Oh, by the way — one more thing about the Allie Beth Stuckey horror fight, because it has a second act, and the second act is the tell. I’ve spent two posts on what she said and how her own side answered it (the weekend post, and the two-parter that wrapped up this morning). This one is about what she did next: she started erasing it, shrinking it, and explaining that you heard it wrong.

And let me answer the fair question: why am I still writing about this? Part of me would be happy to see the whole thing go away, and I don’t wish her any permanent harm. But part of me doesn’t want it to go away, and here’s why. People set themselves up as authorities on what Jesus wants for your life, quote “do not fear” without the first idea of the context it was spoken in, and pronounce rules for millions — and when the record catches them, they shouldn’t get a free pass for it. Everybody talks past his knowledge sometimes; I do it in front of a blog audience I wish numbered a hundred thousand. She does it in front of hundreds of thousands of viewers, with a verse for a gavel. A bop on the head isn’t cruelty. It’s tuition. The hope — hers, if she’ll take it — is that the next time she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, she keeps her mouth shut.

Yesterday: Allie Beth Stuckey banned horror on a “do not fear” proof-text; her critics — nearly all from her own camp — took the proof-text and the method apart; her defenders defended her character and a softer version of her claim. Today: the strongest case that can be made for her side, made by the man who threw her argument away to make it. Then the scope fight, the retreat, and my verdict.

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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.

I am an atheist. I make no secret of it; it’s in the banner. So take it from me when I tell you this has been a strange week, because I have spent it nodding along — hard — with Candace Owens and Matt Walsh. Not on everything. On one thing: both of them looked at conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey’s latest pronouncement and said, in public, in their own words, what I would have said. The pronouncement is the problem. And the way it fell apart, inside her own camp, in about forty-eight hours, is the story.