I agree with a lot of your points, but "Religion is not focused on empathy at all anymore, if it ever was" is a bit of a blanket statement and is mostly untrue. It is certainly true for certain fundamentalist groups. Those are the loudest groups but are a minority among religions here in the states.
I was raised Protestant and am now Catholic. The mainline Protestant churches, the majority of the Catholic church, and every Jewish and Muslim organization I've encountered-- all very much focus on social justice. The USCCB (Catholic bishops) were big proponents of Obama Care before they realized it would contain some clauses that ran afoul of magisterial Catholic teaching. In general, I'd say that religion here has a heavy focus on empathy.
I'm too young to remember, but I feel that religion or religious people in America used to be deeply empathetic. Every single person I've known from the Greatest Generation seem to have strong senses of empathy and generally live mindfully.
Nowadays it seems that a lot of that has died out in most places though...except for like, Utah...
I was raised Protestant and am now Catholic. The mainline Protestant churches, the majority of the Catholic church, and every Jewish and Muslim organization I've encountered-- all very much focus on social justice. The USCCB (Catholic bishops) were big proponents of Obama Care before they realized it would contain some clauses that ran afoul of magisterial Catholic teaching. In general, I'd say that religion here has a heavy focus on empathy.
[EDIT: spelling]