It’s not hard to see how a pastor giving an unexpected flat-Earth sermon could harm a congregation. 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. But often, as in Wolfe’s case, flat-Earthers are the biggest victims of their convictions.

Wolfe’s sudden firing, he told me, was “traumatic.” His kids had grown up in this community. The Church was filled with his closest friends. Still, almost no one reached out after he was fired. “It was just like, all of a sudden, we didn’t exist.”

Indeed, almost universal in the flat-Earth community is the experience of ridicule and social rejection. Acquaintances unfriend adherents on Facebook, and in real life, after seeing one too many posts calling NASA a satanic psyop. Employers question their sanity. Family members find somewhere else to spend Thanksgiving. The loss foregrounds practically every conversation at flat-Earth meetups, so common that some describe themselves with the language of persecuted minorities: Announcing one’s belief is referred to as “coming out,” a term most commonly associated with the LGBTQ community. Separated from loved ones, many then find themselves trapped inside the theory with the only other people who will believe them.