(Continued from 'Toxic Empathy?' )
“MAGA-aligned pastors and influencers have their livelihoods on the line,” Ajoy said. “If they admitted they were wrong about Trump or started condemning his administration, they’d lose their pulpits, platforms and community. These pastors told their congregants that Trump was God’s chosen, influencers told their followers Christians had to vote for him. And as Trump’s administration continues to enact policies that are in direct conflict with Jesus’ teachings, MAGA Christians are left with a choice: Admit they were wrong or manipulate the narrative.”
The changing views on empathy both reflect and stem from what Levings sees as a major theological shift in evangelical churches and seminaries from 2000 onward.
“Scripturally, it’s Jesus who fulfills compassion and empathy, moving the hard lines of Old Testament law to soften into the fruits of the spirit ― love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness, kindness, faithfulness and self-control,” she said. “But when churches and seminaries moved towards reformed theology and Calvinist doctrine, that came with a return to Old Testament law.”
She pointed to fundamentalists like Doug Wilson and John MacArthur, who were influential in shaping congregations to view empathy as weakness. It’s all part of theonomy ― the belief that Old Testament biblical law, including its judicial and penal codes, should be applied to modern society and civil government.
“Jesus is too liberal, too socialist, too forgiving,” Levings said. “Most importantly, Jesus’s compassion is at odds with the political power sought by the religious right. They prefer the ten commandments, harsh sentences, vanquishing so-called enemies and a militaristic stance in their culture war against science, progress and growth.”
The idea is that God is rigid and static. “Faith is holding a line, not feeling moved to comfort pain or see someone’s humanity,” Levings added.
What Happens When We Vilify Empathy
“Discouraging empathy leads to apathy, which leads to the approval of inhumane horrors,” Ajoy said. “Moral blindness is the direct result of discouraging empathy. We see this today in the unwavering loyalty MAGA Christians have extended to Trump, whose policies frequently stand in direct contradiction to the teachings of Jesus.”
Rather than stand with the marginalized, adherents of MAGA Christianity seem to have chosen to align with the powerful.
“As empathy is suppressed, emotional callousness is reframed as moral strength, and bigotry is reinterpreted as faithfulness,” Ajoy said. “Within Christian communities, condemning empathy distorts the character of God, severing divine justice from divine compassion. It also undermines the command to love our neighbor, where people become issues to solve instead of humans to love.”
Prioritizing self-interest and the interest of any specific political movement over compassion, love and decency risks us losing our humanity.
“Empathy is not optional in a faith that claims to be centered on love,” Hale said. “Love requires understanding and humility. Love requires stepping into someone else’s perspective, even when it’s uncomfortable. The more people choose to villainize empathy, the more risk losing the opportunity to live in a just compassionate world.”
That kind of loss is evident in today’s news headlines and the cognitive dissonance in how so many people respond to them.
“People are looking away and ignoring current events to avoid feeling moved,” Levings said. “They’re insisting they ‘aren’t political’ to avoid being engaged citizens. They’re ‘hardening their hearts,’ defiant and unfeeling. They’re reframing what it means to be called ‘Christian’ because their platform has so little to do with Jesus and what it means to follow Christ’s example.”
The real-world consequences are serious and even deadly at times.
“Sufferers can not count on the Christian community to relieve their suffering, because they’re obeying a dictator rather than living like Christ and seeking to relieve suffering,” Levings added. “Another consequence is that democracy is weakened, and our religious freedoms are stripped as we move into a Christian theocracy that has claimed to punish, suppress, legislate, imprison and vanquish those who don’t agree with them.”
Much of the anti-empathy rhetoric aims to control women. Levings observed that when federal immigration officers detained a preschooler and allegedly used him as “bait” to capture his family members, some of the most outraged and vocal critics were mothers.
“The Christian patriarchy views empathy and compassion as feminine weaknesses, and less masculine, making this part of the overall gender distinction they claim makes men and women different from one another,” Levings said. “Women as a voting bloc also endanger the patriarchy’s grip on political power. This press against empathy runs parallel to other attempts to marginalize women’s power, such as repealing the 19th Amendment, removing women from professional roles and programs and changing divorce laws so that we can’t leave marriages.”
Many of the theologians who spoke to HuffPost highlight the tenet that humans are made in God’s image and Christians are called to imitate Christ, who treated the poor, marginalized and oppressed with dignity and worth.
“Be wary of those flaunting their Christianity instead of living it out,” Ajoy said.
She pointed to the worship services at the White House, Oval Office prayer sessions and loud declarations that religion and Christianity are “back” as “showy demonstrations of faith without caring for the poor, the widow, the orphan, the immigrant, the single parent, etc.” As the Bible notes, “faith without works” is not true faith.
“These are an example of the religious hypocrites Jesus condemned in Matthew 15 ― ‘These people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me,’” Ajoy said. “It appears to me that if MAGA Christians lived in Bible times, they would say Jesus had toxic empathy when he healed people without health care, when he fed people who didn’t earn it or when he forgave and loved the adulterous woman instead of judging her. To have empathy is holy, not toxic.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-surprising-skill-maga-christians-say-is-sinful-goog_l_69976218e4b0f4c9ebc660f6
