America's religious divide over empathy
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The gist
PRRI's 2026 American Values Survey found 68% of Americans call empathy a foundational moral value, versus 27% who see it as dangerous.
The split runs along party and religious lines, with white evangelicals the only major group leaning skeptical.
Background
The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) is a nonpartisan research organization that released its 17th annual American Values Survey in partnership with the Brookings Institution. The survey asked Americans to choose between two statements: that empathy is a foundational moral value that helps build a healthy society, or that empathy can become dangerous when it leads people away from a society guided by God's truth. It lands amid what Axios describes as a quiet civil war within American Christianity over who deserves empathy, with conservatives from evangelical pastors to Elon Musk framing empathy as a vulnerability in debates over immigration, racial justice and LGBTQ+ rights. Interviews were conducted ahead of the approaching midterm elections.
How it unfolded
- Feb 2025In an interview with Joe Rogan, Elon Musk called empathy "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization," while acknowledging its potential good and warning against its weaponization.
- Mar 2025The Wild Hunt columnist Karl E. H. Seigfried published an essay examining Musk's warnings about "suicidal empathy" and arguing for empathy as a central value in Heathen theology.
- Aug 20, 2026 to Sep 7, 2026PRRI conducted survey interviews amid debate about the Trump administration and the congressional elections.
- Oct 20, 2026PRRI released the survey: 68% of Americans favored the foundational-value statement and 27% favored the dangerous-when-it-leads-away-from-God's-truth statement.
- Oct 20, 2026The survey reported a 30-point partisan gap: 84% of Democrats agreed empathy is foundational, compared with 54% of Republicans; independents were at 70%.
- Oct 20, 2026White evangelical Protestants were the only major religious group in which a majority (54%) said empathy can become dangerous; 42% called it foundational, though the press release lists 48%.
Who’s saying what
- Official
- PRRI President Robert P. Jones said a "disturbing 'empathy gap'" has opened, separating Republicans and white evangelicals from most other Americans, and called the attacks on empathy typical of violent authoritarian movements.
- Caution
- Elon Musk, cited by Axios among conservatives framing empathy as a vulnerability, called empathy "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization" while acknowledging its potential good and warning against its weaponization.
- Analysts
- The Wild Hunt noted the question measures preferences between two statements about empathy's social role and religious limits, not respondents' capacity for empathy or behavior toward others.
Still unverified
The full PRRI report gives 42% for white evangelical Protestants selecting empathy as foundational, while the press release lists 48%; the sources also state the associations found do not establish what caused respondents' answers or how much religious affiliation or Christian nationalism drove them.