WASHINGTON (AP) — Empathy is usually regarded as a virtue, a key to human decency and kindness. And yet, with increasing momentum, voices on the Christian right are preaching that it has become a vice.
For them, empathy is a cudgel for the left: It can manipulate caring people into accepting all manner of sins according to a conservative Christian perspective, including abortion access, LGBTQ+ rights, illegal immigration and certain views on social and racial justice.
“Empathy becomes toxic when it encourages you to affirm sin, validate lies or support destructive policies,” said Allie Beth Stuckey, author of “Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion.”
Stuckey, host of the popular podcast “Relatable,” is one of two evangelicals who published books within the past year making Christian arguments against some forms of empathy.
The other is Joe Rigney, a professor and pastor who wrote “The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and its Counterfeits.” It was published by Canon Press, an affiliate of Rigney’s conservative denomination, which counts Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth among its members.
These anti-empathy arguments gained traction in the early months of President Donald Trump’s second term, with his flurry of executive orders that critics denounced as lacking empathy.
As foreign aid stopped and more deportations began, Trump’s then-adviser Elon Musk told podcaster Joe Rogan: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”
Even Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, framed the idea in his own religious terms, invoking the concept of ordo amoris, or order of love. Within concentric circles of importance, he argued the immediate family comes first and the wider world last — an interpretation that then-Pope Francis rejected.
While their anti-empathy arguments have differences, Stuckey and Rigney have audiences that are firmly among Trump’s Christian base.
“Could someone use my arguments to justify callous indifference to human suffering? Of course,” Rigney said, countering that he still supports measured Christ-like compassion. “I think I’ve put enough qualifications.”
Historian Susan Lanzoni traced a century of empathy’s uses and definitions in her 2018 book “Empathy: A History.” Though it’s had its critics, she has never seen the aspirational term so derided as it is now.
It’s been particularly jarring to watch Christians take down empathy, said Lanzoni, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School.
“That’s the whole message of Jesus, right?”
If this lot encountered Jesus here on earth today, they would deport him
They’re the same people that crucified him in the first place.
This is insane
They are. Evangelicals are seriously so fucked in the head it’s like dealing with someone out of their mind on crack. And it runs deeeeeep.
In the Bible they talk about how people will view the antichrist as virtuous. Jesus condemns the pharases who are the religious officials of the day, for hypocrisy. I understand when you regretfully have to disobey God’s words and want to call yourself a Christian, dispite your shame. I do not understand gleefully treating the sorjourner as an animal then chanting his name like you mean it. I call them antichrist-ians.
In order to justify their own bigotry, they seem to be literally abandoning the central teachings of the key teacher in Christianity.
When Jesus was asked “what is the most important part of the law”, the two part response was love . To love God wholly, and to love others as we love ourselves.
When later asked how Christians would be judged, Jesus said that we would be judged as if we had done to Jesus whatever we do to the least among us.
I don’t see how it is possible to reconcile bigotry with either of these teachings. I guess they can twist themselves into rhetorical knots and try, but it seems way easier to just decide to love everyone and leave it to God to judge us for whatever our sins may be.
Fun historical fact: Adolf Hitler was not actually an atheist as is often commonly believed. He was actually opposed to atheism and tried to establish a German “Reich Church” that would teach Christianity aligned with Nazi propaganda. Sound familiar?
Matthew 23 is about these kinds of people. Recommended reading, even for fellow atheists. Keep in mind that the scribes and pharisees that Jesus calls out over and over again were the conservative leaders of his time - “pastors and politicians” - behaving just as ours do today.
Conservative christian culture makes people objectively worse.
In other news
- women are at fault for being raped because they wear revealing clothes
- the Good Samaritan was wrong, because that traveller was at fault for being robbed and beaten, why else was he on the road to Jericho
Jesus rather specifically says to take care of the poor and the widowed, etc.
Having no empathy is also one of the things that mark the evils of the end times.
They’re not actual Christians.
Its the opposite of a sin. When Jesus sumed up the law and the prophets into two commandments, the one dealing with other people was basically be empathetic.
" So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets." Matthew 7:12 NIV.
Removed by mod
Anyone who thinks empathy is in any way a bad thing is person who cannot be trusted in any way.
I can’t understand how these people can still look at themselves in the mirror. I guess I’m not very empathetic.
I see the joke you’re making but also if you genuinely want to understand and possibly gain some empathy for these people, I’d suggest reading The Cult of Trump. It’s from 2019 so it doesn’t include a ton of awful stuff that’s happened since then, but it does a great job of contextualizing how people can fall into these belief patterns.
It was written by a man who fell into a cult in his early 20s, found his way out, and has built his career around helping others out of cults and cult-like mindsets.
"Betteridge’s law of headlines is an adage that states: “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.”
