On the public rage and reactions to my dissertation on January 6
I am thrilled to share I submitted my dissertation last week under the title: Theological Paranoia: American Evangelicalism, Conspiracy Theory, and a Public Theology of January 6.
Since sharing on my socials, I’ve watched the title stir up plenty of public conversation, ranging from pure vitriol to overwhelming support. To those who expressed support, thank you. The generosity exhausted the vitriol. But I’m not surprised by these strong reactions, or what they might reveal.
What I aim to do here—for first-time readers and regulars alike—is speak as directly and honestly as I can about the work and the spectacle. It’s a work few have read, but it’s eliciting strong reactions in the shadow of a new year that will—once again—both shape the American experiment and unveil the currents driving the church in America—including evangelicalism.
These reactions to my work highlight the division across America and evangelicalism. Through these cracks, we can glimpse the raging, deep currents of inherited theologies. Elements of these theologies advanced election fraud conspiracies and coordinated January 6 as a matter of Christian faithfulness.
I’ve enjoyed the last three years with the church in Scotland, many of whom could be considered “evangelicals” by most definitions. Add to this the incredible Divinity community at Aberdeen, a truly ecumenical community of generous and rigorous scholars. But never once has the topic of the work—a mixture of Christian theology, evangelical history, conspiracy theories, January 6—received the sort of reaction it has generated in one week of viral exposure in America. This says little about the work, which I won’t defend here, and more about reactions.
On Getting Ahead
Over the last week, there have been several attempts—more than I can follow—to get out ahead of the work. From what I saw, some seized on the term “theological paranoia” others, the topics in general.
Theological paranoia has a very specific meaning and methodology in my work. But this is something I can’t (and don’t) expect reactions to deal with seriously or specifically. There’s an undercurrent of speed at work here, which we’ll come to in a minute. But what I can preview now about the title is that “theological paranoia” is not pathological but theological. I use it to point towards the common word in the Scripture for repentance, “metanoia.” This is a thread I pull through the entire dissertation.
But it is clear Americans and evangelicals are divided over what January 6 meant. The same goes for the rise of conspiracy theory. These immediate reactions depend on the party you belong to, the church you join, the news you consume, the ideologies you live in like a home, the theologies you draw from—yes, the modern air many of us breathe together—everything converging to curate a particular interpretation, including my own. The question is not just what happened that day—aka reconstructing a historical event—but also what it reveals theologically, and what that means for the church-community in America, alongside our fellow citizens.
To me, these divisions on January 6 and the continued prominence of conspiracism within Christian community are more clearly and strongly revealed in reactions to the work. They also generate questions, like: why is this (unread) work a threat? what seems at risk? who stands to benefit from avoiding this work? It seems strange that the right side of the partisan line in 2020 meant discrediting body cams of police brutality, but now holds to divine inspiration of January 6 security footage. My point is that there are clear limits to these lines of thinking, to this partisan back and forth, which only leaves theologies unchallenged—when they should be unsettled.
Reactions point to the perceived risk or threat of the work. And perhaps it will be taken as a threat to certain views of Jesus, which imagine what it means to be Christian in America.
These reactions to my work highlight the division across America and evangelicalism. Through these cracks, we can glimpse the raging, deep currents of inherited theologies. Elements of these theologies advanced election fraud conspiracies and coordinated January 6 as a matter of Christian faithfulness. The theologies of J6 begin with prayer bound up in a spectacle of violence and terror.
And yet, to all this, a reminder: this work is an unpublished, undefended academic work. Subject to review, defense, and a whole host of other things. I am grateful for the (very) limited set of eyes here in Aberdeen, friends, colleagues, supervisors, that have helped shape it. And there is still much more to go.
This article originally appeared on my Substack which you can find here.
On Speed and Slowness
Reactions to the work aren’t receptions. Without reading it, they reveal more of their own perceptions and animosities. It’s a spectacle, one that I’m familiar with as one who used to run in these evangelical spaces. How to be free from this spectacle, but somehow responsible in it?
I tend to stumble—away from then towards—the wisdom of LM Sacasas on the digital, which is why I’ve opted for a long-form reflection here.
“The point is not that our digital-media environment necessarily generates vice; rather it’s that it constitutes an ever-present field of temptation, which can require, in turn, monastic degrees of self-discipline to manage.”
L.M. Sacasas
Now, the digital matters. But the medium is also the message, including speed. We all approach the digital from different vantage points. As best as I can figure, mine is trying to live between two ditches, finding it just as easy to wrap silence in piety as it is to assume snark is prophetic. And yet, monastic discipline does not mean monastic retreat. So when do you speak, how, and to whom?
My own experience has taught me that one of the most quietly dangerous, formative aspects of the evangelical presence in America isn’t the obvious, like political captivity or greed, but speed. Speed is part of the American way, a feature of the life of freedom. And ministry to that life always risks being determined by that life.
Speed turns over what gets called “Christian principles” or “biblical clarity” or “Christian values” to false necessities and fatalisms. You “must” do this, think this, take this stand. These “certainties” get called “convictions.” They often arise from stories not disciplined by Easter, captive to neoliberal moralities that make pragmatism and efficiency the highest good. And so what we call conviction is little more than reaction. When this happens, the slow but often unsettling process of reflection and formation can only ever be reaction and fomentation—no matter what we call them. Speed makes it so that not only do we lack the space to reflect as church-community, but it reads that very suggestion as a threat to the church-community.
The task of the church, says Jacques Ellul, is to “shatter” the necessities and fatalisms that arise from violence, and I’d add to it, the stories the world (and church) tells about itself. And these are determining us more than we realize. And I do mean “us” or what was “us.”
On A People
There have been times where I want to respond (react?) with my evangelical bonifides, to show the ways I have been an insider, a son of this house. But I’ve come to agree with those who set up opposition, not knowing me or where I come from. Because it doesn’t matter. What matters is Jesus’ decisive call, now.
A woman called out to Jesus in Luke 11:27, “blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that nursed you.” She was blessing his hometown, his people, his family, his mother. But Jesus’ response cuts and presses in on us—demanding decision: “Blessed are those who are hearing the Word of God, and are obeying it.” The present matters.
I don’t presume to set myself up here on the right side of Jesus’ Word. He is judge, and judged. What I can do, what I will continue to do, is struggle towards the hearing and obeying of this Word, both the decision it calls for and the division it seems to cause, knowing that in the hands of Jesus, all things—even division among us— is drawn into and even points towards reconciliation.
I believe the division provoked by diverging decisions, all claiming to be “for Jesus” will one day submit to the reconciliation of Jesus. And so I’ll act, knowing those who are provoked towards opposition likely claim the same with zeal, but I will continue to speak publicly for all to hear, in the direction of those who find themselves adrift and angry, dispossessed and dillusioned with evangelicalism in the United States, some damned by it.
On Demilitarized Zones: Church & Academy
For the last three years, I’ve lived in Scotland as an American expat, on land that was once the wild, Roman frontier, inhabited by the Picts kept at bay by Hadrian’s Wall, a network of military installations stretched across the border of modern day England and Scotland.
Our modern world is filled with “demilitarized” zones: the Berlin Wall, Gaza, the 38thparallel. These “demilitarized zones” are newspeak, an Orwellian word for the way language is used to deny or distort the obvious. In this case, by calling such spaces “demilitarized” we miss the obvious, paradoxical fact that they are literally surrounded by concentrated, militarized force. A tinder box, ready to explode.
Metaphorically and tragically, the space between the church and the academy is often “demilitarized.” Here on the walls are concentrated forces, ready to pick off any who find themselves caught in no man’s land. It doesn’t have to be this way. I haven’t found this to be true of Aberdeen, for example, but it often is.
I know of nowhere else to be right now, except in this strange void, speaking and living in what seems like a state of damnation and dispossession. I remember hearing about this from Makoto Fujimura, who calls this existence “border-stalking”—and it’s not a place anyone prays over, or points out on a map of the Christian life, saying “take me here.”
But when you find yourself here, you find shock met with the delight of the Divine surprise— others have been here, well before you. The belonging here is ruinous, a good ruining.
That’s going to be it for now. Looking ahead to the year to come, I will keep distilling and sharing and writing. This has been a reflective attempt to narrate the spectacle & provocation the work is generating. These reactions say less about whatever the work is, and reveals more about the currents cutting through evangelicalism right now.
On Being Damned But Not Damning
These are the currents January 6 “apocalypsed”— a fragmentary and momentary glimpse into the raging waters cutting through the heart of evangelical Christianity in America. Here there is a choice to pursue retribution, the power to crucify and silence, or reconciliation, the power of the Crucified One.
These deep currents at work in evangelicalism, I believe, are radically out of step with a witness to the gospel of peace. The work attempts to draw this out, to talk about it in the church’s language, theology not pathology, a work I hope to share in the right time. But there’s no shortage of voices doing this already—which I found hold the line, avoiding contempt or prejudice, full of gritty, honest hope.
But these currents not easily damned up. And if you’ll allow a bit of wordplay, I like what Luther said: “living, dying, and being damned makes one a theologian”—and being damned by a slice of American evangelicalism (if that’s what this is—I don’t know) won’t alter or arrest the witness this work tries to make.
Being damned by fellow Christians is the shadow side of an unsettling conversion away from forms of “Christianity” itself. Being damned by the evangelical powers that be can be a faithful apostasy, a step towards a kingdom taking shape in the world, but is certainly not of the world. This work is part of my conversion, a witness that will be judged by the grace that is in Jesus, and that’s all we can long for and hope in
Jared Stacy 