06.03.2026 01:08
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“Reality in Ruins: How Conspiracy Theory Became an American Evangelical Crisis” is the #1 New Release in Religion & Sociology—preorder link below.
That’d be great! Send me a message over at my site, realityinruins.com
Cover and first page.
“Beneath the social and political fractures—and the real danger those pose to communities and bodies—there is a theological underbelly: a false, paranoid vision of Jesus caught between visions of American empire and the Kingdom of God. We cannot make peace with this contradiction.”
A really concise interview with Publisher’s Weekly that captures the heart of my book…
A few come to mind from different angles too: from the NT scholarship side, Drew Strait’s Strange Worship is excellent. From the religious studies side, Matthew Taylor’s “The Violent Take It By Force.” I think it’s important to note Black theology in America has been accounting for it.
That’s a great question. For the theological, honestly, “The Christian Imagination” and “Acts” by Willie Jennings I think give the theological treatment (historically informed) even if it doesn’t necessarily name “Christian Nationalism.” And for an intro, “The Fascist Masquerade” by Thurman, 1946.
Conspiracy theory is a caricatured, reductionist way to analyze and narrate power exercised in the material world. Rejecting conspiracy theory does not mean denying the complex, the veiled, or the existence of evil itself.
If conspiracy theory is a storytelling act, then Trump’s “Big Lie” is not consigned to the past. It remains a window into an ongoing story not just about America, but also about good and evil and—for evangelicals—about God.
The first major review of my book “Reality in Ruins” dropped this week
Really grateful for this endorsement of my book Reality In Ruins: How Conspiracy Theory Became an American Evangelical Crisis, from @iamfujimura.bsky.social
For friends at #AARSBL I’ll be delivering a paper on late fascism and evangelical rhetorics of freedom at the Evangelical Studies Unit this morning in Boston—via video. Hope to make it in person next year!
Disreality is not pathological. It is more existential. Less a clinical condition marked by a departure from facts, more an eruption of epistemological anxiety in which new facts are created or realities constructed towards the production of an unstable certainty
"The strange #history."
Today's forthcoming-book pick from Damn History, a free monthly newsletter for readers/writers of #popularhistory. Congrats to author @jaredstacy.bsky.social & @harperonebooks.bsky.social!
Read/subscribe to Damn History: damn-history-16d93f.beehiiv.com/subscribe
The (obvious) analysis: these directives give more plausibility to scenarios where free US elections are suspended or subverted in the name of "national security"
In 3 years, will an American public too familiar with the military in our streets be able to recognize that scenario for what it is?
The point of disinformation in an authoritarian moment isn't to convince people of alternative facts as much as it is to sow mistrust in every source of information or truth outside of "the leader"
Next week! It’s not too late to register. Manitobans: note the free lunch on the Oct 23 option 👀
“It is disturbing…that a ‘faith movement’ can acquire character and weight simply by the use of violence in the manner of the political mass-meeting and the political demonstration for propaganda purposes”
Karl Barth, 1933
3) Slow down and de-escalate (hyper-reactivity is the highway for disinformation, lies travel faster than truth. Learn to ask questions that serve as “brakes”)
Practices to counter disreality:
1) Get local, physical, and material (resist “algorithmic reality” by scaling down into your own community)
2) Cultivate good suspicion (relentlessly question content before sharing—consider images and text, A.I. renders, etc)
I keep saying it: conspiracy theory is mainstream. We aren’t dealing with one narrative here or there, we’re living through a default on “reality” — with terrible consequences.
Here is some advice:
Fascist theater: staged provocation in the political that codes/targets undesirables. It provides content for propaganda to normalize the previously unthinkable.
I mostly avoid reposting propaganda. But if I do, it’s to name it as antichrist. This is the power to crucify and it belongs to hell. Churches that bless it are Babylonian shrines. Do not confuse the power to crucify with the power of the Crucified One, who is peace.
Our elected leaders in the US executive branch are not departing from reality as much as they are creating one— a totality where their word is absolute and dissent is subversion.
Proofs are here. Feeling the weight of this book; what it stands for—naming the authoritarian nexus of falsehood & violence at work in white evangelicalism— and what it hopes in—truth for a common world.
“The hardest work is contending against the disorienting and malformed Christianities which bring themselves to bear against the vulnerable, often in the name of freedom and faith. This is the necessary work, the one the demands the church be exactly what it is.”
