A Pastoral Call: Sympathy, Not Empathy, For Charlie Kirk
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(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 — if not empathy — for a young man whose public voice shaped our times, and whose memorial invites reflection?
Sympathy, not empathy.
Kirk made a distinction between “empathy” and “sympathy” in remarks often truncated and quoted out of context by commentators: “I can’t 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’s a separate topic for a different time.”
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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.
As a “progressive Christian,” I cannot fully empathize with Kirk’s experience and worldview, but I can extend sympathy—acknowledging his humanity, mourning his loss, caring about his family, and seeking to understand the convictions and passion that guided his public life.
In pastoral care, empathy means feeling another’s pain as if it were your own. Walking a mile in another’s shoes. Emotionally identifying with another’s personal experience and journey of life.
Sympathy, by contrast, means recognizing suffering, showing concern, seeking to understand, and extending compassion — even when we don’t 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.
What he got right and wrong
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.
Even when his rhetoric was sharp, he gave voice to the fears of many — 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.
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.
But Kirk’s 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.
His critiques of critical race, gender identity, and DEI, for those on the left, lacked compassion and freedom and justice for all.
Breaking the cycle
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’s advocate — lobbing provocative challenges and daring opponents to prove him wrong.
But if his death teaches us anything, it may be that endless condemnation cannot heal us. Sympathy — rooted in compassion and curiosity — may be the only way to break the cycle of suspicion and condemnation.
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.
Like Mark Antony said of Caesar, we come not to praise Charlie but to bury him — not to empathize but to sympathize. Not to demonize but to recognize his humanity, his convictions and the impact of his voice.
If we fail to do so, we risk retreating further into two Americas, locked in suspicion, trading insults across the aisle.
The Rev. Michael J. Christensen is a theologian, church historian and author of “City Streets, City People, The Samaritan’s Imperative” and “C.S. Lewis on Scripture.” He is a clergy member of the Point Loma Peninsula Faith Leaders in San Diego.