In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, Kate Boyd sits down with Jared Stacy, author of the forthcoming book Reality in Ruins, for a nuanced conversation about why conspiracy theories have become so pervasive in evangelical Christianity and what the church can do about it.

This isn’t just about QAnon or stolen elections—it’s about understanding how evangelicalism’s theology of persecution, end-times anxiety, and individualism creates fertile ground for conspiracism, and how reclaiming the whole story of Jesus offers a way forward that doesn’t require us to become fact-checkers but truth-tellers in our own key.

Topics Covered

* Understanding conspiracy theory as “functional reality” that provides people not just a lens for interpreting the world but prescribes specific actions—like how belief in a stolen election motivated the January 6th Capitol attack

* Why evangelicals are particularly susceptible to conspiracy thinking: the combination of persecution complex, end-times theology giving conspiracies a “theological charge,” and modern individualism that seeks control through claiming secret knowledge

* How evangelicalism’s witness to the gospel grants conspiracy theories plausibility by packaging spurious claims as “what good faithful Christians believe,” making it feel like apostasy to question them rather than just correcting misinformation

* The historical pattern of conspiracy theories serving evangelical responses to cultural anxieties—from George Whitfield using gospel preaching to prevent slave revolts, to Cold War anti-communism, to contemporary fears about losing white Christian America

* Why confronting conspiracy theories head-on with facts or mockery only leads to deeper entrenchment, and what questions like “why do you need this to be true?” or “why is that good news to you?” can open up instead

* How the church can resist conspiracism not by becoming fact-checkers but by being constituted as Jesus’s body—a “place of reversal” where we discover we were wrong, rehearse the whole story of Jesus, and refuse to settle for anything less than recognizing full humanity in everyone

Timestamps:

01:00 Conspiracy Theory as Functional Reality

06:00 Why Evangelicals Are Susceptible to Conspiracy Thinking

12:00 The Theological Charge That Makes Conspiracies Plausible

18:00 Alternative Knowledge vs. Embodied Truth

24:00 Historical Anxieties Driving Conspiracy Theories

35:00 When Facts and Mockery Don’t Work

45:00 The Freedom to Be Wrong in Christian Community

54:00 Healthy Skepticism Without Conspiracy Thinking

1:03:00 The Church as Place of Transformation and Discovery

1:06:00 Finding Jared’s Work and Forthcoming Book

In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, Kate Boyd wraps up the year-and-a-half journey through 2 Samuel with returning guests Jenai Auman and Liz Daye, examining chapters 23-24—David’s self-congratulatory final words followed by a devastating census that reveals how little he’s actually learned.

This isn’t a triumphant ending to a great king’s reign—it’s a sobering reminder that David’s version of greatness cost 70,000 lives, and his idea of repentance always came after profound devastation that somehow never seemed to affect him personally. The contrast between how David sees himself and what the text actually shows us is the perfect capstone to understanding power’s corruption.

And a shoutout to Jon Pyle, Robert Callahan, and Amanda Waldron for being a part of the journey through books of Samuel!

Topics Covered

* How David’s “last words” in chapter 23 present his self-image as a just ruler bringing cloudless morning prosperity, immediately contrasted by the compilers listing “Uriah the Hittite” among his mighty men—a literary shade that reminds readers of David’s profound injustice

* Understanding why David’s census in chapter 24 was such a violation: it risked ritual impurity for the entire nation, mimicked divine power (only gods counted in ancient cultures), and served as the first step toward military conscription, slavery, and exploitation

* Why David’s choice of punishment—three days of plague affecting 70,000 people—reveals his continued pattern of self-protection, when he could have chosen three months of fleeing enemies with his “mighty men” that would’ve primarily affected him

* The devastating reality that David “makes things right with God” through sacrifice but never repairs things with the people harmed by his choices, mirroring modern patterns where abusive leaders go on apology tours without addressing the actual devastation they caused

* How the story ends not with David as hero but with God’s compassion for the land, contrasting David’s transactional understanding of hesed (loyalty) with God’s hesed (compassion)—showing what God actually values versus what David claimed to embody

* Why paying attention to prophets and moving toward justice and shalom matters more than celebrating leaders who buy their own hype, and how David delivering Israel into bondage (the census taking nine months—a gestation period) inverts God’s role as deliverer from oppression

Timestamps:

01:00 David’s Self-Hype Poem vs. “Uriah the Hittite”

07:00 The Mighty Men List as Twilight End Credits

14:00 Why the Census Was Such a Big Deal

21:00 David’s Cowardly Choice: 70,000 Deaths

30:00 Repentance Without Repair to the Harmed

38:00 Spiritual Bypassing and Weaponized Forgiveness

47:00 The Angel Who Wouldn’t Stop Judging

55:00 Measuring Success by Empire vs. Jesus

1:04:00 Final Takeaways from the David Journey

1:06:00 Finding the Hosts and What’s Next

In this episode of the Untidy Faith Podcast, Kate Boyd, Jenai Auman, and Liz Daye continue their exploration of 2 Samuel, examining chapters 21-22—a jarring collection of appendices that reveal David’s legacy through violence, political maneuvering, and self-congratulatory poetry.

This isn’t a triumphant conclusion to David’s reign—it’s a sobering look at how powerful people rewrite history to justify harm, and how the quiet faithfulness of marginalized women like Rizpah often goes unnoticed while loud, self-serving declarations get preserved as “worship.”

Topics Covered

* Understanding the structural shift in 2 Samuel 21-24 from linear narrative to a collection of “appendices” that are deliberately out of chronological order, giving different perspectives and even contradicting earlier accounts like the story of who actually killed Goliath

* How David responds to a three-year famine by asking the Gibeonites (not God) how to fix it, resulting in the execution of seven of Saul’s descendants—a solution that violates Torah patterns of repentance while serving David’s political interests by eliminating threats to his throne

* The prophetic witness of Rizpah, a concubine who holds vigil over her sons’ desecrated bodies for six months, whose quiet faithfulness actually lifts the famine when David finally gives the bodies proper burial—yet most major commentaries ignore her story entirely

* Why the famous contradiction about Goliath’s death (attributed to Elhanan here rather than David) reveals how stories were shaped to serve David’s propaganda, showing us that “history favors the victor” and inviting us to read with suspicion

* Examining David’s Psalm in chapter 22 as an unreliable narrator’s self-congratulatory rewriting of history, claiming blamelessness and righteousness while celebrating violence and conquest that directly contradicts Torah values and God’s vision for leadership

* How hyper-spiritualizing language gets weaponized to justify harm—from David’s beautiful words masking brutal actions to modern Christian nationalism using similar rhetoric to consolidate power while claiming God’s blessing on violence and oppression

Timestamps:

01:00 Chapter 21: Famine, Gibeonites, and Political Pragmatism

06:00 David’s Solution: Execution Instead of Repentance

12:00 Rizpah’s Vigil: Six Months of Prophetic Witness

18:00 Why Most Commentaries Erase Rizpah’s Story

24:00 The Goliath Contradiction and David Propaganda

33:00 Chapter 22: David’s Self-Congratulatory Psalm

42:00 Rewriting History: When Beautiful Words Mask Violence

52:00 Context Matters: Why We Can’t Proof-Text Our Way Through

59:00 Reading with Suspicion and Through the Lens of Torah

1:04:00 Loud Posturing vs. Quiet Faithfulness

1:10:00 Finding the Hosts Online