Book condemning empathy takes aim at power of feminism in church and society
Book review: ‘The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits’ by Joe Rigney, ★☆☆☆☆
When an author uses something like The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits for the title of his book, you can count on it being provocative. And indeed Joe Rigney’s new book is, the title alone being enough reason for it to garner plenty of attention both within and outside the target audience of MAGA-style Christians.
But The Sin of Empathy is more than provocative: It’s a misogynistic mess in which the author pulls a sort of bait and switch, never really arguing that empathy as typically defined is inherently sinful, but instead using the book as a springboard to suggest that American Christianity has become too feminized.
In Rigney’s worldview, women are the empathetic danger to American Christianity. He sees value in the tendency of women to experience the feelings of others, and acknowledges that their sensitivity to the pain of others can be the glue that holds communities together. But the problem, as he sees it, is:
The same impulse that leads a woman to move toward the hurting with comfort and welcome becomes a major liability when it comes to guarding the doctrine and worship of the church.1
And what does the province of men, the “guarding the doctrine and worship of the church,” entail? The first example Rigney uses is the incident in Exodus 32 when Moses comes down from the mountain and sees the idolatry of the Israelites, then orders the sons of Levi to kill the idolators, which included their relatives, friends and neighbors. “Their eye was not to pity those who had committed such evil,” Rigney writes — but that is exactly what women would have done, which is why God put the men in charge.
And because God requires men to be ready to impose judgment, no matter how harsh, Rigney says, “the empathetic sex is ill-suited to the ministerial office.”
Rigney, a theology professor and former pastor, goes on in some detail about how the empathetic influence of women can be so destructive to the church. But Rigney doesn’t stop there; he sees it as also destructive to our society:
Of course, such pathological empathy is not restricted to the church. Our entire society is currently being destroyed by it. Running beneath the various forms of critical theory, whether feminist, racial, or queer, is a culture of victimhood flowing from toxic female empathy.
When Rigney calls empathy sinful, he is careful to define precisely what he means: Empathy is different than compassion, which he sees as good. And it is different than experiencing the feelings of another, even though that is the way “empathy” typically is used outside his book. Empathy as defined in this book is misapplied compassion, a type of compassion that is less than loving because it doesn’t take into consideration the total needs of the person. Rigney devotes a full chapter to the idea of empathy being a type of weaponized pity.
Rigney uses the analogy of someone watching a man drowning as he floats down a river unable to save himself. The empathetic person, he says, is the one who jumps in without thought, resulting not only in a failed rescue but also the possibility of two people drowning. The truly compassionate person, on the other hand, finds a way to to get a rope and life preserver.
And in Rigney’s way of thinking, it is women who would be reckless in how they express compassion, while it is men who would take the thoughtful and steady approach, the one really capable of saving people.
This book is part of Rigney’s effort to “remove the feminist infection from our churches.” As it turns out, this book isn’t about empathy as most of us use the term. It’s a promotion of the type of “Christian” masculinity that fails to recognize that women as well as men are created in the image of a loving God.
“Church” is being used here and throughout this article in the sense of referring to the entire body of believers in Christ.