I remember those little story books we had in Presbyterian Sunday School when I was in first grade.
On the cover of one book, a serene Jesus walks across a flower-strewn meadow accompanied by children and baby animals. Birds fly beneath a bright sun and fleecy clouds.
The theology was plain to those of us just learning to read: “Jesus is love,” as the Good Book says.
Yet to some conservative Christians these days, Jesus is a double-fisted, muscle-bound tough guy ever-ready to vanquish foes, apparently including Christians of the Jesus-is-love persuasion.
They warn against “the sin of empathy,” which they say leads to a nation of wimpy and wussy menfolk. There’s even a book titled The Sin of Empathy.
Growing up Presbyterian, I learned that empathy was a big-time Christian virtue. It still is, according to the Rev. Dwain Lee, pastor at Louisville’s Springdale Presbyterian Church.
“From the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation, empathy is the absolute, essential cornerstone of everything in the Scriptures and everything in the faith,” he said. “It takes an awfully skewed distortion of that continuous story to get where these guys are going.”
I suspect many, if not most, Kentucky churchgoers don’t believe empathy is a sin. I hope they don’t.
But empathy is a top-shelf transgression among some conservative Christians, nearly all of them white, but notably those that embrace Christian nationalism, the idea that America should officially be a Christian nation dominated by white, straight Christian menfolk. Not coincidentally, Christian nationalists are among Donald Trump’s most fervent disciples.
Last year, Lee was among many pastors nationwide who defended Washington D.C. Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde’s inauguration day sermon in which she besought the newly reelected president to “have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.”
Trump, who was in the Washington National Cathedral congregation on Jan. 21, 2025, “didn’t like it,” wrote Brian Kaylor in A Public Witness online. “… A bunch of Trumpian pundits, preachers, and politicians also attacked Budde for standing up for LGBTQ children and undocumented immigrants. Her conservative critics apparently just learned that Episcopalians exist! But beyond just being upset that some Christians are liberal, many of the criticisms seemed to imply the church and Budde should have focused on supporting Trump and helping build national unity behind his agenda.”
In another story, Kaylor quoted from sermons in support of Budde, including Lee’s: “Regardless of who we voted for, regardless of whether we’re Democrats or Republicans, regardless of whether we’re liberals or conservatives, we are first followers of Jesus Christ. … When people in this church are vilified for proclaiming the simple, true message of the gospel, when there are now people seriously claiming that empathy for others is actually a sin, when government officials are trying to muzzle and punish religious expression of the gospel, and most significantly when history offers us a clear and stark precedent, I just can’t stress enough the urgency of the times you and I are living in as people of faith.”
Murray State University historian Brian Clardy, an Episcopal layperson who is licensed to preach, agrees with Lee. “Christian Nationalism is predicated on this very stark, linear, dystopian view of reality that privileges the wrath of God as opposed to the love of God,” the professor said.
He also said Christians nationalists elevate The Last Judgment over the Sermon on the Mount. “In Revelation, you do see a militant Jesus – the one they admire. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is talking about empathy, compassion, benevolence and charity, which they want to sweep under the rug.”
Christian nationalists aren’t content to worship a Rambo Jesus in their churches, according to Clardy. “They want to impose that vision of Jesus on the rest of us, make it public policy and codify it into law.” Christian nationalists, Clardy added, “don’t want us looking at each other as human beings. They don’t believe in the oneness of siblinghood and humanity.”
Lee said Christian nationalism is rooted in Dominionist theology — “this idea that we just can’t sit around and wait for Jesus to return. We’ve got to create this world that’s ready for him.”
Lee also said that Dominionism includes the Seven Mountains Mandate, which holds that conservative Christians must control a septet of key American institutions: education, religion, family, business, government, arts, and the media.
“Their goal is to capture all seven of those ‘mountains’ in a very forceful and macho, chest-thumping way,” said Lee. “They say the meek and mild Jesus was for a different era and they point to Revelation where Jesus is so powerful and forceful.”
But he said Christian nationalists seem to have forgotten why Jesus is so militant. The pastor pointed to Matthew 25:31-46. “This is the one place in the New Testament where Jesus discusses what the final judgment was going to be like.”
Christ, Lee added, “explains that you are going to be judged by whether you had empathy for suffering folk. So who is Jesus being militant against? The people who were not exhibiting empathy.”
He said the idea that empathy is a sin “is heresy, absolute heresy.” He said Christian nationalists “want to control all of culture, all of society based on one narrowly, distorted, heretical version of Christianity with absolutely zero tolerance, zero forbearance for other views. What they’re doing is maddening; it just validates their ignorance, bigotry and prejudices.”
--30--
Comments
