I’m interested to see that Joe Rigney’s book “The sin of empathy” is continuing to generate a lot of passion. New Testament scholar, Robert Gagnon has posted a short article on facebook reacting to an article under the headline “Christian nationalists decided empathy was a sin, now it’s gone mainstream”.
He complains about the
“Absurd title and general content that tries to ignore the distinctions mentioned but immediately discounted:”
Having read and responded to Rigney’s book under this tag https://faithroot.com/tag/empathy/, personally I don’t think that the headline is unfair because it takes as its starting point the title to Rigney’s book and also because I’ve heard numerous people describe empathy itself as problematic or even sinful.
As a few people pick up, including Robert, the confusion about what is meant by empathy lies heavily with Rigney’s work itself. Dani Treweek’s excellent review picks on this a confusion and chopping and changing of terms. I don’t think Rigney really has a defence here to the muddle he gets himself into.
Gagnon says:
“Rigney apparently does not believe that empathy per se is a sin, just as anger per se is not a sin. It is only misused empathy and anger that are sins.”
Whilst Rigney talks about “untethered empathy” in the book, it is also clear that he believes the better emotion/response to be sympathy and so I’m not convinced that the distinction between “empathy” and “untethered empathy” works, except in a row back. The sense coming through the book is that Rigney doesn’t think empathy can be tethered because it is a “feeling in” rather than a “feeling with”.
We might argue also that the problem in terms of failure to challenge and confront sin is not an untethered empathy but rather a tethered empathy that is tethered to something different, an alternative truth if you like. The reason we are discouraged from challenging certain decisions is not because we are meant to empathise with people, after all, there is no place for empathy for certain people or positions. We are not meant to empathise with the Christian nationalist, Donald Trump or the alt right.
The world has no place for empathy for those it considers enemies. Rather we are meant at that point not to confront because we are being told not just that the action/position is understandable but that we believe it to be right. Indeed, one might argue that this is no empathy at all. If I can only empathise with those I agree with them surely I am not really empathising, my feelings are my own, not theirs.
Faithroots 