Category: Relatable
‘They’re scared’ — Allie Beth Stuckey fires back at Hillary Clinton’s hit piece on the biblical movement she helped ignite
Yesterday, the Atlantic ran an op-ed by Hillary Clinton titled “MAGA’s War on Empathy,” in which the former Secretary of State accused the MAGA movement of twisting bedrock Christian values and embracing a worldview where “compassion is weak and cruelty is strong,” connecting specifically “hard-right Christian influencers” to the violence we’ve seen in Minneapolis.
One of the people in Clinton’s crosshairs is Blaze Media’s own Allie Beth Stuckey, host of the Christian podcast “Relatable.”
Among many grievances, the twice-defeated Democrat took issue with Stuckey’s critical analysis of the sermon delivered on January 21 last year by Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde during a post-inauguration interfaith Service of Prayer for the Nation. Budde’s preaching was interpreted by many conservatives, including Stuckey, as a politicization of faith to push progressive views on immigration and LGBTQ+ issues.
“The right-wing Christian podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey called the sermon ‘toxic empathy that is in complete opposition to God’s Word and in support of the most satanic, destructive ideas ever conjured up.’ Toxic empathy! What an oxymoron. I don’t know if the phrase reflects moral blindness or moral bankruptcy, but either way it’s appalling,” Clinton wrote, explicitly describing herself as a Christian.
Now Stuckey fires back at the self-proclaimed devout Mrs. Clinton. In this special “Relatable” episode, she dismisses the hit piece as proof progressives are losing their grip, doubles down on biblical truth over “toxic empathy,” and celebrates the attack as a backhanded compliment.
“First, I just want to make an announcement. I want to announce that I love my life. I love living. I’m happy to be here. That is an important declaration to make anytime you get in the crosshairs of the Clintons, which, to my astonishment, I am,” Stuckey quips, alluding to widely circulated conspiracy narratives tying the Clintons to mysterious deaths.
Though character assassinations like Clinton’s are never ideal, Stuckey celebrates them as proof her message is hitting its mark.
“This article might mention me by name, but it is not actually about me,” she says, “because the truth is, if it weren’t for all of you, Hillary Clinton would not care about me. It is because of your presence, because of your courage, because of your resolve, your influence over this and future generations that Clinton is writing this article.”
And she’s not the first to shoot an arrow at Stuckey. Since her book “Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion” hit the New York Times bestseller list in October 2024, left-wing outlets have been running hit piece after hit piece accusing Stuckey of politically weaponizing the Christian faith.
“The deeper reason [for these attacks] is so incredibly clear to me,” she says, “and that is that we are over the target.”
“We have gotten to the heart of progressive manipulation. We looked at their lies straight in the face that abortion is health care, that trans women are women, that no human being is illegal, and we said, ‘No, I see what you’re doing,’” she continues.
“And now they’re afraid,” she declares.
From 2020 until now, this movement that refuses to allow “emotion to paralyze … critical thinking” has continued to grow, and progressives, realizing that they’re rapidly losing their “monopoly on female compassion,” are in full panic mode, she argues.
“They don’t trot out former Secretary of State, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, unless they are really worried.”
To Clinton — who seemed to reduce Christianity to mere neighborly love — Stuckey sets the record straight on the faith’s highest virtue: “[Love] is inextricably intertwined with the truth.”
“God is love — 1 John 4:8. He gets to define it. And He tells us what it is in 1 Corinthians 13, and in verse 6, we read that love ‘never rejoices in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth,’” she quotes. “So you cannot have in Christianity love without truth.”
But toxic empathy throws genuine love to the wolves.
“You are so deeply in one person’s feelings that you no longer can think objectively. You no longer consider the person on the other side of the equation, and then you make decisions based on how much you feel for one person rather than on what is true and moral and just,” Stuckey illustrates, giving the example of pro-choicers who, in the name of empathy for the mother, neglect to consider “the existence, the rights, and the pain of the baby inside the womb.”
Love and truth: “This is the dichotomy that Jesus represented. Not unconditional empathy toward every purported victim group,” she clarifies.
Ultimately, Stuckey is grateful for Clinton’s polemic.
“She’s put more eyes on [“Toxic Empathy”],” she says.
But for her, it’s never been about selling books.
“It is about getting Christian women to see what is logically and factually and, most importantly, biblically true about some of the biggest issues of our day and to be able to stand confidently in that,” she says.
She concludes by encouraging Christians to take heart when the Enemy assaults them, reading from Luke 6:22: “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and when they revile you and spurn your name as evil on account of the Son of Man!”
Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?
To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
Flirty chat to suicide in hours: The deadly new wave of AI-powered sextortion scams targeting American teens
Ben Gillenwater is an IT expert with 30 years of experience and the creator behind the “family IT guy” accounts on social media, where he shares tips with parents on how to protect their kids online from harmful content, predators, and addictive algorithms, among other virtual risks.
But most importantly, Ben is a dad. Five years ago, he gave his 5-year-old son an iPad, the results of which were so disturbing, it launched him into his current role as a full-time content creator dedicated to protecting children from the dangers of the digital world.
On this episode of “Relatable” with Allie Beth Stuckey, Ben dives into the online perils facing today’s children — including one so sinister, it’ll forever change the way you think about child predators.
When most people think of online groomers, they picture creepy men in basements posing as minors in an effort to lure children into secretly meeting up with them. But some groomers have no intention of ever making physical contact with their victims. Their sole intention is to get rich off of creating chaos and ruining lives from afar.
Gillenwater gives the example of Jordan DeMay — a 17-year-old high school student from Michigan, who tragically died by suicide in 2022 after falling victim to a sextortion scam.
“Good kid, good family, good school records, had a girlfriend,” he says.
Then one day, an attractive girl messaged him on social media and struck up a flirtatious conversation that culminated in her sending nude photos. Jordan was asked to return the favor, and when he did, it was revealed that the images of the girl were stolen or fake and that she was actually a Nigerian gang. The two brothers behind the operation — Samuel and Samson Ogoshi — threatened to blackmail DeMay by sending his explicit photos to his family, friends, and school contacts if he didn’t wire them money, spurring DeMay to take his own life.
This entire sextortion scam — from initial contact to DeMay’s suicide — occurred in less than six hours.
DeMay’s tormentors, says Gillenwater, are part of a broad network of Nigerian cybercriminals called “the Yahoo Boys.” They’re the same people behind the Nigerian prince scams that have conned hundreds of thousands — perhaps even millions — of people into wiring money with fake promises of huge inheritances or riches, only to demand endless upfront “fees” that leave victims with nothing.
Whether they’re posing as wealthy princes or attractive women, their strategy is the same: “identify weakness in people,” Gillenwater says.
Back in the ’80s and ’90s when the digital world was just ramping up, these cybercriminals were able to dupe people using only “poorly worded emails,” but today, thanks to advances in technology, their predatory empire is built on “very well-worded and well-informed AI-powered hunting programs,” meaning their schemes have only gotten darker and more effective.
“Teenage boys specifically are targeted for this [sextortion scam] in particular, and they exploit their biology,” says Gillenwater.
“What they do when establishing the initial connection is they study all of your friends on Instagram and gather up your whole network so they know everybody you go to school with … everybody you go to church with … every family member … that’s how they blackmail you is they’re going to send your naked photo to all those people,” he explains.
Sadly this nefarious kind of operation isn’t exclusive to Nigeria.
“There’s South American gangs, there’s Asian gangs, there’s African gangs, there’s European gangs. It’s a very high-profit, very low-effort endeavor, part of which is automated,” says Gillenwater.
But cybercriminals are just one threat in the vast, dark web of online child predation. In the next part of the interview, Gillenwater dives into some shocking statistics regarding the “traditional creep,” who targets vulnerable kids online for sexual exploitation.
To hear more and learn tips that will help you protect your kids online, watch the full episode above.
Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?
To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
The crisis of ‘trembling pastors’: Why church leaders are ignoring core theology because it’s ‘political’
At Turning Point USA’s annual AmFest, BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey and Senior Director of TPUSA Faith Lucas Miles dove into one the most pressing spiritual issues facing our nation right now: weak pastors.
Miles calls them “trembling pastors.” They aren’t necessarily “traitorous” in that they’re deliberately spreading ideas antithetical to Scripture, but they also aren’t “true pastors” willing to boldly speak truth no matter the cost.
These men, fearful of dividing their congregations or financial loss, steer clear of politically charged subjects.
But the problem with that approach is that so many political issues today are theological at their core. Abortion, marriage, gender, race, and justice have deep spiritual implications, but because these issues appear on the ballot, many pastors turn a blind eye to them and fail to lead their congregations.
But Allie and Miles argue that truth only prevails when pastors courageously lead in all areas.
“I remember one of the things that Charlie [Kirk] said to me is that courage is easy. All you have to do is say yes. You don’t have to have a degree on the wall; you don’t have to have a bunch of money; you don’t have to have good looks. You just have to be willing to say, like, ‘Here I am, Lord. Send me,”’ says Miles.
“I think we need more pastors to do that. … What we’re trying to do at TPUSA Faith is be that voice coming alongside of them and saying, ‘Rise up, you mighty valiant warrior. It’s time to get in the fight here.”’
One type of weak pastor Allie says she sees a lot of are those unwilling to touch anything related to race. They’ve “got it on abortion; they’ve got it on marriage and gender,” she says, but “the racial social justice stuff” is where they “totally fumble the ball.”
This was especially apparent during 2020, when the death of George Floyd set off a social justice movement that razed entire cities to the ground. During that time, there were so many pastors who “sounded so much like BLM or the world when it came to race and justice,” she tells Miles.
Miles says that while he has grace for the pastors who posted black BLM squares before it came out that it was “Marxist, anti-family, anti-God organization,” his sympathy ends with those who never repented.
“I’ve not seen one of these guys go back and repent of that and actually acknowledge this,” he says.
While it’s easy to write this off as pride, part of the problem is lack of education.
Many of these pastors simply “don’t know the history of liberation theology. They don’t know that it’s a hybrid between Marxism and Christianity. They don’t know about James Cone. They don’t know about this idea of crucifying the white Jesus,” says Miles.
To learn more about how TPUSA Faith is walking alongside pastors, educating and encouraging them to boldly proclaim truth and, as Charlie Kirk is famous for saying, “make heaven crowded,” watch the full interview above.
Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?
To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
2025: Triumphs, tragedies, and lasting legacies — Allie Beth Stuckey’s year in review
Without question, 2025 was anything but dull. Trump made a historic return to the White House. Biden regime policies were thankfully booted out the door. Left-wing violence reached astonishing heights. Natural disasters ravaged parts of the country. Infighting in conservatism burned bridges and fractured the MAGA base.
It’s been a wild year full of ups and downs. On this episode of “Relatable,” Allie Beth Stuckey revisits four defining moments of 2025.
1. Trump’s inauguration
On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump was sworn into the presidency for his second term.
It was quite an eventful occasion. The sound system failed just as Carrie Underwood began “America the Beautiful.” But the blonde country icon didn’t skip a beat, launching into an a cappella performance and hitting every note with her usual precision and cadence.
“That was beautiful,” Allie says.
However, controversy erupted when Trump took his oath. Unlike the majority of presidents before him, he did not put his hand on the Bible, leading many to brand it a scandal. But Allie says there was nothing significant or covert about it. The fact that the Trump family provided their own family Bible for the ceremony is proof that he wasn’t making any sort of anti-Bible statement.
2. Vatican elects the first American pope
On May 8, 2025, following the death of Pope Francis, white smoke billowed from the Sistine Chapel, announcing that the successor had been named. It was Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who selected the name Pope Leo XIV. Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, he is the first-ever American pope.
“It’s a really important historical moment — not just in the Catholic Church, but really in the West in general,” Allie says.
“Unfortunately, Pope Leo has some progressive views on some things that I would call unbiblical views on some things that I don’t love,” she adds.
3. Loss of four prominent Protestant leaders
The year 2025 sadly saw four courageous evangelicals pass away.
On May 26, Duck Dynasty patriarch, BlazeTV host, and devout Christ-follower Phil Robertson passed away at the age of 79 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
John MacArthur, an 86-year-old evangelical pastor and theologian, then died on July 14. He died from pneumonia after being hospitalized.
The following month on August 21, James Dobson — psychologist, author, and founder of the conservative Christian ministry Focus on the Family — passed away at age 89 from undisclosed causes.
And finally, reformed Baptist preacher and speaker Voddie Baucham Jr. passed away from an undisclosed emergency medical incident on September 25, 2025. He was only 56 years old.
“I mean, this is, like, just a generation of faithful evangelical Protestant pastors and leaders that we lost,” Allie says.
“Their legacy lives on, and God ordained all of their days, knew exactly when they were going to pass, but it’s still sad for all of us, but especially their families.”
4. Murder of Charlie Kirk
Lastly, 2025 will go down in history as the year when our beloved Charlie Kirk was murdered while speaking at a Turning Point USA event. On September 10, the TPUSA founder was struck in the neck by an assassin’s bullet on the Utah Valley University campus where he was launching his TPUSA 2025 tour. He left behind his wife, Erika, and their two children, as well as the TPUSA empire that has only exploded in growth since his death.
“I will never forget that day,” says Allie, who was friends with Charlie.
“This renewed interest in [God] that we all saw at Charlie’s memorial, that we all saw on college campuses, it is happening,” she encourages.
“It seems like the love of many has grown cold really fast — like we so quickly went from this unified moment at the memorial to conspiracies, to accusations, to slander, to gossip, to division.”
But revival is still happening. Maybe it’s not as loud and bold as it appeared in the beginning, but it’s happening nonetheless. “When we get to the other side of eternity, we are going to see this incredible, complex, interwoven tapestry of all of these little unseen and unsung moments in the lives of believers that culminated in someone’s salvation, and angels rejoicing because of that,” Allie says.
To hear more of Allie’s 2025 recap, watch the episode above.
Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?
To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
Chosen at 13 to be the pastor’s ‘maiden’: Sex-cult survivor shares her horrifying story
When Lindsay Tornambe was just 11 years old, her parents and four siblings moved out to remote Minnesota to join a religious compound called River Road Fellowship. The group was led by a man named Victor Barnard, who claimed that God had ordained him to gather and shepherd the fragmented people of the Way International — a deeply heretical “Christian” sect — after its founder Victor Paul Wierwille died in 1985.
At first, things were almost idyllic. Lindsay spent her days playing with the other kids, tending to animals, and skating on the frozen lake. But it wasn’t long before Barnard’s sinister intentions shattered the pastoral facade he had created, condemning Lindsay and other victims to years-long servitude in a sex cult.
On this episode of “Relatable,” Allie Beth Stuckey interviews Lindsay about her decade as a “maiden” in a cult whose leader is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence.
After secretly grooming Lindsay, Victor, who had taken off his wedding ring, claiming he was “married to the church” like Christ, reportedly preached a sermon from the passage in Exodus where God commands the Israelites to “give” Him their firstborns, meaning redemption through small payments or temple service.
As many cult leaders do, however, Victor reportedly twisted the passage to mean that parents must literally give their firstborn daughters over to him.
“He read off a list of names. Mine was on there,” says Lindsay.
This all happened during the early 2000s, amid lingering influences from the 1999 “Summer of Love” — a notorious period in the Way International when leadership allegedly encouraged widespread sexual promiscuity among members, including married people, as a supposed expression of “God’s love.”
Victor, however, didn’t frame the girls’ role as sexual. They were merely being asked to serve Christ and the church. Lindsay, after seeing her friends eagerly volunteer, consented to being a “maiden,” having no idea what awaited her.
She, along with nine other young girls, was then removed from her family home and taken to live in Victor’s private living compound. The maidens were assigned different duties, like gardening, cooking, cleaning, and assisting Victor with various tasks, many of which were intimate.
“Things in the beginning were kind of okay,” says Lindsay, noting that she initially believed her time as a maiden was temporary.
“I was under the impression that I would serve there and live at the camp … and then I would go home and be homeschooled,” she says.
But a shepherdess who helped oversee the young girls told 13-year-old Lindsay, who had expressed excitement about returning home to her family, that her role as a maiden was a lifetime commitment. “You’re not going home. This is your home now,” she said.
“It was shortly after that that I was raped by Victor for the first time,” says Lindsay, adding that he justified his actions by claiming that “Jesus Christ had Mary Magdalene and the apostle Paul had Phoebe” as sexual partners.
He also claimed that “even though he would be having sex with me, I could remain a virgin spiritually,” she adds.
This abuse, which was often accompanied by physical and emotional abuse, lasted for years, she says.
Eventually, fear and manipulation brainwashed Lindsay into believing she genuinely loved her captor. “One thing that Victor would tell us is that the more we dedicated ourselves to him in this life and to God, the better place in heaven we would have, and so I think the thought of not being in heaven with the maidens and with Victor really scared me,” she says.
But Lindsay’s sympathetic view of Victor was a ticking time bomb.
In 2008, after most of the girls had been moved to another remote location in Washington state, one of the maidens was deported to Brazil after her student visa expired. Victor sent other maidens to live for temporary periods in Brazil alongside her.
When it was Lindsay’s turn to go, she was exposed to the outside world for the first time since her family had joined the commune. The taste of freedom was intoxicating.
When she returned to Washington, the maidens had started their own cleaning business. As a housemaid, Lindsay got another taste of life outside the cult, as she studied family pictures on walls and heard secular music drifting from radios.
This view of the outside world had already begun to sour Lindsay’s feelings for Victor, but then news came that he, still legally married to his wife, who lived next door to him, had been sleeping with married women in the community.
In Minnesota, it is against the law for pastors to have sexual relations with their congregants, so one of the women in the commune reported Victor to the police and even shared some information about his “maidens,” forcing him to flee. The infidelity broke up the original commune in Minnesota, sending Lindsay’s family back to their home state.
Lindsay, deeply disturbed by Victor’s philandering but still unaware of her own abuse, decided she was done being a maiden. Even though fellow maidens and Victor pleaded with her to stay — calling her Judas and accusing her of not loving God — Lindsay’s mind was made up.
She called her parents, who were still committed to the Way International and Victor, and they agreed to allow her to come home.
“They gave me $500 and bought me a train ticket, and I took Amtrak all the way from Washington state to 30th Street Station in Philadelphia,” says Lindsay.
Re-entering secular society at 23 proved difficult and confusing for Lindsay. “At that point, I thought the only way to make a man happy was to sleep with him, and so I slept around a lot. I lived in a lot of sin,” she says.
“I just was really interested in exploring and living life and making friends and getting away from my parents, because they were still supporting Victor.”
While her outside life looked fun and exciting, Lindsay’s internal world grew darker over the years, as she reckoned with her past life in the cult.
“I just kept thinking over and over again: If God is a God of love that I read and believed for so long, why would he let this happen to me? If heaven is so great, why don’t I kill myself now and not live in this internal pain that I feel?” she admits.
To quell the pain, Lindsay experimented with a gamut of “remedies” — self-love programs, crystals, witchcraft, even self-harm.
“I always came up feeling so empty, so unsatisfied,” she says.
But despite Lindsay’s doubt and sin, God was working in ways she couldn’t see. Single motherhood, unexpected friendships, and perfect timing wove together and allowed Lindsay to distinguish the real God from the phony one who had been used to warp and manipulate her as a child.
To hear the beautiful story of Lindsay’s redemption, including where her family is today and the trial that landed Victor behind bars, watch the full interview above.
Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?
To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
Liberals in nuclear meltdown mode after 2026 ‘Color of the Year’ is announced
Liberals across the nation are in full tantrum mode after a shade of white was declared 2026’s top hue.
On December 4, Pantone LLC — which is considered the global authority on color standardization — announced “Cloud Dancer,” described as a “billowy white imbued with serenity,” as its 2026 Color of the Year.
“Similar to a blank canvas, Cloud Dancer signifies our desire for a fresh start. … An airy white hue, PANTONE 11-4201 Cloud Dancer opens up space for creativity, allowing our imagination to drift so that new insights and bold ideas can emerge and take shape,” wrote Pantone Vice President Laurie Pressman.
Pantone Executive Director Leatrice Eiseman echoed the VP’s words: “The cacophony that surrounds us has become overwhelming, making it harder to hear the voices of our inner selves. A conscious statement of simplification, Cloud Dancer enhances our focus, providing release from the distraction of external influences.”
Despite these rationales and Pressman’s statement that skin color “did not factor into” Pantone’s selection, furious liberals are accusing the company of being tone-deaf and racist.
Allie Beth Stuckey dives into the hilariously absurd reactions of several unhinged lefties.
X user @svviftlet tweeted:
In another social media video, two girls denounced Pantone’s Color of the Year, claiming it gives “Sydney Sweeney has good genes vibes.”
Back in July, Sweeney was lambasted for starring in an American Eagle denim commercial using the double entendre that Sydney Sweeney has good jeans/genes.
“You’re not allowed to say if you have blonde hair and blue eyes that you have good genes. … She clearly does have good genes. She’s beautiful,” scoffs Allie, “but if you’re a white person, you can’t say that.”
In another video, Feng Shui expert Katie Rogers literally set her Pantone color swatches on fire:
Another Instagram reel features influencer Charlotte Palermino, who ironically filmed her video in an off-white sweater in front of white-colored walls, whining, “It’s giving conservative.”
“It’s literally just a color, okay? It’s an inanimate color,” says Allie, “and the subliminal message is far more offensive than any supposed message that Pantone is communicating.”
The message these social media users are hammering is that “it’s not okay to be white. … You need to be ashamed of that, that white — having white skin — symbolizes something bad, that we need to reject the color of our skin.”
“In this age of self-confidence and self-love, it’s only white people who have to hate themselves or associate their skin color with the collective sins of people who lived elsewhere at a different time? No,” Allie says.
She encourages everyone, but especially Christians, to reject this social justice nonsense. “It’s completely unbiblical. That is not just. Justice is impartial. Justice is individual. Justice is direct. You don’t carry the sins of someone who kind of looked like you,” she says.
To see the videos and hear more of Allie’s commentary, watch the video above.
Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?
To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
Fact check: No — Jesus was not a refugee
There’s a narrative that circulates in progressive “Christian” circles every time Christmas rolls around: Jesus was born a refugee.
Not only does this take the focus from Jesus’ ultimate identity — the Son of God and savior of mankind — and channels it toward a destructive political agenda, but it’s also just false. Jesus was not a refugee by today’s standards.
On this episode of “Relatable,” Allie Beth Stuckey debunks this ridiculous argument that uses toxic empathy to push open borders.
“We can have a separate biblical defense of defending refugees and how many refugees we should accept and which refugees we should accept from what countries. That’s fine,” says Allie, “but the argument should not be based in the idea that Jesus Himself was a refugee. He was not a refugee in the same sense that we are defining refugees today.”
A refugee in the modern sense, she explains, is “someone who is leaving one country and going to another country to take refuge.”
But that doesn’t describe Mary and Joseph at all. They were simply obeying a Roman census decree that required them to travel inside the empire they already belonged to. This was an internal journey within the same province, not an international border-crossing or asylum-seeking flight comparable to modern refugees entering the United States.
Then after Jesus was born and Herod ordered the massacre of all boys under 2 in Bethlehem, the family — acting on an explicit divine command from God — fled to Egypt, which was also a Roman province at the time.
Mary and Joseph’s travels were never “a breaking of the law,” says Allie.
She reads from Matthew 2:13-15: “Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child and destroy him.’ And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.”’
It’s a “completely different scenario” than progressive “Christians” would like us to believe. Jesus’ family’s flight to Egypt was prophecy fulfillment, obedience to the Lord, and deliverance from a murderous tyrant. And it all happened “within the same empire,” meaning no laws were broken, Allie counters.
The progressive “Christian” argument that anyone who doesn’t support refugees — which today means anyone “who wants to come here from a poorer country” — is somehow against Jesus because He was a refugee is just pure manipulation, she says. It employs “toxic empathy” to get well-intentioned Christians to denounce “enforcement of sovereignty and borders,” both of which are biblical.
“You understand that God created laws and governments and borders and sovereignty for our good, for our protection?” Allie asks.
But there’s another part of the Christmas story progressives conveniently forget: Jesus and His family went home. After Herod died, God told Joseph to “take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel” (Matthew 2:20), but because Herod’s son, another brutal tyrant, was on the throne, they returned to Nazareth, where it all began.
That’s the opposite story of the modern refugee experience, where people often never return home because they can’t or just won’t.
What progressive “Christians” are doing, Allie explains, is reading the Christmas story through a modern, politicized lens. Their version is not only historically inaccurate, it exchanges the “good news of great joy” for a manipulative political strategy that cons people into supporting open borders.
They’re “not getting more into the heart of Jesus and more into the reason for Christmas,” she says. “[They] are instead trying to extract meaning out of the Christmas story in order to accomplish [their] political ends, and in so doing, are very distracted from what it really means.”
To hear more of Allie’s argument, watch the episode above.
Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?
To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
Santa Claus: Innocent Christmas fun or counterfeit Jesus?
Jesus is the reason for the season, but more often than not, it’s Santa who takes front and center stage. A 2,000-year-old baby offering an intangible gift just can’t compete with the big, red-suited, jolly man and his sleigh full of toys in the mind of a child.
That’s one of several reasons Allie Beth Stuckey doesn’t do Santa with her three kids.
On this episode of “Relatable,” Allie presents a compelling case for ditching the man in the red hat and putting Jesus back on the throne of Christmas where He belongs.
Santa invites confusion
While Allie acknowledges that Santa is a “Christian liberty issue,” meaning “we have freedom as Christians to disagree,” she feels personally convicted to forgo the tradition to avoid confusing her children.
Santa “is a form of deceit,” she says.
“We want our kids to trust us … and it can cause this kind of dissonance or confusion in a child when we tell them that someone is real, is giving them gifts, is watching them … is taking a tally of the good deeds they do, the bad deeds they do … and then allocating gifts in accordance to their behavior — and then to tell them one day that that system of morality around Christmastime doesn’t exist,” she argues.
“I do believe that that causes, even if just for a moment, mistrust between the parent and child” and “confusion about what is actually true … about the mysterious and supernatural realm.”
But “causing mistrust through deceit” isn’t even the biggest issue, she says. Santa can also cause “theological confusion” in developing children.
Santa and God have a lot in common, Allie explains. Both see us when we’re sleeping, know when we’re awake, and know if we’ve been bad or good, but the key difference is Santa takes his gifts away when we fail to be good, whereas God, infinite in grace and mercy, does not dangle salvation as a carrot in front of us to keep us behaving.
Santa “is a legalistic form of Christ” and a “counterfeit form of God,” says Allie.
And then there’s the flip side of this pitfall. Children might view God as a kind of Santa Claus, who gives them material gifts in exchange for obedience or good deeds, turning Him from the perfect and holy king of kings and the savior of humanity into a “feel-good” bringer of happiness.
In either case, the similarities between the two figures can deeply confuse malleable children who are still learning to distinguish between fact and fiction, while simultaneously sowing distrust between them and their parents.
Santa distracts from Jesus
Allie’s second reason for ditching St. Nick is that he draws the focus away from Christ.
“Santa Claus is the one who will give you all of your immediate desires and will fulfill all of the temporary pleasure that you long for because he is giving you something in the form of a tangible gift. … It’s no wonder that we as people, but especially children, have such a hard time actually focusing on Christ — the real gift-giver,” she says.
To Santa sympathizers who argue that his mysterious nature “makes Christmas really magical” and stimulates children’s imaginations, Allie says that we can still foster imagination in our kids without lying to them.
And further, “The reality is that there is already a beautiful mystery of Christmas that no one truly understands,” she says. “We are natural people who were intersected by the supernatural when Jesus became Emmanuel, God with us, made flesh. That is the mystery of Christmas.”
“And so why would we create a counternarrative to that? A cheapened narrative, a legalistic narrative that gives all of the wrong lessons about morality and about what saves you and about what satisfies you and about what fulfills you?” she asks.
But Santa doesn’t just distract kids from the true Christmas story; he also distracts parents, who are stressed and spread thin trying to maintain the Santa narrative through elaborate gift displays, Elf on the Shelf, staging half-eaten cookies, and dodging pesky questions from their kids.
“It seems like when that starts to be the taker of our joy or the source of our stress and our energy and not discipling our kids and telling them what the advent, the coming of the Lord, actually means in their lives, well, then we have veered into idolatry,” Allie warns.
To hear the rest of her argument, as well as ways Christians can still incorporate Santa into their Christmas season without losing focus on what matters, watch the full episode above.
Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?
To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
The viral country anthem that has girlboss Twitter melting down and trad women cheering
On November 7, country music artist Kelsea Ballerini released a single titled “I Sit in Parks.” The two-minute track is a heart-wrenching lamentation of the forsaking of motherhood for career aspirations — a rare message from the secular music world.
The chorus: “Did I miss it? By now is it / A lucid dream? Is it my fault / For chasin’ things a body clock / Doesn’t wait for? I did the d**n tour / It’s what I wanted, what I got / I spun around and then I stopped / And wondered if I missed the mark.”
Ballerini, a 32-year old divorcee with no children, vulnerably admits in the ballad that she chose the freedom to pursue her music career over becoming a mother — a decision that causes her intense regret and pain.
The song has garnered a ton of attention — triggering the girlboss feminist crowd and delighting pro-natalists who hope the feminist stronghold keeping young women single, childless, and on the hamster wheel of careerism is finally beginning to crack.
Allie Beth Stuckey, BlazeTV host of “Relatable,” falls into the latter category, believing the song indicates a positive cultural shift.
“I can see how this vulnerability is speaking to what a lot of people feel. This is certainly not Christian, but it’s kind of reflecting this trend that we’re seeing among a lot of young people … wanting to go back to tradition, wanting to go back to church, wanting to go back to marriage, wanting to actually have children,” she says.
The lie so many young women fall for, Allie explains, is that motherhood isn’t for everyone. Feminist dogma convinced them that being a mom is burdensome and a hindrance to personal ambition. The essential truth it leaves out, however, is that while one can reject motherhood, one cannot reject the motherhood instinct. It is wired into women by God and will always be a central piece of their nature.
“This motherhood instinct that we all have when we’re little girls — it doesn’t go away,” says Allie. “We take care of our pets; we take care of our dolls; we take care of our flowers because that is the instinct that God has given us in general as women.”
Even the women who say they never want a husband or children can’t escape the pull of motherhood. It’s usually just channeled toward their “fur babies,” houseplants, businesses, or elsewhere. And it leaves them deeply unfulfilled.
Allie acknowledges that marriage and childbearing aren’t God’s plan for everyone, but motherhood nonetheless is. That instinct to cultivate and nurture can be and should be channeled toward people in some capacity via ministry, mentorship, or mission work. That’s the only thing that will fill the motherhood cup if marriage and having children aren’t in the cards.
Ballerini’s “I Sit in Parks” is a bleak and honest picture of what happens when women forsake motherhood altogether or channel it in unhealthy directions: a deep loneliness that hollows women out.
To hear more of Allie’s analysis, watch the episode above.
Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?
To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
Throwback: 15 utterly UNHINGED things libs labeled ‘racist’
“Every facet of the coffee industry, in fact, is rooted in racism. From the moment the whites viciously stole coffee from black and brown people to the present-day Karen sipping her morning cup of white supremacy, whites have been able to drink the fruits of our labor and our culture with impunity.”
What you just read is an actual quote from an article published in 2023 — back when literally everything was labeled racist by the woke mafia.
In this throwback Allie Beth Stuckey piece, we remember some of the most ridiculous things the critical race theory-obsessed left has used to label white people racists over the years. And sadly, coffee isn’t even close to the most absurd one on the list.
Picnics
A 2020 article from the Philadelphia Inquirer posited that “picnics” were racist because there was once a time when “Southern white people made lynchings a regular occurrence at picnics.”
If you are going to continue using the word “picnic,” then you need to make sure “that history is being talked about,” author Elizabeth Wellington wrote.
“That’s not what people think of when they’re thinking of going out to a park, laying a blanket down, and eating some sandwiches,” scoffed Allie.
Brain pairings (like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches)
Speaking of sandwiches, PB&Js are apparently the perfect metaphor for “implicit bias” against black males in America, according to a video released by the New York Times in 2016.
Social psychologist and management professor at the New York University Stern School of Business Dolly Chugh argued, “I somehow know that if you say peanut butter, I’m gonna say jelly. That’s an association that’s been ingrained in me. … In many forms of media, there’s an overrepresentation of black men and violent crime being paired together.”
Dairy
In 2022, a KFF Health News article reported that 28 civil rights and child advocacy groups — including one led by Al Sharpton — sent a letter to the USDA accusing the National School Lunch Program of “dietary racism.”
Their reasoning? Offering only cow’s milk, ignoring non-dairy alternatives, was racist because children of color apparently have higher rates of lactose intolerance.
Bicycling
A 2021 article from the Washington Post argued that American cycling is racist because a really long time ago, black people were excluded from bicycling clubs.
And then, of course, there’s the issue of racist white cops. “For black Southerners, the cost, dangers and white policing of cycling mobility combined with the weakening of its middle‑class status, meant that the popularity of the bicycle declined within the black community,” author Nathan Cardon wrote.
Equestrianism
If a piece of equipment doesn’t fit you properly, the designers are obviously racist against you. At least that’s the position the New York Times took in a front-page article from 2023 titled “Black equestrians want to be safe. But they can’t find helmets.”
In it, author McKenna Oxenden condemned racist manufacturers of equestrian equipment for not making helmets that accommodate certain black hairstyles, like dreadlocks.
“Is a helmet going to be safe if it’s like six inches off of your skull? No, it’s not. I don’t think it has anything to do with you being black,” Allie retorted.
Recreational running
In 2020, Medium published an article titled “Running is too white. It doesn’t need to be,” in which author Ryan Fan complained that America’s recreational running community is “too white.”
There was only one possible explanation for that, said Fan: systemic inaccessibility and exclusion. All those white runners just make people of color feel unsafe and unwelcome.
“We can do better. We have to,” he pleaded.
“Agree. I don’t like running, so running is too white. And it is because I am an ally that I choose not to,” Allie joked.
National parks
In 2020, ABC published a melodramatic article titled “America’s national parks face existential crisis over race.” In it, authors Stephanie Ebbs and Devin Dwyer reported that national park visitors were “overwhelmingly white” — 77% compared to 23% of non-whites.
The piece quoted then-Associate Director of the Sierra Club Joel Pannell, who fretted that this racial disparity in park visitors spelled doom for the country’s national parks (many of which have been going strong for over a century).
“If we don’t address this … then we’re going to risk losing everything,” he lamented.
“Not enough black people are going outside, so that’s the problem,” Allie mocked.
STD names
In 2022, NPR published an article titled “Critics say ‘monkeypox’ is a racist name. But it’s not going away anytime soon.” In the piece, author Bill Chappell quoted several critics upset about the name monkeypox, as it apparently stigmatizes the black and LGBTQ+ communities.
“There is a long history of referring to blacks as monkeys. Therefore, ‘monkeypox’ is racist and stigmatizes black people,” said global health advocate Ifeanyi Nsofor, ignoring the fact that the virus’ name was coined after it was originally discovered in lab monkeys in 1958.
Energy
Yes, energy — the stuff that powers the world — is “inherently racist,” suggested a 2022 article from Utility Dive.
Author Robert Walton reported that environmental justice advocates were up in arms because the U.S. energy sector is supposedly structurally racist due to historical policies like redlining and discriminatory infrastructure, which have disproportionately burdened low-income and communities of color with high costs and pollution.
Highways
In 2021, the Washington Times published a piece titled “When highways are racist,” in which author Cheryl Chumley lambasted Biden’s Department of Transportation for weaponizing civil rights laws to block a Houston highway project under the absurd pretext that infrastructure can be racist.
Ballet
A 2021 article from Marie Claire bemoaned the art of ballet as structurally white supremacist. Author Chloe Angyal argued that ballet — its aesthetics, history, and culture — is inherently racist because it reinforces a narrow, European ideal that marginalizes dancers of color.
“Ballet is not just white. It is white on purpose,” Angyal complained.
“There’s just not enough black people going up on their tiptoes,” Allie jeered.
Camping
Pitching a tent and roasting some marshmallows under the stars isn’t as innocent as it sounds, said Fast Company writer Elizabath Segran in a 2021 article called “The unbearable whiteness of camping.”
The monopoly white people apparently have on the outdoors all goes back to our colonial roots when colonizers took Indigenous land and turned it into “wilderness” for white recreation, she argued. Those mean ol’ white settlers romanticized themselves as “pioneers” while condemning Native people as “savages” for living out in nature, only to turn around and make nature an element of white culture.
Fast-forward a few hundred years and that same stigma still keeps non-whites from venturing outdoors. Patagonia jackets are too expensive; REI ads are too pale; and black people are apparently disproportionally targeted when they brave the elements.
Philosophy
Much of the genius that came from some of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment and German Idealist philosophy has bias baked into it, argued Aeon writer Avram Alpert in a 2021 piece titled “Philosophy’s systemic racism.” Ideas from the likes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel must be “decolonized,” meaning we must expose how their core logic secretly ranks non-Europeans as irrational “savages” who need white reason to evolve, then flip the script to affirm that people of color already have their own internal progress — no European “uplift” required.
Organized pantries
Those little spice jars with the labels and the matching containers for your pasta and rice? Yeah well, they’re racist, said Associate Professor of Marketing at Loyola University Jenna Drenten.
Dubbing the trend of having aesthetically pleasing cupboards “pantry porn,” Drenten wrote, “Cleanliness has historically been used as a cultural gatekeeping mechanism to reinforce status distinctions based on a vague understanding of ‘niceness’: nice people, with nice yards, in nice houses, make for nice neighbors. What lies beneath the surface of this anti-messiness, pro-niceness stance is a history of classist, racist, and sexist social structures.”
“So you hear that black people? This professor doesn’t think that you can organize your pantry; you need to make it messy in order to really be pro-black and anti-racist,” laughed Allie.
This throwback to the peak-woke era — when coffee was cultural theft and PB&J pairings were microaggressions — proves one thing: The fever has broken, but the receipts still make us laugh.
Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?
To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
