We should still ask our low maintenance friends if they’re okay!

By @wholesomecomics

#kindness #kindnessmatters #compassion #empathy #mentalhealth #mentalhealthmatters #ymhc #communitycare #bekind #peersupport

Really good new article from Shane Burley on evangelical author Joe Rigney and his campaign against empathy as a Christian virtue. It's almost a cliche to describe fascists as defined by their lack of empathy, but there's a lot of truth to it. So it's striking that a guy who has become so influential over the past year or two has done it specifically by providing a framework for justifying a deep aversion to empathy as a core part of (a very particular version of) Christian practice.

Burley talks about this in terms of Rigney's sharp break with the widespread affinity for the state of Israel among far-right Christians in the US, and he's right to do so. I've said it a lot, but it's worth repeating that the most serious fault line on the US right today is between the ones who are just cuckoo for Israel and the ones who are just overt antisemites.

But it's also worth addressing (and this is something Burley doesn't really get at) the fact that opposition to empathy as a Christian value has been with us for a long time in the US, primarily as part of the rationale for unbridled top-down authoritarianism. The whole "bootstraps" thing has always been that: we can't possibly offer a social safety net of any kind, because that would just make people soft and unwilling to let themselves be exploited further. Every angry parent who ever said "This is for your own good" while beating their kid has been lying to themselves (and to their kid) about the importance of suppressing their own empathy for some kind of greater good. And it's not limited to Christians either: it's also the underlying meaning of Ben Shapiro's slogan "facts don't care about your feelings."

At any rate, like so many things in the US today, this isn't a new bad thing. It's an old bad thing that's now being ratcheted up to cartoonish levels.

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From the article:

Rigney may be unfamiliar to many Americans, but he’s an increasingly influential voice amongst evangelical Christians and their clergy leadership. And while he matches some of the more authoritarian tendencies offered by much of the Christian Right, he steps beyond them in his explicit Christian nationalism and his condemnation of empathy for the oppressed.

But what separates him even further, and what likely brought him to Carlson’s attention, is that he strays from the Christian Zionism so often subscribed to by American evangelicals, instead offering his own brand of far-right theocracy as a model for a Republican base rapidly turning to conspiracy theories, abandoning their previous obsessions with Israel, and more willing to see Jews as just as alien as they now see non-white immigrants.

https://maiseh-review.ghost.io/post-zionist-christian-nationalism/?ref=maiseh-review-newsletter

#ChristianNationalism #PostZionism #JoeRigney #empathy

Grandfather with vitiligo crochets dolls for children with same condition.

#kindness #kindnessmatters #compassion #empathy #communitycare #bekind #inclusion #representation #humanrights #ymhc