Cultivating Empathy: The Worth and Dignity of Every Person--Without Exception

by Nathan C. Walker

Overview

An emotionally honest and personal exploration of conflict that introduces a creative and compassionate way to develop empathetic responses.

In Cultivating Empathy, Reverend Nathan C. Walker explores the concept of the moral imagination—a way we can project ourselves into a conflict and understand all perspectives, aware that understanding need not imply agreement.

Walker presents a series of revealing essays about his wrestlings with personal and cultural conflicts and his commitment to stop “otherizing”—which occurs when we either demonize people or romanticize them. His remedy for these kinds of projections is to employ the moral imagination as an everyday spiritual practice. Through his engaging and thought-provoking vignettes, he endeavors to find connection with skinheads, murderers, homophobic preachers, privileged 1-percenters, and Monsanto executives. As he experiments with this approach, he shows a model that can help us all nurture greater empathy for those we have previously held in contempt.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781558967748
Publisher:	Unitarian Universalist Association
Publication date:	09/01/2016
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Nathan C. Walker is the executive director for the Religious Freedom Center of the Newseum Institute in Washington, D.C., where he teaches First Amendment principles that help leaders to negotiate religious and philosophical differences in the public square. He is a Unitarian Universalist minister and author of Exorcising Preaching: Crafting Intellectually Honest Worship.

Read an Excerpt

I hope that the sometimes painful dramas in this book will inspire you, as readers, to refuse to be passive observers. I mean to capture your imagination by inviting you to picture yourself in similar situations and to experiment with different ways to resolve disputes.

In the first chapter, for instance, I recount the time I became angry with wealthy patrons of a theater who felt justified in taking my partner’s seat, removing his coat from it and putting it on the ground while saying, “We sponsored this event.” I have asked various youth groups to reenact this conflict. It is not surprising that they liked playing the parts of the “one-percenters,” but they mostly loved mocking the minister (ahem, me) who publicly humiliated the woman in pearls by asking, “Are you famous? If not, let me help you be” while taking her photo.

My gross behavior serves as the first of several examples of failures in my moral imagination. I found that this encounter is helpful when introducing the subject of this book because the word “moral” can put people on the defensive. People have said to clergy throughout history, “Don’t call me immoral. You are the hypocrite.” That is the precise point here. I am a hypocrite.

By owning this damning title, I take responsibility for my moral failures and turn to my community for help. I need others to teach me how to be kind and empathetic. And, like a child who has not learned to speak, I need others to help identify my unmet needs and help me communicate. In this way, the minister is not the sole deliverer of morality; rather, he or she is one of many who is transformed by a community that teaches its members how to experiment with the moral imagination as an everyday spiritual discipline.

This book is my attempt at documenting my experiments with the moral imagination, from meeting my biological father for the first time; to witnessing a man die on an airplane; to corresponding with Pat Robertson’s senior executive about homosexuality and the Bible; to mediating a conflict with skinheads, a punk band, and Homeland Security; and to meeting with leaders of Monsanto to discuss the ethics of genetically modified foods.

I hope that the encounters described in this book will inspire other individuals and communities to experiment with the moral imagination as well. This is urgent and necessary work because none of us are exempt from the shadow side of the imagination. At some point, we have all cast someone in our dramas in un-charitable ways. We have allowed our biases to justify escalating conflicts. We have allowed ourselves to erode the humanity of those we perceived to be our enemies while tarnishing our own character. Therefore, the moral imagination requires intentional discipline. This practice is a spiritual discipline because it involves examining the nonmaterial aspects of living a virtuous life. And it is a religious response because an intentional community helps to reinforce this new way of creating the moral fabrics that will hold all of us, without exception, in care.

The grand challenge of the moral imagination is an experiment that you are about to begin by placing yourself in my stories. These encounters are but a few of my experiments with living intentionally.

Table of Contents

Foreword Meg Riley xi

Introduction xvii

Meeting the One Percent 1

My God! 13

Reimagining Rwanda 25

With You Always 31

At-one-ment 39

Get Up! 51

My Equality Complex? 59

A Letter to My Murderer 69

A Ministry of Mediation 77

The Monsanto Beast 89

Epilogue 99

Editorial Reviews

Reverend Walker introduces the concept of a moral imagination, or an ability to project oneself into a conflict and understand all the perspectives, as a daily spiritual practice that can lead to developing empathetic responses to those held in contempt.” —Emma Koonse, Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

Picked by Publishers Weekly as One of the Top Six Books for a Post-Election Spiritual Detox
"Reverend Walker introduces the concept of a moral imagination, or an ability to project oneself into a conflict and understand all the perspectives, as a daily spiritual practice that can lead to developing empathetic responses to those held in contempt." —Emma Koonse, Publishers Weekly

Reviews