What Scott Adams' Deathbed Conversion Tells Us About Christianity

MAGA converts to MAGA

Image credit: Art of Charm, CC

Moderately talented cartoonist and racist asshole Scott Adams died this week of prostate cancer. In his last days he said he was planning to convert to Christianity as a kind of hedge against going to hell. Some have mocked this final act as a cynical effort to fool God, or as a misunderstanding of Christianity. I think, though, it’s better understood as a final statement of sincere faith in christofascism and hate, the causes to which Adams dedicated the final years of his life and career.

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Death of a racist

Adams initially rose to fame in the early 90s as the creator of the newspaper strip Dilbert, an ugly cute comic about the grind of cubicle work and the idiocy of bosses. In the 2000s, however, Adams began to gain notoriety for his increasingly unhinged and disgusting political commentary. In 2006 he engaged in some light Holocaust denial, doubting the number of dead.

Then in 2016 he endorsed Donald Trump and the association with MAGA was a slippery slope to compounding vileness. He rabidly opposed Covid vaccination and masking and predicted that if Joe Biden won the 2020 election, “Republicans will be hunted.” He also claimed that a Dilbert TV show was cancelled because the network had engaged in anti-white discrimination against him. In 2022, after the Highland Parking shooting, he said that parents of troubled teen boys might have to murder their own sons to protect others.

In 2023, Adams described Black people as a “hate group” and said, “the best advice I would give to white people is to get the fuck away from black people; just get the fuck away.” The open call for segregation was too much for the nation’s newspapers, which dropped Dilbert.

Adams announced in May 2025 that he had prostate cancer, and that taking ivermectin—horse tranquilizer which MAGA has decided is an all-purpose wonderdrug—had (unsurprisingly) been unhelpful. In November he begged Trump to intervene to get access to the cancer drug Pluvicto; HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy took a moment out of plotting to murder children to expedite a no hope treatment for a racist cartoonist.

MAGA conversion

As it became clear that no intervention was going to help, Adams—a longtime vocal agnostic—began to discuss converting to Christianity. As reported in a much too respectful story in the Catholic Register, Adams posted on January 4 that “it is my plan to convert.” He added, “So I still have time, but my understanding is you’re never too late. And on top of that any skepticism I have about reality would certainly be instantly answered if I wake up in heaven.”

Adams went on to argue that he saw efforts to convert him as kind and respectful and cool.

I have not been a believer. But I also have respect for any Christian who goes out of their way to try to convert me. Because how would I believe you believe your own religion if you’re not trying to convert me? So I have great respect for people who care enough that they want me to convert and then go out of their way to try to convince me.

He added that Christianity was a good bet, and that he liked the idea of being nice to his Christian interlocutors.

I am now convinced that the risk-reward is completely smart. If it turns out that there’s nothing there, I’ve lost nothing. But I’ve respected your wishes, and I like doing that. If it turns out there is something there, and the Christian model is the closest to it, I win. So with your permission, I promise you that I will convert. But I probably won’t spend that much time in that phase, so don’t expect it to happen today, okay? But argument made, argument accepted.

The Catholic Register goes on to talk about Pascal’s wager. But I don’t think Pascal’s Wager is the relevant context. I think the relevant context is Adams’ years long commitment to Donald Trump and his christofascist community.

It’s notable, first of all, that in his discussion of conversion, Adams says nothing about regret, forgiveness, or reconciliation. He does not express regret for insulting Black people, for example, not any doubts about dabbling in Holocaust denial. He doesn’t express sorrow for saying in 2011 that women should be treated differently by society because they are similar to children or mentally disabled people (nor, of course, does he apologize to mentally disabled people for suggesting they shouldn’t have rights.)

Adams does not address any of those he insulted, sneered at, or attacked. Instead, he speaks to Christians in his life. He validates their conversion attempts as a sign of sincerity, implicitly cosigning the brutal, often violent history of Christian imperialism and evangelicism, and also implicitly denigrating religions (like, say, Judaism) that don’t try to convert others. He also suggests he likes respecting the wishes of Christians.

What Adams is saying is that he is embedded in a community of Christians, and more, that he is embedded in a community of Christians who are aggressive about evangelicism. This isn’t surprising; after Adams said incredibly racist shit, christofascists like Charlie Kirk rallied to him in the name of racism and christofascism.

Not all racist Trump supporters like Adams are Christian supremacists. But many of the most active and enthusiastic are. Many in Adam’s community seem to have been pushing him to embrace the full spectrum of MAGA—not just anti-Black racism, not just sexism, not just antisemitism, but Christian supremacism. And in his last days, he did so—offering a thin rationalist explanation, and a much more convincing communitarian one.

Scott Adams, christofascist

In public discourse, Christianity is mostly presented as a force for good which cannot fail, though it can sometimes be failed. Thus, critics of Adams’ late Christian turn generally rebuke him for not understanding the religion, or for a lack of sincerity, just as christofascists are accused of violating the tenets of love and charity on which Christianity is (supposedly) based.

But Christianity is a 2000 year tradition with billions and billions of adherents across history. It does not have some sort of transcendent core or truth; it is in the end simply what Christians do and what Christians make it. And one thing that Christians do and make it is christofascism—a movement that sees Christianity as a violent white nationalist project and which worships hate.

When Scott Adams says he is converting to Christianity, it is worth asking, what Christianity is he converting to? By his own testimony, it is not a Christianity that asks for or requires some sort of reckoning with past harms or past cruelties. Instead, it seems like a Christianity that is mostly about empowerment of and lauding of Christians—for their (often violent) history of evangelicism, for their status as default religion in the US, for their predominance in Adams’ community, which is MAGA community.

Adams embraced MAGA fascism in the last decades of his life. When he says he is a Christian, and doesn’t repudiate the fascism, it’s reasonable to assume that before he died he became a christofascist. Fascist to christofascist isn’t much of a conversion at all—which is, I think, the point.

Christians tend to claim that what you believe is the most important thing about you and your moral life. But often the communities you join and the identities you choose are much more telling, and much more significant, than your cosmological assertions. Adams chose white nationalism some time back. His death bed conversion was not a real transformation of self. It was simply an acknowledgement that in the US, right at the moment, and historically, white nationalism most frequently wears a cross along with its hood.