Can empathy lead to sin? Some conservative Christians argue it can

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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?”

Arguing empathy can be good — and bad

The word empathy appeared in English for the first time in 1908, taken from a German word, meaning “in-feeling.”

Though the word is relatively new to English, the impulse behind it — to feel for or with another — is much older. It forms a core precept across many religions. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” reads a common version of the Golden Rule.

Stuckey admits Jesus is an empathetic figure. In her book, the Southern Baptist from Texas writes, “In a way, Jesus embodied empathy when he took on flesh, suffered the human experience, and bore the burden of our sins by enduring a gruesome death.”

She’s clear that empathy can be good. But she writes it has been co-opted “to convince people that the progressive position is exclusively the one of kindness and morality.”

“If you really care about women, you’ll support their right to choose,” she writes of this progressive line of thinking. “If you really respect people, you’ll use preferred pronouns. … If you’re really compassionate, you’ll welcome the immigrant.”

Rigney doesn’t think empathy is inherently wrong, either. He finds fault with excessive or “untethered empathy” that’s not tied to conservative biblical interpretations.

He has been talking publicly about these ideas since at least 2018, when he discussed the sin of empathy on camera with conservative Pastor Doug Wilson. Since 2023, Rigney has worked at Wilson’s Idaho church and seminary, affiliated with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches.

Rigney said initially he experienced pushback from “certain corners of evangelicalism, that at the time were very dialed into questions of the #MeToo movement and abuse or critical race theory, social justice kind of stuff.”

This debate over empathy often devolves into arguments over word choices or semantics. Rigney prefers older terms like compassion, sympathy or even pity.

The Rev. Albert Mohler leads the flagship seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest U.S. Protestant denomination. He featured Rigney and Stuckey on his podcast this year and agrees with their empathy critiques.

Mohler prefers the word sympathy over empathy.

“There’s no market so far as I know for empathy cards,” he said. “There is a long-standing market for sympathy cards.”

The role of race and gender in anti-empathy arguments

In 2014, Mohler did encourage his audience to have empathy. His words came after a white police officer killed Michael Brown, a Black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri.

“I look back at that statement now, and I would say it’s nowhere near as morally significant as I intended it to be at the time,” Mohler said. Though expressing empathy for hurting people appeared to be “close to the right thing to do,” he sees it as less helpful now.

Stuckey traces her own anti-empathy awakening to the summer of 2020, when racial justice protests roiled the nation. She saw other Christians posting about racism out of an empathy she found misguided.

“I reject the idea that America is a systemically racist country,” she said.

When she said as much in the months after George Floyd’s murder, her audience grew.

Rigney echoes this critique of systemic racism but reserves most of his ire for feminism, which he blames for many of empathy’s ills. Because women are the more empathetic sex, he argues, they often take empathy too far.

He found an encapsulation of this theory at Trump’s inaugural prayer service, where a woman preached from the pulpit. During a sermon that went viral, Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde pleaded with the Republican president to “have mercy” on immigrants and LGBTQ+ people, prompting a conservative backlash.

“Budde’s attempt to ‘speak truth to power’ is a reminder that feminism is a cancer that enables the politics of empathetic manipulation,” Rigney wrote for the evangelical World magazine.

Progressive Christian leaders respond

“Empathy is not toxic. Nor is it a sin,” said the Rev. Canon Dana Colley Corsello in a sermon at Washington National Cathedral, two months after Budde’s plea from that sanctuary.

“The arguments about toxic empathy are finding open ears because far-right-wing, white evangelicals are looking for a moral framework around which they can justify President Trump’s executive orders and policies,” Corsello preached.

“Empathy is at the heart of Jesus’ life and ministry,” Corsello wrote in a recent email exchange about the sermon.

She added, “It’s so troubling that this is even up for debate.”

In New York, the Rev. Micah Bucey first noticed Christian anti-empathy messages after Budde’s sermon. In response, he proposed changing the outdoor sign at Judson Memorial Church, the historic congregation he serves in Manhattan.

“If empathy is a sin, sin boldly,” he proposed it say, a catchphrase that borrows its last clause from the Protestant reformer Martin Luther.

A photo of the resulting church sign was shared thousands of times on social media.

“Our entire spirituality and theology at Judson are built around curiosity and empathy,” Bucey said. “We’ve always considered that our superpower.”

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