Author Joyce Carol Oates was blasted on social media after getting into a spat over caring for widows and orphans and calling the Bible a work of fiction. The spat began when Matthew Sitman, a writer and cohost of the liberal podcast “Know Your Enemy,” made a comment on the breaking story of Alabama families alleging the Alabama Department of Corrections returned the bodies of their deceased loved ones in accelerated states of decomposition and allegedly with internal organs missing. “The state of our prisons, and our treatment of incarcerated people, is such an abomination—we cage, torture, and exploit so many and call it justice when really it is a profound sin that calls out for God’s wrath upon us,” wrote Sitman regarding the story. 

He later posted, “Widows, orphans, prisoners—no Christian can, without doing great violence to Scripture, get around the extremely clear obligations we have to such people.” The statement caught the attention of the Pulitzer nominated author. “‘widows, orphans, prisoners’–really, these entirely disparate categories have something in common?” she wrote, to which Sitman replied, “They do, actually—they’re all people in vulnerable situations who it’s easy to abuse and neglect.” Sitman’s cohost, Sam Adler-Bell, also responded, telling Oates she needed to read the Bible. Oates then criticized the Bible. “the bible, as you call it, is a work of fiction; or rather, an anthology of fictions,” she wrote. “it is not ‘the’ bible for much of the world’s population & those who claim it as their own select those verses that appeal to them while ignoring other verses. fertile ground for hypocrisy.” She also argued that widows of millionaires and billionaires don’t need help. 

The responses to Oates’s post against the Bible were mostly critical, with some calling Oates a bigot or uninformed. One user wrote, “The Bible, as I call it, is an anthology of revelation, history and poetry. Revelation and poetry are categories defined by faith and taste. History, however, can be compared to parallel accounts from other civilizations. The accounts record the same events from different viewpoints, as is to be expected.” Oates, however, doubled down on her comments, continuing to argue against the need for help for widows of wealthy men. Sittman stated the criticism was almost a surprise. “I almost tweeted that I’d never have expected a tweet that expressed support for caring for orphans, widows, and prisoners would be controversial, but actually, that’s exactly what I should have expected in the society we actually live in now,” he wrote. One of his followers stated it was odd to see criticism coming from “that quarter in particular.”