Mary W. McCampbell - Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves: How Art Shapes Empathy

Praise for Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves

Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves will instruct and delight any reader who cares even a little about art, imagination, and humanity. Mary McCampbell is a faithful, loving guide who will teach you things you didnt even know you needed to know, and this is a book you wont even realize you needed until youve read it.

Karen Swallow Prior, research professor of English and of Christianity and culture, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and author of On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books

Educating toward sanctified imagination is a growing movement and a much-needed antidote to the scarcity mindset of a fear-driven culture. In Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves Mary McCampbell opens our vista to a feast of literature and movies for our edification, and she even invites us back to Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. From Douglas Coupland to C. S. Lewis, from Flannery OConnor to Toni Morrison, Mary McCampbell paints a landscape of mystery, hope, and splendor for our imagination to be fed and to be nurtured toward the New Creation.

Makoto Fujimura, artist and author of Art+Faith: A Theology of Making

Psychologists fairly recent findings that empathy can be developed even during adulthood should give us a bit more hope amidst this polarized nation and complex world. Empathy, compassion, and interconnectedness seem impossible as we flip through some major cable news networks today. Yet diligently, McCampbell takes the ingredients of the familiar and invites us on a theological and experiential journey to self and neighbor compassion. McCampbell uses the artistic tools of literature and television, for example, to move us from navel-gazing to looking outward to neighbor. In her book, both storytelling and story analysis, from film to Holy Scripture, inspire and equip us to grow what seems so lacking today: empathy. Id encourage readers to move through the text slowly, learning from the phrases and insights, and even vicariously from McCampbells style of engagement with the arts, to strengthen their empathy muscle.

Christina Edmondson, psychologist, cohost of the Truths Table podcast, and author of Faithful Antiracism: Moving Past Talk to Systemic Change

Mary McCampbell has given us a vision of a flourishing community: one full of art, music, film, and fiction that tells the stories of who we are and the diverse gifts we bring to the table. Her book will have us opening our eyes to more clearly see those who are different from useither because of gender, skin color, ability, or political opinionsas our neighbors. Through the stories we encounter in her work, we will be drawn toward a fuller knowledge of what love means. As McCampbell shows us, love looks like a welcoming table.

Jessica Hooten Wilson, Louise Cowan Scholar in Residence, University of Dallas, and author of The Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints

Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves is a rare and precious book. Mary McCampbell explores a vast web of textsfrom fiction by Graham Greene, Toni Morrison, and Douglas Coupland to television drama including Better Call Saul, Friday Night Lights, and The Walking Deadwith wit, rigor, and an eye for theological depth. She shows how the arts frequently model the way of empathy and, in turn, encourage a compassionate and imaginative response to life itself. This is a compelling and quietly urgent book that embodies the creative empathy it finds in literature, film, and music.

Andrew Tate, Reader of Literature, Religion, and Aesthetics, Lancaster University, and author of Contemporary Fiction and Christianity

Mary McCampbell sees so widely and so well, with uncanny depth of feeling for what is and for what ought to be, that she understands the crucial way the imagination is meant to give us eyes to see what is in fact the truth of our existence. Artful and thoughtful, remarkably eloquent and literate, she has seen the best films and read the best novels and short stories, skillfully drawing on her years of paying attention to what matters most to all of us as we wrestle with the mystery of suffering and of beauty. She graces the reader by inviting us to learn over her shoulder and through her heart. Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves is a very good book by a very good teachera book for every serious student of art and, even more, for every serious human being.

Steven Garber, Senior Fellow for Vocation and the Common Good for the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust and author of The Seamless Life: A Tapestry of Love and Learning, Worship and Work

Everyone thinks they understand empathy, until they really dig into it. Mary McCampbell does that good work for us here, enriching us with a better understanding of ourselves, others, and God. Her brilliant analysis of poems, novels, short stories, films, and television shows will leave you with a new list of rich stories to encounter, as well as a renewed conviction to relentlessly love others, after the heart of God. Embracing entertainment, but never merely entertained, McCampbell excavates a vast range of contemporary narratives, revealing great depths of human need, care, and value.

Joseph G. Kickasola, professor of film and digital media, Baylor University, and author of The Films of Krzysztof Kielowski: The Liminal Image

Mary W. McCampbell

Fortress Press

Minneapolis

IMAGINING OUR NEIGHBORS AS OURSELVES

How Art Shapes Empathy

Copyright 2022 Fortress Press, an imprint of 1517 Media. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email or write to Permissions, Fortress Press, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209.

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

Scripture quotations marked (KJV) are taken from the King James Version.

Cover design: L. Owens

Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-7390-1

eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-7391-8

While the author and 1517 Media have confirmed that all references to website addresses (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing, URLs may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

For my mother, Frances Walker McCampbell. Thank you so much for teaching me the way of empathy.

I n his 1940 novel, The Power and the Glory, Graham Greenes beleaguered whiskey priest has been jailed alongside a very pious woman who is repulsed when she finds out that he is a bad priest who craves a drink more than anything, even more than God. His capacity to extend grace is both intentional and supernatural as he imagines his jail-cell neighbor both truthfully and compassionately.

Novelist Michael Chabon agrees that imagination is a necessity if we want to empathize and treat others with compassion: To me, imagination is key to morality. If you cant imagine what it is to live in someone elses head, then youre more likely to hurt them. A constricted imagination that has not been fed on goodness, beauty, and truth can cause damage to our neighbors, leading to objectification or dehumanization rather than empathy and compassion. When encountering differences in the other, we have a natural tendency to place a makeshift label on them in order to fit them neatly into our ordered understanding of reality. Empathy can only grow when we actively work against this default tendency. As Chabon implies, our malnourished capacity for empathy is connected to an equally malnourished imagination. The smaller our world isour circle of like friends, our limited environment, our entertainment choices that reflect what we think we already knowthe more malnourished our imaginations will be. When this is the case, we are less likely to empathize. Holding onto the jagged edges of realityrather than airbrushing them to fit our own agendais essential if we are to try to honor the humanity of another.