Lent 2026, Day 2: Toxic Empathy.

I wanted to share this essay I read earlier by David French at The New York Times:

A year ago this month, I wrote a newsletter warning about a new trend on the MAGA Christian right. Christian theologians and influencers had begun warning about the “sin of empathy” or “toxic empathy.”

In books, essays, podcasts and speeches, prominent Christian influencers, ministers and theologians sounded the alarm that secular progressives were leading Christians astray by appealing to their emotions at the expense of their reason.

The steel man version of their case goes like this:

Progressives have turned Christians’ soft hearts against hard truths. Progressives have persuaded all too many Christians that the suffering of, say, undocumented immigrants or women facing unwanted pregnancies should override their concerns about the economic and social costs of large-scale immigration, or their compassion for victims of crimes committed by immigrants, or their concerns about the plight of the unborn child.

Sometimes, as the argument goes, you have to do tough, hard things. That means mass deportation. That means cutting off aid to the poor and vulnerable in the developing world. That means ending gay marriage even if it breaks up families. And that means the strictest possible pro-life laws, even when the life or physical health of the mother might be at stake, or sending mothers to jail for aborting their child.

And so, Christians, you have to steel yourselves to stand up for truth and righteousness, and accept the condemnation of a world that will call you cruel.

As with many bad ideas, the attack on empathy is rooted in something real. Partisans tend to be terrible at showing the slightest empathy for “them,” the people on the other side.

Immigration activists can be very good at highlighting the plight of migrants, for example, while ignoring or paying little attention to the costs of uncontrolled migration.

More from French:

Arguments about the Middle East are sometimes the worst of all — it can be difficult to find anyone who prioritizes every life at stake in the seemingly endless wars between Israel and its foes.

The problem in those cases isn’t with empathy, which is a vital human virtue, but rather in its selective application. Just as we wouldn’t call love a sin because we might be stingy in our love, empathy isn’t a sin because its application is incomplete.

Or, put another way, our problem isn’t with too much empathy, but too little. We’re unwilling to place ourselves in other people’s shoes, to try to understand who they are and what their lives are like.

It’s hard to talk about this issue without recognizing a fundamental truth of the moment: The attack on empathy would have gained very little traction in the church if Donald Trump weren’t president. He delights in vengeance, and he owes his presidency to the evangelical church.

I’ll never truly understand why the American Evangelical church chose to so fully enmesh itself with a political party. Yes, I know it’s power, control, and “winning.” Yet, from the backing of forever wars to the current idol worship, I’ve been repulsed.

Back to the essay:

Given the sharp differences between Trump and every other Republican president of the modern era, in my experience evangelicals are desperate to to rationalize their support for a man who gratuitously and intentionally inflicts unnecessary suffering on his opponents.

That’s exactly how empathy becomes a sin.

And because empathy is a sin, virtually any appeal to consider the suffering of Trump’s opponents becomes yet more proof that Christians are being manipulated, that their emotions are used against them.

Are you concerned about children who might die because we gratuitously and needlessly cut billions of dollars of foreign aid? That’s toxic empathy. Are you worried about the conditions in detention facilities where migrants are held by the thousands? That’s more toxic empathy. Are you shocked and appalled at ICE’s aggression in the streets? Well, then, you’re losing your moorings. Mass deportation was always going to be tough to watch. Stay strong. Don’t let empathy seep into your soul.

But this problem extends well beyond public policy into the fundamental cruelty and callousness of the culture of the new right. It is no coincidence that the attack on empathy correlates with an extraordinary rise in blatant racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia on the right.

Empathy stands as a firewall against bigotry. But it’s more than that — it can also free you from bigotry. Understanding another person’s experience (and imagining if it happened to you) softens our hearts and creates human connection.

Read the whole thing here.