Jared Stacy, PhD

Reality In Ruins: How Conspiracy Theory Became an American Evangelical Crisis Coming March 17, 2026

Authoritarianism always relies on a storied sense that the strongman speaks for “us” to “make things right”

New episode up! @jaredstacy, a theologian & former pastor, discusses the intersection of evangelical Christianity & conspiracy theories. How do these narratives influence faith? Politics? Society? He offers theological reflections & practical advice for engaging: open.substack.com/pub/americanva…

For now, these words, the history it recounts, the stories it tells, the witness it tries to make to the dispossession that is God’s deliverence—all that is out in the world, for the world. I hope you’ll take it in for yourself.

And yes, I’ve read the @CTmagazine review from @bonniekristian. There may be a time to respond, but not today. Disreality—that lived sense of occupying entirely different realities—rears its head everywhere we go. And it rages with real, lived consequences.

“Reality In Ruins” is officially out in the world; let’s throw sand in the machine—tell the truth and yes, wait for the truth—disreality be damned.

Reality in Ruins: How Conspiracy Theory Became an American Evangelical Crisis—on sale this week! harpercollins.com/products/reali…

The endorsements for “Reality In Ruins: How Conspiracy Theory Became An American Evangelical Crisis”

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Hear the untold history of evangelical conspiracism: harpercollins.com/products/reali…

There is no historical moment in American evangelicalism where conspiracy thinking is not at work warping the gospel toward suspicion, fear, and theological paranoia—a mixed portrait of Jesus.

I wrote a blurb for this, and it's excellent.

@DrewStrait No, I haven’t read it! But it looks like it may apply. A lot of this comes on thinking re: the Talarico dusts ups.

@jaredstacy I appreciate this. Are you responding to Carter’s essay here?

“Christians participating in politics” is not Christian nationalism. “Christian nationalism” is the confusion of church with state by collapsing ethnic identity into national-partisan identity as the ideological content for “Christian faith.”

“Reality In Ruins: How Conspiracy Theory Became an American Evangelical Crisis” makes its way into the world next week on March 17!

A book for anyone saying “it feels like we’re living in different realities…” while looking for a way forward. harpercollins.com/products/reali…

“Reality in Ruins: How Conspiracy Theory Became an American Evangelical Crisis” is the #1 New Release in Religion & Sociology Preorder link in comments:

We need more of the currents that flow from the thinking called “Christian anarchism” — it is corrosive to the militant claims of Christian nationalism. “The role of the Christian in society is to shatter the false necessities of violence” — Jacques Ellul

3) Theology against theology lays bare malformed dogma. Whenever Christians have embraced the false necessity to engineer the return of Christ, we end up embracing Antichrist to those ends. The messiah has already come; history is not managed or manufactured by the church.

Over 100 complaints, from 40 units, in over 30 military installations—the idea that Christians must engineer the return of Jesus by bloodshed is antichrist. I’ve got three thoughts 🧵