We Live In A Political World: #304 / Empathy Is Not A Sin

Click Here For The Blog In The Original

The May 2025 edition of Sojourners Magazine had a discussion about "empathy," and considered whether or not empathy might be a "sin." Online, as you will see if you click the following link, the headline on the discussion about empathy read this way: "If Empathy Is Wrong, I Don't Want To Be Right." In the hard copy version of the magazine, the title was more direct: "Empathy Isn't A Sin."

The article I am talking about was written by the editor of Sojourners, in response to a "tweet" by a Utah church deacon and "self-described Christian husband and father" named Ben Garrett. Garrett's "tweet" was responding to a sermon preached by the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, D.C., the Reverend Marianne Edgar Budde." The Bishop's sermon, given the day after the inauguration of our current president and vice president, urged them to "have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now” — specifically naming transgender and undocumented children who feared what the new administration would mean for them.

Here is the tweet by Ben Garrett, written in response to Bishop Budde's appeal, with Garrett's tweet accompanied by a picture of the Bishop:

Do not commit the sin of empathy. This snake is God’s enemy and yours too. She hates God and His people. You need to properly hate in response. She is not merely deceived but a deceiver. Your eye shall not pity.

I have fallen far behind in reading all the magazines to which I subscribe. I just recently read the May 2025 edition of Sojourners. I was stunned by this appeal to hate.

I hope that anyone reading this blog posting of mine will be stunned by Garrett's statement, as well, and will think about the kind of corrosive hatred that has so profoundly infected our political life - and of which this is such a profoundly powerful example.

We can only live together if we have love and empathy for those with whom we may profoundly disagree.

Empathy is not a sin!