The Sin of Empathy (Part 1)

Analyzing the theological, ideological, and cultural antagonisms about empathy

During this initial phase of The (Re)union Project, we have been engaged in diagnostic work, trying to understand the divisions within the church and their historical origin. One of these divisions, new for many but a regular conversation at Ideos, surrounds empathy. Over the past 6 years, we have regularly engaged with the “War on Empathy”. This conversation is essential, and hopefully a good starting place for peacebuilding. If we cannot find a way to build peace and seek unity around empathy, how will we ever move to far more profound theological ruptures?

To this end, we previously interacted with Paul Bloom’s book Against Empathy. Recently, however, considerable attention has been drawn to the “sin of empathy” due to its frequent repetition in political conversations. To gain insight into the origin of this phrase and its relevance, we turn to Dr. Joe Rigney's book The Sin of Empathy.

In a recent conversation on Thinking in Public, Dr. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, discussed the book with its author, Dr. Joe Rigney. This conversation provided a helpful summation and exposition of the book's positions and the larger theological context in which it was formed and operates. In reading the book and listening to this enlightening conversation, we paid attention to the following questions:

• What helpful insights into empathy and faith does this book offer?

• What deeper ruptures are exposed in this conversation?

• What are the theological and ideological cultures and beliefs informing and shaping the author’s understanding of empathy?

• Are the ideas in this book directly related to the culture war we see playing out in the church and the political movement that has regularly condemned the “sin of empathy”?

• How does empathic intelligence relate to, contradict, expand, or inform the ideas presented?

How is the Sin of Empathy helpful?

First, we ask, “How is The Sin of Empathy helpful?” Rigney provides a helpful examination of the cultural rise of empathy and its application. Defining empathy is challenging, as we have noted numerous times in our work. Dr. Rigney delves into the challenges of discussing empathy, given its multifaceted nature and its rise to prominence over the past century. He is “not primarily interested in the ‘true’ definition of empathy, but rather with its use and influence in our culture.”¹

He is particularly interested in the distinction between sympathy and empathy, as highlighted by influential Christian writer Brene Brown. The critical difference between the two is the emotional distance between the afflicted and the other. Sympathy can be extended at a distance, whereas empathy involves the sharing of emotions at its core. Empathy conveys “feeling with or feeling in” the other. Rigney notes both the positives and negatives of these distinctions and their potential applications. The intertwining of emotions inherent in how empathy is discussed and utilized causes him concern and forms the basis for the book.

Empathy’s expectation that we experience another’s suffering or distress on an emotional level is problematic for Rigney. “For many, empathy’s virtue (and its superiority over sympathy) lies precisely in this fuller immersion in the pain and feelings of another, in so entering their experience that we fully feel what they feel.”² Whether or not this is the argument of Brene Brown or others is not necessary to investigate. For Rigney, this is the distinction that matters. Empathy’s elevation to a virtue within the church is inherently problematic because of this expected emotional entanglement.

This is a helpful qualifier for empathy and understanding the book’s argument. Rigney’s argument builds upon themes from the aforementioned "Against Empathy” by Paul Bloom. As a tool for decision-making, Bloom's case for rational compassion rather than empathy is rooted in the same fear of the consequences of emotional entanglement. Rigney also draws on the work of Edwin Friedman in "A Failure of Nerve" to highlight how empathy can be a deterrent and obstacle to effective leadership, healthy cultures, and the church's mission. This work and its ideas are vital for us to consider as we wrestle with how God is at work in the world and what it means to join God in bringing healing to the world.

Friedman says, “As lofty and noble as the concepts of empathy may sound, and as well-intentioned as those may be who make it the linchpin idea of their theories of healing, education, or management, societal regression has too often perverted the use of empathy into a disguise for anxiety, a rationalization for the failure to define a position, and a powerful tool in the hands of the ‘sensitive’. It has generally been my experience that in any community or family discussion, those who are the first to introduce concern for empathy feel powerless. They are trying to use the togetherness force of a repressed society to get those they perceive to have power to adapt to them.”³

We don’t have the space to delve into Friedman's work in depth now, but his ideas help us understand the potential dangers of empathy. On this point, Rigney is wise to highlight how our empathy can be hijacked, leading to inactivity or apathy due to the difficulties involved in trying to understand the emotions and experiences of others. Empathy can lock us into a cycle of anxiety or toxicity that directly impedes our ability to act mercifully or compassionately on behalf of another. In a cultural moment where anxiety and emotional distress are inescapable, emotional boundaries are necessary and healthy. This is clear for Rigney, who argues that emotional boundaries are essential to maintain “stability and sober-mindedness necessary to actually help the sufferer”⁴ We will address this concern later in the article.

Some of these themes also appear in the book Bad Therapy by Abigail Shirer. Shirer shares Rigney’s concern that empathy can become an emotional trap that impedes healthy systems. (Shirer is not writing from a theological perspective, but there is a significant ideological overlap.) Shirer writes, “Empathy invariably involves a choice of whose feelings to coronate and whose to disregard… Empathy supplies a narrow aperture of intense caring. Those outside it blur into nothing.”⁵ Rigney articulates something prevalent and rising in this cultural moment: in a profoundly therapeutic and overly anxious culture, people are struggling to maintain healthy emotional boundaries.

Here is how Ideos would describe this struggle: Our empathy is often hijacked in ways that lead not to compassionate living, but to inactivity and apathy. Rather than encouraging us to adopt a compassionate approach to living, our empathizing with the suffering of others often turns us inward, trapping us in self-absorption.

Another way that this book is helpful is through Dr. Rigney’s positive vision for compassionate living. He is trying to help us “distinguish good from bad, healthy from toxic, the virtue of compassion from the sin of empathy”⁶ The book celebrates the virtues of scripture, especially compassion. “The virtue of compassion (or sympathy) is the habitual inclination to share the suffering and pain of the hurting that moves us to relieve their suffering and pursue their ultimate good.”⁷ So, provocative title aside, the book's ultimate goal is to promote virtue and identify obstacles to virtuous living that are inherent in our culture. Empathy is not evil, but the book argues it is a passion. Passions can become sinful when they run wild, just as the sin of anger or the sin of pride. Any passion becomes problematic when it is either deficient or excessive.

This is a point of divergence with the book’s argument. The version of empathy put forth in the book and its capacity for sinfulness rely on it being a passion. We emphasize empathy as a learned intelligence that moves it from mere emotions or passions. Instead of a hindrance, it opens up the possibility for empathy’s role in our transformation and incarnational living.

Rigney argues that empathy can become toxic when it interferes with self-regulation, a concept introduced by Friedman. Without an anchor, without health, and a non-anxious love, our lives as Christians can indeed become malformed and broken. He regularly mentions that compassion for victims of abuse and injustice should be part of the Christian life. Rigney also rightly notes that empathy can be weaponized by those in positions of power to prevent accountability and to harm victims of abuse further. This is embodied in scapegoating, which occurs when those in power hijack the empathy of the in-group and mobilize them against the out-group, portraying them as a threat. (See our article on scapegoating and empathy)

Rigney's questions about the nature and application of empathy are valid and important. Empathy can be weaponized, hijacked, and sabotage our goals. Friedman’s work on family systems, becoming a non-anxious presence in an anxious culture, and differentiating discomfort and harm are helpful for our conversations. Rigney is attempting to navigate a culture that many have identified as overly therapeutic, in search of a better way forward for spiritual formation, leadership, and compassionate living.

What else is at work here?

So, is there a reason why this phrase, “the sin of empathy,” has become so popular in political and theological circles on the far right? How do the arguments of this book resonate with and enlighten the larger war on empathy in the church and our politics? Ultimately, the book reveals the particular theological and ideological forces that have motivated the creation of the category of “sinful empathy” and its intended application. What is revealed is both not surprising and somewhat jarring.

After walking through the weaponization of pity and the culture of victimhood that Rigney diagnoses, he applies this framework to the threats he is genuinely concerned about: the Progressive Gaze and Feminism. Rigney presents an extensive argument, spanning multiple chapters, that the sin of empathy has infiltrated and compromised the church's ministry by forcing leaders and organizations to seek validation under the Progressive Gaze and by empowering feminism within the church.

Suffering Under The Progressive Gaze

Let’s begin our examination with the Progressive Gaze. Rigney says, “Candor and honesty were smothered beneath the progressive gaze. Christians began to censor themselves and became reluctant to challenge woke ideologies, to question specious proposals related to race, sex, and abuse, and to speak clearly about progressive sins.” For Rigney, the civil rights and social justice conflicts of the past decade are conflicts over wokeness. Using this term as a regular description of these issues immediately raises questions as to whether or not Rigney is taking these issues seriously. For example, the redefinition of the term woke, removing it from its cultural context, and using it as a catch-all term for all things Progressive is a tool of ideological dismissal. This is precisely the tactic Rigney complains about and argues is a preferred tactic of Progressives. “Those who control the dictionary redefine morality.” Rigney views this as a reasonable tactic for himself, but an illegitimate ideological tool when used against him. (Transcript from interview with Al Mohler)

The chapter on the Progressive Gaze argues that many church leaders, in their “quest for credibility in urban, elite contexts and the desire to differentiate themselves from the culture warriors..came to live their lives and conduct their ministries under the progressive gaze.”⁸ Rigney makes an extensive argument that the church’s empathy has been hijacked and its message and ministry compromised by having to accommodate progressive views: critical theory, intersectionality, oppressor vs. oppressed framework, victimhood, misogyny, sexism, abuse, and trauma. These forces are the true enemies, causing the sin of empathy.

As we consider the work of unity and peacebuilding, it is essential to note that Rigney’s view is a widely held perspective among many Christians and the evangelical voting bloc (distinguishing this group from historical theological categories). There is a loud chorus of leaders within the church who believe that the church's flourishing and any possible healing require addressing the ideological influences they label as “woke” and how they have hijacked the gospel. Any serious peacebuilding work must understand the nature of these concerns and create space for dialogue in pursuit of healing.

Applying Rigney’s analysis to this conversation is also deeply pertinent in this current political moment. In this moment, the emergence of Christian Nationalism is empowering and fueling the radical transformation of our federal government. Written before the second Trump presidency, Rigney highlights numerous ideologies at work in the church, which, at the time, he attached to Progressives, but are perhaps also now being revealed to be at work within far-right circles as well. The following paragraph can be read one way in 2022, and feels like a very different observation in 2025.

“But in American culture in the twenty-first century, it is the progressive gaze that poses the greatest threat to Christian faithfulness. Given the pervasiveness of progressive ideology in Big Government, Big Business, Big Tech, Big Education, Big Sports, and Big Media, the primary pressure on Christians is from the Left. And as this chapter indicates, the progressive gaze is fueled by passions - untethered empathy, the fear of man, and the desire for approval and respectability.”⁹

With the rapid abandonment of DEI initiatives, policies aimed at curbing hate speech and misinformation, civil rights promotions, and community partnerships, along with the data collection and manipulation taking place in these various industries, it is possible that Rigney is more right than he realized. Maybe the application of his concerns is far more wide-reaching than was realized at the book’s publication.

Perhaps this narrative about “Big _” being a stronghold of Progressive ideology has misdiagnosed the powers at work. Rather than this being empathy run amok, maybe it is simply greed. The unnamed cultural force corrupting the church, one that is being revealed in this moment, is greed. When policies and practices addressing inequality, injustice, or access became unprofitable, much of what Rigney and others feared and complained about disappeared and were dismantled. It is hard to use the category of sinful empathy as a diagnosis in light of this evidence.

In a recent episodes of In Conversation With.. we explored greed and the worship of Mammon, its impact on unity, and how it is reshaping our understanding of the world. Explore our discussions on Mammon and Greed.

“Candor and honesty” are, for Rigney, the significant cost of the Progressive Gaze. This is a vital insight into how this category of sinful empathy is utilized. The concern about the changes in the church is the abandonment of candor and honesty, as well as the inability to speak the truth anymore. For Rigney, this means not being allowed to talk about the truth about gender, sexuality, and Conservative ideology. The scope of the book is limited, but in this argument, there is little space provided for the truth-telling taking place within the church about misogyny, racism, greed, political assimilation, corruption, supremacy cultures, abuse, and cultures that protect the powerful instead of the powerless. Those are addressed as “accusations”, but no more than a nominal mention of these issues occurs. There is no legitimate engagement with these serious and well-documented issues. By sweeping up the rise of a diverse group of voices that have exposed the truth about the brokenness of evangelical culture, and naming them as voices seeking to lead the church into sinful empathy, there is, unfortunately, wholesale dismissal taking place.

A deep concern about the posture accompanying the “sin of empathy” is that it prevents any possible movement towards listening, dialogue, and opening space for healing the church. The application of this category seems to be widening and strengthening ideological divides.

The Fear of Feminism

These ideological walls, which make unity and healing difficult, are further reinforced in the chapter Feminism: Queen of the Woke. Here, Rigney brings in other voices to reveal his genuine concerns. He celebrates the views of Father Calvin Robinson, an Anglo-Catholic priest. “In particular, he (Fr. Robinson) identified feminism as the gateway drug to critical theory in the church, calling women’s ordination a ‘Trojan horse’ and a ‘cancer’.”¹⁰ Women as church leaders are also referred to as a cancer in the church by both Mohler and Rigney in their conversation. As a staunch resister of women’s ordination, and an advocate for a particular theological school which has very defined gender roles, Rigney makes an extensive argument that empathy is feminine in its nature, and the inclusion of women in leadership in the church will compromise the church by bringing empathy into decision making, theological formation, and the reading of scripture.

“Put simply, it is this: men struggle to deal with the unhappiness and displeasure of women. Put another way, female distress activates male agitation. Male empathy for an unhappy woman is frequently a disguise for his own anxiety and angst.”¹¹ Much of the argument in this chapter is an ontological argument that men and women are created differently, and there is a hierarchy in that creation. When men are drawn into feminine behaviors, such as empathy, it will ultimately compromise their design and harm the church. Concerningly, to support these arguments, well-worn and disproven tropes about men being more theologically rigid and women theologically flexible, men thinking and women feeling, and women being easily manipulated by their feelings (especially empathy), are trotted out as evidence of the sinful slide of our culture and the church. In this perspective, empathy and emotional intelligence can be a hindrance when guarding the church's doctrine and worship.

Here are some other descriptions from the book showing the extent of this argument:

• “The empathetic sex is ill-suited to the ministerial office”

• “Pathological empathy”

• “Culture of victimhood flowing from toxic female empathy..”

• “Empathy feeds the competitive victimhood mentality that is rampant in our society. In an empathetic society, victimhood confers invulnerability.”

In the conversation between Al Mohler and Joe Rigney, the following statement was made. (Transcribed from video)

“What feminism has done is it’s taken the more empathic sex, women are the empathic sex by God’s design, I think it’s a glorious design feature that God made women more into emotions, to share emotions, feel emotions, and respond to people suffering with care and compassion. This is a great and glorious gift that God intended to be used for his glory and for the good of others. That’s true, but that same gift, if you put it in other contexts in which you have to draw clear lines and show fortitude and courage, in the face of threats, it is not an asset it is a liability. There is a reason that the empathetic sex is barred from the priestly office…”

Concluding Thoughts

There is much more to say, but understanding the cultural commitments related to the “sin of empathy” is sufficiently done. The arguments of the potential danger of empathy, as offered by Rigney, and oft repeated in our current politics, are directly tied to specific and well defined theological and cultural views that are working to create and preserve a very narrow reading of scripture, understanding of leadership, perspective on the pastoral office, understanding of gender, and political worldview. There is considerable cultural commentary within this argument, but scant analysis of the culture that gives rise to it. There is little unpacking of the nature of these views, as revealed through the experiences, research, and theological work of the people named as “woke” or progressive.

In reality, many of the arguments in the book are disputed within conservative theological circles as well. Brilliant work is being done within theologically conservative parts of the church, examining issues dismissed here as progressive.
This tone of dismissal takes many of the salient ideas in the book about the difficulty of defining empathy, the dangers of our overly therapeutic culture, and its impact on spiritual formation, and intertwines them in thick ideology. There is a notable absence of intellectual humility, particularly in honoring and giving attention to the diversity within the church and 2000 years of scriptural interpretation. Several times, abstract and sweeping comments are made about the church, theology, and cultural developments that are inaccurate both historically and currently.

Unity requires diversity, a commitment to truth, recognition of one another's inherent dignity and worth, and self-awareness. Without being wholly dismissive of Rigney and others who are concerned about the sin of empathy, it is hard not to notice ways in which a lack of compassion or a willingness to listen to other voices in the church results in the absence of a theology of unity rooted in Christ that allows for theological diversity. Indeed, this is a deep chasm to cross in our pursuit of unity.

Using our empathic intelligence framework, it is essential to note that this book also presents a bifurcated understanding of what it means to be human. This bifurcation separates thought from feeling. Rigney and others concerned with the potential dangers of empathy argue that if we just rely on our brains, on being “sober-minded and compassionate,” we can resist being shaped by our culture.

This is wishful thinking. None of us can escape being shaped by our culture. The debate about empathy is not between rational, unencultured thinkers and easily manipulated individuals who are overly influenced by their emotions. Those are false categories. As followers of Jesus, we all strive to understand how our culture shapes us and how being united with Christ will transform us into the image of God.

There is also a lack of recognition of how the brain works, such as what neuroscience tells us about basic processes, including determining who is safe or a threat. What may feel like a rational decision is often an emotionally connected neuro-pathway. The starting point of our engagement with the gospel is one in which God shows up in our culture, reveals that truth to all of us about who we are and how we are misformed, and invites us into a transformation that allows us to embody good news for our culture. This transformation includes renewing our minds so that we will no longer conform to the patterns of our culture. (Romans 12)

Ultimately, the deep trouble in Rigney’s argument lies in his acknowledgement of how empathy can be weaponized and used to demonize the “other.” Yet, he offers no confession of how this occurs within his theological or ideological circles. It is always the other who is at fault. “We find it easy to demonize those that we don’t feel empathy for. Thus, intense empathy for our in-group often goes hand in hand with intense anger (and even hatred) for our out-group. We turn our opponents into devils because they are easier to hate.”¹² It is jarring to read this accurate understanding of scapegoating and enemy-making, only to encounter it repeatedly throughout the book.

In part 2 of this series, we will analyze the arguments about the dangers of empathy as they relate to our framework of empathic intelligence, the theology of the incarnation, and peacebuilding.

1. The Sin of Empathy, p. 21

2. Ibid, p.24

3. Failure of Nerve, p. 142

4. The Sin of Empathy, p.26

5. Bad Therapy, p. 160

6. The Sin of Empathy, p.6

7. Ibid, p. 32

8. Ibid, p.98

9. Ibid, p.100

10. Ibid, p.109

11. Ibid, p.116

12. Ibid, p.67