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?”
This is the antithesis of “good people.”
Good people see what is right, know what is right, and do what is right regardless of what others try to instill or coerce into them. That you avoid associating with them tells me that you know this, too.
No, I would argue you’re describing intelligent people. Good people are defined by their intentions. My relatives are good people because they want what they believe is best for others. The fact that their beliefs are wrong is a testament to their stupidity. Plenty of harmful things have been done by good people.
Edit: Take their votes for Trump. They voted for him because they genuinely believe he has their welfare at heart. They’re wrong, because they’re stupid, but that’s not the same as the KKK Trump voters who voted for him because they’re evil.
I think where we differ is that I grant no absolution for excuses. Repeatedly causing harm makes one a bad person. It does not matter if that harm is driven by stupidity, “good intentions”, or any other “noble cause.” To make an occasional mistake is human, but to consistently repeat mistakes without learning, to continue to cause harm, makes one evil.
Let me phrase this in a historical context, if I believed that burning your relatives at the stake was for the good of others, would that make me a good person? It does not matter that the belief is stupid, the outcome is harm. Every person has the capacity to justify their actions. That capacity does not mean that all people are “good people.”
We do differ then. I don’t throw the term “evil” around that loosely. Most of the suffering in the world is caused by well-intentioned people or people who feel justified in causing the harm they do. The very reason people try to justify the harm they cause is because they see themselves as a good person. True evil is thankfully hard to come by, and is typically the stuff of psychopaths and malignant narcissists. You do encounter it outside of that, like in extreme racists, but that’s also thankfully fairly rare.
But I’ll give you an example: I work in a community mental health clinic, and some of my patients have some pretty hardcore criminal histories. Just about all of them also have some pretty hardcore trauma and abuse histories. They’re, at least in some senses, “the product of their environment.” This is such a truism that there’s even a saying in social work: hurt people hurt people. Are they evil?