Stuckey organizes her argument around five political issues: abortion access, trans inclusion, gay rights, immigration, and social justice. She comes down roundly on the side of the Republican position on each of these issues, arguing that “the progressive left uses real-life tragedies and trendy slogans to manipulate well-meaning people like you and me.”
Throughout her book, Stuckey emphasizes that while “empathy is a powerful motivation to love those around you…empathy alone is a terrible guide.” In other words, Christians must discern the proper recipients of their empathy.
And the game appears to be zero-sum.
To Stuckey, Christians are called to practice empathy with unborn children. However, she remains suspicious about a “womb to tomb” ethic that examines the systemic causes of poverty and other factors that lead to abortion, even calling such an approach “toxic empathy in action.”
Stuckey refers to systemic racism as a myth, arguing that disparities between white and Black Americans regarding wealth, education, policing, and health outcomes “don’t automatically prove racism.”
Instead, Stuckey seeks to see the world through the eyes of Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who is currently serving prison time for the murder of George Floyd. The killing, which was captured on film, sparked fresh calls for racial justice reform.
Nevertheless, Stuckey more than once questions whether Floyd’s murder was racially motivated, because, “How could I know Derek Chauvin’s heart?”—a breathtaking level of restraint in withholding moral judgment from an author who spends most of her book offering sweeping moral judgments.
Similarly, Stuckey argues that while progressives tell heartbreaking stories of deportations and family separations to trick Christians into feeling empathy for immigrants, true compassion is that which focuses on the American families who are harmed by violent crimes perpetrated by those immigrants. (This despite the fact that immigrants are statistically less likely to commit such crimes than natural-born citizens.)
Stuckey rightly identifies the traditional Christian views of sexuality and gender, astutely pointing out the emotional manipulation that parents of children with gender dysphoria are too often made to endure—“Would you prefer a living son or a dead daughter?” But for all Stuckey’s posturing about emotional manipulation, she uses deeply evocative language and stories herself, more than once smoothing over the theological, psychological, biological, and political complexities of the debate surrounding gender and sexuality.
Through these stories, Stuckey, among other things, strives to establish logical and emotional connections between trans activists and pedophiles, gay couples and the inhumane commodification of reproductive technologies.
In the end, Stuckey makes clear who it is she believes deserves our empathy: Republicans. While Christians must cultivate compassion for their fellow partisans, empathy in any other context is toxic.
Dr. Joe Rigney and ‘The Sin of Empathy’
Dr. Joe Rigney takes the conversation even a step further. To him, empathy is not merely toxic—it can be downright sinful.
While “Toxic Empathy” came out several months before Rigney’s “The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits,” Rigney has been one of the leading voices against empathy since 2021. In March of that year, Rigney appeared alongside Douglas Wilson, founder of Canon Press and self-described “paleo-Confederate,” in a video conversation titled “The Sin of Empathy.”
At the time, Rigney was president of Bethlehem College and Seminary under the leadership of theologian Dr. John Piper. But Rigney tendered his resignation in 2023, citing “vision divergence.” Rigney expressed that his views had evolved on infant baptism and Christian nationalism—putting him at odds with the historic Baptist positions on those issues.
Rigney subsequently joined the faculty of Wilson’s New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho. Canon Press, which had previously published Dr. Stephen Wolfe’s “The Case for Christian Nationalism,” published “The Sin of Empathy,” as well as Rigney’s previous work, “Leadership and Emotional Sabotage.”
