The term “toxic empathy” was coined largely by Allie Beth Stuckey, a conservative evangelical podcaster. Like so many things with evangelical Christianity, when you have the light of materialism you actually need to dumb yourself down a bit to try and understand it. But here’s my attempt to explain it (cw: I will be talking about how evangelicals justify their transphobia)

Evangelicals despise trans people, gays, brown immigrants, poor people (with poor people being a reasonable proxy for them for “black folks”), womens rights, etc. They want to strip away the rights and protections from these groups and establish some form of Christian nationalism and white supremacy. But the problem is they can’t just come out and say it because their views are already fairly unpopular. So they are trying out this idea that being empathetic to others is usually harmful to the person you are expressing empathy for (btw, Stuckey can’t even get her words right. She’s talking about sympathy, not empathy. But I will stick with calling it “empathy” even though Stuckey is a dumbass who can’t even get this right).

For example, according to evangelicals, being gay or trans is a sin. God designed us to be cis and het. And since God’s designs for his creation are perfect, if you decide to transition and identify as something other than the gender you were assigned to at birth, you are harming yourself. Thus, if you try and empathize with someone who is trans and naturally support their rights to like, exist, your empathy is toxic because you are harming the subject of your empathy and society at large. If you really cared about them, you would explain that their choices are sinful but God offers hope for their souls - not only for their eternal destination, but for the ability to make them cis, the later they usually think is possible through prayer and accepting Jesus as savior, I shit you not. Everything I said above would apply to gay, lesbian, and bi folks as well.

Empathizing with women who want to right to have an abortion is toxic because motherhood is God’s greatest gift to women and what they were designed for. Empathizing with poor people is bad because of the tired old trope that helping poor people only increases their dependence on others. I actually can’t figure out how they think being empathic to immigrants is “toxic”. That’s a tough one because they want to say having more brown people just dilutes the nation’s pure white genes, but can’t. But I didn’t bother to look it up yet.

So all this is your typical evangelical pablum. The only thing about it I find interesting is that it’s not directed towards people outside of evangelicalism. Back in the 90s and 00s, evangelicals would talk a lot about “Judeo-Christian values” as a way to get conservative non-evangelicals and independents to align with their political program. But in recent years, with the rise of Christian nationalism, they seem to be giving up on convincing anyone outside of their own to go along with them. Evangelicals think they have sufficient numbers to enact their political program if they can just get their own people in line and show up to vote. And so long as they maintain their undying allegiance to capital, they may have a point. The capital-evangelical “alliance” means evangelicals get political influence well beyond their numbers. Definitely something to keep an eye on.

[–] rufuscrispo@hexbear.net 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The only thing about it I find interesting is that it’s not directed towards people outside of evangelicalism. Back in the 90s and 00s, evangelicals would talk a lot about “Judeo-Christian values” as a way to get conservative non-evangelicals and independents to align with their political program. But in recent years, with the rise of Christian nationalism, they seem to be giving up on convincing anyone outside of their own to go along with them. Evangelicals think they have sufficient numbers to enact their political program if they can just get their own people in line and show up to vote.

that is interesting. the frontier always comes home, even within these sects, and they're subject to same material forces as the american empire writ large.

american church-going has been on the decline decade after decade, and even the evangelical churches struggle to hold onto their numbers. but these glossy megachurch shopping malls still need some form of message discipline to hold up their ranks. for example, there's a wildly successful megachurch franchise in my area that quietly has lgbtq+ "small groups," but their membership is a tens of thousands of people spread across a dozen or more campuses. i really doubt that 99% of the members know this, and it certainly isn't something that the church leadership condones. but what are these real estate scams going to do? turn down their money? cut off networking opportunities for their next mlm plan? not gonna happen.

today's leading evangelical figures would be pilloried by the bible-thumpers of thirty years ago, when a wife using a hyphenated surname after marriage was considered tantamount to lesbianism, but co-opting liberal hr officespeak and self-help tactics never meant these shits were ever truly tolerant or loving.

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Yes, but it’s all dialectical. Very recently, that decline in white evangelicalism seems to be a bit arrested. Anecdotally, the most rabidly political churches seem to be doing better in the wake of COVID. I do think those churches are attracting some reactionary, unchurched white Americans. Granted, the overall movement may lose 2 people for every 1 they gain with a far-right political message, but that may lead to a smaller but increasingly psychotic evangelical Christianity that is hell-bent on Christian nationalism.

I believe the principal contradiction within White Evangelical Christianity is between the broader, more non-confrontational evangelicalism that - while still quite reactionary and right-wing - is keenly interested in growing their numbers and this Christian nationalist, hyper-politicized Evangelicalism that doesn’t care about overall numbers but does want to attract others who want to implement their political vision by any means. The former side is currently dominant, but the later is the emerging side.