This issue is big enough that I’m posting my Substack post here. The Centrality of Empathy for Godly Pastors It has been brought to my attention by a number of friends, readers, and students that some pastors and professors and leaders are putting down empathy as a virtue for Christians and especially for pastors. I have myself heard a pastor in Chicagoland say he does not have empathy. From what I’ve seen of him I would agree, but I say so in grief. From the best I can tell these denouncers of empathy are distinguishing the virtue of compassion from the potential vice of empathy. The former means to “suffer with” and the latter “to suffer in.” Or, to “feel with” and “feel in.” The former is rational; the latter appears to be less (that) rational, and perhaps irrational. At least in their constructions, it’s OK to suffer with but not to suffer in.