Wolfe’s sudden firing, he told me, was “traumatic.” His kids had grown up in this community. But often, as in Wolfe’s case, flat-Earthers are the biggest victims of their convictions.

The polarizing idea has a way of setting people at odds with one another and drawing them into other fringe conspiracy theories-no good for a house of worship. It’s not hard to see how a pastor giving an unexpected flat-Earth sermon could harm a congregation. He believes the leaders discovered his belief when they learned he’d attended the conference. He had planned to broach the topic delicately during an upcoming Church-leadership meeting, making a religious argument for the theory beginning with Genesis 1, but he never had a chance. Wolfe left the convention with a new group of friends and a new commitment to live publicly as a flat-Earther. By 2018 he’d decided to attend Take On the World, a Christian conference promoting flat-Earth theory, about an hour from his home.

Wolfe had been full-on “flat,” as believers refer to themselves, for almost a year, ever since he stumbled across YouTube videos promoting a biblical flat-Earth model when researching a sermon on the Great Flood. Still, certain Christians, like Wolfe, preach that the idea is supported by a literal interpretation of the Bible. The deeply unpopular theory erroneously posits that the planet is flat as a pancake and (according to many) contained beneath a dome. Wolfe believes that association was his “flat Earth” belief, which he’d kept under wraps in order to avoid this kind of situation. This article was adapted from Kelly Weill’s recent book, Off the Edge.

Flat earth model