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?”
I had a really good preacher growing up. Probably a big part of why I don't hate all religion.
He spoke of compassion, of the teachings of the bible as he felt was to be a good person. Viewed being Christian as being like Christ as much as much as one was possible, but people fail to live up to it, that's our failings, but to believe is to still keep striving for that perfection.
2001 happened, and the hatred to Muslims came. Then one day, the preacher is talking about an extremist, one that is hated by the government, outspoken to the government, that people hated and reviled. A man from the middle east. "That is our lord and savior." You could have heard a pin drop in that room when everyone was figuring he was talking about a Muslim radical instead of Jesus. It was a call against the fear mongering, to love our neighbors even if we don't believe the same, to not assume the worst about people. He described how we usually get Jesus wrong in looks, that he'd be one of those we'd be persecuting post 9/11 America because of his looks, showing a magazine cover where a group of anthropologists reconstructed what Jesus likely looked like based on what they knew of the people of that region of that time, had the magazine on display in the hall where people gathered after worship.
It wasn't a year later that he was removed from being the preacher of that church. Probably a big part of why I'm not a believer anymore.
I think he won the best preacher's pulpit, one no corrupt church leadership can take away: Your heart. It will beat to his words, for many more decades to come.
So this is only vaguely related but the look of white Jesus is probably based off of Alexander the great through a somewhat roundabout mess. Basically the Colossus of Rhodes was most likely modelled after Alexander this is based off of some surviving contemporary artifacts of Helios which the Colossus of Rhodes was a statue of, cut forward a couple centuries and due to a weird mess of synchronizing religious imagery and coding you end up with Jesus as being portrayed as Helios or at least based off of the Greek god. This is also where the halo most likely comes from, it's probably derived from the sun beams Helio was portrayed with which sometimes had a halo of light.
Okay, that is cool!
I would like to subscribe to more obscure connections of modern iconography to unrelated mythology.
Oh no, you don't get to drop something like that without further context!
Father Christmas/Santa Claus/Saint Nicholas in his modern gift giving portrayal is a synchronization of Odin, basically in a lot of Odins portrayals he is shown giving gifts as a reward for virtues namely wisdom and bravery. During christianization of both Germany and Scandinavia this element of the god was held onto and simply attached to the Saint.
Also because it's an absolute mess I'm gonna note that the various cults of the Mother Mary probably have their roots in the cults of Venus/Aphrodite in her motherly aspect, also the Egyptian god Isis is in there somewhere. Frankly speaking early Christianity is a mess of mystery cults and lost context.
I've known about Christianity is almost the English of Religions as in it sneaks other religions in the alley, knocks them over the head and riffles through their pockets for traditions, and weirdly knew about the Santa comes from Odin...
I did not know anything about the Mother Mary side though, that is really fantastic to learn.
Yeah it's on the more esoteric side of things that is only kinda understood. As I noted early Christianity was more or less just another mystery cult who's defining feature was that it came out of Hebrew traditions rather than Hellenic. Just to give you an idea of how weird it got there's evidence that early Christianity and the Anubis cults got along weirdly well and may have even merged in some cases, best guess as to why is that they were both cults with close associations with death and thusly were similarly shunned.