The Media Explore 'Toxic Empathy' in Christianity

Tim Graham on Sep 10, 2025

PBS News tweeted out something unexpected from conservative Christian author Allie Beth Stuckey, author of the book "Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion." This was the Stuckey quote they shared: "Empathy becomes toxic when it encourages you to affirm sin, validate lies, or support destructive policies."

At first, I hoped "PBS News Hour" interviewed Stuckey, as they did a few months ago with Michael Knowles. But it turns out their website posted an article by Associated Press religion reporter Tiffany Stanley. The story noted the trend against empathy in pro-Trump circles, and balanced it with passionate rebuttal from the "progressive" Christians.

The other conservative in the piece was Joe Rigney, a professor and pastor who wrote "The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and its Counterfeits." He acknowledged: "Could someone use my arguments to justify callous indifference to human suffering? Of course," but the Left uses Christian themes for secular ends. "Jesus was an asylum seeker" is one of their manipulative lines. Or "Jesus was a Palestinian," which aggressively forgets he was a Jew.

It's been particularly jarring to watch Christians oppose empathy, claimed historian Susan Lanzoni, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School who wrote a book on the history of empathy. "That's the whole message of Jesus, right?" No.

Jesus did not show empathy when he turned over the tables of the money changers outside the synagogue, and he displayed some anger when people questioned healing a man's withered hand on the Sabbath. There are times for Christians to be indignant on behalf of God's church.

As Stanley pointed out, Stuckey made it clear empathy can be good, but it's been co-opted "to convince people that the progressive position is exclusively the one of kindness and morality," as in: "If you really care about women, you'll support their right to choose" abortion. Or "If you really respect people, you'll use preferred pronouns" Or another: "If you're really compassionate, you'll welcome the immigrant."

God-fearing people can feel empathy for the stranger -- the immigrant -- but that doesn't have to overflow into an open-borders policy that allows untrammeled illegal immigration.

Conservative Christians feel that the unborn child is a human being who cannot be sacrificed for a woman's convenience. Couldn't it be argued that it's "toxic empathy" to encourage a frightened woman to destroy an innocent baby?

The AP reporter also brought in Episcopal preacher Dana Colley Corsello for the typical liberal-media spin. "The arguments about toxic empathy are finding open ears because far-right-wing, white evangelicals are looking for a moral framework around which they can justify President Trump's executive orders and policies," she preached. Jesus is painted as exactly the opposite of Trump.

The liberal media are much more in tune with far-left-wing, black evangelicals like Obama's former preacher Jeremiah Wright, who didn't display empathy for his fellow Americans when he described 9/11 as the "chickens coming home to roost." That "liberation theology" neatly matches the radical left.

In the days after the article, Stuckey found toxic empathy in the people who felt sorry for the vicious killer of Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte. The killer was a minority. She tweeted: "This animal was arrested and released a dozen times in the name of social justice and racial equity. Social justice and racial equity policies are borne out of 'empathy' for the 'marginalized.'"

Empathy should flow plentifully to the victim and her family, and not the killer. If the killer showed remorse and asked for forgiveness, that could change. But it's toxic in the aftermath of a senseless attack to ignore the murder victim and bemoan a "system."

Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.