Can’t a solar eclipse just be a solar eclipse?
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on March 27, 2024.
With echoes of “You’re so vain; you probably think the Bible’s about you,” today’s conservative American conspiracy theorists are raising money for Christian broadcasters by claiming the upcoming solar eclipse is a prophetic word from God revealed in the stars and in the Scriptures about the return of Jesus and the Confederacy.
The Great North American Eclipse will darken the skies from Sinaloa, Mexico, to Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, April 8.
“The biblical implications are massive,” claims an InfoWars video posted last week by Alex Jones, the alt-right conspiracy theorist who was ordered to pay $1.487 billion in damages in a defamation lawsuit over spreading conspiracies related to the Sandy Hook school shooting.
The InfoWars video points to Genesis 1:14 and claims: “God declared the sun and the moon were for signs. The only signs they can give is eclipses. And the nice thing about eclipses, no false prophet can manipulate it.”
Some of the conspiracies about April 8 are being spread by the science deniers of the flat earth movement. According to Jeffery Blevins at the University of Cincinnati: “They’re not just primed to believe the earth is flat, they’re primed to believe you can’t trust science, academics, the media or government. And it might also lead you to see other extremist views as plausible.”
Even though many conservatives reject the idea of a flat earth, they share a lack of trust in science, academics, the media and government. And as we saw during the January 6 insurrection attempt and in recent calls for violent retribution, the extremist views of authoritarian Christians are becoming more concerning for many Americans.
So imagine what might happen if these extremists who are obsessed with spiritual warfare apocalypticism began interpreting a solar eclipse as a sign in the heavens to sacralize their demonization of immigrants in a promotion of Civil War.