Allie Beth Stuckey is not mad. Stop saying she’s mad.

This week’s subject, Allie Beth Stuckey, is not happy with me! I wrote about this Christian fundamentalist influencer at Salon, and she’s reacted with at least two videos raging about it. Wait until she finds out that we also had a video planned — and now we can use clips of her furiously insisting she’s going to pray for me, over and over.

Internet beef is fun, and we have our laughs. But this is still a serious topic: MAGA’s war on empathy. As we also discuss, the Venezuelan boat bombings and ICE raids show how bad anti-empathy politics can get.

Biblical literalism is awfully selective

My guest, Tim Whitaker, knows a lot about where Allie Beth Stuckey is coming from. He grew up as a right-wing Christian, and has since come around to a more liberal interpretation of the faith. In this clip, he explains how people who say they’re Biblical “literalists” actually do plenty of interpreting — and a lot of it is quite the stretch.

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Encore song of the week: “Ain’t It Fun” by the Dead Boys

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