SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
People tend to think of empathy or caring about other people's feelings as a good thing, but in some conservative circles, there's a growing chorus of voices arguing that empathy could be bad.
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ELON MUSK: The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.
MCCAMMON: That's billionaire Elon Musk, speaking recently on the podcast "The Joe Rogan Experience." They were discussing the idea that unchecked immigration into Western countries is threatening Western political and cultural values. Musk agrees and warns that societies are at risk of self-destructing.
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MUSK: There's so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself.
JOE ROGAN: Yeah.
MUSK: So that - we've got civilizational suicidal empathy going on.
MCCAMMON: Musk, of course, is a close adviser to President Trump and the leader of the administration's DOGE initiative, which is making massive cuts to the federal government, including humanitarian programs at home and overseas. Musk said empathy can be good, but it's too often weaponized to persuade well-meaning people to support bad ideas. In recent months, several high-profile Christian conservatives have been sounding similar warnings.
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JOSH MCPHERSON: Empathy almost needs to be struck from the Christian vocabulary.
UNIDENTIFIED PASTOR #1: It does.
UNIDENTIFIED PASTOR #2: Yes.
MCPHERSON: Empathy is dangerous. Empathy is toxic. Empathy will align you with hell.
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ALLIE BETH STUCKEY: Really, I think empathy as hoisted up as the highest virtue, or even a virtue at all - I think that really gets us into a really big mess.
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JOE RIGNEY: Most people have a hard time imagining how empathy could ever be harmful. And therefore, if I'm the devil, where am I going to hide some of my most destructive tactics?
MCCAMMON: That was pastor Josh McPherson on his podcast, "Stronger Man Nation," conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey on the "Family Talk" podcast, and author Joe Rigney, discussing his book, "The Sin Of Empathy," on a podcast hosted by Al Mohler of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
New York Times columnist David French has noticed this discourse and wrote about it in a recent column called "Behold The Strange Spectacle Of Christians Against Empathy." French says Jesus - the central figure in Christianity - embodied empathy by coming to Earth as a man and enduring the human experience. French notes that Trump has cut programs long supported by many evangelicals and conservative Catholics, including funding for religious organizations that help the poor.
DAVID FRENCH: So how do you rationalize this change? And I think that that's why some of these arguments about toxic empathy and other concepts are falling upon willing and open ears because they're - people are looking for a moral frame around which they can fit the Trump movement, and decrying empathy helps them do that.
MCCAMMON: Some conservatives also argue that women are especially susceptible to being misled by appeals to empathy, often when it comes to helping people who are suffering or in need. Here's Allie Beth Stuckey on "Family Talk."
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STUCKEY: They'll use emotional, compassionate, kind-sounding language in order to get a woman to think, well, in order to be a good person, in order to be kind, in order to even love my neighbor, then I have to be pro-open borders. I have to be pro-LGBTQ. I have to be pro-choice.
MCCAMMON: In an interview with NPR, Joe Rigney said he believes women are more naturally empathetic, which makes them better nurturers. Rigney says they're also more likely to reject church teachings they see as lacking compassion.
RIGNEY: And in that kind of context, the empathetic sex is ill-suited precisely because of the ways that that empathy could be manipulated into, say, refusing to draw lines or in the name of helping a oppressed group, we're going to abandon our biblical confession or something like that.
MCCAMMON: David French, meanwhile, says the idea that women are uniquely vulnerable to manipulation ties in closely with Christian nationalism, the idea that Christian men should run the country.
FRENCH: And so you do have quite a bit of literature in the far right - the Christian nationalist right - that is decrying what they see as the, quote, "feminized church, feminized political discourse." They say that America is a gynocracy, is what they will call it. And that empathy element is a part of their argument.
MCCAMMON: Rigney says he wouldn't flinch from being described as a Christian nationalist.
RIGNEY: And I want society to be Christian. So, yes, I think it's true. I think it's good for the world, and I think it's, quite frankly, good for religious minorities. I think that, in many ways, in the absence of that, tyranny is inevitable.
MCCAMMON: French says he worries that some Christians have shifted from fighting for religious freedom to fighting for Christian dominance. But when it comes to calls for public policies grounded in empathy, he acknowledges that everyone has to draw lines somewhere.
FRENCH: There are times when the head has to overrule the heart. That is something that has to happen sometimes in public policy. But at the same time, there should be no objection to appeals to the heart because our compassion, our empathy is a fundamental part of who we should be as human beings.
MCCAMMON: French says there's nothing really new about accusing one's political opponents of appealing to emotion rather than logic, but he argues there should be room in our political discourse for both. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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