The “cancel culture” is real and looking for its next victim. Any perceived “transgression” against the current “politically correct” or “socially correct” norms is enough to get an “offender” removed from pretty much anything: a job, an opportunity, a relationship, even the ability to live a quiet and peaceful life. The cancel culture is ravenous and it has even come for those who thought they were safely ensconced in our culture’s favored places, like Hollywood. Some have begun to speak out about the dangers of cancel culture and now they’re be shamed into silence. The most insidious accusation, perhaps, is that Christians are the ones who invented and perfected cancel culture and any outcry against it by Evangelicals is hypocritical. Is the accusation true? Did Christians create the cancel culture and are Christians now reaping what they sowed? Are we, as Evangelical Christians, to blame for what we see in our world today?
I began thinking about this question when I saw a meme floating around social media. The meme was a screenshot of a Twitter post (and a response) that accused the Christian culture of creating the moment we are now living through. “Please don’t talk to me about cancel culture,” wrote Twitter user @cmatchell. “I was a Christian child of the 90s,” she explained. “We stopped listening to Sandy (sic) Patty & Amy Grant, stopped watching Disney, & avoided Proctor and Gamble products. Christians perfected cancel culture. They just don’t like it when the tables turn.” The response, from Twitter user @erickinokc, added these accusations: “Oh this is bringing back memories! No Harry Potter because witchcraft! Let’s burn Eminem Cds in the bonfire! If someone doesn’t join you for See You at the Pole, FRIENDSHIP OVER!”
I don’t know either Twitter user who posted the tweets that became the meme I saw and I have no way of verifying their experiences. Who knows what their personal experiences were as children of the 1990s. Who knows what kind of church they went to, whether the Bible was taught accurately and clearly, and whether they actually attended bonfires where offending products were burned. Let’s assume that they are telling the truth and let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that they witnessed a form of “cancel culture” as children or youth in Christian circles. Does that prove that Christians invented and perfected cancel culture? If true, does that justify now, when a Christian or conservative speaks out about current events or social issues, they should be canceled in every possible way?
Let’s consider the premise that Christians invented cancel culture. I suppose one would have to go back deep into history to determine the first instance of a group of people or a society at large “canceling” a person the way we now think of “cancel culture”. That task would be extremely difficult and virtually impossible to conduct . . . throughout the history of the world people have “canceled” other people with whom they disagreed, up to and including murdering those with whom they could not see eye to eye. This is not a Christian thing, either. Killing people because you disagree with them has happened in every corner of the globe for as long as people have lived in a fallen world. Canceling a person’s ability to conduct business or speak freely or live as they see fit was likely “perfected” by the Third Reich, the USSR, and various other Communist actors in the 20th Century. Today’s cancel culture has not reached that point, thankfully, at least in the United States, but the cancel culture has taken plays from the playbooks of many of history’s worst actors and it may not be long until the “perfection” of cancel culture results in the deaths of some.
The premise that Christians invented cancel culture is dubious, at best. The idea that Christians perfected cancel culture in the 90s is extremely suspect. But let’s look closer at the accusations leveled by the Twitter users and see if there is any legitimacy to them. Did Christians “cancel” Sandi Patty? What about Amy Grant? To answer those two questions, one has to understand who Sandi Patty and Amy Grant were to Christians in the 90s. They were more than just “Christian celebrities” (though they were certainly that). They were, in many ways, icons of Christianity. They sang the songs Christians sang in their cars and even in church. They were role models of Christian living, people to whom parents had pointed their daughters to as points of reference. Truly, they were on a pedestal where they should never have been. And both of them famously had moral failings (according to Biblical standards) that tarnished their reputations and violated the beliefs millions of Christians thought they embraced. As Christian “leaders” they basically disqualified themselves from Christian leadership by engaging in sin and even continuing in it without repentance. They were not pastors, of course, but pastors and parents had trusted them and their example of faith. When they fell into sin and refused to repent, pastors and parents turned away from their examples and sought others to whom they could point as role models for their impressionable children and youth.
I recall, vividly, this time in Christian subculture. I recall my own family ceasing to listen to Sandi Patty’s music (we were never Amy Grant fans, for some reason). I don not recall our pastor speaking out against her or calling for burning of her tapes (this was before CDs). I know that Sandi Patty lost the support of the Christian community, including the loss of recording contracts with Christian record labels and the loss of access to Christian venues (she stopped getting invited to sing at Christian churches). This was done because Sandi Patty could no longer, according to Biblical principles, be allowed a place of leadership within the church and Christian community. I don’t know if Sandi Patty (as our example) was handled with grace and mercy and forgiveness by most Christians, but I do know that my family’s rejection of Sandi Patty’s influence in the wake of her sins (and lack of repentance, most importantly) was not for the purposes of “canceling” her and ensuring that she never work again. I would like to think the Christian response to her moral failings was a Biblical response designed to see repentance occur in her heart and even full restoration of her to fellowship in the Christian community. Perhaps that was not the case everywhere and for everyone. But I know that in my own experience our “canceling” of Sandi Patty was with deep discouragement and sadness. To this day, her famous rendition of “We Shall Behold Him” is stirring and moving for me . . . in fact, I even have it downloaded to my phone and listen to it every now and then.
Did Christians cancel Sandi Patty? I would argue no, certainly not in the way cancel culture operates today. The cancel culture that Christians and conservatives are speaking out against today–and I have spoken out against it for everyone–is not the equivalent of a group dealing with the transgressions of one its own. Christianity dealt with Sandi Patty and Amy Grant (and Ray Boltz and Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard and so many others, unfortunately) within the confines of Christianity. No one, to my knowledge, hope that Amy Grant would starve to death because she lost her Christian base of supporters (for a very short time, mind you). Amy Grant went on to have a “crossover” career and I know of no Christian who hoped she’d fail in that endeavor. I think there were many Christians saddened to think she would sell out her beliefs and those who had supported her, but no Christians that I am aware of hoped to completely and utterly destroy her as is the case in today’s current cancel culture moment.
Jonathan Merritt, in an article for Religion News Service, wrote about Christianity and the cancel culture in June of 2020. In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a fan of Johnathan Merritt nor do I agree with much of his analysis of anything related to Evangelical Christianity. (I don’t agree with him but I do not think he should be canceled.) His article, which addressed the “canceling” of Church of the Highlands senior pastor Chris Hodges (after he liked a tweet that seemed to deny the reality of “white privilege”) contains some helpful information in evaluating the claim that Christians invented and perfected cancel culture (a claim he advances in the article). Here’s his definition of cancel culture, from the article:
“Hodges had been ‘canceled’ – a term for what happens when people, most often on social media but increasingly in ‘real life,’ band together and employ shaming tactics to block a person from having a platform. It can mean boycotting the target’s businesses, refusing to consume their books or films or pressuring friends, colleagues and activists to denounce them or formally cut ties.”
Merritt’s definition is close to reality and helpful in understanding the cancel culture, but cancel culture is now more than what he says it is. Cancel culture is not just “shaming” people but doing everything within their power to destroy a person’s reputation and ability to continue in any public work or forum. It is more than taking away a person’s platform. Cancel culture has become a way for people to “disappear” dissenting voices and those who are canceled are not just people who say objectively offensive things. Those who are canceled today are usually just those who disagree with the prevailing mood or those who deem it appropriate to utilize the First Amendment right of free speech. Cancel culture targets anyone with a platform or audience or influence and seeks to utterly destroy them and remove from all memory their former work. It seeks to punish any and all infractions with no hope of redemption. And if there was a redemptive process in cancel culture, it would look like toeing the party line and liking it . . . loving it, with ones whole heart and soul (think of Wilson Smith at the end of Orwell’s 1984).
Christians have engaged in public boycotts of secular culture before (the Twitter users pointed to boycotts of Disney and Proctor and Gamble, as examples) and I would say that such boycotts were ineffective and ill-advised. Boycotts do not change hearts; all boycotts do is marshal