On Empathy, Bishop Budde, and Christian Nationalism

It seems I have to remind people that empathy is not a sin.

In case you’ve been living under a rock this week, get back under it, because I’m going to talk about a situation involving President Trump. On Monday, we had the inauguration of Donald Trump, and I’ve made my opinion quite clear about Trump. This isn’t about him. It’s about the woman who preached a sermon to him, Bishop Mariann Budde– or rather, it’s about the reaction to her sermon.

The day after the inauguration, Trump and his posse attended a service at the Washington National Cathedral, officiated by Bishop Budde. And the good bishop preached a sermon wherein she asked the president to have mercy on certain marginalized groups like immigrants and LGBTQ people. You can read the text of that sermon here. There is not anything alarming in it. We’re supposed to have mercy on everyone.

The Bible is not nearly so clear as people would like to believe about many topics, but it’s crystal clear that we owe mercy to immigrants. And whether you’re Side A or Side B or any other letter of the alphabet, I can’t imagine being a Christian and NOT agreeing that we ought to show mercy to LGBTQ people, whom the bishop said “fear for their lives.” If you think that Transgender people are only suffering from a mental illness, we’re going to disagree on a lot, but you and I still ought to agree in principle that we should show mercy to a child afraid for her life.

Of course, the internet went bananas. I saw a lot of people congratulating Bishop Budde for her words, as I myself did. I saw people taking it a little far and posting pictures of her with a halo. I saw people sharing the fact that when the parents of Matthew Shepherd were unable to bury his remains, for fear the grave would be vandalized, Budde is the one who invited them to bury him in the National Cathedral– a fact that made me respect her even more.

And then there were the remarks from Christians who didn’t like her.

I am always surprised at how offended some people can get at a female cleric who isn’t in their denomination and has nothing to do with them. They were furious with Bishop Budde. I saw scores of people insisting that she isn’t a real bishop, refusing to call her “bishop” without ironic quotation marks, making fun of her looks and her short pixie haircut. I was scolded for praising her sermon because the sermon was somehow “not Biblical.” I was told that she only preached the sermon and invited so much negative attention in order to gain fame and money. It got so ridiculous I began to suspect that half the people dragging her on social media were parody accounts designed to make Christians look terrible.

And then I got the worst take of all, on X of course, from a Protestant deacon named Ben Garrett. Garrett went and invented a news sin to accuse the bishop of committing:

“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 is a deceiver. Your eye shall not pity.”

I’ve been trying for years to articulate the difference between the thing I call “American Christianity” and that other form of Christianity, the one I think actually has to do with Christ. It’s not about denomination, because I’ve met Catholics and Protestants of all stripes who fit into both categories. It’s not about whether you prefer a more traditional liturgy or a modern one either. It’s not urban versus rural. It’s not to do with your level of education. It’s something else entirely and I haven’t known just how to put it, but this angry grouch of a deacon just made it clear for me. The difference between the thing I call American Christianity, and authentic Christianity, is that American Christianity thinks empathy is a sin.

Empathy– feeling with another, suffering with them, putting yourself in their shoes– is a sin, for the White Christian Nationalist.

For the Christian who’s actually trying to follow Christ, it’s a virtuous trait to be cultivated.

Empathy is, after all, a trait that Jesus displayed in spades. I can’t find a list of all the times the Gospels say that Jesus was “moved with compassion,” but that phrase is used at least twice in Matthew, once for a multitude of people and once for the blind men who cried “have mercy on us, Son of David!” He’s moved with compassion at the sight of a leper in the first chapter of Mark and at the crowd in the sixth chapter. In Luke, Jesus was moved with compassion at the sight of the widow with the dead son. I haven’t found the exact phrase “Jesus was moved with compassion” in the Gospel according to John, but John does contain my favorite Bible verse of all time: at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, “Jesus wept.” It seems to me that Bible-believing Christians are required to understand that Jesus had empathy.

If you hold the Catholic view of the Passion and Death of Christ instead of believing in substitutiary atonement, then the whole reason Christ became Man in the first place was empathy: He wanted to suffer our suffering with us so He could draw our human experience up into the life of the Holy Trinity. But I can’t imagine Deacon Garrett would have any patience for that kind of theology.

I have said before that the opposite of Christ isn’t the devil, the opposite of Christ is empire. And White Christian Nationalists have made it their entire program to create an earthly empire, with Christ is their excuse.

I would also say that the opposite of Christ who descended from Heaven to Earth and from Earth into hell in order to suffer with us, is a Christianity that condemns empathy as a sin. It seems the White Christian Nationalists are doing that as well now.

I am thankful for Bishop Budde’s witness to the Gospel.

In a way, I’m also thankful for Deacon Garrett’s witness. It’s taught me something I didn’t know about the depravity of White Christian Nationalists.

I know which type of Christianity I’m going to practice.