When Bishop Mariann Budde stood in the pulpit at the Washington National Cathedral at an inauguration week prayer service and asked President Donald Trump to show mercy on migrants, some believe she was expressing a biblical virtue.
“Blessed are the merciful,” the Gospel of Matthew recounts Jesus as saying in his most famous sermon, “for they will be shown mercy.”
Joe Rigney was having none of it. The prominent evangelical Christian pastor, commentator and seminary professor saw in Budde’s words a sign of “feminist cancer” invading the church, and said her call for mercy stands in the way of criminals getting what they deserve.
“When it comes to upholding strict standards of justice, empathy is a liability, not an asset,” Rigney wrote in a column for World Opinions, an evangelical publication, not long after the prayer service.
Christian leaders have long disagreed about how the Bible’s values apply to public policy. In the case of Budde’s sermon, however, the values themselves are up for debate. The idea that empathy and mercy are sins has gained traction, particularly among fans of Trump and supporters of Doug Wilson, a controversial evangelical Idaho pastor and publisher.
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Conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey, author of “Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion,” claims that empathy is used by liberals to mislead Christians. Rigney, whose book “The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits” is due out later this year, sees empathy as a sign that “wokeness” has infiltrated the church.
In an interview with media, Rigney said Budde’s sermon showed why women should not be allowed to speak in church services. He argued that the Bible commands its readers to withhold mercy or pity when grave sins are involved.
“The Bible obviously commands us to be tenderhearted and compassionate in various places,” he said. “And then it also says in various places that there are times when pity and compassion are entirely inappropriate.”
Rigney claimed that Budde and other liberals’ desire to show compassion and mercy for immigrants ignores instances of harm done by those in the country illegally, citing the murder of Laken Riley, a young Georgia woman killed by an immigrant. “It’s selective empathy,” he said.
He pointed to a passage in Deuteronomy that commands readers to show no pity when dealing with issues such as idolatry. Rigney said the misuse of empathy is “the main mechanism by which all things woke infiltrated the church and society.”
Franklin Graham, an evangelical leader and longtime Trump ally who also criticized Budde’s sermon, said that the new president’s actions on immigration are about enforcing the law.
“That has nothing to do with compassion,” he told “American Agenda,” a Newsmax program. “It has to do with what’s right to do. If you want to have compassion, then have the law the same for everybody. Don’t have a law for one and another law for another group. No, it’s one law fits all, and we need to stay with that.”
New Testament scholar Scot McKnight said Rigney misses the point about mercy and compassion in the Bible. God cares about justice, McKnight said, but God also shows compassion. McKnight pointed to a passage from the Gospel of Matthew, showing how Jesus responded when faced with human suffering.
“When he saw the crowds,” Matthew writes, “he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”
McKnight suspects that Rigney and those who agree with his views believe some people are undeserving of God’s mercy, but said that mercy as it is presented in the Bible seeks to restore those who have done wrong and seeks to redeem them.
“Their biggest fear is that people are going to be too empathetic and therefore they’re not going to hold the line on righteousness,” he said. “They made a mockery of the gospel of grace and the gospel of compassion. They end up denying the very thing that Jesus was doing.”
The ongoing war on “wokeness” and social justice that has divided congregations and communities, turning issues that even conservative Christians once embraced — immigration reform, refugee resettlement and racial reconciliation — into political minefields.
PEPFAR, the global AIDS relief program that launched in 2004 as part of George W. Bush’s support for a “compassionate conservatism” and championed by megachurch leaders, seems to have lost some support. The funding for the program was paused earlier this week by the White House, then unfrozen after Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued an emergency waiver.
Peter Wehner, a contributing writer for The Atlantic magazine and senior fellow at the Trinity Forum, said that compassionate conservativism has fallen out of favor with Republicans during the Trump years. “For many people in MAGA world, compassion is viewed as weak, hardly a virtue, and certainly not something that should be a goal of government,” he said in an email.
Trump acolytes have questioned the wisdom of funding faith groups that resettle immigrants or assist refugees. On “Face the Nation” Sunday, Vice President JD Vance dismissed the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ recent championing of migrants as concern about keeping federal funding flowing more than about immigrants. World Relief, an evangelical nonprofit, and other faith-based ministries have also been criticized.
“If it can’t survive without taxpayer dollars, it’s not ministry,” wrote author and activist Megan Basham on X on Wednesday. “It’s a government agency.”
William Wolfe, a former Trump official who now runs the Center for Baptist Leadership, called refugee resettlement a grift and part of the “national suicide” of America during a discussion on X in which other speakers accused World Relief and Catholic groups of being anti-Christian and emotionally manipulative.
Groups such as World Relief gained additional access to federal funds in large part due to the “charitable choice” movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s, in which Republicans and Christian conservatives advocated for government funding for faith-based ministries.
Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, a conservative former senator from Missouri who sponsored the original charitable choice legislation, told a White House faith-based conference in 2003: “Charitable Choice was intended to level and broaden the playing field so that secular and sacred organizations could have an equal opportunity to cooperate with government and bring the most effective programs to help feed the hungry, heal the sick, and shelter the homeless.”
Brian Fikkert, founder of the Christian anti-poverty group Chalmers Center for Economic Development and co-author of “When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor … and Yourself,” said he’s baffled by claims that mercy or empathy is sinful.
“God is described as a God of both justice and compassion, and he manages to combine both,” he said. “He calls us to emulate him with deeds of justice and compassion, particularly for the poor, the oppressed, the needy, the foreigners who are in the land. Our entire predisposition ought to be an openhandedness, a compassion, a sense of mercy.”
Fikkert agrees that America should have secure borders and that government officials should be concerned with those who commit crimes, but he said that is not an excuse to treat immigrants with cruelty or scapegoat them.
Instead, the Bible, which teaches that immigrants are made in God’s image, is filled with examples of God telling leaders to be merciful. “The idea that Scripture would forbid a king or a government from being merciful or kind to the poor is just ridiculous,” he said.
Bob Smietana is a national reporter for Religion News Service.
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19 Responses
One problem abetting discussions like these is a failure to define our words. The terms immigrant, asylum seeker, refugee, and alien are often used interchangeably but have different meanings. And different public policy approaches may be appropriate for each.
If God describes Himself in the Bible as full of compassion and mercy, and if He commands us to become like Him, how can such values even be debatable? Do some of those quoted in the above article provoke fear and dissension about culture wars in order to gain attention, social media followers, and revenue?
I’ve never heard anything as crazy as this! Whst is wrong with people?!
This of course is a complex issue. The U.S.has laws concerning immigration. It is expected that immigrants follow those laws as they enter the country. If those laws are unjust or overly restrictive, then the constitution provides ways to change that. If you enter the country and don’t follow those laws then you are an illegal immigrant and therefore a criminal.
Allowing open borders fosters criminal activity such as drug running, terrorism, human trafficking and escape from prosecution of crimes committed in another country. How merciful should we be in those instances? The government’s primary responsibility is to keep it’s citizens safe. Why were these issues not raised in this article. This is another case of confusing terms et. Al. Immigration versus lawbreakers/illegal immigrants.
Thank you, Ron Samples, a voice of reason.
I appreciate your thoughtful response. I was left wondering where the compassion is for the 300,000 children that have gone missing since crossing our border. We can, and should have both compassion and order.
“He pointed to a passage in Deuteronomy that commands readers to show no pity when dealing with issues such as idolatry. Rigney said the misuse of empathy is “the main mechanism by which all things woke infiltrated the church and society.”” The clear New Testament response to idolatry that distressed him by the Apostle Paul was to graciously point out that the real God is not man-made and does not live in houses made by hands. He preached the Gospel. In the 1980’s the Vietnamese church in the US was largely the result of compassion, Christian families sponsoring refugees and imigrants. The words “Remember you were bought with a price” are what needs to guide us, not political grandstanding.
I’d like to know what these individuals had to say about President Trump’s complete pardon for the armed violent rioters who injured at least 140 police officers on January 6th, 2021. Some had traumatic brain injuries, heart attacks, and injuries so severe they couldn’t resume law enforcement duties. 5 officers later lost their lives attributed to the event. Were the views on justice and compassion by those mentioned in this article consistent in these situations as well or did their politics create a hypocritical double standard in how they viewed the pardons of these armed violent offenders who were convicted in a court of law?
I don’t think anyone is against immigrants. It’s illegal immigration that is the issue.
Legal immigration allows the USA to know you’re not a pedophile or criminal before “allowing” entrance into our country. This article uses the term “immigrants” too loosely. I support LEGAL immigration. Calling everyone who crosses the border an “immigrant” is misleading.
Thank you, Adam Tardo, for this important point.
> I don’t think anyone is against immigrants.
Then you aren’t paying attention, or you have a very very broad view of what you consider a pro-immigrant position.
Most prominent anti-illegal-immigration individuals and organizations also call for extreme cutbacks on the number of legal immigrants allowed in this country. A subset of them may say they only want to cut back legal immigration until the illegal immigration problem is “solved”, but I’m skeptical.
Many demonize legal immigrants, such as Haitians, claiming they are eating their neighbor’s pets, without adequate evidence.
Not every person here illegally is a criminal. Yes , they should obey the immigration rules but do we consider the employers who hire them criminals? They are in the image of God and deserve dignity. There might even be a few fleeing persecution.
People who have money to fund teams of lawyers with unlimited access to media, and have powerful friends in America are effectively above the law! The law seems to operate unequally.is It’s interesting to see the alignment between religion and power, especially as Jesus said: “My kingdom is not of this world”.
I feel the devil distracts Christians with emotive words like wokeness, whatever it means- The question is: How do we love our neighbor as ourselves? How do we care for the least amongst us? Forget about terminology or ideology.
So often it seems, christians forget that Jesus came as a brown man . He, like me would be uncomfortable in some of the places dedicated to him. He did go in the synagogue but his greatest teachings were outside among the people. He did not teach theology but spent a lot of time telling us how to live with each other.
Your very first sentence is a non-starter. By definition, any person here illegally, i.e. they did not immigrate legally is by definition breaking the law and they are a criminal. There is no credible debate otherwise. Those people need to be returned to their country of origin. If you advocate leaving them here you are insulting every single person who ever immigrated to this country legally and followed our laws to become a legally-recognized citizen. Authors like Mr. Smietana deliberately use the words immigrant or refugee to engender sympathy for people who actually are not immigrants or refugees. Anyone who is an illegal alien here needs to be deported, not encouraged to break our laws further. As for Jesus being a “brown man,” that claim is patently false. Jesus was a Jew. He was Semitic which is basically a class to itself, and neither white, nor brown as you are using the term.
All countries should have strong borders; without them governments can turn into anarchies. Those who have entered the country illegally are law breakers and the government has a right, and a responsibility, to remove them. I think it’s wrong for churches and others to interfere with the government (e.g., ICE) when removing “illegals.”
However, once people are in America, no matter how they got here, if they need food and shelter and healthcare, it’s incumbent upon Christians to show compassion, helping them as needed, as ministry. I can’t see Christ withholding what is needed for their survival. We belong to a Kingdom; our first pledge of allegiance should be to that Kingdom and motivated by Kingdom principles e.g., the Sermon on the Mount.
I agree with Franklin Graham. Illegal immigrants have broken the law and must receive the consequences which is deportation. We have a system in place for legal immigration.
Just as the “empathy” crowd does not like to draw lines in the sand with the worst criminal migrants, the “justice” crowd often ignores the fact that not all illegal immigrants need to be deported. Of course, Christians are called to love everyone, including the very worst criminals, but that doesn’t mean that they should be able to remain in this country. The way we treat an individual that the Lord puts into our life is not the same as a wide-ranging public policy that must keep the safety of American citizens into account.
I was disgusted by this article but it moved me to make a contribution to World Relief so thanks for reporting on this.
While being aware that life is full of variables, these redefinitions of ’empathy’ seem to be reactionary to the point that if embraced with little spiritual discernment, are unchristian in every sense of the word.
Interesting to note that after interviewing and analysing numerous public servants, professionals, bussinessmen, and military personnel during the Nuremberg trials. The appointed psychologist Gustave Gilbert concluded by defining evil as, “the absence of empathy.”
There are so many assumptions made here, and the title is painfully condescending … “Christianity 101”. I would dare say if you came home to see your front door unlocked, and a person moved into your spare bedroom – you would call the police. You would rightfully ask that the police remove them from your home. If that same person answered an ad to rent your bedroom, you approved them, and allowed them to move into your home, participating in your daily life within pre-agreed boundaries you would not need the law. The law would however, still manage your daily routines.
This is no different, and is not a conversation of ‘Christian’ or ‘Christianity 101’. This is actually a PhD course in Christianity. Demonstrating love and empathy, in the middle of very complex topics, critical to our stewardship of a nation. It is applying the laws that Jesus commanded us to submit to, while also being loving during the enforcement of those laws. This requires wisdom and a daily in pouring of grace, to navigate both with honor,
Nathan, a more apt analogy would be that you posted an ad needing someone to come to cook and clean your house for $10 a day, and you were happy with that arrangement for a very long time. But at some point you decided that you wanted to pay less, so you made a law that no one could come cook and clean anyone’s homes anymore, and then told your housekeeper that you’d keep them on for $5 a day, and they couldn’t say no, because you’d turn them in for breaking the law. And then you lowered it to $2 a day, and $1 a day. And then they made you mad, so you called the cops to have them arrested because they were in your house.
This would be a more accurate analogy, if you also burned down their house so they were unsafe there, and totally dependent on you.
A lot of people who think people being in america undocumented is an injustice to US haven’t looked at american history with immigration, which people are migrating and why, and never seem to be concerned with the people/corporations who EMPLOY undocumented workers, attracting people here.