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@futurebird As someone who grew up Baptist, lived through the D&D/heavy metal/Satanists kidnapping kids on Halloween/etc panics, and now as an adult who still holds Christian beliefs, I can say that it comes down to two words: power and control.

In the Before Times when books, newspapers, TV, and word-of-mouth were the only sources of information (and the news media was still trusted), all it took was for the media to suggest a scenario and the rank-and-file would get all a-flutter because they couldn't fact-check it like we can now. If it was reported as news, well then it must be true!

IIRC, it was Ronald Reagan's campaign that figured out how to mobilize evangelical Christians as a political demographic (remember the Moral Majority and Focus On the Family?) and once the higher-ups in those religions got a taste of the power and control that politics can offer, the inevitable slide into today's Christian Nationalism was begun. Since power begets money (and vice versa), they would never attack the institutions that keep that power and control intact (and the money flowing), so they choose to use terrifying "spiritual forces" (that can't be rationally questioned) to generate fear in their followers and redirect their moral outrage towards other things in order to keep the money and power status quo.