{"id":104577,"date":"2025-09-20T23:49:57","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T23:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/crcc\/?p=104577"},"modified":"2025-10-10T17:58:52","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T17:58:52","slug":"a-pastoral-call-sympathy-not-empathy-for-charlie-kirk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/crcc\/a-pastoral-call-sympathy-not-empathy-for-charlie-kirk\/","title":{"rendered":"A Pastoral Call: Sympathy, Not Empathy, For Charlie Kirk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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A Pastoral Call: Sympathy, Not Empathy, For Charlie Kirk<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n By<\/span>Michael Christensen<\/strong>\n \n September 20, 2025<\/span>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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This article was originally published on Religion Unplugged<\/a> by a participant in the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture\u2019s Compelling Preaching program.<\/em><\/p>\n

(OPINION) In this moment of national outrage and community grief, is it possible for Americans across the political spectrum to extend a measure of sympathy \u2014 if not empathy \u2014 for a young man whose public voice shaped our times, and whose memorial invites reflection?<\/p>\n

Sympathy, not empathy.<\/p>\n

Kirk made a distinction between \u201cempathy\u201d and \u201csympathy\u201d in remarks often truncated and quoted out of context by commentators: \u201cI can\u2019t stand the word empathy. I think empathy is a made-up new age term, and it does a lot of damage. Sympathy, I prefer more than empathy. That\u2019s a separate topic for a different time.\u201d<\/p>\n

That different time is now. If those on the right are rejecting empathy, and those on the left are the party of empathy, then perhaps sympathy can find some common ground.<\/p>\n

As a \u201cprogressive Christian,\u201d I cannot fully empathize with Kirk\u2019s experience and worldview, but I can extend sympathy\u2014acknowledging his humanity, mourning his loss, caring about his family, and seeking to understand the convictions and passion that guided his public life.<\/p>\n

In pastoral care, empathy means feeling another\u2019s pain as if it were your own. Walking a mile in another\u2019s shoes. Emotionally identifying with another\u2019s personal experience and journey of life.<\/p>\n

Sympathy, by contrast, means recognizing suffering, showing concern, seeking to understand, and extending compassion \u2014 even when we don\u2019t share the same experience or commitments. Sympathy allows me see Charlie as a child of God, for whom Christ died, and resist the temptation to cast him or his followers in the worst possible light.<\/p>\n

What he got right and wrong<\/h3>\n

Kirk spoke to concerns that many Americans feel are too easily dismissed: The importance of family, the conviction that faith belongs in public life, and the desire to preserve tradition in a rapidly changing world.<\/p>\n

Even when his rhetoric was sharp, he gave voice to the fears of many \u2014 about secularism, multiculturalism, moral relativism and the erosion of religious freedom. He displayed remarkable courage in the public square, and his perspectives deserve to be heard, just as opposing voices do.<\/p>\n

Kirk was not merely a provocateur. He championed freedom of speech and religious liberty and paid the ultimate price. Though ironically, the death of this champion of free speech is now being used to silence voices of dissent and critique on all sides.<\/p>\n

But Kirk\u2019s negative and dismissive remarks about ethnic minorities, trans persons, non-citizens and his support for public executions (witnessed by children of a certain age), for example, struck many of us as extremely wrong.<\/p>\n

His critiques of critical race, gender identity, and DEI, for those on the left, lacked compassion and freedom and justice for all.<\/p>\n

Breaking the cycle<\/h3>\n

America is dangerously polarized. We are split into camps with different facts, values and even realities. Kirk often stepped into that arena as a kind of devil\u2019s advocate \u2014 lobbing provocative challenges and daring opponents to prove him wrong.<\/p>\n

But if his death teaches us anything, it may be that endless condemnation cannot heal us. Sympathy \u2014 rooted in compassion and curiosity \u2014 may be the only way to break the cycle of suspicion and condemnation.<\/p>\n

We may disagree with Kirk or with his critics, but sympathy invites us to pause, listen, dig deeper and seek to understand. That is how we model a way beyond the culture war.<\/p>\n

Like Mark Antony said of Caesar, we come not to praise Charlie but to bury him \u2014 not to empathize but to sympathize. Not to demonize but to recognize his humanity, his convictions and the impact of his voice.<\/p>\n

If we fail to do so, we risk retreating further into two Americas, locked in suspicion, trading insults across the aisle.<\/p>\n

Click here to read the article on Religion Unplugged.<\/a><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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