Reality in Ruins: How Conspiracy Theory Became an American Evangelical Crisis

The impassioned debut study from theologian Stacy explores white American evangelicals’ dangerous devotion to conspiracy theorizing and proposes a faith-based route away from insular paranoia. A former evangelical pastor who grew up in a fundamentalist community, Stacy recollects his dismay at finding his congregants believed that “Tom Hanks was a closet pedophile” or that “the 2020 election was stolen,” as well as at witnessing the slew of Christian symbolism present in the crowd on January 6 (“I was watching terror as worship”). Arguing that conspiracy “isn’t a bug but a feature” of American evangelicalism, the author examines the movement’s long history of conspiracy theorizing, from Great Awakening leader George Whitfield’s paranoid fear of slave uprisings to Reverend Billy Graham’s recorded Oval Office conversation with Richard Nixon about Jewish people supposedly controlling the media. Stacy also analyzes features of evangelical theology—such as “a totalizing knowledge of good and evil”—that encourage what he calls “holy paranoia.” Hoping to challenge “moral zealotry” in his community, Stacy advocates for a “Christian posture that refuses to possess the knowledge of good and evil for ourselves” and, instead, embraces uncertainty. He includes prompts for readers (“Why do I want this to be true?”; “Who do I need to encounter?”) that probe at unquestioned belief and gaps in knowledge. It’s an empathic rumination on the evangelical community’s inner workings. (Mar.)