Jared Stacy doesn’t talk about his years in New Orleans as a charming chapter of early adulthood. He talks about them as devastation — the good kind.
“New Orleans wrecked me in the best way possible,” he said.
Near the end of his time in Louisiana, Stacy attended what he thought was a prayer gathering for pastors at LSU’s Pete Maravich Assembly Center. Instead, he found himself crossing a protest line between a Christian rally and pro-choice demonstrators — a moment that unsettled him in ways he didn’t yet understand.
Advertisement
Author Jared Stacy’s new book, “Reality in Ruins: How Conspiracy Theory Became an American Evangelical Crisis,” will be released March 17. The book is published by HarperCollins.
Provided photo by Stevie Stacy
Stacy, now 35 and living in St. Petersburg, Florida, grew up in a conservative Baptist environment that he describes as “hard right and far right.” As a child, the word “fundamentalist” simply meant serious Christianity.
Advertisement
In the church culture he knew, faith was defined by certainty — about theology, politics and the boundaries between believers and everyone else.
Living and working in New Orleans began to chip away at that certainty.
The experience eventually became the starting point for his work examining conspiracy thinking inside American evangelicalism — and for his new book, “Reality in Ruins: How Conspiracy Theory Became an American Evangelical Crisis,” which will be released March 17 by HarperCollins.
“I definitely grew up and knew the language,” he said. “Fundamentalist was a good thing. To me as a kid, it just meant we were Christians. We were serious Christians.”
A storefront church in Metairie
After marrying his wife, Stevie Noble, the couple chose New Orleans in 2012 so they could both pursue graduate degrees. Stacy enrolled at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in Gentilly. Within six months he was pastoring a small church in Metairie.
Advertisement
The congregation met in a storefront church near Fat City, where apartment buildings, parade routes and late-night restaurants filled the surrounding blocks and the church door stayed open throughout the week. Neighbors drifted in and out. The surrounding neighborhood — dense, pedestrian and diverse — exposed him to people he had rarely encountered in his upbringing.
“People just walked in,” he said.
That environment brought him into conversations he had rarely experienced before.
The congregation included people with different political views and life experiences than the communities he had grown up around.
“I remember thinking, ‘Man, I’m going to church with people who are Democrats,’” he said. “That was a first for me.”
Advertisement
Living and working in the New Orleans area slowly dismantled assumptions he had carried since childhood. He says that the experience was not dramatic in the moment, but it gradually reshaped how he understood faith and the people around him.
“I really felt like I was the one being pastored just by the experience itself,” he said. “I didn’t have the language to be able to articulate the sort of changes that were occurring. The ways that my lived theology was undergoing a crisis that I didn’t realize.”
At the time, he did not fully understand the internal shift that was happening. Years later, those experiences would shape his academic work.
His book examines the long relationship between evangelical Christianity and conspiracy thinking in the United States. One of his central arguments is that conspiracy theories are not a recent intrusion into evangelical culture but something woven into its history.
“Conspiracy theory is very much like a load-bearing wall in the evangelical house in America,” he said. “It is a feature, not a bug.”
Advertisement
The idea deepened during his doctoral studies at the University of Aberdeen, which he completed in 2024.
The more he studied American history and evangelical culture, the more he saw how persistent conspiracy thinking had been.
“You can’t tell the story of America without conspiracy theories,” he said. “These stories are always the things that get told when we’re afraid of society getting turned upside out.”
What surprised him even more was how resistant those beliefs are to correction.
Fact-checking alone, he said, rarely changes deeply held beliefs shaped by religious or cultural narratives. Instead, he argues, conspiracy thinking often operates inside broader stories people already believe about the world — stories that make some claims feel plausible and others impossible.
Advertisement
Modern technology has only accelerated that dynamic.
“We are living with more facts, more information than we’ve ever lived with before,” he said. “And, ironically, we are less able to parse fact from fiction, reality from disreality than perhaps at any other time.”
For Stacy, those questions are not purely academic.
After their time in New Orleans, Stacy and his wife moved to her childhood church in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
“We didn’t realize how much we had changed. We thought we were going back to somewhere familiar,” Stacy said, “but that was the place where we began to work through how our beliefs changed and the contradictions between our beliefs and the Southern Baptist Convention were unveiled in a local, concrete place.”
Advertisement
From Fredericksburg, Stacy decided to go back to graduate school to earn a doctorate.
His research intersects with his own spiritual journey and with debates inside American Christianity about power, politics and belief.
He describes his approach as “doing theology against theology” — using Christian ideas to challenge political or religious movements that claim Christian authority.
“I do that as an insider,” he said. “I was in there — and I called White Christian nationalism just Christianity.”
The urgency of the problem, he argues, is not simply theoretical.
Advertisement
The stories communities tell about one another can shape how people treat each other in the real world.
“I call it a crisis because there are real human communities, human lives, human bodies that are placed in physical risk because of the stories we tell,” he said.
But the word “crisis,” he said, also carries another meaning.
Moments of crisis demand decisions.
“A crisis in the truest sense of the word calls for a decision,” he said. “To not choose is to choose.”
Advertisement
Noticing the signs at LSU
Walking across LSU’s campus with a Bible in hand, Stacy joined a group heading toward the event at the PMAC. Along the way, he struck up a conversation with an English professor walking beside him.
As they neared the PMAC, Stacy noticed the signs. He realized that the people he was walking with were part of a pro-choice demonstration that he would have to walk through to attend the Christian rally inside.
The moment forced him to confront two worlds colliding in the same space.
“I suddenly look around and realize that they are holding pro-choice signs,” he said. “And I have this moment where the guy that I was walking with, and I suddenly recognized that we’re not part of the same people here.”
Crossing the protest line to enter the rally unsettled him in ways he could not fully explain at the time.
Advertisement
He now sees that moment as an early glimpse of the religious and political fusion he later studied.
“I had this very unsettling sense that maybe the Jesus that I worshipped would not have crossed that picket line,” he said. “I felt like this lit professor and I might have had a lot to talk about. I’m like crossing this protest line to go to a prayer rally.”
Looking back, he says those kinds of experiences helped him recognize how closely political rallies and religious revivalism could mirror each other, seeing the two as almost indiscernible.
A crisis inside evangelicalism
Today, Stacy works as a hospice chaplain and attends what he describes as a “post-evangelical” church in St. Petersburg. The congregation still recites ancient Christian creeds and the Lord’s Prayer each week, but it has moved away from the evangelical label.
The shift reflects a broader attempt to acknowledge the tradition the church came from while moving beyond it.
Advertisement
“If we just give it up,” he said of the label evangelical, “no one has to say they’re sorry.”
Stacy still considers himself a Christian, though his faith looks different from the one he inherited and knew as a child. He says that his faith has been totally altered — and yet it hasn’t changed at all.
Part of faith, he believes, involves letting go of illusions.
“I think part of the Christian faith involves being dispossessed of our illusions,” he said.
For pastors and believers wrestling with the tensions he describes, Stacy says speaking honestly may come at a cost and that “courage can look like ruin.” The choice to challenge conspiracy thinking or Christian nationalism can threaten careers and congregations.
Advertisement
Pastors who speak out, he acknowledged, may lose jobs, relationships or stability. But, he says, silence carries its own consequences.
“Our world needs not just analysts and experts,” he said. “It also needs witnesses.”
For Stacy, that journey began years earlier in a storefront church in Metairie — where the certainty he once carried first began to come undone.
Louisiana State Police investigating deadly hit-and-run involving bicyclist
Advertisement
THE DRAFT STARTS AT 6:00. ALL RIGHT. ALSO WARM. TURNING TO WEATHER NOW A LIVE LOOK OUTSIDE ON YOUR MONDAY. WARM AND BREEZY. A COUPLE OF CLOUDS OUT THERE, BUT OVERALL A BEAUTIFUL START TO THE WORKWEEK. YEAH AND NO RAIN. LET’S GET STRAIGHT TO WDSU FIRST WARNING WEATHER METEOROLOGIST JIM SIREN. IT’S GOING TO BE PRETTY NICE ALL WEEK. YES IT IS. WE MAY SEE A COUPLE OF SPOTTY SHOWERS AS WE LOOK A LITTLE FURTHER DOWN THE ROAD, BUT MAYBE I’M OVERPLAYING THAT CHANCE FOR RAIN JUST BECAUSE WE NEED THE RAIN. HOWEVER, AS WE LOOK FARTHER DOWN THE ROAD, NOT ONLY DO WE HAVE A COLD FRONT, BUT WE HAVE A REAL GOOD CHANCE FOR RAIN, I THINK. BUT THAT’S IN THE EXTENDED EXTENDED FORECAST RIGHT NOW. SHORT TERM THINGS ARE LOOKING GOOD. PONTCHARTRAIN CONSERVANCY CAMERA SHOWING US MOSTLY SUNNY SKIES AND WITH THE SUNSHINE, WE’VE MADE IT TO THE MID 80S IN A COUPLE OF SPOTS. 85 BOGALUSA WE’RE AT 83 IN BATON ROUGE, 81 THE CURRENT TEMPERATURE IN SLIDELL. I ACTUALLY OVERHEARD A COWORKER SAY, IT’S KIND OF HOT TODAY AND I GUESS 85 DEGREES IF YOU’RE WORKING IN THE YARD. YEAH, THAT’S KIND OF HOT WINDS RIGHT NOW AT ABOUT TEN, 12, 15MPH. SOUTHEASTERLY WINDS BECOMING A BIT MORE SOUTHERLY BY MIDWEEK. THAT WILL BRING US A LITTLE MORE LOW LEVEL MOISTURE. THE DEW POINT TEMPERATURE IS GOING TO COME UP. WE’VE EVEN SEEN SOME WIND GUSTS IN EXCESS OF 20MPH HERE OVER THE LAST HALF HOUR OR SO. SO A BREEZY DAY TODAY, A BREEZY DAY TOMORROW. OFFICIALLY RIGHT NOW AT LOUIS ARMSTRONG INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. WINDS BECOMING SOUTHERLY AT ABOUT 13 WITH A DEW POINT OF 61. THAT DEW POINT LIKELY COMING UP JUST A LITTLE BIT BY WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY. IN THE SHORT TERM THOUGH, LET’S ENJOY THE NICE BREEZY WEATHER CLOUDS INCREASING TO THE WEST OF US, BUT IT’S REALLY HIGH PRESSURE AT THE SURFACE THAT’S GOING TO BRING US THE SOUTH TO SOUTHEASTERLY WIND TODAY, BECOMING MORE SOUTHERLY BY WEDNESDAY. THAT’S WHEN WE COULD SEE A FEW SPOTTY SHOWERS. BUT THE REAL THING THAT’S GOING TO CHANGE OUR WEATHER A LITTLE BIT IS PROBABLY GOING TO BE A COLD FRONT THAT’S GOING TO BE HERE THIS WEEKEND. WILL IT HOLD TOGETHER AS OF RIGHT NOW? I THINK SO. WATER VAPOR IMAGERY SHOWS US THIS. A LOT OF DRY AIR THAT’S GOING TO BE MOVING IN. SO TOMORROW I THINK IS GOING TO BE ANOTHER DAY WITH PLENTY OF SUNSHINE. ANY CLOUD COVER, JUST LOW LEVEL CUMULUS CLOUDS THAT REALLY WON’T BUILD INTO ANYTHING. LET’S GO HOUR BY HOUR. AND FIRST OF ALL, SHOW YOU THE EVENING WALK AROUND THE BLOCK AFTER DINNER. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT. TEMPERATURES ARE GOING TO BE IN THE LOW 70S ON THE NORTH SHORE. ACTUALLY LOW 70S, JUST ABOUT EVERYWHERE. CLOUD COVER, VERY LIMITED. STILL A LITTLE BIT BREEZY TOMORROW MORNING, BUT RATHER THAN THE 50S, WE WOKE UP IN THE 50S OVER THE WEEKEND. NOW WE’RE GOING TO BE IN THE LOW 60S ON THE NORTH SHORE, MID TO UPPER 60S IN THE METRO. A TOUCH MUGGY, BUT THAT BREEZE STILL AT ABOUT 5 TO 10MPH. TOMORROW, ANOTHER MOSTLY SUNNY DAY WITH A HIGH TEMPERATURE IN THE LOW TO MID 80S. BOGALUSA. LOOKS LIKE YOU’LL GET TO THE MID 80S AGAIN TOMORROW. NOW HERE COMES THE CHANGE ON WEDNESDAY. AND GRANTED, IT’S NOT A MAJOR CHANGE, BUT HERE’S A SOUTHERLY WIND. SO THIS MODEL IS ACTUALLY PICKING UP ON 1 OR 2 SHOWERS IN THE MORNING. I THINK THIS MODEL MAY BE A LITTLE AGGRESSIVE, BUT IN THE AFTERNOON A FEW MORE SHOWERS. WE’RE PUTTING A 20% CHANCE FOR SHOWERS IN THE FORECAST ON WEDNESDAY AS WELL AS THURSDAY. IF YOU SEE A SHOWER, COUNT YOURSELF AS ONE OF THE LUCKY ONES AND YOU’LL NOTICE THAT THOSE SHOWERS SHOULD BE VERY, VERY LIGHT AT BEST. SLIGHTLY BETTER CHANCE FOR RAIN THIS WEEKEND. LET’S TRACK THIS COLD FRONT. SATURDAY, 7 A.M. GETTING CLOSER TO US BY 7 P.M. CLOUDS STARTING TO INCREASE JUST A LITTLE BIT. IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE THIS FRONT IS GOING TO BRING US A LOT OF RAIN IN 24 HOURS AGO, I THOUGHT THE FRONT WAS GOING TO WASH OUT BEFORE IT GOT HERE. NOW IT LOOKS LIKE THE FRONT IS ACTUALLY GOING TO MAKE IT. WE’LL PUT ABOUT A 20 TO 30% CHANCE FOR SHOWERS IN THE FORECAST ON SUNDAY. THIS MODEL REALLY DOESN’T HAVE MUCH SIGNIFICANT RAIN AT ALL, BUT THE FRONT SHOULD MAKE IT THROUGH. SO BY THE BEGINNING OF NEXT WEEK, THINGS GETTING A LITTLE BIT COOLER, A LITTLE BIT DRIER FOR US, A LITTLE LESS HUMID AS WELL. SO YOUR FORECAST FOR THIS EVENING CALLING FOR MAINLY CLEAR SKIES, A LITTLE BIT MUGGY, TEMPERATURES IN THE LOW 60S ON THE NORTH SHORE MID TO UPPER 60S ELSEWHERE. TOMORROW WE’LL DO IT AGAIN A LOT LIKE TODAY. MOSTLY SUNNY, BREEZY AND WARM, 83 TO 86 FOR THE AFTERNOON HIGH. THERE’S THAT 20% CHANCE FOR SHOWERS ONCE WE GET TO WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY. VERY SPOTTY SHOWERS AT BEST. COLD FRONT SHOULD BE MOVING THROUGH SUNDAY, MAYBE LATE MORNING EARLY AFTERNOON. SO BY LATE SUNDAY AFTERNOON WE’LL NOTICE THE HUMIDITY DROPPING JUST A LITTLE BIT. I THINK THINGS ARE LOOKING GREAT FOR FRENCH QUARTER FEST. JUST BE PREPARED, YOU KNOW, TO GET THOSE $2 DISPOSABLE RAIN PONCHOS PUT IN YOUR BACK POCKET. IF YOU SEE ONE OF THE SHOWERS ON SUNDAY, IT’S NOT GOING TO LAST ALL THAT LONG. AND THEN WE’RE COOLER AND DRIER AND VERY PLEASANT ON MONDAY. A MUCH BETTER CHANCE FOR RAIN IN OUR EXTENDED EXTENDED FORECAST,
Advertisement
Louisiana State Police investigating deadly hit-and-run involving bicyclist
Updated: 9:31 PM CDT Apr 13, 2026
Editorial Standards ⓘ
Advertisement
A Folsom man was killed in a hit-and-run in St. Tammany over the weekend.Louisiana State Police say Rodrigo Ornelas Jr., 24, of Folsom, was riding his bike on Sunday morning around 12:30 a.m. on LA Highway 40 at Blackwell Cemetery Road. At the same time, an unknown dark-colored sedan or small SUV was traveling east on LA Highway 40, struck Ornelas Jr., and left the scene.Police say the area was poorly lit and that he was not wearing a helmet but was dressed in light-colored clothing. Ornelas sustained serious injuries and was transported to a local hospital for treatment, where he later died. According to troopers, they have determined that the bicycle was equipped with reflectors but was not equipped with lights. The crash remains under investigation.
FOLSOM, La. —
A Folsom man was killed in a hit-and-run in St. Tammany over the weekend.
Louisiana State Police say Rodrigo Ornelas Jr., 24, of Folsom, was riding his bike on Sunday morning around 12:30 a.m. on LA Highway 40 at Blackwell Cemetery Road.
Advertisement
At the same time, an unknown dark-colored sedan or small SUV was traveling east on LA Highway 40, struck Ornelas Jr., and left the scene.
Police say the area was poorly lit and that he was not wearing a helmet but was dressed in light-colored clothing.
Ornelas sustained serious injuries and was transported to a local hospital for treatment, where he later died.
Advertisement
According to troopers, they have determined that the bicycle was equipped with reflectors but was not equipped with lights.
A Raceland man has been charged with vehicular homicide for a March crash that left a Chauvin man dead.
Aljean Ledet, 58, of Chauvin died, March 25, after Michael Boudreaux, 21, of Raceland, rear-ended him at the intersection of LA 56 and Josie Court, according to a news release by the Louisiana State Police. Ledet was not wearing a seatbelt.
Police gathered toxicology samples from the two men at the time of the incident and later found that Boudreaux’s blood alcohol content was over the legal limit at the time of the crash. Boudreaux has been charged with vehicular homicide, DWI (first offense), reckless operation, no seatbelt and driving under suspension.
Louisiana news: Oil discovery in Gulf near existing platform south of Louisiana coast
Advertisement
Boudreaux turned himself in to Troopers, April 9, 2026, and was booked into the Terrebonne Parish jail.
On March 25, Ledet was traveling north on LA 56 in a 2008 Chevrolet Colorado. At the same time Boudreaux was in a 2006 Pontiac G6 also traveling north, the release said. Boudreaux failed to slow down and struck the rear of Ledet’s Chevrolet.
After the impact, Ledet’s vehicle was sent off the road on the right and overturned. He was unrestrained and sustained fatal injuries.
For three straight weekends prior to this one, No. 10 Southern Miss managed to escape with series wins despite giving its opponents several opportunities to win. After playing with fire for a fourth consecutive weekend, though, the Golden Eagles finally got burned badly, as they lost Sunday’s rubber match and the series to the Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns at Russo Park in Lafayette.
The Golden Eagles (25-11, 8-7 Sun Belt) spent much of the weekend walking a tightrope, undone by the same issues that had lingered beneath the surface in recent series. Free passes proved especially costly in Sunday’s finale, including a bases-loaded walk that allowed Louisiana to push its lead to 6-4 in the bottom of the fifth inning. That run proved to be the difference, as the Cajuns ultimately held on to win 6-5.
It’s Gut-Check Time for the Eags
Advertisement
@SouthernMissBSB
Head coach Christian Ostrander, who was ejected in the game in the bottom of the fourth inning for arguing balls and strikes with the umpire, has to be left wondering what has happened to his Golden Eagles team that started the year on fire with a 15-2 record and several wins over high-quality opponents. Southern Miss has gone just 10-9 since that point, despite still remaining fairly high in the national rankings.
Advertisement
With a big midweek game against Ole Miss in Pearl coming up on Tuesday, and a big weekend series at home against a very good Texas State team starting on Friday, it is officially gut-check time for the Golden Eagles. Hosting a regional is still not out of the question for this ballclub, but losing a second Sun Belt series certainly doesn’t help its case.
How the Rubber Match Loss Happened
Advertisement
@SouthernMissBSB
Advertisement
The Golden Eagles had 10 hits on Sunday, with six of those coming from junior shortstop Seth Smith and senior outfielder Joey Urban (three each). Smith connected on his second home run of the year–a solo shot to right field in the top of the sixth to bring Southern Miss within 6-5.
In the top of the ninth, senior second baseman Kyle Morrison got on base from the lead-off spot with a walk, but junior outfielder Davis Gillespie, who had been on fire lately, cooled off in this one and hit into a double play on the very next at-bat. Senior first baseman Matthew Russo got the last chance to tie the game with two outs, but he grounded out to first base to end the game and the series. Overall, the Golden Eagles left nine runners on base.
Junior RHP Thomas Crabtree got the start for the Golden Eagles but only made it 1.2 innings before being replaced by senior LHP Kros Sivley. Sivley lasted one-third of an inning before being replaced by junior RHP Josh Och (L, 3-1), who pitched for 1.1 innings before giving the ball up to sophomore RHP McCarty English for two-thirds of an inning. Altogether, Crabtree, Sivley, Och and English surrendered five hits, six earned runs, six walks, and four hit batters while registering six strikeouts.
Senior RHP JW Armistead and senior RHP Colby Allen, who made his second appearance of the weekend, came in for the final four innings (two each) and gave up zero hits or runs. However, it was a case of too little, too late, as the Golden Eagles were unable to score in the final three frames.
Advertisement
The Sky Isn’t Falling… Yet
Josh House
Advertisement
As bad as things might feel right now for the Golden Eagles, the sky isn’t falling… at least not yet. Although it doesn’t necessarily mean that things will end up going the same way, this year’s ballclub is still out-pacing the 2024 and 2025 teams in the win/loss column. Southern Miss was 22-14 by this point in 2024 and 24-12 in 2025. This team has the talent to turn things up a notch or two; Coach Oz and his staff will just have to find the right buttons to push to make that happen.
Advertisement
Nothing would help wash away the bad taste of an upset series loss to the Ragin’ Cajuns quite like a big midweek win over an in-state rival that is coming off a weekend sweep of LSU. Southern Miss will take on Ole Miss at Trustmark Park on Tuesday at 6 p.m., looking to bounce back from its latest gut-punch. Stay tuned to Southern Miss Golden Eagles On SI for more baseball coverage throughout this coming week.
