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Ross Douthat: In the world of online influencers, one evangelical Christian writer and podcaster stands out, offering her audience a blend of politics, theology and lifestyle advice. Is Allie Beth Stuckey an example of what religious authority looks like in America today? What does she offer to her audience of younger religious women? And why does she think the biggest problem in American politics isn’t too much cruelty but the wrong kind of empathy?
Allie Beth Stuckey, welcome to “Interesting Times.”
Allie Beth Stuckey: Thank you. I appreciate it.
Douthat: We’re going to have a conversation that covers evangelical Christianity, some of the divides within it and its relationship to Donald Trump. But first, I want to talk about what you do.
You make a podcast called “Relatable.” The Atlantic wrote a profile of you a little while ago, and it called you “the new Phyllis Schlafly,” which is a reference to the famous female conservative activist from the 1970s and 1980s.
To start out, are you a political commentator, a religious teacher, a lifestyle influencer?
Stuckey: I try to occupy that space where politics and theology intersect. Christian theology, specifically. I describe myself as a Christian wife and mom who is trying to navigate the chaos of our culture with as much clarity and courage as God is willing to give me.
And so that does mean talking about politics. There are seasons over the past few years that I have focused mostly on politics, especially in an election year. I really want the mostly suburban moms and women, ages 25 to 45, that are listening to the show to understand what is at stake — what’s the difference between the two candidates.
I don’t try to remain neutral in that. Everyone knows I’m a Christian conservative. Thus far, I have always voted Republican.
There are also a lot of times — and I would say right now is this kind of season — where I and my audience kind of feel exhausted by the news cycle. They’re not as interested in politics as they were before, and they’re more interested in talking about deeper underlying theological issues or topics or trends. And I like to focus on that.
I don’t know if I could say that I am squarely a political commentator. I certainly wouldn’t call myself a Bible study leader or religious teacher. I just try to occupy the space where those two things very clearly mix together and intersect as much as I possibly can.
Douthat: There’s also a strong parenting and motherhood and female life element to what you do and what you talk about.
Looking at your recent podcasts, there’s discussions about Christian evangelism in L.A. and abortion and politics and those kinds of issues.
Then there’s also discussions about sunscreen and parenting styles and the secret to fixing your period. I almost feel like you’re selling yourself a little bit short by saying it’s just about politics and theology. It’s a larger discussion about how to be a Christian woman, with an emphasis both on “Christian” and on “woman.”
Stuckey: Yeah, we certainly do talk about lifestyle things. And while I don’t consider myself a mainstay in the MAHA movement, there are a lot of principles in that that I really appreciate. We have been talking about health and wellness — certainly since Covid — and some of the deception that we see in the medical industry coming from official science and scientific institutions like the C.D.C.
That has kind of given way to a consistent conversation on my podcast about what is actually true scientifically? What is true about our bodies, and how do we apply that to how we take care of ourselves and how we take care of our families?
So yes, that definitely intersects with motherhood. But I also don’t consider myself a family or motherhood influencer, if that makes sense.
Douthat: So who is your audience right now? Who is the Allie Beth Stuckey listener?
Stuckey: I would say it is mostly Christian conservative women, ages 25 to 45. There are obviously men who listen as well.
Douthat: How many men listen to the show?
Stuckey: They have their own name. They’re called the Relatabros, and I call my husband chief Relatabro. He is the head of the Relatabros. At least from the YouTube demographic information that we have, I believe it’s 85 percent female, or maybe 80 percent female. So there’s definitely a chunk of men who listen to and watch the show.
Some episodes, like “How to Fix Your Period,” are probably not going to be for them, but other episodes they can enjoy just as much.
Douthat: So Relatabros, women 25 to 45; what else would you say that people who are in your sphere are listening to and reading and consuming? Do you feel like you’re part of a larger millennial and maybe Zoomer ecosystem for younger Christians?
Stuckey: I would say that if my audience wants day-to-day news, a lot of them are probably watching Megyn Kelly, which I am, too. I love Megyn, and I love her analysis of the news, and I think a lot of them are probably going to her for that.
For a big chunk of my audience, it seems I am the only connection to news and politics that they have in their lives, and I take that role very seriously. They’re not listening to a bunch of other political shows, too.
Douthat: That’s really interesting. Do you feel like you’re the main religious conversation partner for a lot of them, not in terms of the home or church but in terms of the internet?
Stuckey: I don’t think so. I think in the Christian world, I am seen as political. In the larger evangelical world, if they think of Allie Beth Stuckey, they think: She talks politics. I think in the political world, like when I’m going to speak at Turning Point or speak at a conservative organization conference, they think of me as the Christian one.
The one who is always talking about the Bible. I think for one group I’m probably the plug-in for religion and Christianity. For another group, they see me as their connection to politics.
Douthat: Why do you think younger women are drawn to your particular way of talking about the world?
Stuckey: No. 1, clarity. A lot of evangelical leaders and pastors have a tougher job than me in a lot of ways, so I’m not trying to throw all of them under the bus, but they’re just not as clear about what the Bible says about gender or what the Bible says about marriage. Does the Bible have anything to say about immigration?
The biggest surge in followers and listeners that I had in a short period of time was in 2020, when everyone was posting the black square. Everyone was saying that George Floyd was killed because of racism. Everyone was saying that white people, especially white evangelicals, had a role to play in George Floyd’s death. We all need to sit back and listen and learn, and even in churches we need to be reading “White Fragility.”
And I don’t like to pat myself on the back at all, because I certainly wasn’t alone, but among white evangelical women, I have been one of the only ones to say, “No, that’s not biblical. That’s not how I’m talking about it.” I’m not going to shame white women. I’m not going to say that they need to sit down and shut up and be lambasted for something that someone who might have looked like them in the same geographical region did 200 years ago or 50 years ago. That’s not the biblical definition of justice.
I think that there have been a lot of points like that over the past five years, where it seems like evangelicals have gone soft and just moved to the left, especially on social justice and race issues. I have been one of the only ones that these women are listening to willing to say no. And not because I am cruel, not because I’m harsh, but because I don’t think that’s what the Bible says.
I think God’s justice and love and mercy and truth are much better than the secular social-justice-mongers would have you believe.
Douthat: I want to go further on the argument that you just raised, the critique of evangelical leaders drifting to the left. But before that, can you talk about how you grew up and your religious upbringing?
Stuckey: Yes. I am very grateful that I was raised in a conservative Christian home. I don’t remember talking about politics a whole lot growing up. I do remember really caring about the Bush/Gore election. Now, mind you, I was in second grade at this time.
I remember we had this mock election in our classroom, and only one girl said that she and her parents were going to vote for Al Gore. It was a huge deal because I was raised in a very conservative suburb of Dallas and I went to a conservative Christian school, kindergarten through 12th grade.
I’m sure all of that contributed to my natural conservatism. That Christian upbringing certainly contributed to the values that I still hold today.
We went to Southern Baptist church growing up — Wednesday, Sunday morning, Sunday night, all of that good stuff. My parents not only talked the talk but walked the walk, which also has helped me.
Douthat: Are you still a Southern Baptist?
Stuckey: Yes, I still go to a Southern Baptist church. I don’t know if I align with every single doctrinal belief that I had in the church growing up, but I do still consider myself a Southern Baptist.
Douthat: Well, talk a little bit about that. Was there any kind of pivot point in your own religious development?
Stuckey: So I grew up going to Southern Baptist churches. In high school, I started going to a nondenominational church by myself when I was a junior. I do remember that church and a Bible teacher in my junior year who really opened my eyes to Reformed theology, and it was in college that I probably started identifying as Reformed.
Douthat: Go a little further, because my suspicion is that at least part of our audience isn’t intensely familiar with, for instance, Reformed or Calvinist views on the end times.
What does it mean, in the context of American Protestantism, if somebody says: I identify as Reformed? What does that mean?
Stuckey: I’ll give a short answer, but suffice it to say there are disagreements about what it means to be Reformed. I would consider myself a Reformed Baptist.
Gosh, I don’t know if there’s a short way to explain all of this. Predestination is a centerpiece of Calvinism, whether you believe that people were predestined to be Christians or whether it is by human effort that we are saved.
I fall into the predestination camp. We also have a really big emphasis on theological study and, I would say, biblical literalism in a lot of ways.
Douthat: We don’t want to take up the whole conversation with this, but let’s extend it in a couple of ways. So “Reformed” means a really strong emphasis on God’s grace and God’s will over and against human effort alone.
There’s an incredibly strong emphasis on the Bible not just as the word of God but as the defining test of Christian life in a way that is distinct from Catholicism’s emphasis on the authority of the pope or the bishops.
Let’s do the beginning and the end of the world, and then we’ll move on.
Stuckey: Sure.
Douthat: We can do the end of the world first. There are a lot of debates in evangelical Protestantism about the end times and what Christians should expect, how to interpret the book of Revelation. Where does your tradition fall on that?
Stuckey: I would call myself a classic or historic premillennialist. And for those out there that are like: What are y’all even talking about? I’m sorry. You don’t need to know this right now to become a Christian, but “classical premillennialist” means that I don’t believe that Christians are going to be raptured before the tribulation. I think that we are here for that, that we’re not going to escape that by a rapture.
And then there are differences in view, as well, on the role of Israel. What is Israel? Who is Israel? There’s a lot of debate about that right now within Christianity, too, especially in light of the end times.
Douthat: And just to oversimplify, your camp is a little less likely to identify the current state of Israel with the biblical Israel in a way that other evangelicals might be likely to do.
Stuckey: Yes, and that is where I diverge from the vast majority of Southern Baptists who do believe that God has a special, particular plan for Israel’s salvation, that it is the current geographical state of Israel. Whereas I would point to several passages in Scripture to say that that’s not quite right.
Even though, as I’ve said many times, I do support supporting Israel in a variety of ways for other reasons.
Douthat: Just since I promised the beginning as well, are you a six-day creationist?
Stuckey: I am.
Douthat: Do you think the world was literally made in six days, as in the beginning of Genesis?
Stuckey: Yes. It seems to me that that’s what Jesus believes, and when he speaks about the Old Testament and the creation order, he seems to speak of it in a literal sense when he’s speaking in the Gospels, and that’s a good verification for me.
Douthat: OK, that’s sort of where you’ve ended up. You belong to a tradition that does not have female pastors, that follows St. Paul’s words about how women should not be leaders speaking in church. I think that a lot of people outside your religious context would see that as a tension.
Here’s someone who belongs to a church that doesn’t have female pastors and yet is presenting herself as an authority figure — filling the breach when actual pastors are failing. Do you think that’s a tension?
Stuckey: That is a great question.
Yes. I do take literally Paul’s admonition that women are not to teach in church. Now, there is a debate — and we could even get into this, it would probably be an interesting conversation — about how the Christian right has actually changed in the past five years when it comes to how they see the role of women.
Five years ago, no one talked about that tension to me. No one had an issue with me saying, “I don’t think women should be pastors and preachers.” But I don’t take that to mean that women shouldn’t talk, that women can’t be persuasive, that there aren’t different ways for women to lead and influence and persuade outside of the context of the pulpit in the local church on Sunday morning.
It does get tricky when it seems like I am saying: Hey, your male pastor is acting cowardly, and he’s not being clear on this. Don’t listen to that because he’s asking you to compromise.
But I’m not trying to say listen to me or follow me or you should listen to this podcast instead of going to church. I’m trying to say whether you listen to me or not, read your Bible, and I want your reading of the Bible to determine what church you go to. And if you don’t go to a church that is preaching the entire counsel of God, even when that is inconvenient for the culture, then you should go to a different church.
Douthat: What do you think is the key distinction here between church on Sunday morning as a space of male authority and Tuesday morning podcasting as a space of female communication?
But let’s be honest. You’re not just communicating. You’re making an argument. You’re making a critique. And whether you vest yourself with a pastor’s authority or not, there are people who regard you as authoritative. So what is the theological distinction between that Sunday morning space and your work outside the work of a pastor?
Stuckey: Well, one is church, and one is not.
The church has a distinct governing body and the pastor has not only the role of persuasion — although I agree with you, that’s basically what a sermon is — but he is also a pastor. He is also a shepherd. He has the ability to exercise church discipline, and I don’t have that authority.
People do regard me as a leader in some sense. But I don’t think that there is any command against that kind of influence and mode of persuasion in Scripture when it comes to women. The church is the bride of Christ, and it is distinct from a podcast studio. I am sure you agree with this as a Catholic. It’s not just four walls. It is distinct from the rest of the world.
Douthat: I do agree. I think if you look at the Catholic tradition, you see a lot of cases where prominent female leaders seem to emerge with a message that seems intended to, honestly, shame men in authority in the church. I’m curious if you think that the exercise of female authority in your church, in your religious landscape, is itself a reflection of male failure.
That you’re here and people are listening to you because men are failing.
Stuckey: I do think that many pastors are failing. I don’t know if I can say all men in the Southern Baptist or evangelical world are failing.
Douthat: [Laughs.] Not all men. Not all men.
Stuckey: But I think many. I think that there are a lot of clear and obedient and courageous pastors. And just because they’re not going viral or they’re not written about in the media, that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.
But there are some very prominent leaders and prominent figures within evangelicalism who are straight-up soft. They’re soft when it comes to sexuality. They were soft when it came to the necessity of churches meeting together physically during Covid. They were soft when it came to the difference between biblical justice and secular social justice, and they’re unwilling to say simply what the Bible says about these things.
I don’t think that pastors should get up every Sunday and tell you what’s going on in the news. I don’t think that they are bound to the news cycle. But when the Bible says in the beginning, God created them male and female, in his image, he created them, they shouldn’t avoid that. They shouldn’t pretend like that doesn’t mean what it means. We shouldn’t pretend that the Bible doesn’t speak so clearly to so many of the so-called culture war issues of our day.
And because they are scared of what they may lose by speaking up because they like to be written about nicely in The New York Times or wherever, they’re just not willing to say it. I think that’s a travesty, because I think clarity is the most loving thing that we can give the people who listen to us.
Douthat: Let’s go a little deeper into this critique.
You wrote a book entitled “Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion.” You can see just from the subtitle that it is effectively both a critique of secular progressivism and also a critique of your fellow Christians.
I think a lot of people hear a word like “empathy” and think that it is just something that Christians are automatically called to and that a critique of empathy is effectively a critique of Christianity itself.
What is toxic empathy? What is wrong with some forms of empathy, from your perspective?
Stuckey: That is correct: some forms of empathy. I argue — and this is not my original argument — I heard Abigail Shrier first say this, and I think she might have even got this from Paul Bloom, a Yale psychologist who wrote a book called “Against Empathy.”
Douthat: An interesting side note is that in fact my own mother once wrote an essay critiquing empathy for First Things magazine some years ago. In it, she drew on Paul Bloom, who is a secular psychologist, criticizing from a secular perspective, an overidentification with other people’s feelings.
All of which is to say I am a somewhat sympathetic audience for this kind of argument.
Stuckey: I just wanted to give proper credit for this first line that I’m about to say: Empathy by itself is neutral. Empathy by itself, I believe, is neither good nor bad. That’s probably not an exact quote from Paul Bloom, but that’s where I got that line of reasoning.
Empathy is not in itself a virtue. It is not in itself something that we should aspire to. And that alone kind of knocks people off their skates when I say that. I say that it can be positive in what it can lead you to, or it can be negative in what it can lead you to.
An example I give in my book: I was traveling with my 3-year-old. We were going to Atlanta. My hands were full; she was in her runaway era. I was trying to get down the jet bridge. There was no way that I could control her and get all this stuff that I needed down. So I just literally sat down, and I didn’t know what to do, and I was almost on the verge of tears. I had all these people pass me by, and this woman came up to me, and she just looked at me, and she said, “It’s OK. I’m a mom. I get it.” And she got one of my bags, and we made it to our seats, and it was great.
Then, just a couple of weeks later, I was traveling by myself, and I saw this mom with her child, and she had her stroller, she had all of her stuff. I could see she was on the verge of tears. She was trying to get to her seat, and she didn’t know how she was going do it. Well, I had been there. I felt so deeply exactly how she felt, and because of that, because I just knew so personally the stress that she was feeling, I was able to meet her needs. I grabbed her bag. She made it to her seat, and she was good to go.
And so, having been there, being able to put yourself in someone’s shoes can lead you to do the right thing. It can lead you to sacrifice. It can lead you to selflessness. It can lead you to acts of love and kindness. But putting yourself in someone’s shoes, feeling what they feel can also lead you to do three things that I say makes empathy toxic: One, validate lies. Two, affirm sin. And three, support destructive policies.
Those are the three characteristics that I think can make empathy toxic.
Douthat: So in your definition, just so listeners are clear, empathy means the act of feeling or trying to feel what others are feeling, and it’s distinct, therefore, from compassion or sympathy, where you are trying to help someone. You might feel bad for them, but you aren’t trying to directly feel their set of emotions.
This is primarily, then, about empathizing with people who are either doing something that is wrong for understandable human reasons or who are supporting policies that are themselves going to lead to bad outcomes, even if they have charitable motives.
Stuckey: It’s not against even trying to feel how they feel. It is allowing feeling how they feel to lead you to justify what they are doing — which happens in abortion and the gender debate and the sexuality debate and the justice debate and the immigration debate.
Because we feel so deeply for this one purported victim, we say, well, maybe deportation is wrong, or maybe I should affirm this person’s stated gender, even though it mismatches their biology, or maybe I should affirm the right to have an abortion because I feel so deeply for this person’s plight.
That is when your empathy has led you in a bad direction and has turned toxic.
Douthat: This is somewhat distinct then from one of the arguments that Paul Bloom makes in his book, which is that one problem with empathy is that it can actually lead in the other direction toward helplessness: You feel everything that happens in the world in some way because you’re empathizing with other people so much and this can paralyze you.
The problems of the world are too large, and I can’t possibly solve them. Do you think that’s a problem with empathy as well?
Stuckey: Yes. That’s not a theme that I explore in my book, although I think it’s interesting. I also think it’s interesting that, especially with kids in the classroom, the more you emphasize empathy, the meaner those kids can get to those in the out-group. Abigail Shrier phrased it like this: full of empathy and mean as hell.
I see that with a lot of progressives, and I call it misplaced mothering. I think a lot of progressives take those that they see as victims under their wing. For example, the man who identifies as a woman who wants to go into the women’s bathroom or wants to play against women in sports. They see this person as marginalized, as vulnerable, as misunderstood, and they feel so deeply for them. They feel so deeply for their pain that they have a hostile reaction to anyone who comes against their chosen victim, this person that they care for — in the same way that a mama bear would have a hostile reaction to someone who is trying to attack her cubs.
That is how I think a lot of deeply feeling progressives feel about illegal aliens or whoever they see as a victim. Those of us who are on the other side of the issue they actually see as oppressors. As enemies of their chosen victims. I think that’s why it causes the absolute cruelty that we often see from progressives who simultaneously say that they are deeply empathetic and loving.
Douthat: So this is a critique of progressivism and how progressivism has ended up taking particular sides in the immigration debate and the debates about transgenderism and other issues like that.
But then it’s also a critique of your fellow Christians. You think that this is a trap that people who have theologically conservative commitments have fallen into, especially over the last five or 10 years.
Stuckey: Yes, especially in the summer of 2020. I saw this a lot with Covid, but I also saw this a lot when it came to the conversation about race and police brutality. We’d have these claims that America is systemically racist, that the church has played a large part in that, that white people need to be apologetic and humble and listen and learn and all of this stuff.
I would point to certain statistics, or I would question certain narratives, and what I got told over and over again is that sometimes the truth doesn’t matter. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what the data says, that you just have to have empathy.
And while I don’t disagree that sometimes you shouldn’t bring up data and facts in a conversation with a person when you just need to have compassion for them, the truth actually does matter, especially when it’s leading to certain policy decisions.
I just don’t buy that idea that sometimes we have to exchange the truth for empathy and let people believe a lie because it feels better for them.
I think that is actually really cruel and hateful and, ultimately, destructive.
Douthat: OK, let’s talk about how this argument looks from the other side of the debate for a minute.
You are framing the divide in terms of what happened in the year 2020, and from your point of view, it seems the divide reflects the evangelical response to Covid, the pandemic and to whether churches should accept long-running restrictions and ——
Stuckey: And Trump.
Douthat: And Trump. That’s what I wanted to bring it around to. From the point of view of a lot of people who you have criticized or who have criticized you, the divide starts with Trump.
Where you see toxic empathy, they see a systematic delight in other people’s tears. I mean, cruelty is the one-word phrase. Trump himself is cruel. He mocks people. He’s savage to people and so on. But that’s also attached to this sense of: We love to hear the liberals cry. If we’re deporting people — you see this in Trump’s second term, making a YouTube video about deportation that’s reveling in rounding people up.
I think clearly if empathy can be toxic, cruelty can be even more toxic. Do you think that is a fair critique of Trump and Trumpism and its impact on American politics?
Stuckey: Maybe, but it’s not a fair critique of my argument. It’s not a fair critique of my book. My argument is that toxic empathy is cruel, that it ignores the people on the other side of the moral equation. For example, if you take the abortion issue, I start out by telling the story of a woman named Samantha.
Her story was first told by NPR. She found out that her baby had a fatal fetal anomaly at the 20-week mark, but in Texas she wasn’t allowed to abort her child. NPR tells the story as if this was horrible for Samantha, who had to go through the financial, physical, emotional burden of bearing this child, only to have this child to die.
By the end of the story, the reader feels exactly how it seems NPR wants them to feel, which is that this is a great injustice toward Samantha. How dare these draconian laws force her to do something so painful, so financially burdensome. We need to liberate women from these anti-abortion laws that are making them go through so much.
You have so much empathy for Samantha that you support the pro-abortion position by the end of this, through the mode of storytelling. What I try to do is tell the story from the other perspective: The actual victim in this story — that NPR and most mainstream media outlets do not want you to know about — is the baby.
They don’t want you to think about the actual victim of abortion. What would have been the fate of this baby, whose name is Halo? What would have been her fate if Texas had not had this — quote, unquote — pro-life law? She would’ve been poisoned. She would’ve been dismembered. She would’ve been discarded like toxic waste.
But instead, she was delivered and clothed and named and held and loved and buried like the full human being that she is. My argument is that toxic empathy — when it comes to any issue, not just abortion — is actually cruel and destructive and deadly, both for the individual and for society because it only focuses on one purported victim and ignores the actual victims on the other side of the equation.
We can agree that some of the things that Trump has said are much more brazen, and I would agree with you about what some people call cruelty, and we can get into that. But I’m not saying that compassion is bad. Actually, compassion and empathy aren’t even the same things.
I’m saying: No. What you progressives in many cases are calling empathetic or calling nice is actually really cruel. It’s actually really bad. I’m saying that the progressives use empathy as a vehicle to ultimate cruelty.
Douthat: Let’s talk about a different issue for a minute. Let’s talk about immigration. Part of your argument is that you have a set of conservative-leaning evangelicals who are alienated from Donald Trump or alienated from the Republican Party and end up being pulled to the left.
This happens not just on issues like abortion and transgender issues, but it also happens on an issue like immigration. It seems to me that immigration is just an issue where you have competing and entirely reasonable forms of — we don’t even have to call it “empathy.” We can just say “sympathy” instead. A reflection that people have understandable desires to have a better life and people have understandable desires to have immigration proceed at a reasonable rate that doesn’t overwhelm their communities.
People have understandable fears about crime and disorder and violence, but these things need to be balanced in various ways. It doesn’t seem that there is a single definitive Christian position on what the absolutely best immigration rate should be.
Stuckey: Yeah, I would agree with that part.
Douthat: Where do you think your fellow Christians have gone wrong on immigration?
Stuckey: So you are absolutely right. There are always going to be people on any issue, but especially immigration, who demand our empathy, and I’m OK with saying that. Or you could say “sympathy” or just “feeling deeply for their plight.”
I would say a lot of people on the progressive side don’t even consider the plight of those who have been negatively impacted by illegal immigration on a large scale or on an individual level. Ultimately, and this is really my argument in the book, there are always going to be people on both sides of any story with real pain, with real stories that matter. And both people are made in the image of God. At the end of the day, that’s why you can’t be led by empathy, because if you allow yourself, you can feel really deep empathy for people with competing needs and interests.
I think the Christians have to ask ourselves: But what is true? And then what does the Bible say? And you’re right, on an issue like immigration, it’s not as clear as where the Bible stands when it comes to the reality of the gender binary of male and female, the definition of marriage is between one man and one woman or the value of life starting at the moment of conception as made in the imago Dei.
Immigration is not as clear. We can only look to Scripture to see the principles of nations, of governance, of laws, of borders, of security, of God’s provision through walls, the Book of Nehemiah, and say: OK. Can we apply those principles to America today? Do they still have wisdom? Does it make sense why God wanted secure walls for Jerusalem? Does that still apply to America?
We can just use logic to say if we don’t have borders, we don’t have sovereignty, then we don’t have citizenship, then we don’t have rights. And that’s bad for everyone, especially the most vulnerable. If we can’t enforce immigration law, then we essentially have no borders or sovereignty. Of course, there are going to be sad stories within that. But at the end of the day, sovereignty matters for every single country, not just for America.
That’s how I think through it. There are people in good faith who are sincere Christians who could disagree with me on different forms of immigration policy. But for the people who simply use this issue to virtue signal and say, I can’t believe ICE is doing this or Trump is doing this or this is so bad or look at this one story, even though they’ll never talk about Kate Steinle or Laken Riley or the stories on the other side of it ——
Douthat: And the stories on the other side are stories of Americans who have been murdered or assaulted by illegal immigrants.
Stuckey: Yes. I forget the New York Times audience might not just know those stories automatically and those names.
I just want to know: What is their solution? Any progressive, not just a Christian, what is their solution? I guess I don’t know the answer, either, but I don’t hear from the other side.
Do we have an unconditional unmitigated obligation to accept everyone into America no matter what, just because they want a better life? Is there any limit? Is there any immigration law that we can enforce? Is there any kind of way to nicely deport and detain people who shouldn’t be here? I’m not hearing a whole lot of solutions from the other side, either.
Maybe that’s a place where we can try to come together and figure something out.
Douthat: I’m interested in how evangelicalism has ended up so polarized, and this does seem like a case, honestly, where it makes a case for empathy.
My evangelical friends who are very, very anti-Trump often show a failure of understanding toward why so many conservative Christians would end up voting Republican even under Trumpian conditions. I feel like there’s a pretty clear failure of understanding how the world looks from the perspective of somebody who decides to stay Republican and decides to stay a Trump voter.
I see this all the time, but I also feel like there’s a failure of empathy from your side. You’re an evangelical Christian in 2015, 2016.
You watch your political party being taken over by a man whose personal life obviously defies all of the moral norms that evangelicals struggled so hard to uphold in the 1990s during all the Bill Clinton controversies. A man whose policies break with places where sincere pro-life, pro-marriage conservatives were deeply involved in work like aid to Africa and aid to the developing world.
A president whose stance on immigration doesn’t just say we need to build the wall, he also clearly uses the language of scapegoat and cruelty around the very large number of people who have understandable reasons to migrate to the United States, whether or not it’s reasonable for the United States to welcome them.
Sincere Christians recoil from this man, recoil from his takeover of the Republican Party and, in the process, end up kind of inevitably pulled somewhat to their left on issues where previously they were further to the right. But isn’t that understandable? Doesn’t that seem understandable to you as someone who disagrees with these people?
Stuckey: It’s totally understandable, and I have given a lot of credit to that over the years not only because I sincerely understand it but because it’s more persuasive when you try to steel-man someone’s concerns rather than diminish them. I’ve never voted for Donald Trump in a primary because I’ve had plenty of issues with how Donald Trump talks or conducts himself.
My critiques have been from the right, though. I have been troubled by some of the things that he said about abortion and worried if he was really strong enough on the issues that I care about or if the second term would only be about a personal vendetta. I’ve actually been very pleasantly surprised and pretty satisfied with a lot of the things that he has actually done in the way of conservatism.
What I want the other side to understand is that I hear you, I absolutely hear you. However, from my perspective, the other side is worse. Was Donald Trump my pick in the primary? Obviously he was the pick of a lot of people, but was he my pick in the primary?
For a lot of Christians who are in my camp, there are plenty of things about Donald Trump that we don’t love. But at the end of the day, when we look at the policies that affect our country, that affect our family and when we weigh them against Scripture, especially when it comes to the gender debate, Donald Trump wins every time against Joe Biden, every time against Kamala Harris. All of the things they say that the Democrats do this better or more compassionately or more biblically — I just don’t think that’s true. I judge policies by their outcomes, not by their stated intentions.
Democrats have a lot of good stated intentions. I don’t think that the outcomes are kind, good or beneficial for society. I understand that there’s a lot of us over here who hear your concerns about Donald Trump, who don’t like his past adultery and different things that he has said, who even take issue with him saying the F-word. There are a lot of us like that who still say: Wow.
But under Joe Biden, the U.S.D.A. took funding away from public schools that didn’t allow boys into girls’ bathrooms. That’s evil. The Trump administration is doing the opposite of that, and that’s good. So there are a lot of big reasons that we would vote for Donald Trump if it’s against another Democrat like that.
Douthat: I want to go further into your critique of Trump and his second term but just pause on that issue on the question of good and evil policies.
Is there something that Donald Trump could do on immigration policy that you would consider evil?
Stuckey: I am most sympathetic when it comes to the taking in of Christian refugees from the Middle East and elsewhere. I want these people to be protected. My highest priority is the protection and the preservation of Christians, especially persecuted Christians. The stories that I’ve seen about Christian refugees from war-torn areas having a difficult time coming to the United States are the most difficult for me.
Although it’s so difficult because I don’t think that I can trust Christianity Today and other liberal outlets to tell the total truth because I know that they hate Donald Trump. It takes a lot of effort for those of us who are on the conservative side who are open to arguments against some immigration policy. If it is truly cruel, if it is truly unwise, it’s difficult for us to know where to go to get the accurate information because when you’re only seeing that stuff from people who hate Donald Trump anyway and want Christians to hate him, it’s a little hard to take that at face value.
Douthat: Do you think that there are issues that have clear theological answers?
Is there a distinction between culture war issues or abortion or right to life issues? We haven’t talked about climate change, but that’s another issue where there’s a critique of evangelical elites or evangelical pastors drifting to the left.
It seems that there are certain issues that Christian tradition speaks to in a way that is distinct from how to think about scientific debates, that’s just not a question where you open Nehemiah and say: This is the thing to take out of the Bible.
Stuckey: I agree with you. I would distinguish between creation-order issues and non-creation-order issues. A lot of the so-called culture war issues that we debate today are answered, I could say, in the first 27 verses of the Bible. But you could say in the first three chapters of the Bible or the first 11 chapters of the Bible, we get a lot of questions answered.
I don’t think there’s any wiggle room about the definition of gender or marriage or the value of life inside the womb. I think there’s very little wiggle room when it comes to policy on those three issues. When it comes to climate change, I actually do think that goes back to the creation order and our stewardship of the earth but also realizing that we do, as humans, have dominion over the earth. It’s not the other way around — that human beings matter more than plants or animals or any other part of creation. But when it comes to all of the different scientific discussions and policies surrounding that, you’re right.
I don’t think that the Bible speaks clearly to that. I think we can look throughout Scripture to see the principles for a lot of things, like justice and immigration. But those are going to be open to more debate and discussion — which I am also very open to — than the big three: abortion, gender and sexuality, which I think there should be zero debate on within Christianity.
Douthat: In theory, then, there isn’t any reason you couldn’t share a church or a tradition with someone who was pro-life, pro-traditional marriage and thought Christian refugees from the Middle East deserve better treatment than the Trump administration is giving them.
Stuckey: Oh, yeah, totally.
Douthat: But in practice, it does seem like you think that conservative Christians who hold those views are too far inside the liberal bubble, in the grip of toxic empathy, or mistaken.
Stuckey: It really depends. This is something that bothers me — and I see this among a lot of evangelicals — they will only post about the news when it is an opportunity to be critical of Trump. Then they will claim they’re not being political. They will post about a case that seems like it is racism against a Black person by the police — or that’s how The New York Times or another outlet is describing it — or a case where it seems that the Trump administration is being cruel to refugees or to immigrants. They will post those stories, but they will never post stories that are critical of Joe Biden or the Democrats or those on the other side of the equation.
I think we can disagree as Christians on some of those things and the policy solutions to some of those things. But if you are allowing your outreach and your compassion to be exclusively or primarily dictated by what the mainstream media says is right and wrong, then yes, I do think that you are probably being led by toxic empathy.
Now, if you’re truly outside of the political binary and you always care about the issues, and human dignity is what I’m following, and I care about whatever story is out there, no matter how it makes any politician look, I can respect that.
Douthat: All right, let’s finish with Trump’s second term. You mentioned earlier that you have critiques of Trump and you have critiques of his administration, but they’re often critiques from a culturally conservative perspective. These range from critiques of Trump tap dancing or just striding away from some pro-life positions during the campaign.
You’ve been pretty critical of the Trump administration’s pro-I.V.F. stance, which is pretty clearly a violation of pro-life principle from almost any reasonable definition of the term.
Has Trump done anything that isn’t in some way functionally pro-choice on abortion policy?
Stuckey: Well, I know that he issued that executive order on I.V.F., which didn’t have a whole lot of teeth to it. I think he was just trying to communicate: Hey, I promised that I was going to do this when I was campaigning and look, I’m doing it. Obviously, I think that that’s a step in the wrong direction.
You and I, I think, share that ethic on life. There are a lot of people out there, including conservatives, including a ton of evangelicals, maybe even professing Catholics, who do not understand what you just said: that it is a violation of the pro-life ethic to be pro-I.V.F. I don’t expect Trump or the people around Trump to understand that because I’ve realized in conservative evangelicalism, at least, that is a very niche view.
Douthat: I just think it’s clear sort of from a rhetorical perspective that Trump in the aftermath of Roe has positioned himself as someone who says the issue should be returned to the states.
We’re not going to have a national policy on abortion. We’re going to have support or at least rhetorical support for I.V.F. — which, I agree with you, pro-life opposition to embryo creation and destruction in I.V.F. is a more niche position, even within the larger pro-life movement.
To me, it seems that religious conservatives got a lot out of the bargain with Donald Trump. More than a lot of anti-Trump evangelicals and anti-Trump religious conservatives expected and did, in fact, get Roe v. Wade overturned. They got a lot of moves on issues related to gender identity that were not necessarily predictable five to 10 years ago. So I would never argue that religious conservatives have just been taken for a ride by Trump.
At the same time, when I look at Trump’s second term and the issues that he’s invested in, very few of them seem to have anything to do with cultural conservatism or religious conservatism. Trump doesn’t want to talk about abortion. You can defend his policy on immigration from a religious perspective, but I don’t think anyone would argue that like Stephen Miller is sitting in his office in the White House carefully balancing the dictates of Christian charity and the biblical admonitions about the importance of building walls.
Stephen Miller just wants to deport people. It just seems to me, at this moment, religious influence on the Trump administration and on conservatism is ebbing. I’m curious if you think that’s right or if you think I’m overreading that from my position at The New York Times.
Stuckey: Maybe so. I’m for deporting people. I really like Stephen Miller. Evangelical support for deporting illegal immigrants is very high. I just see a lot of effort from the left that seems to go after that Christian demographic who is not so sure about Trump and is almost looking for an opportunity to not support Trump by highlighting these stories of supposed cruelty from ICE or the Trump administration so that more and more Christians will say: Yeah, I voted for Trump, but this is just too far.
Douthat: But wait. Isn’t that a reasonable thing to say? Don’t you want people in the position of the Christian supporter of Donald Trump to say: I support deportations, but the way we’re deporting people to a prison in El Salvador seems like a violation of natural law?
I mean, like you just did, supporting Trump’s position generally on abortion, but thinking what he’s doing on I.V.F. is wrong. You’re worried about the progressives and toxic empathy leaking into conservative evangelicalism.
But doesn’t conservative evangelicalism have more credibility if it can critique Trump?
Stuckey: It might be reasonable. I’m not saying that it is always unreasonable to listen to those critiques of Trump or to see those highlights of supposed cruelty from the Trump administration and say: Wow, that does seem bad.
I’m saying that if Christians are looking to have credibility with the left or credibility with progressives or credibility with the world, and they are looking for an escape route to no longer like Donald Trump or support Donald Trump, that they so easily — without thinking — latch on to the deeply feeling stories that we are given and say “This is just too far for me” without even digging in and asking the question: But is this true? Or what is the other side to the story? That’s what I see as a form of toxic empathy. That’s what leads to what I call the mushy middle. That’s where I see a lot of evangelicals are going. That’s the question that I always want people to ask, whether I’m talking or The New York Times is talking.
But is this true? If it sounds too good or too bad to be true about either side, that’s the question that we need to ask: But is this true, and what is on the other side of it? Like I said, not always unreasonable, but it’s unreasonable if you’re not using reason.
Douthat: What would you say to someone watching or listening to this program who is in the mushy middle? Who doesn’t like Donald Trump, who is maybe not a reformed Calvinist Protestant but is religious, is Christian, is sympathetic to some of your views on abortion, some of your views on transgender issues but feels like Trump is using Christianity rather than Christianity operating through Trump? You are a public representative of Christianity.
You’re talking about what is truth. You are an arbiter of truth in contemporary America. What is your message of outreach to someone who is not sure, someone who is cross-pressured?
Stuckey: I would say I really don’t care how you feel about Donald Trump. You can loathe Donald Trump. You can be someone who never voted for Donald Trump. But maybe you’re starting to see that progressive policies aren’t in alignment with the Bible or that they are just destructive. And I am happy to have people like that in my community.
There are people like that in my audience who have never voted for Donald Trump, but they really agree with me when it comes to the policies. What I would say to that person — even if your mind never changes on Donald Trump, I don’t care, politicians come and go — things are clearer than you think. Make sure that you are not using nuance as an excuse not to dig into the truth about something.
Douthat: And what would it take to alienate you from politics?
I know a lot of people in the camp of the Never Trump, anti-Trump evangelicals or Never Trump, anti-Trump Christians. Some of them have become vehement partisans of progressive politics. Some of them have become reluctant supporters of the Democrats.
Some of them have just said: Look, American politics doesn’t present choices that Christians in good conscience should be deeply associated with. Maybe you still vote, but you just back out or opt out a little bit.
Is there a line like that for you? Can you imagine a world where you depoliticize?
Stuckey: I already don’t like politics very much, and I feel like after the election I have backed away from talking a lot about politics because we were so in it before the election and a lot of people are just tired of it. I’m not even saying that’s the right thing, but I think that’s the feeling that a lot of people have.
I see my role as an anchor on the right, as basically as conservative as you can get on virtually every issue but especially the life issue, especially gender, especially marriage. We are few and far between, those of us who actually believe that the law should have something to say about the reality of natural marriage between man and woman and that children have a right and should have a legal right to their mom and dad — a mom and dad, at the very least.
There aren’t very many of us over here, but we have a role to play in persuading people and pulling people as far as we can into our camp.
Douthat: But that would imply that there’s never a moment when you leave. Because functionally on same-sex marriage, the Republican Party under Trump has basically abandoned that fight and that debate. If you cast a vote for a Republican politician today, outside of some very particular situations, you’re just not casting a vote for the traditional definition of marriage.
Stuckey: There was a time that Republicans probably felt like they had given up on the abortion fight, too. And then, of course, Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. So things can change.
Douthat: So your view is you stay in the fight?
Stuckey: I guess it depends on what you mean by stay. I am not really that involved in politics. I care about the underlying issues and making sure as much as we possibly can that the Bible is informing our views on those issues. When it comes to election years, I’m going to speak up and say what I think Christians should do.
Will I ever stop doing that? Will I ever stop saying, “Hey, I do think Christians should vote for this person”? It depends on if the left stays as bad as it is. And if the left stays as bad as it is — the unfortunately reality, and I truly don’t like this reality — as long as the right is to the right of that, as long as the right is more sane than the left, then my position right now is that we have an obligation to vote for the more sane policy platform.
I think that’s a low bar right now. Maybe I could change my mind in a few years, but that’s where I am right now.
Douthat: All right. On that note, Allie Beth Stuckey, thanks so much for joining me.
Stuckey: Thank you.
Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
This episode of “Interesting Times” was produced by Katherine Sullivan, Elisa Gutierrez, Andrea Betanzos and Sophia Alvarez Boyd. It was edited by Jordana Hochman. Mixing and engineering by Pat McCusker. Cinematography by Marina King and Stephen Smith. Camera Operated by Nathan Davis. Video editing by Arpita Aneja and Jan Kobal. Original music by Isaac Jones, Pat McCusker and Aman Sahota. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Michelle Harris and Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski. Video directed by Jonah M. Kessel. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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Ross Douthat has been an Opinion columnist for The Times since 2009. He is also the host of the Opinion podcast “Interesting Times.” He is the author, most recently, of “Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious.” @DouthatNYT • Facebook
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