Standing outside the door to your neighbor ’s home, you might notice one or two things about the household, such as how often their dog barks, if the morning toast has been burned, or if someone chronically loses their house keys. For Canadians like me, there are many things we’ve noticed over the years about our neighbors to the south. From this Canadian’s point of view, there is a marked difference between our two societies when it comes to empathy. I’m curious about that disparity, and like any good neighbor, I’m also worried about what it might bode for the neighborhood.
One of the primary differences between the United States and Canada is their religious ideologies. Both countries are predominantly Christian, though the United States is a bit more so at 63 percent, with Canada at 53 percent. Perhaps more significant is which kind of Christians are dominant in each country. According to its census, Catholics make up about 30 percent of the Canadian population, eclipsing all other Christian denominations. Only 23 percent of Americans are Catholics, according to Gallup, which might not seem like much of a difference until one considers that almost half of the U.S. population is Protestant, about 49 percent, versus a little over 12 percent in Canada. There is also a notable difference in the number of “nones,” the religiously unaffiliated, with Canada at about 35 percent and the U.S. at about 26 percent.
What do religious demographics have to do with empathy? To answer this question, we have to take a peek into the ideological positions of both theological perspectives. A research paper by Bemito Arruñada of the University of Barcelona, “Protestants and Catholics: Similar Work Ethic, Different Social Ethic,” published in The Economic Journal in 2010, provides some helpful context.
Formulating four major criteria, Arruñada assesses the differences in ethics between Catholicism and Protestantism, beginning with each religion’s “theology of salvation.” For Catholics, good works and deeds play an important role in gaining access to the afterlife. The Protestant ethic dismisses good works and adheres to the position that salvation comes only through divine grace. In other words, it doesn’t matter what you do; if you don’t get into heaven, you’re the problem.
The second is church organization or structure. In Catholicism, the Church and its priests are necessary intermediaries that interpret, validate, and communicate the teaching of the Bible and the will of God. Given the years I spent in seminary studying biblical scholarship, I submit that anyone who reads the Bible would benefit from understanding the historical, social, and political contexts in which it was written and for whom. Without this knowledge one might be open to fantastical interpretations such as those spun by evangelical ministers and their fixation on all things demonic. (I’m looking at you, Book of Revelations.)
That said, in Protestantism there is no intermediary needed, as the Bible is considered an independent authority unto itself and open to individual interpretations, particularly in terms of how salvation is achieved. Perhaps you can already see how this could be problematic.
The third criterion looks at ideological enforcement. Catholicism is blanketed in ceremony that emphasizes the potential and need for moral development. This focus on one’s progress toward grace begins with baptism, then to first communion and confession or penance. Each sacrament is a rung in the ladder of internal moral development for Catholics. Protestantism narrows its focus to external expressions of divine grace, such as health, wealth, and social ranking. An emphasis on mutual social control and adherence to ideological homogeneity in Protestantism reinforces the impulse to monitor one another’s behavior for compliance.
The last assessment criterion reviews the impact that these ideologies have on social interactions. Catholics prioritize family and close friends. The Protestant view is that a strong social ethic necessitates mutual social controls.
Empathy is a prosocial skill, one that is intentionally cultivated in social-emotional learning (SEL) curricula. Empathy has four primary interrelated dimensions: empathetic concern, perspective taking, empathetic visualization, and empathetic personal distress. Unless we are impacted by some antisocial pathology, most of us have experienced each of these dimensions of empathy in one way or another. Empathy building programs play a crucial role in interpersonal relationships and community building, and yet American evangelicals are gunning for SEL.
If at first you struggle to see the problem with an educational pedagogy focused on the mental health and resilience of children, you’re not alone. For proponents of SEL, this methodology focuses on building interpersonal relationships and emotional regulation. It challenges and supports students as they work to access and understand their emotions, providing them with resources to articulate these emotions, and then support to manage and resolve conflicts and interpersonal challenges.
Journalist Claire Lampen explored evangelical antipathy for SEL in an article for The Cut in 2022, and found that the crux was the ways in which social-emotional learning upsets evangelicals’ ideological apple cart. If we consider the ideological differences between Catholics and Protestants, we can see how the latter’s demand for strong adhesion to a biblically prescribed social ethic might get in the way of SEL’s aim to teach students to respect differences. The ideology of inculturation in Catholic theology provides a bit more wiggle room regarding perspective-taking and respecting differences…but only just.
Lampen quotes one Utah parent who complained that SEL proponents “want to use SEL to reprogram our children into social justice activists for particular causes.” They claimed these programs make kids “reject familial cultural or religious beliefs, favor socialism over capitalism, and push[es] them to believe that racial, gender or class identity matters more than unifying as a human race.”
What a sad perspective, to so vehemently reject a well-researched curriculum that helps children navigate a tumultuous world, helps students manage their mental health, and helps reduce bullying. Whether or not America’s evangelicals realize it, they are the ones playing a game of identity politics, claiming the moral high ground due to ideological perspectives and enshrining “rugged individualism” as a tenet of faith. It is the unchecked influence of the Protestant work ethic that sees capitalistic consumerism as a sign of divine grace.
The untethered idea that SEL and empathy are bad things that must be stopped is, in my estimation, one of the saddest things to emerge from twenty-first century evangelicalism. From where I sit, I can’t help but worry that for so many of my American neighbors, the idea of empathy inspires not warmth and hope, but fear and rage.