Empathy is the new Christian battleground
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As the U.S. grows more diverse, a quiet civil war is unfolding within American Christianity over who deserves empathy.
Why it matters: Conservatives ranging from evangelical pastors to Elon Musk have started framing empathy not as a virtue but as a vulnerability on immigration, racial justice and LGBTQ+ rights.
- They are working to drive out school lessons on empathy and argue in books and sermons that empathy is for the weak or "woke."
- Others say empathy is central to Christianity and the teachings of Jesus.
- This split comes as Christianity and organized religion are shrinking and the U.S. undergoes a profound demographic transformation: no single racial group will hold a majority within two decades.
Zoom in: "Empathy as hoisted up as the highest virtue — or even a virtue at all — gets us into a really big mess," conservative author Allie Beth Stuckey said on a "Family Talk" podcast. She wrote a book last year, "Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion."
- "Empathy is dangerous. Empathy is toxic. Empathy will align you with hell," pastor Josh McPherson, a conservative men's-ministry influencer, said on his "Stronger Man Nation" podcast.
- Pastor Joe Rigney, in his book, "The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits," attacks empathy as spiritually dangerous.
- Elon Musk said on Joe Rogan's podcast this February that Western empathy toward the suffering of others is being "weaponized" and linked it to civilizational decline, even though he thought empathy was good.
The big picture: Around 80% of U.S. adults said empathy was a moral value that underpinned a healthy society, according to the wide-ranging survey by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) in October.
- Only 16% said empathy was a dangerous emotion that undermines "our ability to set up a society that is guided by God's truth," the poll found.
The other side: "In the Christian tradition, to have anybody argue that a spirit of empathy is somehow a vulnerability... is insane," Father Brendan Busse, pastor of Dolores Mission Catholic Church in Los Angeles, tells Axios.
- Busse said the suffering of Jesus on the Cross invokes empathy, as does the call to help "the least of these" in the Gospels.
- Empathy drives the mission of Homeboy Industries, the Los Angeles-based (and world's largest) gang intervention organization, founded by Catholic priest Greg Boyle.
- The North Carolina-based Repairers of the Breach, founded by Bishop William J. Barber II, uses empathy to fight poverty and economic inequality.
Between the lines: Between 2021 and early 2023, legislators in at least 25 states introduced bills backed by conservatives intended to ban or restrict social-emotional learning (SEL) in K-12 schools.
- Social-emotional learning is an educational strategy that teaches empathy, cooperation and social skills.
- All SEL bans have failed to pass following opposition from educators and moderate Christians.
The bottom line: The Bible gives conflicting messages on empathy, said Dan McClellan, a Biblical scholar and author of "The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture's Most Controversial Issues."
- On the one hand, McClellan said some stories in scripture speak of empathy only for your ethnic group and disregard others, like Joshua's passages about the walls of Jericho and the killing of innocent children.
- "Then there's a universal empathy, where your empathy extends beyond your own group," McClellan said, pointing to the Beatitudes and Jesus' parable about the Good Samaritan.
