Episode 71: Jared Stacy - The Evangelical to Conspiracy Theory Pipeline
In this week’s episode of Faith for Normal People, Pete and Jared talk with theologian and ethicist Jared Stacy about the rise of conspiracy thinking, especially within American evangelicalism. Drawing on his research, Jared Stacy explains how conspiracy theories tap into fears of cultural decline, offer a sense of control, and become spiritually charged narratives about good and evil. He also explores opportunities for people to recognize these patterns and consider more grounded, truth-seeking ways of engaging faith and public life.
Mentioned in This Episode
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Ep 71 Jared Stacy
Jared Byas: You are listening to Faith for Normal People, the only other God-ordained podcast on the internet.
Pete: I'm Pete Enns.
Jared Byas: And I'm Jared Byas.
On today's episode of Faith for Normal People. We're talking about conspiratorial thinking with Jared Stacy.
Pete: Jared's a theologian, ethicist, and former pastor who has a new book, Reality in Ruins: How Conspiracy Theory Became an Evangelical Crisis.
Jared Byas: It's a good episode. Don't forget to stay tuned for quiet time at the end of the episode where we'll reflect on the conversation.
Pete: Alright. Let's get into this.
Jared Stacy: Precisely what we see in conspiracy theory is this supercharging of cultural narratives of decline and national revival sort of gets a theological supercharge. From a movement like Evangelicalism that has always had some sort of stake in providing the morality that that justifies and makes this sort of America function.
Jared Byas: All right. Jared, welcome to the podcast. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. It's been a long time coming, I think.
Jared Stacy: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Pete: A lot of things happening too. So let, let's begin just with the basics. You know, we're gonna be talking about conspiracies, conspiracy theories.
How do you define conspiracy?
Jared Stacy: Yeah, I mean, everyone has a functional definition, don't they? And it's almost like a, you-know-it-when-you-see-it kind of thing. And one of the things that surprised me when I first started researching this is just how many formal definitions there are. There are, and, uh, you know, it, it really depends on what sort of discipline you are, you're doing.
So there's psychological definitions that kind of point to conspiracy theories kind of operating as sort of a repair mechanism so people have a sense of, uh, sense of balance. Uh, then there's information science that kind of gears into like, are these claims, you know, evidence-based or not? Then you have political science.
So I, I kind of bring it all and, and give it a theological twist, uh, or a faith-based twist. Uh, and really what I kind of focus on is conspiracy theory is a story, it's a storytelling act. So we're not just talking about a conspiracy theory as you know, what it's claiming, but also it incorporates conspiracy theorizing, right?
Like the act of narrating something around you. Um, but then we could dig a little deeper into that. So conspiracy theory, as I define it, is a storytelling act that claims to reveal hidden truths, but that always implies a broader story or a bigger story. Um, and one of the reasons I like this definition is it does focus on, you know, the fact claims being made, but it also points towards the implication of that, uh, and also what that story sort of generates in terms of, hey, what am I supposed to do with this information?
And so when you look at conspiracy theories and there's some really low hanging fruit that we could look at, and we'll look backwards, like JFK, the JFK assassination or the moon landing. Both of those sort of imply something beyond November 22nd, 1963 and the grassy knoll, right? You can't just leave it there.
You have to talk about the CIA and everything else that might have gone into the assassination of a president. The same with the moon landing. It's not just that it was faked in a studio back lot, allegedly. It's that we're all, we'd also have to talk about, well, what went into that and what's still ongoing to sustain that story.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared Stacy: So that's why I like that, um, that sort of definition. So just to, you know, re-summarize that, it's, it's a storytelling act that, that conveys hidden truths. It claims to reveal hidden truths that always implies something bigger. Uh, and usually that bigger is a battle. Yeah. Um, it's, it's, it's this, these forces of good and evil that are, you know, demanding a, a sort of response from us.
Jared Byas: Mm-hmm.
Jared Stacy: Um, so that, that's kind of how I define it and that. That draws together some of the best, uh, definitions that come from, you know, other, other ways of talking about this.
Pete: Jared, can we just, um, fine-tune a little bit the idea of storytelling? Um, I'm, I'm assuming you don't mean people are intentionally thinking of telling stories.
It's more these narratives, these, these, um, unspoken narratives that we have that make sense of our existence, right? This is, this is this, this is not necessarily conscious.
Jared Stacy: Right. No.
Pete: And deliberately have a conspiracy.
Jared Stacy: Yeah, that is a great point that, that some of the storytelling I'm talking about is really at a primal level, right?
That it generates and, and provides content for what you or I or anyone would just call normal, you know? Or, or, or even, right. Or, you know, in a moral sense or, or biblical even. And, and so it's, it's this cutting edge attempt to keep this story, whatever that story is, to keep it intact, to project it and interpret an event that leaves, you know, certain commitments and assumptions, essentially untouched.
Jared Byas: Yeah. Is part of it, and you saying those back to back in terms of claiming something that, you know, a hidden truth, but also goes beyond that. There seems to be also this, uh, doubling down of being an insider that goes along with what makes it a conspiracy is not just that it reveals a hidden truth, but that says something about the ones who are, who are in the know
Pete: Who get it. Yeah.
Jared Byas: And not only do I know this fact. Actually, I know the larger story that actually makes sense of that fact in this larger narrative. 'cause I often think of conspiracy as not just a story about an event, which is what you're saying. It's actually right. An event against a larger background and the ones who know not only know the truth of JFK, we talk, we can talk more about how we can broaden that out.
But also we know what that signifies in the larger sense, right? And so there's this kinda doubling down of what we know.
Jared Stacy: Mm-hmm. And for some of your listeners that are kind of attuned to church history, you know, you, you may, your radar may be pinging here because that's essentially gnostic.
Uh, and, and the, the church father Aaron really coined the label people who know, right? Like that's what he used to describe this sort of Christian knowing. And he, he famously said, you know, that it's, it's sort of a truth that is more true than truth itself, is how he framed it. Yeah. And, and you're exactly right, Jared, like the, the way that these stories sort of expand into a myth, and you could, you could draw that all the way into the 20th century when Jacques Ellul, who was looking at propaganda in mass societies, kind of put his finger on the same thing.
These are myths of everything. And, there's a set of people who always claim to know, and there's, there's some comfort because it's not just you. Right. That's what you're saying.
The belonging that you find, uh, down the rabbit hole, so to speak. Mm-hmm. Uh, it, it does satisfy psychologically some of what, the, the, the uncertainty that you're trying to, you're trying to, you know, kind of offload and you find that in a community that everyone's like, oh, we're, we're all tracking on the same thing. We all, we, we all see it. And, and that's, that's some certainty and safety in there, um, that we don't talk about enough.
'Cause it's a belonging. That is providing something for people that if they were to drop it suddenly we're also starting this crisis of, of community too,
Pete: Well, you mentioned, you know, before the, the primal level of this storytelling. I mean, maybe just state the obvious, but that's why it's so hard to have conversations with people and we, we, we've all seen these clips on social media where, you know, the more left-leaning guy is interviewing, you know, uh, MAGA people at an event and you know, it, it's you.
There's no getting through to them. I'm sure that works both ways too. Yeah. But you know, it's, it's, it's so deeply ingrained and it's so, um, it's such an unexamined, uh, mm-hmm. Again, I'm not picking on anybody.
I think people do this right. Just you have unexamined narratives that give your life shape and it's very hard to, to talk with people.
Jared Byas: Well, maybe I can ask a question on the back of that. Because sometimes I think we can dismiss conspiracy because we think about it like Area 51, or, I mean, I think there was a quaint understanding of conspiracy theories in the eighties and nineties maybe, where people were into this as like a hobby.
It was almost like a little bit tongue in cheek, right. But I think what we're talking about here is what you talked about earlier is conspiratorialism, or, like a way of thinking that is conspiratorial, and it goes beyond just examples of these events where it's like, ooh, there's more to the story.
Can you say a little bit more about this idea of conspiratorial thinking and how, like Pete said, a lot of us do it maybe just to differing measures. What are those ingredients that make it conspiratorial versus journalistic or curious?
Jared Stacy: Right, right. Yeah, no, that's a great question. And, and, and the edge is, is razor thin.
Right. Because, very quickly, to give an example of how thin this edge is, you know, we're very familiar in our present moment with talk about the deep state. Right.
And, and the assumption is, and MAGA has certainly popularized that notion in its politics and its rhetoric, but in US history, it was actually the ideological left that began this kind of account of what the deep state is right after Eisenhower and the military industrial complex, the, the left in America really picked up that notion of a deep state to narrate CIA coup, you know, all the coup attempts across the Cold War. So again, the line between conspiracy theory and accounts of aggregate power, right?
Material accounts of aggregate power is, is really thin. And I, I think in some ways this should generate some sort of empathy, um, for those who are kind of bound up in conspiracy theorizing, who, you know, don't have access to even the resources or the, you know, the, the skillset to begin to make these kind of accounts of power.
That's at some level what's going on. But to take your question and kind of finish this thought, uh, of how thin this edge is. I think when we kind of jump that edge, right, and it stops being, um, evidence-based or it, and it, it refuses to sort of deal in the material. I think two big things kind of go into conspiratorial thinking and the, and, and the first one really has nothing to do with particularly the sort of ideological commitments that you might make.
Uh, the first one has to do with the fact that we're all breathing the air of modernity and we all think that the world. And it's, the world happens through just individual action, right? So there's an account of causality of, hey, I, I go and I order my coffee in the morning and I say to the barista, I want this coffee.
And the barista says, okay, sure you do. And I get my coffee. Um, we've all been through the drive-through before though, when we're like, what's taking so long? Why, why? I, I told them my order and it's not here. And, and the reason that is, right. Well, there's so many variables that you or I may not know.
Uh, that may not actually have to do with the barista. Right? I, I know I've been in this scenario where I start to think like, really, uh, you know, antagonistic thoughts really like given the, like, what is this person doing? They're ignoring me, da, da da, da, and start making sort of character statements about this person.
When in actuality it might be that the machine broke or, you know, so there's all this, these sort of variables that go into it. But when conspiracy, the act of conspiracy theorizing really tries to retain and protect this idea of individualism that the world is shaped by direct, you know, unencumbered individual action.
And you know, like the claim that Bill Gates, uh, you know, single handedly engineered the, uh, the COVID-19 pandemic, right? Or that, or that, Joe Biden or, or any, that any one individual could do that. Um, and, and here's where the, here's where the razor thin edge is with that kind of individualism, is that there, there are moments where power aggregates.
I point people to the Wannsee conference in Berlin during the Second World War all the time because there, the, the, the logistical architecture for the Holocaust was decided by German scholars, SS officers, military commanders in a single room over the course of two or three hours.
Pete: Wow.
Jared Stacy: Right. So that, that conspiracy, that real life concentration of aggregate power, extrajudicial, all of those things, that happens. But the, but the reality is when do we know about it and how can we talk about it before we know about it? And that's where the sort of the, the projection of individualism is sort of like a red flag of like, well, we're, we're not really, we don't really have a full account of what's going on.
The second element, and I'll make this one shorter than the first, um, the second element that really goes into conspiracy theorizing is, is really this notion of apocalyptic thinking. Um, and without getting too far into that, and we can talk about it further if you want, um, but the way that, um, in America, the Left Behind series has sort of diffused itself and gone mainstream, uh, has really done a number on how people perceive of authoritarianism, uh, totalitarianism.
Uh, and, and what the shape it takes and that sort of evangelical apocrypha, uh, in, in, in a way has given people a storied framework for understanding where history is heading and how to narrate it and what to expect.
There's a whole, whole path down that road, but what I'm seeing right now is sort of the fusion of these two sorts of things, you know, that we're modern people who think that the, the world and political action is just the result of one person telling another person, I'm gonna do this. And there's no barriers on the path to whatever they wanna accomplish.
And, and then on the other hand, there's people who are trying to narrate this chaotic, uh, liminal moment of just a, a total destruction of order, uh, or the, the semblance of order and trying to narrate it. And they're doing so by reaching for pseudo-biblical concepts that have been sort of packed in and consumed inside evangelicalism, uh, for in, in no small part of 200 years.
Uh, but that apocalyptic thread and that individualism thread, uh, they're kind of woven together. Uh, and, and we see that very clearly. Uh, and I tried to show, you know, throughout evangelical history.
Jared Byas: Well let's talk. I mean, yeah, I was gonna say, don't wanna go down that road. That's exactly the road we wanna go to. That's the road we wanna go down. Yeah. Um, perfect. So let's, let's tie in evangelicalism, but first it's similar to how we defined conspiracy. Can you define what you mean by evangelical? Just so we kind of understand what you're talking about and then we can jump into how these two streams interact.
Jared Stacy: Yeah. So that is all up for debate, isn't it? Um, one person's evangelicalism is rendered by a set of theological beliefs. Uh, another is based on partisan or sociological identity. And what I kind of prefer to say is that, you know, being evangelical is always sort of this live exercise, this live battle.
And, I could point to sociological data that says, look, being an evangelical is, is more aligned with your partisan identity and support for Trump than it is any of these sort of theological beliefs that have been developed by, uh, an academic guild to sort of identify in history like who's being the evangelical.
Um, and so that's my way of not, not extricating myself from that, but it's, it's my way of kind of showing this ongoing conversation where if anyone walks in and says like, these are the real evangelicals, there's there, there might be a scheme of justification going on there of like, who are you not including and why?
Uh, and I'm really interested in that. And so, you know, I, I would, I would kind of define evangelical in, in multiple ways as a really difficult way of answering your question. Um, but there are certainly theological beliefs, but there's also cultural and institutional association, whether that's like Wheaton or Liberty, uh, or, or, or partisan support.
And so I'm, I'm tracing all of those to kind of, for me, it's, it's a very live theological question. And I think the more interesting answer is, um, and I, I hear this from our pastor here in Tampa all the time, so I'll just say it. You know, he says, if we give up on the evangelical label, there's no one around to say sorry.
And so I'm not here fighting to reclaim this label. I'm not fighting to resuscitate it. I'm not fighting to rebrand it. I, I don't care in that, in that respect. But when it comes to, um, grappling with this sort of disoriented Christianity, um, I'm comfortable identifying myself with the fact that I would not be who I am without this disoriented cultural movement.
Um, and I'm happy to do theology from, from that place of sort of being a post-evangelical.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared Stacy: Um, but it's very much up for grabs. So that did not answer your question, Jared, at all.
I think I'm, yeah. I think I'm, I'm driven and passionate about that particular answer because for me, it sort of puts everyone's deck of cards and hand on the table and saying, look what's at stake?
And who gets to define this?
Jared Byas: Yeah.
Jared Stacy: Um, and so that's, I think that's sort of the, the, the, the cutting edge, the live question that I'm trying to resurface.
Jared Byas: Yeah. I, this is gonna take us too far down a field, so we'll. We'll pivot, but I did, one thing that you said made me think of, you talked about institutions culture.
There are these touch points that create a network of meaning.
And there are institutions, there are beliefs, there's political stances and political platforms. Those kind of create, uh, some kind of boundary, as poor as it might be. And there was one note on there that I think is, it's an interesting shift to think about is, the evangelicalism of my youth would've included some kind of moralism, the moral high ground.
Of sort of purity culture, not just sexually, but in general. It's sort of, we don't listen to certain kinds of music, we don't watch certain kinds of movies and all of that. And I feel like the stronger the political pull has gotten, the lower that moralism piece has gotten.
And so it's sort of, that one's kind of gotten less important to be defined by, while, like the political one has sort of increased in how you define it, but that's neither here nor there. Yeah. So what, what parts I, I think this is what I wanna do, like this deep dive on.
What parts of Evangelicalism make people more likely to be a part of this conspiratorial thinking. Again, it's not specific conspiracy theories right? But this kind of thinking, what, how are they wedded together in a lot of ways?
Jared Stacy: Well, I, I, there's, and there's a lot of answers to that question. There's a lot of dimensions to it.
And, and I think that that's helpful because on the one hand-
Jared Byas: You're not a very good conspiracy theorist. Every question you're like, well, there's nuance. No, there's, it depends. There's nuance. There's so many different options here.
Pete: There're two sides.
Jared Byas: You know, give it, give it to us straight. Jared.
Jared Stacy: I, so one of the things that I think clearly sets evangelicalism apart in terms of its ability to sort of give safe harbor to conspiracy theory.
Uh, has been its commitment to the United States, has been its commitment to sort of provide the morality to make America run. That's from the very beginning. You know, when George Whitfield is, is preaching to enslaved people, he's doing so with kind of, uh, a tongue in cheek to the, to white slave masters who were angry at him.
He was a maverick, right, for preaching to enslaved people. But what he preached was a sort of domesticating gospel. A gospel that was really meant to quell the white anxiety for enslaved revolts. And so from the very beginning, the gospel that evangelicalism has preached in America has been a gospel that is set to sort of bust conspiracy theories, uh, that emerge from beneath America, right?
The, the, the fear of social revolution because of the institution of chattel slavery. Uh, and so I, I think in some ways, Whitfield's preaching and that sort of conspiracy busting gospel, you, you see it again with Billy Graham in the Cold War and, and preaching to a mass American citizens basically saying, hey, the way to stave off communism and the way to bust the communist conspiracy theory is to repent and believe in Jesus Christ. Right?
And so that idea that gospel has been a thread running all the way through. And there's maybe a, a particular commitment to not just the United States, but to a particular social order that evangelicals believe represents quote unquote biblical values that is never up for debate or discernment, but is just sort of contained in the slogan that we need to make America great again.
And that means making it a Christian nation again. And that means what? Exactly?
Jared Byas: Yeah.
Jared Stacy: Uh, and so I think that that's one key point of just a commitment to a particular sort of America. But there's also a theological underbelly to that, right? That, that evangelicals possess biblical values, that evangelicals alone are sort of the, the, the possessors of this knowledge of good and evil, which as a theologian is really problematic.
If there's ever someone who says, like, we possess the knowledge of good and evil when we're thinking, well, that's, that's exactly how Genesis frames all of our problems, is seizing that knowledge for ourself.
Jared Byas: Would you, would you say that a corollary of that is not just we possess good. Good and evil, but the possession, like kind of certainty is a value or a virtue. Yeah.
Jared Stacy: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jared Byas: Is maybe one of these characteristics.
Jared Stacy: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and, and to, to put my money where my mouth is.
I mean, when I got invited to be on your show, I chuckled and I laughed very hard to myself because I read Pete, your book, uh. What is the Bible actually about? I'm butchering your title. What is the title for everyone?
Jared Byas: How the Bible Actually Works.
Pete: That's it.
Jared Byas: I'm the one who knows that
Pete: It's the yellow one.
Jared Byas: The person who read it and the person who wrote it doesn't know it.
Pete: Maybe twelve years ago.
Jared Stacy: I read that book and, and I, I went on and I disliked it so much. I gave it a one star review on Goodreads. Um, because it, because it didn't, it didn't. I wasn't prepared for it.
I read it years later.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared Stacy: And I, I went back and I actually went back and changed my good read review. Like I actually went back and gave you more stars. Because at the time though, at the time, the certainty that I had, there was a penalty for rethinking. For asking different questions and, and, and to ask those questions was actually a sign in that world that you weren't taking the Bible seriously.
And, because there was only kind of a very narrow set of ways of considering what the Bible is, how it witnesses to what, who God is and what he's doing in the world. I, I, I literally just was not prepared for that.
Pete: Right.
Jared Stacy: And so when we talk about possession versus confession, right. I think that that's a very Christian way of naming this problem, right. Is that possession is something you're like, nope, we've got it. We're set. Confession is actually an acknowledgement that the living God of Jesus Christ is, is calling you and you are once again responding.
And, and that resonates with me because I grew up in these spaces where changing your mind or keeping your theology since seminary was sort of like the flag that you'd run up and, and prove yourself.
Pete: Or, or since you were a child, I mean, quite frankly.
Jared Stacy: Yeah.
Pete: You know, just, you don't change from that, so, yeah.
Jared Stacy: Right.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared Stacy: So I, that, that sort of certainty when conspiracy theory, it's, it's, it's a, certainly a projection of that.
Um, and, and there's some really low hanging fruit to this question too that I'm sure a lot of people just see, just scrolling and, and there's a couple of theological touchpoints. Uh, the first is just the way that Evangelicalism has talked about angels and demons. Um, the spiritual warfare, you know, the sort of uncritical theology that just enables politicians and their rhetoric to label the other side as demonically influenced without any sort of recourse to why they're able to say that or do that. It's just accepted and received and there's a dehumanizing element to that of course.
Jared Byas: Well, part of that, I mean I'm sure we'll get to this in the apocalyptic sense, but the demonic actually is conspiratorial in that it allows for, you have to have eyes to see it.
Like on the surface it looks like this, but if you actually are in the know, you see it as for what it really is, which is demonic and you, and so it allows for that even more.
Pete: The irony of that is, um, you know, the anti-elitism that sort of fuels this, it is just being replaced by another elite group that's in the know that really sees it.
And because we have the spirit and we have the Bible and things like that.
Jared Stacy: Yeah.
Pete: Can we, um, I mean the, the touches, I think on something we mentioned before, um, the apocalyptic.
Jared Stacy: Yeah.
Pete: And could, could just flesh that out a little bit. Talk, talk to us a little bit about what that means, first of all, and, and how it ties into conspirator thinking.
Jared Stacy: Yeah. I mean, we're, what we're really talking about in, in this sense is how we, how we talk about or narrate history, uh, and in evangelicalism, there's this running thread that essentially, um, looks at history and, and apocalypse as sort of a, a doomsday scenario, and that's pretty much how it's understood culturally too.
Uh, and that this, there's this idea that the world is gonna end. Uh, and I look, I think of the films like, Don't Look Up.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared Stacy: Uh, even, even Avengers Endgame, where, you know, Thanos snaps his finger and half the world's population disappears. Uh, Daniel Hummel is a scholar who looked at evangelical theologies of the end times and kind of says, look, that's, that's a diffused form of the rapture that is making its way into our very, you know, it's not claiming to be a Christian movie.
But it's this scenario that Left Behind, as this sort of apocryphal, uh, you know, extension of evangelical theology, popular theology, um, that you could get off the shelf at Walmart. And I learned today that, you know, it was like the fifth book of Left Behind that actually broke into the national mainstream. It was being sold at Walmart, right? So people don't have to go inside an evangelical church to imbibe this sort of apocalypticism, this sort of apocalyptic thinking that, you know, talks about the world's end. And so there's really this negative apocalyptic sense that is threaded through evangelical conspiracies.
Pete: What makes it attractive?
Jared Stacy: Well, I think, yeah, there, there's this sense, well, I I, I heard a conversation this week with someone who is having a very difficult time sharing, you know, counter-facts in a sort of political conversation. And, and the person that she was responding to just shrugged his shoulders and said, well, everyone, everyone on the left is going to hell anyway.
Jared Byas: Yeah.
Jared Stacy: And so it was this sort of sense of, and you could, you could actually fill in the blank, whether it's, uh, global warming and climate change that's brought on through unrestrained capitalism. The, the, the shrug, the shoulders as well. We know the world's gonna end anyway, so we might as well do X, Y, Z.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared Stacy: And, and so that notion that apocalypse is always sort of this negative terminal point, um, and conspiracy theory as this ongoing battle sort of fits that framework in the sense that, well, you know, history is going to end in this cataclysm and then everyone is gonna get what's coming to them. Uh, and, and so that sort of-
Pete: And they love that.
Jared Stacy: Yeah. And, and exactly. And that, and that issues in this sort of sadistic, malformed, disoriented witness where what we're witnessing to is the, the judgment of God that is completely out of touch with the grace of God. And I don't think that the New Testament allows us to, to restrain and, and, and disconnect grace from judgment and judgment from grace.
You know, it's a, it's a gracious judgment and it's a judging grace that sets us all in Christ.
Pete: Well, you don't have one of those wimpy Jesuses, do you, that, like, heals people? Come on.
Jared Stacy: The empathetic, the empathetic Jesus. Yeah. Well, God, God forbid we. We worship a, a, a man who shows empathy to other people.
Jared Byas: Well, but to, to, I'm, I'm kind of, if for our, those who are listening probably didn't see, but if you're watching, I've been like taking notes because I wanna maybe problematize us a little bit. Yeah. And that is when we talk about apocalyptic thinking, that's, that's a, a legitimate, uh, maybe we would say genre distinction we would make about literature of a certain time and place.
And there are some historically concrete factors that went into what kind of produces this kind of literature. You know, you have a moment of, of persecution, um, by one superpower, uh, over a group of people who don't have power. Right. It's an oppressive time. You have, uh, this idea of, we need to give people hope in this oppressive time.
And one way to do that is to simplify the narrative. It is good versus evil. And of course we are being oppressed by the evil and we have a savior who will redeem us, whether that's God or, or whatever. That narrative structure gives us hope in that time. And when we have that hope, we can imagine the end of the current era.
And we can imagine a new era where we're not oppressed anymore and I just, that's like legitimate. It's like baked into our Bible in so many places.
Pete: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah,
Jared Byas: Yeah. And then, so I just wanna make sure like we're not- Left Behind is not made up wholesale out of nothing. It is in our Bible, and then it just gets translated through the centuries toward this mutation of it.
That expresses itself very, um-
Pete: with made up oppressors.
Jared Byas: Well, what I was gonna say is yeah, it's a, it's, it's a victimization. Re narrativizing. Yeah. And, and a, and a flipping or a role reversal where I, yeah. I grew up in this, and I think it sounds like you did too. We were the oppressed people and, and we had to have an enemy.
And the enemy was like Bill Clinton for a long time. Or we had, it was this, the world? And John has that link. Well, like this isn't, these are, this is coming from the Bible, I guess what I'm saying, like Right. Yeah. You can connect these dots that if you, if you have the structure of apocalyptic and you drop it into the 1980s, and then you're like, okay, but in this narrative we need an enemy.
And we look at John and it says, the world is against us. Now we have this bucket, a container called the world, and we can put kind of whatever we want in there. And that can be abortion and that can be, uh, Democrats, but that could also be global warming. It can kind of be anything we want it to be. And who gets to decide what goes in the bucket of the enemy?
Jared Stacy: Mm-hmm.
Jared Byas: Is whenever people in actual power, politicians get a hold of this narrative and they see how they can wield it. Where it is like, oh, if I just continue this narrative, that's a through line of this faith tradition and I just swap out the characters. And now it's not Bill Clinton, it's illegal immigrants.
Now it's not this, it's that. It just is a powerful tool and narrative in our culture that can just so easily be co-opted by the actual power that we have, which is, you know, politicians and billionaires or whatever, however we wanna define that. So anyway, that's kind of my, that's my conspiracy theory about conspiracy theories.
Jared Stacy: I love it. Well, and I, I think it, it illustrates a really important point is that, um, that theology has something to say that the Bible actually has something to say about the sort of disoriented, malformed Christianity that is wreaking havoc in the United States right now. That, that it has contributed, malformed theology has contributed to the very real material, uh, terror that is sweeping across this country.
Um, but that actually means also that the time calls for a new, faithful, renovated confession of what it means to be Christian again. Uh, Oscar Romero had this great statement where he, he just said, let you know, let us be today's Christians. And that's, that's animating a lot of what I'm attempting to do in the book and, and even in conversations like these where we're able to kind of look at the biblical narrative and say, oh, like, yeah, there, there was an oppressed, you know, ostracized group of Jewish, Gentile Christians who had been kicked outta their synagogue and also were marginalized from participation in the Roman Empire, and this is how they narrated their world.
Jared Byas: Yeah.
Jared Stacy: Uh, and, and nothing could be, to your point, Jared, nothing could be more, uh, frustrating and nothing could be more warping to apocalypticism than reading revelation from a majority perspective.
Jared Byas: Right.
Jared Stacy: Right. Like that, that's what we're talking about.
Jared Byas: Yeah.
Jared Stacy: nd, and that's, that's precisely what we see in conspiracy theory is this, this supercharging of cultural narratives of decline.
And that's where fascism links up into this, is cultural narratives of decline and national revival sort of gets a theological supercharge from a movement like Evangelicalism that has always had some sort of stake in providing the morality that, that justifies and makes this sort of America function.
And so when conspiracy theories erupt, 'cause they're not just erupting inside evangelicalism, they're, they're erupting all around our world. But when they come into Evangelicalism, they're given a very unique theological charge. And the apocalyptic, you know, in a negative sense that sort of inversion that, that you really, really put well.
We're, we're really trying to, how, how do we do the work to sort of put it right side up again to talk about the apocalypse, the unveiling as positive as like, hey, the, the unveiling of Jesus. Where, where is Jesus in 2026 America? Who, who, who is Jesus represented by in these conditions that we find ourselves in?
Um, and, and how do we tell that story? How do we discern that story? Because conspiracy theory does a lot of things, but one of the things it doesn't do is it, it doesn't slow down. It doesn't have time for discernment.
Pete: I've noticed.
Jared Stacy: It's, it, it is, it is reactive and it, it matches the, the, the scale and speed of, of this digital info structure that we find ourselves.
You know, um, Brian Brock is an ethicist. He, he calls it, we've created a second nature. It used to be that the ancients were reading the signs of the times and, and tea leaves and, and, and looking at the oracles about, about the heavens. But we've created digitally a sort of second nature that is determining us in, in many ways, that the ancients were determined by harvest cycles and things like that.
And conspiracy theory thrives in this sort of technologically natural environment. And, uh, and so that, that should be liberating in some respects because it's not just a pathological condition, you know, it's not just, and I get it when people say, oh, they're crazy. It may seem like that. Um, but truth is weirder than what conspiracy theory does.
That's, that's one of the things I've found is that, you know, the, the two dimensional individualism that we talked about. Truth, the truth is way more complex and, and way weirder. It's strange.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared Stacy: And, uh, and conspiracy theory fails not just because of the false facts it pedals. But it, it fails because it's too simple.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared Stacy: Uh, it fails because it can't capture the strangeness and weirdness and complexity of, of material reality. Um, but then it also doesn't reflect, uh, in a, in a very large sense, the sort of metaphysical stuff that is the stuff of myth too. It, it, it distorts that as well and it just kind of short circuits everything.
Jared Byas: Conspiracy likes to keep it simplistic, black, white. It's very common sense, and the evangelical tradition I grew up in was also like that. It's sort of like there's a, there's a common sense-ness to it. You don't need to go to one of these highfalutin schools to learn how to read the Bible. It's kind of common sense, and you just need to read it and do the plain, just read it plainly. It's right there.
And I think that's what's also attractive is yeah, as we start to recognize that truth is way more complex. There's a fear. And so it's nice for someone in power to say, well, that's all evil and bad. Your intuition is right. It's actually very simple, let me tell you the simple truth of it, right?
Jared Stacy: Yeah.
Pete: Right.
Jared Stacy: And that's, I think that's what I'm trying to do in the book is acknowledging that sort of drive for common sense and simplicity that makes it so reflexively attractive is to cultivate a different posture. And, and I know not everyone who's listening to this conversation is Christian.
Um, but in the book, what I'm trying to do is, offer a fallback posture for, for Christians to begin to say like, “I don’t know” again.
And, and not in a way that that leads us off the hook in terms of responsibility, but in a way where we're actually talking about good suspicion that's cultivated against ourselves.
I'm reminded of, like, Dietrich Bonhoeffer had this great quip, uh, in 1934. He was invited to this conference and he just said, you know, we no longer read the Bible against ourselves. We only read it for ourselves. And if, if that doesn't fully encapsulate what we're seeing now, and it's to listeners who, who aren't Christian and say, well, this, that's not how I understand reality.
I would, I would just offer the, the, the thought or the question of. But wouldn't, wouldn't it be helpful if there were Christians who weren't sharing these things publicly, who weren't driving our politics by this way? And so there's a responsibility for Christians, uh, to work better towards this common world where Christians aren't claiming things like, well, we have the mind of Christ, and so we deserve to be your overlord and, and endorse authoritarianism.
Pete: So, which Jesus would never do, but anyway. Yeah.
Jared Stacy: Right. Exactly. Exactly.
Pete: Mm-hmm. So, I mean, and, um. In a couple minutes we have left, uh, maybe just bring this home and if you have any thoughts about how to navigate-
Jared Stacy: Yeah.
Pete: This reality.
Jared Stacy: Mm-hmm.
Pete: With, we get this question a lot with family, with friends, with colleagues, um, that's, that's a tough call without mm-hmm. You know, adding to the polarization.
Jared Stacy: Right.
Pete: Do you have any quick thoughts on that?
Jared Stacy: I, I do. And, it's all research backed. Um, the first one is that, that fact versus fact only leads to deeper re entrenchment. That if, if we are, you know, part of what I talk about in the book is that we're actually, the problem is not actually that we don't have enough facts.
The problem is that we have too many, um, that there is just, we are, we are a wash in not just good information, but also bad information. And so not only are we trying to get all the data that we need that's accurate and evidence-based, but we're also in a polluted stream too. So that makes that whole operation that much harder.
Um, but even amassing all those facts together is sort of ammunition to tip the scales in, in a sort of argument. The research shows that that approach only leads to further retrenchment of whatever commitment someone carried into it. Um, and so the other thing I would say, so first, you know, don't feel like you have to win an argument to prove this point.
Um, the second thing that I would say is, you know, the ability to cultivate communities where changing your mind is not, is not penalized. You know, and, and this is where like as a theologian, I, I do think that we have a responsibility to talk about hope, but not in a fanciful way, but in a way that sort of gestures towards there will be a day where what we are living through is no longer as pressing or acute, and we are gonna be living in the aftermath of this.
And I think that hopeful question is what sort of communities are going to lead people in the work of telling the truth and reconciling and all of those things. And that's not diminishing justice, that's holding it up. Um, and so I, for those who have sort of found themselves ostracized from communities, uh, and also are sort of like why I don't have anyone in my life anymore to have those conversations with.
I've been doing this for 10 to 15 years. I don't have that anymore. I would, I would sort of gesture towards, can, can we find or build and, and these communities where when things change, when the time shifts, um, that they'll be in place to sort of do this hard work of reconciliation and truth-telling?
Um, and that draws precedent from apartheid South Africa and, and different ways that different countries have done that. Um, and the, maybe the final thing I would say, uh, in terms of just practical on the ground advice, um, is to continue telling the truth. And I think part of that begins with, uh, casting some good suspicion on ourselves.
Um, you know, responsible, humble engagement with our screens and our phones. I know that may sound trite and glib, um, but the, the question of when something comes across our screen, you know, and we immediately wanna share it 'cause it seems to confirm everything that we suspect, you know, asking ourselves a battery of questions, of like, hey, like, hey, why do I want this to be true?
Maybe why do I need this to be true? Um, and more importantly, you know, what changes for me if this isn't true? Uh, that's if, if the whole cycle is reactive and based on speed and, and if someone's profiting from it. We didn't talk about that at all. But there's a lot of profit involved in the sort of paranoia, um, that one of the ways that we throw sand in that machine to borrow a resistance phrase from the second World War is to actually slow down, uh, and is to actually cultivate a pattern of living that is, uh, resistant towards the hyper reactive sense that we always need to be sharing something.
Um, and I, I, I don't know if all of that together, I, I, I'm not sure what will come of that. But what I do know, uh, is that the truth does have its day. And that we, we don't need to, um, operate as if it all depends on us, that we can be faithful, responsible, we can be good citizens, uh, and faithful Christians.
But we can do that without, again, trading our, our humble, humble, epistemic humility.
Jared Byas: Mm-hmm.
Jared Stacy: Uh, we can do that without giving ourselves over to the same sort of certainty that keeps the cycle just going all over again. I think that's what I'm getting after is like, here's some practices that really break that cycle of needing to be, needing to be certain, needing to know.
Um, because that's truly subversive is a people who are courageous enough to say. I don't know, and I don't know if I'll ever have enough to know, but here's what I do know and acting on that.
Jared Byas: Alright.
Pete: Well yeah, that, that's, thank you. That's a lot to think about and I appreciate how you ended this with, uh, some, some practical thoughts.
Jared Byas: Yeah, it's very practical. I appreciate that. It's research-backed. Yeah.
Jared Stacy: Hey, thanks so much for having me on. Appreciate it.
Jared Byas: And now for Quiet Time.
Pete: With Pete and Jared.
Jared Byas: Okay. We're here to reflect a little bit on this, uh, episode with Jared about conspiracy. My wheels were turning. I don't know about you.
Pete: Yeah, there's a lot going on. Here's a lot of stuff we didn't talk about.
Jared Byas: I know, I know. We could have had a part two. Maybe we'll have to invite him back at some point.
But one thing we'll talk about here is he talked about at the very end of the episode, I thought it'd be good for us to reflect on this idea of self-critique because as I've, I've thought about that. I think. I'm thinking of Walter Brueggemann, I think, who's the one I remember saying it, which is that's, that was a little bit unique in the tradition to have this self-critique built in.
Pete: Like the prophetic tradition.
Jared Byas: The prophetic tradition of the Bible. Right. Right, right. And I think, um, that's an important part of this that I think we're missing in an echo chamber.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared Byas: Everything is just confirming.
Pete: Yeah.
Jared Byas: Where's the feedback loop that's like, Hey, Jared. You're not right about everything.
Pete: Right.
Jared Byas: So,
Pete: Yeah. And that's, you know, and on social media, and I'm, you know, I, I, I, I sense this, I feel this myself, that, you know, I read something that I like and I, my impulse is to sort of disseminate this. And, um, the question is, well, why?
First of all, why, what's the purpose of that, you know, fact, he said, fact against fact never wins.
And that's absolutely correct. But also, you know what? What are you not critiquing about yourself in that moment? And, and I think that's, to me, that's, that's Christian maturity to think that way and to not just assume that we're right about everything and what can we learn from the other person.
And they're not just projects, um, who disagree. They're people who have their own primal wiring like we do. It'sjust, and you know, there's, there just the, the polemicizing nature of this is, um. It's built into it and, and it's being fed by social media and other things. And, uh, you know, how, how do we pump the brake?
Jared Byas: Well, nothing about, you mentioned it a minute ago, nothing about our current discourse, like the structure of it, like literally the interface that we type into to give our opinions is set up for complexity. It is all set up to oversimplify.
Pete: Yeah.
Jared Byas: And I see this, we talked about MAGA and we talked about, um, kind of the right conspiratorial thinking, but I see this maybe I'll call it, to be generous, apocalyptic thinking.
Jared Stacy: Mm-hmm.
Jared Byas: On the left and the right around when we get emotional, we want, we want to, we just wanna oversimplify. \We want it to be very simple. These are evil people doing evil things. These are good people doing good things. I'm on the side of the people who are doing the good things.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared Byas: And I feel justified. I think it's just this set of emotions that get put into play.
Pete: I mean, strong emotions don't do well with nuance anyway.
Jared Byas: That's what I'm saying. Yeah. I think our emotions, once our amygdala gets hijacked and we're in like emotional reactivity mode. I think this apocalyptic kind of thinking is almost like second nature, right?
We just kind of click into, I feel threatened and therefore who's my tribe and my tribe is, right? Mm-hmm. And yours is wrong. And it's not, I wanna be clear. I'm not saying that there aren't things that we can assess and call them. Those are, are, are systemic evils or that are, those are instances of injustice.
Pete: But that's not a reactive position.
Jared Byas: But that's not the, that's not what I'm talking about. Right? I'm talking about are knee jerk. I mean, the amount of times I've seen people on online. From the left and from the, my, it's actually, I don't see it as much from the right, but they will share something and then the next day they'll be like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry.
That was actually AI-generated. It wasn't actually true. Um, you know, I kind of got duped into it, but it's like-
Pete: At least they said that though.
Jared Byas: Yeah. At least that's what I mean. At least they said it. But it is this like reactivity where it's just that impulse you're talking about, which is just, I wanna share it
Pete: And, and, you know, not to give cheap advice.
'Cause I, I mean, I have to struggle with this myself. You know, to be non-reactive is, is a learned discipline to, I'm only gonna spend a few minutes on scrolling some things and I'm gonna promise myself I'm not gonna share anything. Yeah. Or something like that, that we can be more in a reflective position that maybe, oh, so hard to say, takes the time to listen to people you vehemently disagree with.
But if you sense there's no genuine hope for any sort of discussion, well then you just can walk away, excuse yourself and say, yeah, this, you know,
Jared Byas: But I think it’s important, I mean, I purposely follow, uh, people on the right, the people on the left, people in the center, and I find if I can remain open, I haven't really changed my convictions about certain things.
But the, when I say like the nasty impulse to dehumanize is not there. 'Cause I see the nuance like, oh, I can understand how you got there.
Pete: Right?
Jared Byas: You didn't get there because you're an evil person who wants to do evil things, right?
Pete: Yeah.
Jared Byas: There's a certain logic, I could call that logic faulty.
I could call the logic evil. I could call the systems of injustice that perpetuate evil, but I don't tend to, after listening to people think you're an evil person.
Pete: Yeah. And, and I think some people, we've both experienced this also collectively, where I think people want us to be reactive.
And to take a side quickly.
Jared Byas: Well we’d probably be more popular
Pete: Or not. It just depends, you know? I mean, it, that's not the point. The point is that we, um-
Jared Byas: That's always the point.
Pete: We're trying hard not to do that, you know, to, to joke around and to have fun is one thing, right. But, you know, to contribute to polarization is, it, it does not go anywhere at all unless you somehow gain all power. And that's already happened in our country and it's not going well there either. Right? I mean, you, you can never coerce people polemically, right? You have to sort of earn the right to be invested in their lives and, and that's why, you know, having neighbors who don't think like you might not be the worst thing in the world.
You know, you have to actually engage them.
Jared Byas: All right. Well, I'm glad we solved the problem of polarization in our
Pete: Yes.
Jared Byas: In our country.
Pete: Anyway, conspiracies. Yeah, we're trying. Really trying.
Jared Byas: Alright, see you guys.
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