Is MAGA a Prayer?
The ways that religion cements devotion
NOTE: Within this text, wherever gender is not key to the explanation, I am using the Elverson ey/em construction of the Spivak Pronouns.
Many, among the talkative rational people, have referred to MAGA/QAnon as a cult. Some may be willing to call it a religion; but, to be fair, a cult is just a religion to which we have not yet become accustomed. I’ve been thinking about religion and the way that it gives adherents permission to believe things that are not provable. In fact even the religions with which we have become most familiar (familiar enough that we take them for granted) insist on some pretty fantastic claims. Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead to save us all from our sins against a father god. The world was created by an all-powerful deity who sent Moses to rescue his chosen people and lead them on a bloody tour of the Middle East seizing lands that the surprised residents thought were theirs, but which Yahweh assured the Hebrews were not.
The polytheistic beliefs of Hindu and Shinto practitioners also construct a world which projects beyond the merely human and envisions an internally consistent set of interactions between the natural and the supernatural realms. As with Christianity and Judaism, these too provide a story based in historical understanding and explaining where the believer comes from and where ey is going. The world-wide appeal of such beliefs proclaims the real value of such a narrative.
One may criticize Scientology as a grift, but its overall story is as compelling and consistent as any good work of L. Ron Hubbard science fiction. The Urantia Book tells a story of our world from creation to now and provides compelling answers to daily nagging questions; it reads like a knock-off of a science fiction novel by Larry Niven. These narratives, even the widely accepted ones, tell a story which must be recognized as fantastical, in that they all stray into the acceptance of unseen and unprovable forces which nonetheless directly impinge upon the ordinary world that we all know. A consistent albeit fantastical narrative must, it seems, underlie any religious belief.
Religion is called for specifically because there are problems that we believe will never be addressed. We adhere to religion without scientific support because we believe that it must provide what science cannot. We adhere despite ridicule and evidence contradicting our belief. In fact, if a religious narrative was not fantastical, but was instead a measured and sometimes uncertain recitation of what we know and can easily observe, we would be hard pressed to call it religion. What wonder there was in such a belief would lie in the actual magnificence of a largely explainable beautiful sunset; or the rhythmic crashing of the generally comprehensible ocean waves on an Oregon beach; or the utterly describable twinkling of a night sky in the desert. Each point in such a recitation could be tested and even corrected through experimentation upon the real things in our real world.
What sort of religion is that!? The unknowns are all being diligently pursued by hopeful scientists who sincerely believe that an explanation will be forthcoming. Eternal vagaries? More like questions to be eventually answered through disciplined work! No philosophical treatises regarding minimum platforms for dancing angels and no arguing over the ultimate capabilities of our favorite deity. Rather than undertake a possibly foolhardy investigation of the unknowable, those without the fortitude to undertake such a noble endeavor will prefer the simplicity of a made-up solution — a solution for which religion is ideally suited.
MAGA/QAnon
Here I come to MAGA/QAnon. Is this a political philosophy or is it a newly forming religion? While Jesus is often intoned in the MAGA/QAnon gatherings, blending an existing religion into a new one is fairly common (see Mormonism). Such blending doesn’t make the new religion any less a new religion. In considering this as a religion, I look for the common indicators:
A deity: There appear to be two cooperating deities, Donald Trump and Q. In time Ron DeSantis may replace Trump but these people demand a faultless (or eternally forgiven) leader and there are plenty who are willing to serve this purpose. Desantis even wrote himself into the eighth day of the Biblical creation myth. A crisis: Q appears to have transmogrified (disappeared, died and risen, eternal and always changing) and Donald Trump is persecuted more than any other President by nearly everyone he can think of, a sort of digital crucifixion. A narrative: Q provided a masterful and internally consistent history of Democrat offenses against God and Man while Trump continues to tell the tale of the many cuts he suffers every day. A world: The MAGA/QAnon world has all of the same things in it that ours does but the relationships are different. A volunteer at a polling booth is a conspirator corrupting the election. A legislator proposing law is a traitor seeking to destroy our freedoms. A President identifying problems to be solved is a turncoat besmirching American greatness. It provides a complete world but with all interactions transformed. Prophecies: Q has identified a number of predicted facts such as the housing of Trump offenders in a boat off of Guantanamo Bay, the return of JFK Jr. as a Conservative, the 2020 triumph of Donald Trump and the trials of Democrat criminals, all of which failed to transpire leading (as is common) to an even deeper devotion by the believers. Unassailable devotion: Democrats cannibalize children and somehow hide this activity from the neighbors and parents. Democrats have extensive control over election results but somehow fail to win every election. There is a “deep state” which has managed to keep the biggest secret there is for decades while somehow losing track of Hunter Biden’s laptop. No matter how insane the specific claims, the believers remain unwavering.
These observations lead me to conclude that this is a religion; and any religion calls for ritual and prayer.
The Science of Religion
I began to consider this view while reading T. M. Luhrmann’s How God Becomes Real, a fascinating study of religious practice. Professor Luhrmann includes excerpts from Bronislaw Malinowski’s book, Magic, Science and Religion, in which he rebels against the simplistic notion that we have science and the savage has magic. He uses the Melanesian cultures as an acid test of this idea noting their very sophisticated processes for sowing seed, dealing with insects and navigating over long distances. For those tasks, they do not require any outside help; but, when it comes to rain, for example, these capable folk recognize that they have no direct control. It is here that they count on the supernatural.
Through rituals and prayers intended to appease various deities and spiritual forces, they provide themselves with a sort of comfort in the face of otherwise capricious nature. In other words, we all have science to explain what we can explain and engineering to control what we can control and we all, to some degree, feel the desire (if not the need) for something in addition to manage the existential threat of everything else. What is needed is a practice which may provide at least the illusion that we have some understanding and control over imponderable Nature.
Luhrmann, takes this a step further by isolating the practice we know as prayer. She sees prayer as a method for putting the petitioner in the place of the imponderable and its supernatural curators, reminding themselves of their role in their spirit-rich world. She writes:
I have come to think about prayer as a metacognitive practice, by which I mean that it is a practice of thinking about thinking. Those who pray commit to the faith frame, and in so doing, they step back from their everyday way of thinking to examine their thoughts, as if seeing from a god or spirit’s point of view. They look back on their thoughts as if from outside and ask whether those thoughts are in accord with a world in which gods and spirits matter. It is this metacognitive dimension of the practice that changes people and helps them to deal with the disappointments and the difficulties of their lives.
So, regardless whether prayer is effective in changing the minds of spiritual forces, it serves other purposes. It surely provides some comfort, in that rather than merely waiting for the unpredictable, the petitioner has the feeling of playing an active role. Those living comfortably with most needs satisfied may have little need for such ritual. One for whom external forces represent a constant threat, may find ritual eir only relief. If a portion of the populace could be kept always uneasy, always frightened; if they could be convinced that there are horrendous problems that will never be addressed; then, they too would look to the most likely god-like savior, and they too would pray to that savior for the boon that only a deity can provide.
Bound Fast
Most etymologists conclude that the word “religion” derives from the Greek word religare which means “bound fast” or “tied up tightly”. It refers to a situation from which one cannot extricate oneself. One who is religious is unlikely to abandon the faith regardless the amount of contrary evidence that is presented. Such a person is bound fast to that belief. There are a number of effective methods for bringing about such a binding, with the most powerful being to call for a public declaration. A public declaration is a powerful commitment that has been used by religious groups for millennia. Such a commitment must be easy to learn, and imbued with meaning. It must be stated publicly and reflected upon privately. Each public recitation binds the devout more firmly to the belief through a process known as social proof. Each private recitation reminds the devout follower that “this is your identity, it is who you are”.
I am reminded of The Cloud of Unknowing, a short book by an anonymous Christian monk who (not to put too fine a point on it) essentially reinvented Zen Buddhism in the fields of fourteenth-century Britain. That author makes a bold and interesting claim: “The short prayer pierces heaven.” The short prayer is not so much the “thinking about thinking” that Luhrmann proposes, although it can lead to that. Instead, the short prayer is a template for thinking. It is brief text message that shows up in your DM stream over and over and over. It becomes the thought that is to be thought and it means whatever you need it to mean.
The short prayer has a key advantage: it can be chanted in a public ritual, and here we return to MAGA/QAnon. In September rallies, Trump supporters began to respond with a simple ritual of raising their index fingers high in a salute. The exact meaning was not known at the time. It is likely that it had meaning for only a few in that crowd until the rest of them joined in. At that moment, it meant something to everyone — even if it was just “I am a part of this.”
Short prayers like “Make America great again”, “Follow the white rabbit”, and “Where we go one we go all” are excellent and binding proclamations. Each is easily remembered and vague enough that each member may fill it with personal meaning and assume that all others understand it in the same way. Each prayer and gesture solidifies their union with their great leader(s). They become one with Q. They become one with Trump. As Luhrmann suggests, the prayer reconciles the mere mortal with the elements of eir transcended spiritual nature. Whether MAGA/QAnon was designed to be a religion or those in power found value in encouraging its fortuitous development, it appears to be a religion now.
We have discussed prayer but what about ritual? The rituals are unusual but clearly qualify as ritual. The raised index finger and the Q patch on the Broward County SWAT uniform is joined by weekend military training wherein manly individuals who would cower before a U.S. military gunner, live the twelve-year-old-boy fantasy of going to war. Such individuals will openly carry firearms indicating that the cowering fear of assault by geriatric shoppers prompting extraordinary performative display is in fact bravery. These rituals and their associated decorations, honorifics and uniforms, also cement devotion. If you were to spend a year marching through malls in camouflage while openly armed and loudly proclaiming your sacred rights to protect yourself from the housewives and teenagers surrounding you, I suspect you would have some difficulty renouncing that.
“Hey, weren’t you that armed guy who pushed the old butcher into the newspaper stand because he had a knife?”
“No, that was really a different person.”
“No, I remember now. And then you screamed like a little girl and ran away because you couldn’t get your gun out of its holster…”
“No, really. I’m a very different person now…”
I’m just saying, it would be difficult. Public display binds like nothing else.
If there is any value in my current thoughts on this subject, it may be simply to suggest that religious movements last a long time and are impervious to reason. With or without Trump, this sect may pose a threat of violence and disinformation over social media for decades. It has assumed a unique identity with a compelling (although fictional) narrative. It needs watching and it needs effective and ethical counter-measures in the form of positive messages from those in power offering real movements and legislation to reduce the psychic burdens on common folk and make fantasy religion less appealing. It requires a progressive agenda that truly helps people and welcomes them into a benign and loving community. We need to influence our neighbors and discuss the direction of our community and our nation so as to slow this dark populist cult. This should not be taken lightly. It is a force that has destroyed nations and subjugated millions.
It is religion.
Julian S. Taylor is the author of Famine in the Bullpen a book about bringing innovation back to software engineering. Available at or orderable from your local bookstore. Rediscover real browsing at your local bookstore. Also available in ebook and audio formats at Sockwood Press.