White evangelical protestants in the US are the only religious group 'in which a majority says empathy can become dangerous when it leads people away from a society guided by God's truth'
https://www.axios.com/2026/10/20/religious-divide-empathy-democrats-republicans
Oct 20, 2026, 1:07 PM@skinnylatte I have no idea how these people can read the Gospels and come to the conclusion that "empathy is bad, actually." I just don't get it.
I mean, I understand how it's happened. I've seen it in real time as American Evangelicalism has evolved into what it is today, I just...gosh, I hate it.
@mdmrn that's because it's an in-group / out group cult (many of them are but this one especially). they exist by saying that salvation only for people inside, damnation for everybody else. it's what they need for their sect to survive (hatred)
Oct 20, 2026, 1:10 PM@skinnylatte They need an enemy to continue to function. Which...is not how Christianity SHOULD work.
I know organized Christianity has worked that way, many times over throughout history, but it shouldn't. Not based on what they claim to believe.
@mdmrn @skinnylatte if that's not how Christianity should work, can you please explain the last two thousand years?
Oct 20, 2026, 2:03 PM@Affekt @skinnylatte Men using religious institutions to maintain power structures. I mean, that's what has happened.
Empathy should be at the core of a faith that claims to worship a man who said to love your enemies the same as your friends.
Randomly, I had to bring up Mel Brooks because of these posts 🤪
Oct 20, 2026, 5:11 PM@ai6yr That should shut us up, all right. :-# @mdmrn @Affekt @skinnylatte
@hakona @mdmrn @Affekt @skinnylatte LOL not commenting on your great posts, just randomly reading this Mel Brooks started playing in my head... apologies!
Oct 20, 2026, 5:50 PM@ai6yr No apology needed 😁
Mind-blowing that they would put on such a large production for a skit. Lots of neat stuff to unpack, though I (as a foreigner) find some of it hard to grasp. I did recognise a New-Yorker in there at one point though. Wondering if everything happening there has any /meaning/, or if they put some of it in just for fun.
@mdmrn @Affekt @skinnylatte
Maintaining power structures and hierarchies is a feature of monotheistic religion.
Oct 20, 2026, 4:51 PMlook, am an atheist and look at Constantine’s conversion as an opportunistic move to consolidate power AND RAISE TAXES; but the hierarchy was with the divine NOT one another
» John, CHAPTER 13 | USCCB
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/john/13
16 Amen, amen, I say to you, no slave is greater than his master nor any messenger greater than the one who sent him.
34 I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.
Oh I agree, it's completely antagonistic to the teachings of the NT, but the idea of a single, God-appointed dictator to rule over all of His people in His name went went down a storm with the Roman Emperors and the pagan Kings and Queens of Europe.
Can't imagine why 😔
Oct 21, 2026, 11:17 AM@ReggieHere @blogdiva
There is always the power that devolves from that one up there to his earthly representatives, either divine emperors, kings, popes or mere clergy. Who have the power to interpret and guide and enforce. The rest is history.
@mdmrn @Affekt @skinnylatte
Well, there always has been since Zarathrustra came up with the idea of monotheism. Before that pretty much everyone worshipped multiple Gods which was more of a crimp on the ambitions of dictators.
Oct 20, 2026, 4:44 PM@Affekt @mdmrn @skinnylatte
Same as Apple. It all started going down hill when the man himself died.
Oct 22, 2026, 11:45 AM@Affekt @mdmrn @skinnylatte
this is how #christianity •should• work: https://christspiracy.com/
lots of good jesus stories in the new testament, really, but then they add all this homophobic oppressor shit by this asshole roman cop called paul.
@mdmrn @skinnylatte By far most religions work like this, when you look past the gilded entry doors: the others are sinners and they will be punished.
Which invariably gets translated as: they *must* be punished (by the believers, that is, and not by the supreme being).
@skinnylatte @mdmrn …if the authoritarian personality was a denomination…
Oct 20, 2026, 1:46 PM@skinnylatte @mdmrn Cult dynamics are the key to understanding this, I think. The in-group vs out-group division is important, but so too is the unchallengeable authority that lies at the heart of these cults, whether those are personalities or ideals. Empathy tempts the believer to look at the suffering of those in the out-group and ask “Isn’t this excessive? Shouldn’t we be doing *something* for them?” But that undermines the authority that drew the r lines separating the elect from the unsaved, so empathy becomes a sin.
All of this is anchored by emotional needs that bring people into cults and keep them there…though I understand that operates more on an individual level and tends to fall apart across generations
Edit: adding link to YT channel about cults: https://youtu.be/8iiVfpPrFAY
Back in 2025 when Elon‘s attack on empathy was doing the attention cycle, I started nosing around. You can get a broader picture of the effort being put into eradicating empathy, which by the way they can’t do because human society requires the ability to coordinate emotion.
Empathy is the great egalitarian equalizer. That’s why high control groups need to expropriate it
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @pcas @skinnylatte @mdmrn A society controlled by narcissists is hell on earth.
Fascism is a hell of a drug.
The assault on empathy is disingenuous. The tactic of the religious right is to claim that empathy is some novel concept of the left wing.
The only problem with that is it’s completely wrong (in so many ways)
Cult relies on making themselves unavoidably distinct from the rest of society. Destroying people’s empathy for other isolate them, as well as branding them behaviorally.
@mdmrn
@skinnylatte
Oh, that's an easy one: they DON'T read the Gospels. One would assume, "evangelical Christian," means an extremely devout person steeped in the tenets of their religion... One would be wrong. They're steeped in Facebook memes and hate-talk radio.
Oct 20, 2026, 4:52 PM@TheGreatLlama @mdmrn @skinnylatte 🛎 🛎 🛎
@mdmrn @skinnylatte Most Christians DON'T read the text, and are conditioned to follow cult leader types rather than use discernment or any philosophical rationale.
It remains a foundational principle of Evangelicalism that questions are bad, and no one should actually read anything.
Modern Evangelicals don't even go to church much if at all, and are totally lead by "influencers", aka propagandists.
This is one of the many ways Putin plays us in the US and England.
@mdmrn @skinnylatte just look at the history of Christianity in Europe. When did they ever have empathy?
@skinnylatte but hey, there's an impossible-to-explain epidemic of marginalized people going nc with their blood relatives
@skinnylatte Maybe I’m just naïve, but I’m surprised not everyone with faith agree with the statement that empathy is foundational. 😬
@morino_pottery @skinnylatte religious folks may say "god is love" but they worship an angry, vengeful, punishing god - and they preach hell and damnation - not much empathy there.
@skinnylatte Nietzsche would be really confused
Oct 20, 2026, 1:16 PM@skinnylatte some people need a shot of Sermon on the Mount straight into their veins
Oct 20, 2026, 2:22 PMOr the parable of the Good Samaritan, which is entirely about how it doesn't matter who you are or positive or negative prejudices that may relate to you, what matters is how well you treat people around you.
Oct 21, 2026, 12:16 AM@david_chisnall @venite @skinnylatte or really anything from the entirety of all four gospels for heaven sake. Grab a chunk of text from anywhere, the message is consistent. They’re just not trying to hear it.
Their ancestors in Europe ran away because they didn't have empathy towards them. Now they do the same to non-Christians in the US.
@skinnylatte A repugnant group of people who use "religion" as a veil for racism and general discrimination. They cherry pick passages from the Bible to justify their behavior and pretend they are "good Christians" while they violate the teachings of their Messiah and much of the old testament.
The weird thing is how recent so much of it is.
I was recently reading about an early 20th century cult leader and scam artist called Sister Aimee, thinking I was going to learn about the history of cults and scams, and instead fell into a rabbit hole of the emergence of American Evangelical Christianity, and how it evolved during the 1930s - 1950s period from a variety of other religious groups.
There are still people alive today who were alive when sects like Pentecostals were pacifists and antiracists.
@skinnylatte well yeah, evangelical "Christianity" is a cult that uses Christian symbols but venerates money, power, and violence in place of Christ
@f1veg0ldenrAyz @skinnylatte No. White Christianity(NOT just evangelical at all) is first and foremost Nazi eugenics, racism above all else. Name racism. Name Nazism, which is centuries older than Hitler. This appears to be incredibly painful for white leftists to do, every bit as much as for white right wingers. Whites have always been a minority of Christians, but a horrifically genocidal, toxic minority. Facebook once banned me for a month for posting that fact.
@jonesmurphy @f1veg0ldenrAyz @skinnylatte
This yt #Episcopalian is here to agree, & to recommend Dr Ibram X Kendi's books to folks who find the facts hard to swallow
I've come to understand that #Fascism is what we've been trained to call #Capitalism when it starts treating ytpipo the way it's been treating #BIPOC folks the whole f'in time
Solidarity from Tacoma
:BLM: :af: :ai_free: :iww:🇵🇸🕊
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/778233/chain-of-ideas-by-ibram-x-kendi/
@jonesmurphy @skinnylatte
"white" is a social category applied to different groups of people in different places at different points of history. Most white Catholics and Orthodox Christians weren't event considered to be white in the US up until recently. Do you mean Protestantism? Most black Christians are Protestant. How do you square that circle? I suspect that you can't. Your heart is in the right place but I think you need to improve your analysis of the world: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm
@f1veg0ldenrAyz @skinnylatte What you write is insane bullshit. White Catholics were enslaving blacks in what is now the USA over a century before any Protestants arrived. The white Catholic Spaniards and Portuguese led the European onslaught on Africa starting around 1400, and then a century later attacked the Americas dragging black captives. Your knowledge and understanding of US history is trash, starting with the centuries of European Empires which gave birth to the US. Shame on you.
@jonesmurphy @skinnylatte oh okay you're just a nutcase, then. Gotcha. Enjoy your block 👍
Oct 20, 2026, 4:03 PM@f1veg0ldenrAyz @jonesmurphy @skinnylatte
Facts don't care about your feelings, "Billie Bones."
Here's a block for you.
@f1veg0ldenrAyz @jonesmurphy @skinnylatte
Goodbye Billy
@f1veg0ldenrAyz@layer8.space @skinnylatte This racist (https://layer8.space/@f1veg0ldenrAyz) blocked me because of my vastly superior knowledge of history. Because I know black history, and white Catholics were by far bigger enslavers of black people than white Protestants. This is the racist stupidity and mediocrity that heavily infests the white left.
I blocked them.
Thank you.
@skinnylatte
They are also fine with child rape.
Oct 20, 2026, 2:41 PM@skinnylatte considering others, when they have different beliefs, is seen as questioning the acceptable ones, and questioning is seen as rejection/disobedience.
Oct 20, 2026, 2:41 PMtbh I've always found it damning that the other Christian sects just...let the Evangelicals control everything for 50 years. Like, didn't feel the need to *do anything* as they ::checks notes:: eviscerated the social safety net and the rights of a half-dozen minorities.
So, in my way of thinking, this poll isn't showing what these people actually think; it's showing what they want other people to think about them.
Oct 20, 2026, 2:51 PM@johnzajac @skinnylatte active vs passive opposition?
Oct 20, 2026, 2:56 PM@johnzajac @skinnylatte "Not a true Christian" was sometimes whispered in communities I grew up in, but never shouted. There was never any real challenge.
Because Christians have a vested interest in pretending like it's a unified house rather than 20,000 denominations (or whatever) who all think the other denominations are going to hell.
Someone once asked me if I was worried being a non-believer during a Christian coup and I was like, "Nah. At least, not at first. They always go after the heretics before they get around to the unbelievers."
So many varieties of religions and religious sects, and somehow everyone believes theirs (most likely the one they happened to be born into) is the correct one.
And every one of them is wrong.
@skinnylatte evangelicals are just the KKK wrapped up in polo shirts driving to the next burning cross bake sale in their BMW suv.
@skinnylatte We need to stop looking to them for any advice.
This is a democracy, the majority is supposed to rule and they're not it.
Parkrose permaculture has recently posted the number of videos discussing the child rearing practices of Pete Hegseth’s church.
It is their belief that infants and children must be broken spiritually into complete submission. These are people that believe in corporal violence on children to teach them absolute obedience.
It isn’t only Elon Musk that’s been preaching, the idea that empathy is a bug. Evangelicals have been going after it too.
A authoritarianism relies on it