Get Your Smart On
The Politicization of Anti-Empathy in Christian Evangelical and White Nationalist circles.
This piece picks up where “The Christian Right’s Anti-Empathy Crusade I” leaves off. You might want to read that first.
Allie Beth Stuckey is a conservative commentator with a communications degree and a podcast on political and cultural issues from a Christian perspective. In her book, Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion (Sentinel/Penguin, 2024), Stuckey takes a page from Paul Bloom’s use of the rhetorical tactic of dissociation where she starts her account by defining “toxic empathy” as a manipulated empathy* *that allows the left to exploit Christian compassion. She doesn’t oppose “toxic empathy” to a non-manipulated empathy, or sympathy like Bloom does, but to a “truth-filled-love.” She thus implies that “manipulated” means misleading and false, whereas Christian compassion is grounded in an objectively moral truth. We already saw this religiously vetted version of “truth” in Joe Rigley’s work:
“In this case, their truth isn’t factual, empirical, or verifiable, but the truth that is found in their interpretation of the Christian bible, an interpretation that upholds the patriarchal authority of the church. Truth and goodness are conflated on this assertion of an objective moral order.” — Mona Mona, The Christian Right’s Anti-Empathy Crusade I
According to Stuckey, empathy stands in “complete opposition to God’s Word” and supports ideas she characterizes as nothing short of satanic and destructive. She argues that empathy pushes “social justice” as “the only way to love racial minorities,” and that responses to injustice should be grounded in objective truth and Christian principles:
“Toxic empathy claims the only way to love racial minorities is to advance social justice, but “justice” that shows partiality to the poor or those perceived as oppressed only leads to societal chaos.
Empathy can help us see their perspective and foster compassion, but that’s all it can do. It can’t guide us into making the right decisions or donning the wise, moral, or biblical position. Toxic empathy bullies us into believing that the unwise, immoral, and unbiblical position is actually the righteous one”* (page 4).
Here, she is thinking of the protests over the killing of George Floyd that erupted in 2020. She provocatively writes in “The Black Square and the Right Side of History” (in June 2020) that “performative acts of solidarity,” such as posting a black square on social media, reflect a superficial, emotionally driven response to injustice that prioritizes conformity over truth and biblical discernment.1 As Julia Carrie Wong reports in “Loathe Thy Neighbor”:
*“Stuckey takes as her starting point that great ethical quandary of early June 2020: whether or not to post a black square on Instagram in protest of the police murder of George Floyd. After five pages of deliberation – “I thought some more about posting. It would’ve been easy to do. It would’ve been a way to demonstrate my empathy toward Floyd and victims of racism” Stuckey decided to post instead a video of an elderly Black woman lamenting the destruction of riots. Accused by some commenters of being disrespectful to Floyd’s loss of life, she concluded: “I was facing weaponized, toxic empathy” *(Julia Carrie Wong in “Loathe Thy Neighbor”).
I repeat for emphasis: Stuckey posted the video of an elderly Black woman lamenting the destruction of riots, to represent the chaos caused by “social justice,” showing a supposed harm caused to someone who that “social justice” was trying to protect, and depicting how letting emotions run high leads to bad outcomes. I sleuthed pretty hard to try and find this video and failed to find it. We don’t have any details about who took the footage, where it was taken, when, or how that woman felt being used in that way.
Like those who came before her, Stuckey argues that empathy, being an emotion, makes one “highly susceptible to manipulation,” making it a “dangerous guide for our decisions, behavior, and public policy” (Bloom). Toxic, manipulative empathy, capitalizes on a Christian's “righteous desire to be compassionate” towards perceived outcasts or the weak (Rigley). Accordingly, empathy leads people to affirm what God calls sinful and advocate for ineffective or deadly policies, ultimately damaging the very people they intend to help (Rigley-plus-good). The main contribution Stuckey makes is to apply Joe Rigney’s already evangelical-christianized anti-empathy to hot-button social issues. Stuckey’s right-wing political agenda is explicit:
“In the coming chapters, we’ll see just how toxic empathy is deployed— and how it can be overcome—on the biggest issues today: abortion, transgenderism, “gay marriage,” illegal immigration, and social justice. On each of these subjects, the progressive left uses real-life tragedies and trendy slogans to manipulate well-meaning people like you and me.”
Extending the misogynist and transphobic discourse, she gives us a listicle of red flags to identify when empathy is crossing over to toxic empathy, the first of which is the use of what she calls “euphemisms” that obscure the reality of contentious issues, in her words, making harmful positions seem more palatable. What are these euphemisms? Using “reproductive rights” or “reproductive health” instead of “killing an unborn child,” or “gender-affirming care” for “bodily mutilation.” Toxic, manipulative empathy capitalizes on a Christian's “righteous desire to be compassionate” towards perceived outcasts or the weak. Accordingly, empathy leads people to affirm what God calls sinful and advocate for ineffective or deadly policies, ultimately damaging the very people they intend to help.
She will go on to do what she accuses progressives of doing: she politicizes empathy as toxic where applied to that laundry list of right-wing talking points. The book's first purpose is to justify pre-determined conservative political stances rather than offering a neutral, biblically-driven critique of empathy itself. And while the goal may be to set up a permission structure2 to dehumanize LGBT folks, immigrants, people of color, and women, the logic doesn’t need to work in order to do its job. As I discussed at the end of the last part of this series, the real effect of this is to strengthen the in-group mentality against outsiders, degrade moral reasoning, erode trust in congregants’ own feelings and judgements, and tighten authoritarian control over their believers. It pushes their follower’s fear buttons as well as stoking their righteous pride.
So far, the trajectory has been: 1) Create anti-empathy literature that seems academically vetted to legitimize anti-empathy sentiment; 2) Publish a religious take focused on an evangelical Christian interpretation of the anti-empathy literature; 3) Politicize that religious take by applying it to concrete, controversial social issues. What comes next?
No doubt, they want to make inroads into mainstream US-American culture, and Trump’s election has given them a once in a generation opportunity. (This rhetoric has been brewing for about twenty years, and yet it is just now becoming visible to us on the outside.) The next step is weaponizing this anti-empathy rhetoric against individuals they perceive as enemies of their cause.
As Wong tells it, we saw this anti-empathy and misogynist discourse explode onto the national stage with the Budde incident: On January 21, 2025, the Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde delivered a sermon at the Washington National Cathedral’s inaugural prayer service following President Trump’s second inauguration, wherein she pleads with Trump to show mercy toward immigrants, LGBTQ+ individuals, and others fearing for their lives, urging compassion for vulnerable communities in a moment of national uncertainty.
Wong tells us that Bishop Budde's sermon “touched off a firestorm among some of Trump’s evangelical supporters.” She documents: Christian podcasters Ben Garrett tweets “Do not commit the sin of empathy”; Allie Beth Stuckey tweets about “toxic empathy that is in complete opposition to God’s Word”; Pastor Joe Rigney describes Budde's message as a “clear example of the man-eating weed of Humanistic Mercy” and links it to feminism and the “politics of empathetic manipulation and victimhood.” What is interesting is that Budde never uses the word empathy — she uses the more religiously appropriate terms “mercy” and “compassion.” But it doesn’t matter. She is the perfect lightning rod for their anti-empathy sentiment. She is a woman, in a position of leadership in her church, and carrying the message of a more mainstream Christianity they want to displace or replace. She is attacked and stands her ground well, but their message gets out into the mainstream anyways.
Coda: On December 13, 2024, Gurwinder publishes “How Empathy Makes Us Cruel and Irrational” on his Substack, and I publish my response “Who's Afraid of Empathy?” on December 23, 2024. This piece is where I am first alerted to this anti-empathy rhetoric. I write how, in the end, Gurwinder seems to be smearing “attorney General for Los Angeles county George Gascón with his shit-empathy.” Seeing what is going on in L.A. right now, this becomes conspiratory-ly interesting. Gurwinder portrays Gascón as a symbol of the dangers of unchecked empathy in the criminal justice system, that was supposed to have led to a significant increase in crime. So the playbook seems to be to accuse those they want to discredit with having empathy, which is very similar to the accusation of being “woke.” Their appropriation of "woke" has been more successful, as I wrote before, while anti-empathy hasn't caught on quite as much.
I do think we’re going to see more attacks on empathetic individuals, so look out for this — send it to me, let’s start tracking it.
TIMELINE of the Christian Right’s Anti-Empathy Crusade*
2007: Edwin H. Friedman publishes A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix. Church Publishing, Inc., 2007.
2016: The book Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion by Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom is published, arguing against allowing empathy to guide actions in areas like philanthropy and politics due to potential for manipulation and bias.
2018: Rod Dreher’s *The Benedict Option *argues that the broader culture’s “empathetic” or “therapeutic” turn was eroding Christian moral and social principles, helping to popularize this line of thinking among some conservative Christians.
2018: Pastor Joe Rigney begins evangelizing against what he calls the “sin of empathy,” linking it to feminism and the “politics of empathetic manipulation and victimhood.” Rigney’s "article “The Enticing Sin of Empathy: How Satan Corrupts Through Compassion” published on Desiring God’s website was widely shared on social media, and became a flashpoint for debates within Christian circles about whether empathy is Christian or not.
February 2023: Joe Rigney’s book The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and its Counterfeits is published, offering a critical examination of empathy and distinguishing genuine compassion from its misleading or superficial forms.
2024: Allie Beth Stuckey publishes Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion.
December 13, 2024: Gurwinder publishes “How Empathy Makes Us Cruel and Irrational” on his Substack, and I publish my response “Who's Afraid of Empathy?”on Dec 23, 2024. This piece is where I am first alerted to this anti-empathy rhetoric. In it, I write that, in the end, Gurwinder seems to be smearing “attorney General for Los Angeles county George Gascón with his shit-empathy.” Seeing what is going on in L.A. right now, this becomes even more interesting.
January 21, 2025: The Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde delivers a sermon at the Washington National Cathedral’s inaugural prayer service following President Trump’s second inauguration. She pleads with Trump to show mercy toward immigrants, LGBTQ+ individuals, and others fearing for their lives, urging compassion for vulnerable communities in a moment of national uncertainty.
Within days of January 21, 2025: Bishop Budde's sermon “touched off a firestorm among some of Trump’s evangelical supporters.” Christian podcasters Ben Garrett tweets “Do not commit the sin of empathy.” Allie Beth Stuckey tweets about “toxic empathy that is in complete opposition to God’s Word.” Pastor Joe Rigney describes Budde's message as a “clear example of the man-eating weed of Humanistic Mercy” and links it to feminism and the “politics of empathetic manipulation and victimhood.”
January 30, 2025: Vice President J.D. Vance publicly advocated for a hierarchical interpretation of Christian love, known as ordo amoris, suggesting that love should be prioritized starting with one's family, then neighbors, followed by community, country, and finally the broader world. This perspective was articulated during an interview with Sean Hannity and further emphasized in subsequent public statements.
February 3, 2025: Cardinal Robert Prevost, who would later become Pope Leo XIV, responded to Vance's interpretation by posting on X (formerly Twitter), “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others,” linking to an article from the National Catholic Reporter that criticized Vance's remarks.
February 10, 2025: In a letter addressed to the U.S. bishops, Pope Francis responded to Vice President J.D. Vance's invocation of the theological concept ordo amoris to justify the Trump administration's immigration policies. Vance had argued for a hierarchical ordering of love, prioritizing family, community, and nation over others. Pope Francis countered this interpretation by emphasizing that Christian love should be universal and inclusive, drawing upon the parable of the Good Samaritan to illustrate the boundless nature of compassion. He warned against policies that criminalize migrants and stressed the importance of recognizing the dignity of every human being, regardless of their legal status. The Pope's letter served as a direct challenge to nationalist interpretations of Christian doctrine that exclude or marginalize vulnerable populations.
February 19, 2025: Joe Rigney promotes his book [The Sin of Empathy](http://The Sin of Empathy) on Albert Mohler's podcast, Thinking In Public, where Mohler offers his own critiques of empathy, calling it a “synthetic word,” too tied to “constant emoting,” Marxism, and identity politics.