The most common thread among the 650 believers at the event was that a pancake-shaped world is a biblical truth

When he first heard about the idea of a flat Earth Robbie Davidson thought the notion that the world was not a sphere was crazy.

“I thought the idea of a flat Earth was ridiculous,” said Robbie Davidson, a slim, hyper Canadian sporting a ginger goatee and loose fitting suit while sitting in the lobby of a Denver hotel.

But not any more. The hotel is hosting the second annual Flat Earth International Conference – an event that Davidson himself founded and organized.

“I’d first heard it in the Bible and thought ‘this can’t be true,’” he recalled, speaking with rapid excitement. “I mean, I believed everything else, that the Earth was created in six literal days, but what about all this other stuff [about a flat Earth]? To be consistent as a biblical literalist, I can’t pick and choose.”

David’s conversion to believing in a flat earth was only a few years ago, yet in that time he and scores of others around the globe – including a few celebrities – have subscribed to the idea that the Earth is shaped like a pancake.

The theories splinter off from there, with varying ideas about who is propagating misinformation about the Earth’s shape and why, but there are a number of unifying touchstones: Nasa, Freemasons, the “faked” moon landing, globalists, Elon Musk.

But perhaps the most common thread is the Bible, and the conviction of its fundamental truth. That makes evangelical Christians one of largest and most enthusiastic groups who embrace the theory, but they are also one of the least reported on and one that causes immense controversy in their own community.

Yet walking the halls of the conference – where 650 people from around the world paid up to $350 to attend lectures about their horizontal idea of the planet – it’s not uncommon to see people praying over one another, discussing apocalyptic theories about “end times”, or swapping Bible verses that describe the Earth in a non-spherical fashion.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘It’s very cathartic being around other flat Earthers’ at the Flat Earth international conference in Denver, Colorado, November 2018. Photograph: Josiah Hesse/The Guardian

“I’ve found over 200 scriptures that corroborate the idea that we are living on a stationary, flat Earth,” said Nathan Roberts, one of many “cosmological evangelists” speaking at the event.

He’s a handsome, young entrepreneur, traveling the country with his wife and kids, speaking about Jesus and selling books about creationism – the perfect model of an American evangelical. And yet most evangelicals, like most scientists, despise the work that he does on a flat Earth.

“The most persecution I’ve faced has been from within the church,” Roberts said.

At a time when evangelicals are facing somewhat of a public relations crisis–backlash against their LGBT stance, prosperity doctrines and overwhelming support of the Trump 2016 campaign, observers say it makes sense they would bristle at any associations with the flat Earth movement.

Throughout the last century, evangelicals have had a love-hate relationship with fundamentalist Christians, who are an evangelical subculture who see the Bible as a historical, scientifically factual account of world events.

Mainstream evangelicals tend to employ what’s known as “seeker sensitive” tactics of neutral politics, live rock music and charming, hip pastors, attracting celebrities like Chris Pratt, Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian. Whereas fundamentalist Christians are typically less frills and more idealism, often leading to homeschooling, survivalist lifestyles, and a focus on the Book of Revelation.

Flat Earthers (or “biblical Earthers,” as some distinguish themselves at this conference) are a new subculture of American fundamentalist Christianity. It’s a marriage of anti-government conspiracy theories (Nasa’s space program is a complete lie) with biblical literalism (the Earth is the flat, center of the universe, with heaven above the sky and hell below the ground).

The movement does claim a few celebrities. In 2007 The View co-host and evangelical Christian Sherri Shepherd caused a collective gasp in the early world of social media when she publicly questioned whether the Earth was flat. Former MTV diva Tila Tequila, rapper B.o.B., and Boston Celtics Kyrie Irving have all publicly identified as flat Earthers.

At Thursday’s conference, Davidson was giddy to announce the unexpected appearance of the YouTube personality Logan Paul (whose channel has more than 18 million subscribers). Paul made a brief appearance on stage, where he announced he was “coming out of the flat Earth closet” to a thunderous applause from the crowd.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A rocket design to prove a horizontal hypothesis at the Flat Earth conference in Denver, Colorado, November 2018. Photograph: Josiah Hesse/The Guardian

Their increase in relevance is primarily due to social media and an endlessly curious media. The Washington Post, for example, has run six separate articles about an amateur rocketeer attempting to kiss the sky and video-record that the world is flat.

But for the most part, flat Earthers are one of the most mocked subcultures of our time.

They have inspired the ire of Neil deGrasse Tyson, Modern Family and an evangelical scholar whose work they have cited as evidence for their theory.

“They’ve taken my writing about ancient Israelite cosmology, interpreted it in this uber-literal way, and used it to prop up this flat Earth idea,” said Michael Heiser, a biblical scholar from Liberty University and host of The Naked Bible podcast, who has expressed his frustration with the misinterpretation of his work by flat Earthers.

Like most debates between scholars and fundamentalists, his gripe with flat Earthers comes down to whether the Bible should be seen as an allegorical or literal text.

“In Genesis, you have an Earth that is round but flat, with a solid dome over it,” says Heiser. “In Proverbs, there are references to the seas being held in place where light meets darkness, which is the horizon, where the dome covers and seals the Earth. You have references to the Earth being set upon a foundation, known as the pillars of the Earth. You have waters beneath the Earth, which is the realm of the dead.

“All of this is standard vocabulary for how people of this time and place viewed the world. They didn’t know about Antarctica or New Zealand. The Bible is an ancient Mediterranean-centered document, written by people who are describing their world through their experiences. The mountains are described as holding the dome of the sky in place, but there was no REI store nearby where they could buy mountain climbing gear and scale these peaks to see what was going on.”

Heiser is a Christian himself, albeit one who prefers to view the Bible in its historical context.

Many people at the conference, including Davidson, say they have been kicked out of churches, or lost jobs with churches, or suffered broken relationships with family members because they have gone public with their beliefs about a flat Earth.

They see the Denver conference as a rare opportunity to share a physical space with fellow believers.

“It’s very cathartic being around other [flat Earthers],” said Davidson. “It’s so important, because we’ve been isolated and abused, and now we can breathe, relate and connect with like-minded people … I’d say only 20% of flat Earthers are actually out of the closet about this. What you see now is just the first wave. There’s a bigger wave coming and it’s gonna catch the world off guard.”