On October 19th, Allie Beth Stuckey — host of the Relatable podcast, and one of the most listened-to voices in conservative Christianity — told her audience that Christians shouldn’t be fans of horror, and shouldn’t fully participate in Halloween “in all of its darkness,” and she hung the rule on a phrase from Scripture: do not fear. Within three days she was being answered, in public, by people from inside her own camp — and defended, after a fashion, from inside it too. Yesterday I gave you the fight as a fight. Today and tomorrow I want to lay out the argument itself, both sides, in their own words, and then tell you where I land.

One pledge before we start, because it matters to how I run this blog: her side gets its full strength here. Not the weakest clip, not the clumsiest sentence — the strongest version of the case against horror that her camp can produce. You’ll see tomorrow that the strongest version isn’t the one she gave. But it exists, it’s serious, and it gets its hearing before my verdict does. If I’m going to argue against a position, I want to argue against the best of it. Anything less is shadowboxing.

Her claims, in her own words. From Relatable, episode 1410, October 19th. First, the ban itself: “I also just don’t think that Christians should be a fan of horror in general. Like I don’t think you should be reading books that make you scared. I don’t think that you should be watching movies that make you scared.” Then the foundation, the sentence the whole structure stands on: “How many times do we read throughout scripture from Jesus and in the Old Testament, do not fear… yet we purposely consume content that is meant to make us scared.” Then the reach of it — this was never only about slasher films: even Law & Order: SVU, she said, “is actually a direct contradiction of Jesus’s command to not fear or be anxious about anything. So, we shouldn’t be facilitating fear.” And one detail to hold in your hand for later: reaching for an example of what her mother rightly kept from her as a sixth-grader, she named the movie Signs. Remember that title.

Exchange one: the proof-text. Does “do not fear” ban scary stories? Candace Owens — six million subscribers, the biggest microphone in this story — answered hardest, in her October 21st episode: Stuckey “completely inverts scripture. She discerns the exact opposite meaning because it’s how she feels.” Owens’ own reading: the command “is actually commanding you to be courageous” — “He’s not saying don’t pretend none of it’s happening.” A pastor named Jayms made the same point with footnotes in an essay the same day: the Bible’s “fear not” formula is battlefield assurance, spoken to people facing real danger, not a media-consumption rule — and she, he noted, “drew the line at whatever makes you scared,” SVU included. A small satire channel, BabylonBibi Beyond Satire, made it as a joke that’s also an argument (I’m paraphrasing him; his video has no transcript to quote): a word of comfort about trusting God got turned upside down into a ban, by a method that treats verses like Lego bricks. Jenna Ellis, from the legal right, diagnosed it in one sentence on X: the clip “very much made it sound like you think being scared is sinful, and that ‘do not fear’ is a command against being scared.” And in the original reply thread, an ordinary commenter named B. David Ingalls said the whole thing in two lines: when the Bible says “do not fear,” “it was not a command against being scared. It was a reassurance to us of God’s power and presence.”

That is five answers, from five directions, to one sentence. Now here is her side’s answer to the proof-text — and I am reporting this flatly because it is documented, not spun: there isn’t one. Across every defense of Stuckey that surfaced — on X, on Substack, on a friendly television hour — no supporter of note repeated or defended the “do not fear” argument. Worse for her: her strongest defender attacked it. Pastor Gregg Kite, whose full case for her side you’ll get tomorrow, called her “do not fear” reasoning “atrocious,” a horrible twisting of the Scriptures, and rebuilt her entire position on a different verse. And Stuckey’s own answer, when it came, was not a defense but a narrowing: “Hang on! I didn’t say anywhere that Christians shouldn’t watch suspenseful or tense things…” — posted on X on October 20th, in a post that also insisted, “I still stand by what I said.” Worth knowing who she was answering: that narrowing was a reply aimed at Matt Walsh, the heavyweight who had pushed back that day. Of everyone who answered her, he’s the one she felt she had to answer. And her answer was the retreat. State of play on exchange one: the argument she led with is the argument nobody — including her own side — will carry.

Exchange two: the method. Underneath the verse fight is a more basic one: was this an opinion, or a commandment? Owens’ charge is the sharpest sentence anyone produced all week: “She can never give her opinion without somehow making it righteous. And that’s very dangerous.” Owens summarized the posture as: “The Bible commands my opinion, which is subject to change at any moment.” And she landed on the same word the little satire channel landed on, independently: “It’s like bubblegum Christianity.” Dr. Danielle Treweek, an evangelical theologian answering from inside the camp, made the honesty version of the point: the clip said “scared,” repeatedly and specifically — not “paranoid” — and to clarify without admitting the proof-text was misused is “not just disappointing, it’s alarming,” because Stuckey’s words carry weight precisely when she tells people Jesus “commands” something.

Her side’s answer, again, is instructive. Kyle Mann, editor-in-chief of the Babylon Bee, defended her on X — as a person: “Allie Beth Stuckey has always been thoughtful and kind. So give her the benefit of the doubt when you disagree with her. You maniacs.” And then as a position: it would be legalistic to call horror a sin, but hers is “a fair position, and she has some good reasoning… It’s still an issue of conscience and moderation to me.” Read that twice. The position Mann calls fair is the conscience version — the exact standard Owens demanded: give your opinion as an opinion and let people take it or leave it. Mann is defending the Stuckey of the October 20th narrowing, not the commandment voice of October 19th. Emily Jashinsky, hosting Stuckey on After Party, opened by pre-validating her — “people were definitely misinterpreting what you said. There’s no question about it” — and pushed back zero times in the hour. That’s a defense of a friend, delivered in a room with no opposing voice. State of play on exchange two: on the method, her defenders change the subject — to her character, or to a softer version of her claim. The original charge stands unanswered in its own terms.

Exchange three, first half: horror itself. Set the verse and the method aside. Is the genre defensible? Her own camp’s witnesses said yes, on every ground available. In the original thread, a commenter named Spencer Askew opened the literary case: “Traditional Horror is a deeply Christian genre. I mean, ‘Dracula’ might be the most overtly Christian novel we have” — and The Picture of Dorian Gray, he argued, is “about the consequences of sin and the soul’s corruption.” The insider witness is Emily Butler, a Christian horror fan and mother who agrees with Stuckey on most things, and who filmed her rebuttal in a witch costume. Butler’s kill-shot aims at that detail I asked you to hold: Signs — the film Stuckey’s mother rightly kept from her — is the story of a pastor who loses his faith when his wife dies and gets it back on his knees, begging God to save his son. It is one of the most overtly Christian films Hollywood has made. The star exhibit testifies for the other side. Butler on The Exorcist: “Oh, I won’t watch The Exorcist. It’s too scary. It focuses on the demonic.” Yes, exactly. That’s the point. And her category question, which nobody on Stuckey’s side has answered: applied evenly, the rule bans war movies, Schindler’s List, the news — “Are we not allowed to represent evil on the screen?” Depiction is not endorsement. She added the craft case — no genre raises a story’s stakes like horror — and the theological case came from Owens: “when you see true evil, it inspires you to be good.” Theologian Laura Robinson added the common-sense one on Substack: Stuckey collapses pretend fear into real fear; horror fans are playing, and the fear ends when the story ends.

And Matt Walsh, in his own words on October 20th: horror is “the most Christian genre of film,” “the only genre where the priest might actually be the good guy. Horror has deep roots in Christian thought and tradition” — and “it’s okay for Christians to tell and enjoy stories that are tense, suspenseful, even scary. There’s nothing inherently sinful about any of those feelings.”

So Part One leaves it here: her proof-text is undefended, her method is defended only by changing the subject, and the genre she banned has been defended — artistically, theologically, and by plain common sense — by people who share her politics and her pew. But fairness is fairness, and I promised you her side at full strength. She has one. Tomorrow: Pastor Gregg Kite throws her argument away and builds her a better one, her defenders’ best points get their hearing, we look at what she did with the criticism once it landed — and then I’ll give you my verdict.