Author note: this is the first part of a series I am writing on Flat Earth homeschooling. It explores evangelical Christian Flat Earth conspiracy theory books created to indoctrinate homeschooled children. The next part of the series will be released soon.
I recently purchased a number of evangelical Christian Flat Earth conspiracy theory books created to indoctrinate homeschooled children. These books (which include Caspian Sarginson’s Biblical Cosmology for Homeschoolers, Sue B. West’s The Flat Earth Handbook for Parents, Terah Talf’s ABCs of Our Flat Earth, Rachel Jerry’s Let There Be!, Michal Grace Konkel’s 22 Kinds!, and T.S.T. Audits’ Flat Earth: A Coloring Book of Big Questions, among others) are all either written by homeschooling parents or explicitly marketed to homeschooling families and children (and sometimes both!). They include homeschooling curricula, children’s picture books, and children’s coloring books. All promote an evangelical Christian perspective of the Flat Earth conspiracy theory—the idea that the Christian God created the planet Earth as flat, stationary, and covered by a solid dome.
To evangelical Flat Earthers, the flatness of the Earth is merely one aspect of a broader belief system they call “biblical cosmology.” Biblical cosmology argues for “a geocentric, enclosed system, model of the universe that resembles that of the ancient Hebrew concept of the heavens and the earth.”[1] While normal people might equate biblical cosmology with belief in a Flat Earth, evangelical Flat Earthers believe that “biblical cosmology encompasses every descriptor of God’s creation in the Bible, not only the shape of the earth. These include: shape and state of the earth (stationary, fixed on foundations, heaven above, hell below); the firmament (solid crystalline dome, waters above and below); sun and moon (moves in a circuit over the earth, each giving their own light); stars (fixed in the firmament, moving in their course); ends of the earth; the aether.”[2]
Here is a pictorial depiction of the biblical cosmology belief system from Rachel Jerry’s Let There Be!:
Now, I don’t believe the Earth is flat, just to be clear. I think a Flat Earth is not only pseudoscience, but also a conspiracy theory. This is because Flat Earth ideology is not merely a theory of cosmology. It is not just one of many proposals about how the universe is structured. It is more than that. It is also a conspiracy theory. It claims vast forces of darkness are conspiring to keep the truth hidden about Earth being flat. Those forces of darkness are distinctly spiritual and explicitly anti-Christian.[3]
Some might think that I am wasting my time by exploring evangelical Christian Flat Earth conspiracy theory books. Are there not more important causes to advocate for today? Certainly, that could be true. Flat Earth conspiracy theorists are still on the margins of the Christofascist Right. They are a highly vocal group, but they are nowhere close to being a majority group within evangelicalism. They are criticized by fellow evangelical Christians as detached from reality. Nonetheless, I do not think I am wasting my time by considering their beliefs and their attempts to indoctrinate homeschooled children. This is for three reasons: (1) I think evangelical Christian Flat Earth conspiracy theorists, not Young Earth Creationists, are the quintessential examples of taking biblical literalism to its fullest and most consistent conclusions; (2) I think the popularity of the conspiracy theory is growing, especially among young people and religious people, with 10% of Americans currently believing in a Flat Earth (which is not an insignificant number!) and more than half of them being “very religious” people who think “evidence of the earth’s shape may be found in scripture”; and (3) I think the fact that it is entirely legal in most of the United States for evangelical Christians to indoctrinate their children with Flat Earth conspiracy theories and call it education or science indicates how broken homeschool policy is in our nation.
But I am getting ahead of myself. Before passing too much judgment (good or bad) on the claim that the Earth is flat, I need to accurately and fairly articulate what that claim entails. I will begin my exploration and summary of the Flat Earth conspiracy theory with the idea of the firmament. The existence of the firmament is a key aspect of Flat Earth ideology.
What is the firmament? According to normal people like the folks at Merriam-Webster, the firmament is “the vault or arch of the sky.” Normal people often use the words “firmament” and “sky” interchangeably—and so do many Bible translators when translating the creation stories from the Jewish Book of Genesis. However, this is a cardinal sin to evangelical Flat Earth conspirators. To them, the sky is made of air and gas, whereas the firmament is a large, solid dome that covers the earth and separates it from the heavenly realm.[4]
Think about the movie The Truman Show. In Peter Weir’s brilliant, satirical film, the main character, Truman Burbank, lives his entire life unknowingly inside of an enormous but enclosed soundstage because his life is the subject of a reality television show. When Truman eventually comes to know the truth about his scripted and manipulated life, we find out that the sky in his world is not made of atmosphere but rather is a solid dome sitting on top of the soundstage and contains stage lights. The show’s producer, the godlike Christof, physically sits in a control room on top of the fake sky, manipulating the light and weather in Truman’s world.
Evangelical Flat Earthers believe the same general things about the firmament:
- The firmament is solid; you cannot go through it[5]:
- The firmament is dome-shaped, sitting on top of the Earth and sealing it shut—the seal being made of a giant ice wall[6]:
- The firmament is holding back water above us[7].
- The firmament contains lights—namely, the sun, the moon, and the stars, which are placed by God in the firmament and which move around inside their stationary dome[8]:
- God, like Christof, physically lives above the firmament[9]:
According to flat earth homeschoolers, the firmament was created by the Christian God on the second day of the universe’s creation. And this claim of theirs is undeniably true in a sense: the Book of Genesis does say God created a firmament on the second day of creation and it does say God fixed the sun, the moon, and the stars in it. They are not making that up.
Here is what the Torah says in Genesis 1:6-8, 14, and 16-17:
God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water, and let it be a separation between water and water.” And God made the expanse and it separated between the water that was below the expanse and the water that was above the expanse, and it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven, and it was evening, and it was morning, a second day… And God said, “Let there be luminaries in the expanse of the heavens…” And God made the two great luminaries: the great luminary to rule the day and the lesser luminary to rule the night, and the stars. And God placed them in the expanse of the heavens…
Here is how the Complete Jewish Bible translates this passage:
God said, “Let there be a dome in the middle of the water; let it divide the water from the water.” God made the dome and divided the water under the dome from the water above the dome; that is how it was, and God called the dome Sky. So there was evening, and there was morning, a second day… God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky…” God made the two great lights — the larger light to rule the day and the smaller light to rule the night — and the stars. God put them in the dome of the sky…
And finally, here is the King James Version (KJV):
God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day… And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven… And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven.
As you can see, the Bible speaks plainly of some sort of substantive layer between the earth and the heavens in which the sun, the moon, and the stars are set and which is holding back water from above. Depending on the Bible translation you use, the firmament takes on greater or lesser detail. But its existence is not in question in the text.
This is why I said earlier that I think evangelical Christian Flat Earth conspiracy theorists, not Young Earth Creationists, are the quintessential examples of taking biblical literalism to its fullest and most consistent conclusions. Evangelical Flat Earthers do not merely reject secular evolutionary theory like young earth creationists do; they also take the Bible’s ancient cosmology as accurate—despite all evidence to the contrary. Ken Ham doesn’t have the balls.
But the fact is, many ancient people did believe in a Flat Earth and the idea of a solid, fixed firmament. In the Enuma Elish, an ancient Mesopotamian creation story, the Babylonian hero-god Marduk successfully slays Tiamat, the villain-goddess of saltwater oceans, using her corpse as a gruesome firmament:
The lord paused to view her dead body, That he might divide the monster and do artful works. He split her like a shellfish into two parts: Half of her he sat up as the ceiling of the sky, He pulled down the bar and posted guards. He ordered them not to allow her waters to escape.
Early Chinese cosmology also had a similar belief. Chinese cosmologists called it “tiānyuán dìfāng”—the idea of a round heaven over a flat, square earth. The Zhoubi Suanjing, an ancient Chinese astronomical and mathematical work, popularized this idea. According to a Cambridge University Press paper, this belief continued into the 17th century and was dispelled by Jesuit missionaries.
The ancient Jewish cosmology, articulated in Genesis 1 with a solid dome covering the earth, clearly fits within this larger context. So, while normal people may consider belief in a Flat Earth wacky today, the belief is in line with other evangelical, literalist readings of the Bible. Young Earth Creationism and the Flat Earth conspiracy theory have the same root. Flat Earth conspirators are just Young Earth Creationists on coke.[10]
Here’s the part I am personally struggling with, though: if the Flat Earth is covered by a firmament, and the firmament is a dome, that means the Earth is covered by something in the shape of half a sphere. According to National Geographic, a dome is “a curved formation or structure” that is “shaped like half of a sphere.” Think of a cloche: the silver dome used to cover and serve food.
If the firmament is cloche-like, that means at least the top half of the Earth is spherical. We may not know the shape of the bottom half, according to Flat Earth conspiracy theorists, but if the top half is spherical, it seems reasonable to believe God created the bottom half symmetrically. And when you put two domes together, you get a sphere or globe. So, we end up with a spherical world anyways!
To be continued.
References
[1] Rachel Jerry, Let There Be! Biblical Cosmology of Creation for Little Ones, independently published, 2024.
[2] Ibid.
[3] In Biblical Cosmology for Homeschoolers (independently published, 2025), Caspian Sarginson writes that, “We are living in a mighty spiritual war for the teaching and training of our children, and the prize is our children—their minds, hearts, and souls.” Satan is our opponent, as he is “desperately at work seeking to deceive everyone on Earth”—and “amidst all of the evil deception” Satan promotes, “there is one deception that has fooled billions of people for centuries,” namely, the “the Earth is a globe in a heliocentric system” (p. 6-7).
[4] Sue B. West, The Flat Earth Handbook for Parents: 20 Creative Lessons for Homeschool Kids, Book 2, Lessons 21-41, independently published, 2025: “The firmament [is] a mighty dome that many ancient cultures, as well as biblical texts, described as holding up the stars and separating the waters above from those below.”
[5] Image is from Caspian Sarginson, Biblical Cosmology for Homeschoolers, independently published, 2025.
[6] Images are from Terah Talf, ABCs of Our Flat Earth, independently published, 2017.
[7] Image is from T.S.T. Audits, Flat Earth: A Coloring Book of Big Questions for Curious Kids Who Wonder About the World, independently published, 2025.
[8] Image is from Rachel Jerry, Let There Be! Biblical Cosmology of Creation for Little Ones, independently published, 2024
[9] Image is from Michal Grace Konkel, 22 Kinds! A Biblical Creation Story for YHWH’s Little Ones, independently published, 2025.
[10] This is why Young Earth Creationists are getting nervous about their Flat Earth brethren’s rise in popularity. Here is evangelical astronomer Danny R. Faulkner, writing for the Young Earth Creationist organization Answers in Genesis just a few years ago: “I fear that their false gospel will spread further. Flat earth is a cult. It is not harmless. It is wrecking the lives of many people, and it is leading to the eternal loss of many.” You can sense the worry there.