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?”
While the religious right are hypocrites full of shit & miss the teaching of compassion & benevolence to strive for a better humanity, some people get sanctimonious & invoke "empathy" to browbeat others & police opinions rather than to uplift & realize the aims of empathy.
It's a common, selectively applied phenomenon around here. Someone bashes a deluded redditor moaning the "loss" of their "AI friend" to a ChatGPT upgrade, and an outraged commenter snaps back "your takeaway is they deserve to be alone? have some fucking empathy". In contrast, a deluded, conservative mother moans the loss of her disabled son's medicaid, and we rightly bash & criticize that idiot getting just desserts at leopards eating faces instead of demand "fucking empathy".
When invoking "empathy" suits them, they act like displays of "empathy" settle everything when they don't. Not everything is about empathy, and some things need to be criticized. Even real (rather than performative) empathy is only a start.
To do good, we also need reason to inform us how & we need the truth to support us. We need to moderate feelings with reason & let logic guide us to the best answers. Otherwise, we're indulging in appeals to emotion, and we risk succumbing to feel-good zeal & irrationality liable to do less good than harm.
Give legitimate examples and I will retract my downvote
As if I care: how about no & downvote your uninformed way?