Defending a grieving widow isn’t the problem. It’s the inability to separate emotion from Scripture and to make theological claims that the Bible doesn’t support. But she’s not alone. Damnation Porn is a new kind of theological error in which emotional loyalty to a political figure gets laundered through Scripture and retailed as an eternal consequence. The widow-shield is another tactic being regularly deployed around Erika Kirk, and has nothing to do with James 1:27 and everything to do with insulating an organization from accountability.
Allie Beth Stuckey has found her calling, and it isn’t theology. It’s spiritual manipulation and the manufacture of spiritual consequences for people who disagree with her friends. Last week, broadcasting to more than one million followers across her platforms - making her the reigning queen of the evangelical content economy - Stuckey delivered a verdict with the certainty usually reserved for the Pope of Rome speaking Ex Cathedra: if you criticize Erika Kirk, the Holy Spirit has departed your body, and there’s a fair to middling chance you’re going to hell.
She knows this because she is Allie Beth Stuckey, she’s “as mentally and physically capable of stepping to a pulpit on Sunday morning and delivering a more biblically sound, exegetically exquisite, persuasive, and dynamic sermon than many male pastors in America today” (she told us so), and the Holy Ghost apparently fills her in on all of his eternal salvation litmus tests.
The Blaze entitled the article, “Allie Beth Stuckey issues stern warning to Christian right: Mocking Erika Kirk is a 'soul sickness' and a risky gamble with your soul.” To be specific, the point of reference was for those who saw her crying at Trump’s recent Correspondents’ Dinner and did something other than bowl over in compassion. For those who mocked her - and she isn’t terribly specific what that means - then it’s not just uncouth, unkind, or even un-Christian, but likely an indication that you’re awaiting eternal, conscious torment.
No worries, she was careful to disclaim it. “That’s not Allie Stuckey’s judgment, OK? That is the nature of the Holy Spirit because he is the convictor.” The disclaimer is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this scenario. It’s the Holy Ghost that has issued this decree. If you go to hell for mocking the CEO of a political non-profit, we dont’t even want to know the punishment for second-guessing the Holy Spirit.
When a woman prefaces a theological declaration by informing you it isn’t her judgment, it is always her judgment. What she has done is borrow the Third Person of the Trinity to deliver the verdict she wants, then duck behind Him when someone asks who said it. Nothing about that is discernment. That is Holy Ghost ventriloquism.
NXR has written about Stuckey before. Her theological exhibitionism, her enthusiasm for platforming spiritual circus acts, her role as the evangelical content machine’s most presentable cog the wheel that grinds the gears of the podcast-preaching boss babe influencers. But now, Stuckey has turned the same emotional appeal she uses to generate clicks and conference tickets toward theological gatekeeping, and the result is what we are now calling Damnation Porn: the spiritual manipulation tactic aimed at silencing critics through fear instead of making an actual argument.
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