Far from being a societal weakness, empathy may very well be the most important virtue we have to save humanity and bring about planetary healing; but it is difficult to cultivate the virtue of empathy without intentionally engaging in personal relationships with persons who are different from us. It is difficult to develop empathy for others if we remain inside a bubble with people who are only like us. 

Here in the United States, we have seen that as empathy has been on the decline, white Christian nationalism has been on the rise. The core evil of the Christian nationalist form of fascism we are currently experiencing is that those who adhere to it are devoid of empathy for persons who do not share their nationalist, patriarchal, and quite often racist version of Christianity. This lack of empathy for those perceived as “other” leads to the discrimination and depersonalization of large segments of our human community and hinders the cultivation of love and justice for all in beloved community.

Christian nationalist fascism strives for a monoculture, and a human monoculture is the enemy of empathy and justice in a pluralistic society. As Christian nationalism waxes, empathy within our society wanes as persons outside the Christian nationalist fold are increasingly viewed as categories of people to control or eliminate rather than persons of inherent worth to respect and celebrate. 

Christian nationalism and fascism are not the same thing, but using the terminology of the sociologist Max Weber, they have an “elective affinity” for one another and have exhibited an increasingly mutually reinforcing relationship such that the fascism we are currently experiencing in the United States is aptly identified as a Christian nationalist form of fascism, though it is also reinforced by other social and economic factors, including the greed of a narcissistic and increasingly nihilistic oligarchy. 

Weber saw a similar mutually reinforcing relationship of elective affinity between the Protestant ethic and the rise of capitalism in Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries that he wrote about in his 1905 book THE PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM. A similar sociological analysis could be made today concerning CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM AND THE SPIIRT OF FASCISM.

One of the best settings in which to cultivate the virtue of empathy is in a diverse, religiously pluralistic, multicultural, and multiracial community – the kind of setting that one for example might find in affordable, accessible, and in-person residential liberal arts colleges and universities and also in intentionally diverse K-12 public schools. It is no accident that both are under attack by Christian nationalist fascism.

In my own experience, it was during my public school education growing up that I first came to know persons of other races and different orientations to religion, and it was in the context of a residential liberal arts college setting that I came to more fully know persons of different cultures, different religions, different sexual orientations. and different worldviews. Two years of studying in other countries as a graduate student was also a mind opening and heart opening experience with persons from numerous different backgrounds and experiences.

If I had not experienced the opportunity to develop these personal relationships with people who were different from me, my worldview would have been so much more narrow and the scope of my empathy for others much more limited. 

It was in the context of a liberal arts education that I first experienced in-depth dialogue with persons and ideas that were very different than my own, and it was also in this setting that I engaged in service to others with persons who had very diverse and different orientations to religion. Judgments and prejudices were challenged and transformed by the crucible of real-life relationships as I experienced the love and empathy of others who were different from me in ways that expanded and deepened my understanding of who they were as persons sharing in this journey of life together. 

My whole concept of heaven and hell radically changed because of the empathy that was developed during my liberal arts college experience as it became apparent to me that my fairly fundamentalist view of Christianity would mean that hell would be full of billions of loving and kind people, and I was not able to reconcile that with the idea of a loving and just God. Had I gone to college with only Christians who thought like I did, it may have taken me much longer to move away from such a deeply flawed theological position that entails believing in the eternal torment of billions of non-Christian souls. 

Fascism has always viewed a liberal arts education as a threat to its vision of a monoculture society with little to no empathy for persons seen as being outside of the nationalist monoculture. Fascism uses education as an instrument to indoctrinate, control, and divide us rather than as a means to cultivate empathy in a pluralistic society 

Pluralistic and participatory democracy on the other hand strives for true freedom, and true freedom entails using our freedom for each others, seeing ourselves as being in this together, living into our interdependence with one another, and cultivating a culture of empathy. True freedom entails working with others to build a community of empathy, love, mutual support, justice, and resilience because no one should have to face what is coming alone.

If we really want to regenerate Earth and enjoy a truly flourishing world, we will also need to cultivate an empathy that goes beyond the human community to include the community of all life as we recognize that both human animals and other-than-human animals are all in this one world house together and that our well-being is a function of our mutual interdependence. If we work together to cultivate inter-species empathy, then we might come to understand that empathy is not and has never been a weakness. On the contrary, empathy is the superpower of beloved community.