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.
Nonsense. They would’ve just sent him to alligator auschwitz and made him eat rotten food from a bowl on the ground with his hands tied behind his back.
Pam: “it’s the same picture.”
jesus can just tell his daddy and the angels to smite them, send 7 of them.
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.
the rapture is also thier creation too.
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.
These jokers had like 2000 years of warning of what the antichrist would be like and still fell for it. Unreal.
I’m not religious, so this is in jest, but it’s still eerie.
Trump doesn’t tick all the boxes of the Antichrist (ex. he isn’t universally loved) but the Bible also says there will be many antichrists leading up to the Antichrist and he is certainly one of the them.
You sure bout that?
Universally loved / followed
The entire world follows his actions and words.
Anyway, there are 666 other reasons in that article that are pulled straight from the holey book.
I’m aware of his article. Pretty good one but even he concluded it doesn’t all align.
Nothing in the bible aligns.
But if there ever were one person who so closely fit, it is him.
The Pharisees were a competing group of reformers.
Jesus was a member of the Pharisaic tradition himself. His problem was that many, if not most, other Pharisees were selfish, self-centered, self-serving hypocrites. Just like the Rightist political and religious leaders of today. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
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.
Conservative Christians talking about the “sins” of others.
THEY SUPPORT A CHILD RAPIST WHO IS AN ADULTERER. 🤷♂️
Something something splinter log in eye something
The true Christian response would be that Trump will be judged in the afterlife but that they still support what he’s doing in government… which is making things harder for people with darker skin and/or who are LGBTQ+. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” and all that.
Ask them if they would allow their preteen daughter to stay the night with Trump and you’ll see where their feelings truly lie. Many of them would! Many of them would happily traffick their child to him hoping that she might be his fourth wife and their family would benefit. A few would tell you that the accusations against him are inventions of the liberals, but those people are never mentally sound.
These dipshits clearly do not understand the parable of the Good Samaritan or anything Jesus did/said.
The parable where the good samaritan was deported for being a criminal foreigner? Or the sermon given by a young criminal who got hung at the cross?
That’s what they take away from the bible and seriously I can’t understand how someone like that can still call themselves christians. Tbh, that’s the definition of “taking the lord’s name in vain”.
The “Christian” Right: When you only care about Leviticus, and only the parts that let you hate the gays, and you actively ignore EVERYTHING Christ said.
“How to be worse than the pharisees”.
The pharisees at least followed the law themselves and didn’t only use it to justify hateing others.
They remember his famous speech that ends ‘do you feel lucky, punk? Well do ya!?’ And all the stuff about how ‘some percentage of people must necessarily starve so genocide is fine and good actually and its mot like the irish or indians are people anyway’
1 John 3:17
“If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?”
Yes but that was pre-Maga.
You can’t expect them to read so far beyond John 3:16 now can you?
I don’t expect them to be able to count to 16…
They don’t read past Austin 3:16. That’s the only verse they live by I think.
most of them probably dont read it all, only listens to thier televengist pastor.
a brother or sister in need
Obviously, Jesus was referring to immediate family only. Anyone outside the sacred bloodline should be killed on sight.
Matthew 22:37-39 NIV. Jesus replied: “ 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.
Matthew 25:40-46 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,
I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
These aren’t even out of context. But I admit these are copied straight from the woke red bits.
But perhaps Kropotkin wrote it better. Mutual Aid,1902: “…in all these scenes of animal life which passed before my eyes, I saw mutual aid and mutual support carried on to an extent which made me suspect in it a feature of the greatest importance for the maintenance of life, the preservation of each species, and its further evolution.”
Kropotkin is my favorite Santa. One of his most eloquent quotes. Thank you.
Right wing Christians want empathy to be a sin because it goes against their politics.
Empathy is a sin because it goes against their Christian beliefs. They’re being persecuted.
11th commandment “Thou shalt not do unto others as you would have them do unto you”
As a Christian, I’m utterly disgusted by how these people are perverting my religion that’s supposed to be all about love for others. For your enemy, even.
Feed the poor, shelter the homeless, heal the sick, visit the imprisoned and welcome the foreigner. That’s how we will be judged, according to Matthew 25.
The pervert the words of Jesus. First the Prosperity Gospel, and now this.
What does your religion say should be done with these usurpers and blasphemers?
Love them? But also counter their false teachings. Loving the people they mislead or hurt, and save them from harm.
“Love the sinner, hate the sin” is the boilerplate answer, and fundamentally it’s correct, but also never forget that Jesus himself kicked over tables and brandished a whip at these people.
Like, you always think of Jesus as this soft-spoken, kind-hearted individual who always tried to help people. But when he came back to the temple and saw people were using it to try to peddle their wares under the guise and protection of religion, he called that out and threatened violence. And he was right to.
Oit of control capitalism was the one thing that made him lose his temper.
And yes, “love the sinner, hate the sin”, but also protect vulnerable people from harm, and a lot of those conservatives are explicitly looking to hurt people.
Is there a meaningful number of traditional Christians left? I haven’t seen much effort from churches to counter these false teachings.
In fact I’ve seen the opposite. A traveling priest came to my mother’s church before the elections cycle last year and was spouting off about how leftism is evil and the cause for all modern societies problems.
It’s much more enticing to publish news articles about the asshats.
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There are a lot of Christians of many different varieties. None of the Christians I know would agree with conservative Americans.
The Bible condones slavery.
That’s a problem if you consider the Bible to be univocal. Considering the Bible to be univocal is a bad idea in the first place.
Whatever you have to come up with to feel ok about condoning slavery.
I don’t, I’m an atheist. I also recognize that if you throw out univocality, then you can happily throw out the slavery bits.
And you should throw out univocality to make any sense of the Bible at all.
The first mistake in that line of reasoning is assuming that the Bible makes sense.
It makes sense as much as any other text. Of course it has contradictions. The mistake is thinking the fundie approach is the only way to approach it; that’s buying into their game. It’s not even a singular book, but a collection of writings from across centuries.
I don’t, but the various books in the Bible were written in specific times and contexts, often times when slavery was common. The bible puts limits on slavery, says at various places to release slaves after 7 years, to pay them, to treat them well.
One place in the NT that deals with slavery (and is pretty controversial because of that), is when Paul sends an escaped slave back to his master, with a letter to the master telling him to treat the slave as a brother, because they’re brothers in Christ, both children of God.
Paul was trying to spread Christianity in Greece, where slavery was very common, and outright condemning it would probably make a lot of Greeks reject it. There are a lot of places where you can see Paul being very pragmatic about stuff as long as it helps spread the Word. So I guess “here’s you’re slave, but remember he’s your brother” is his compromise with slavery.
I’m pretty certain slavery was the most common form of employment during that period. Slave and master could basically translate to worker and boss now
Looking at antiquity via modern morals is easy. Most of us would not have our current morals if we were raised during the same time period
Note: slavery is obviously bad
And all your Lord and Savior had to do was say, “hey guys, you shouldn’t own other people.”
Christianity WAS outright rejected at that time because it was extreme. So that’s not really an excuse, is it.
He did.
And one of the scribes, having heard them talking and having noticed how well Jesus answered them, asked the question “Which commandment is the most important?”
Jesus answered “The most important is ‘Hear this, Israel, the Lord - Our God - the Lord is singular. And you shall love the Lord, who is your God, with every emotion, every breath, every thought, and every bit of your strength.’
“The second is the same. ‘You shall respectfully devote yourself to others as much as you do for yourself.’ There are no commandments more important than these.
— from Mark 12.
And the King Above All Kings will respond to them “Let me be blunt, the ways you behaved toward even the lowest of people, who are my brothers, you did to me.”
— from Matthew 25
As a previous person mentioned, the whole “The Bible is a singular work of God’s literal word” argument is absurdist in the extreme, even if it’s mainstream today. This dogma began in the US in the 1900s with the Fundamentalist movement. Even the word “Bible” itself means “library.”
Lol ya’ll are the champions at grasping at straws.
Whatever you have to tell yourself.
good thing all Christians have that as their primary takeaway!
It was in the 1800s when it was used as justification for chattel slavery in the US. Including the printing of “slave Bibles” where all references to “freedom” and “liberty” were removed.
And if you pay attention to what Republicans are saying, you’d recognize that this mindset never actually fully went away.
If you want to try and use that as a cudgel for someone advocating to love thy neighbor, take care of the downtrodden, etc., feel free.
Assholes are going to interpret things how they want. See the main topic of this post for reference.
Doesn’t mean you should piss in the cornflakes of folks who are advocating for objectively good things. That makes you look like an asshole.
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?
Hitler was brought up Catholic.
The Church never excommunicated him.
Not surprising considering the commonalities between cult leaders and fascist dictators. “Us” in group vs scapegoat “them” out group degenerates of the week, calling themselves family to distance from biological families and social support, hierarchy with an unquestionable leader on top, love me or suffer my wrath, etc. Even the way they talk from the pulpit or podium, no justification for any claims, just vibes and biases exploiting.
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.
He generally referred to them as “liars, Pharisees, hypocrites.”
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
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.
There’s a theory that the whole Christianity thing was just a conspiracy hy the (extremely banned) cult of bacchus that got way out of hand.
Oh no, you don’t get to drop something like that without further context!
I absolutely do. I’m not an expert and barely remember the discussion where i heard it.
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.
If people knew S.S. Jesus was healing leppers, then there would be no incentive for people to avoid leprosy.
-Supply-Side Jesus for the uninitiated.
