Empathy is commonly seen as a virtue, but a growing current within the Christian right characterizes certain forms of empathy as harmful. Critics claim empathy can be exploited to persuade believers to accept abortion access, LGBTQ+ rights, illegal immigration and specific social and racial justice positions. One critique describes empathy as toxic when it leads to affirming sin, validating falsehoods or supporting destructive policies. Two evangelical books present Christian arguments against some empathy forms, and these ideas gained traction amid political moves framed as lacking empathy and religious defenses prioritizing family and ordered love.
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.
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.
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