Cancel Culture: A Graceless Shortcut to Nowhere

Unless you have been living entirely off the grid for the last half-decade, you are likely quite familiar with Cancel Culture. It’s the current societal craze aimed at silencing the opposition, whomever that may be.

In her 2023 study, Pippa Norris defines cancel culture as the “collective strategies by activists using social pressures to achieve cultural ostracism of targets (someone or something) accused of offensive words or deeds.”^[1] In Norris’s words, the goal is ostracism. Cancel culture does not settle for simply embarrassing or shaming; instead, it serves as a means of excommunication. It is the ultimate form of punishment for dissenters in the Western world.

While Norris sees cancel culture as a strategy for ostracism, others consider it more a symptom of today’s ideological divisions. Skeptic Magazine contributor Carol Tavris claims that many view cancel culture as “an overblown label for the eternal ideological wars between the left and the right, in which each extreme complains that the other side is censoring them while working hard to censor that other side.”^[2]

Regardless of the particular definition, it is clear that cancel culture is not just ideological or political. In fact, cancel culture may scream the loudest in the area of morality. Witness the tearing down of monuments in an attempt to cancel the legacy of those deemed to have behaved in a morally reprehensible manner by today’s standards. It has also wormed its way into the church as a moral tactic. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, recently summed up cancel culture like this: “You post something stupid when you are 19, and you pay for it when you are 35 – and you pay for it forever.”^[3] One may now potentially cancel for what was once called a testimony.

While I am all in on discipline and consequences for actions, cancel culture carries a shortsightedness contrary to biblical grace.

First, cancel culture promotes a false dichotomy. You are either on my side (which is obviously and undeniably the side of the morally right), or you are irredeemable. Black and white. In or out. The real-world effect is that cancel culture cancels second chances. However, Hershey Friedman and Vlady Svetlata believe a second chance is foundational to justice. They state, “The idea of a second chance so that one who made mistakes can have a fresh start is … part of social justice.”^[4] Without the possibility of a second chance, cancellation is not a pathway to restoration; it is simply the end. It makes me wonder how anyone can claim that cancel culture is a valuable tool of social justice.^[5]

Consequently, if there is no option for a second chance, then the entire process of grace is irrelevant. James, the half-brother of Jesus, writes pragmatically to the churches who knew and respected him. His emphasis on practicality includes applying grace to people who mess up. He says, “My dear friends, if you know people who have wandered off from God’s truth, don’t write them off. Go after them. Get them back, and you will have rescued precious lives from destruction and prevented an epidemic of wandering away from God.”^[6] Did you get that? Do not write them off. That is James’ first-century way of saying, “Don’t cancel them because there is an alternative.” The alternative James recommends is to go after them. Confront and rebuke with the goal of restoration.

A practical biblical demonstration is the conflict between the apostles Peter and Paul. Paul had some strong words for his colleague Peter. He insisted that Peter was acting very wrong, even morally reprehensible. But he doesn’t cancel Peter; he calls Peter out. He confronts Peter and rebukes him. In Paul’s words, “When Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for what he did was very wrong.“^[7] Paul stuck to his convictions and maintained his relationships.

Amy Erickson hits the nail on the head. She says, “Whereas cancel culture is animated by a desire to advertise one’s own moral superiority and cut ties with offenders, proverbial rebuke lovingly corrects an offender for the sake of their moral development and with the hope of ongoing relationship.”^[8]

So, the big question is, why do we resort to cancelling instead of working toward restoration? One possible answer is that rebuke and correction may provoke cancellation in response. Fearing being cancelled ourselves, we skip confrontation and go directly to cancelling others. The fear of saying or being perceived as saying the wrong thing results in self-censorship, according to Tavris. She states, “Because cancel culture seeks to punish anyone who says or does the ‘wrong’ thing, absent knowledge of their motivation or context, people censor themselves.”^[9]

However, the best answer may simply be that rebuke, correction, and the accompanying emotions and tensions are too hard. Cancelling is easy. Grace, as demonstrated in correction and rebuke, is significantly more difficult.

Relationships can be complicated, and cancelling is easy, but it’s a graceless shortcut to nowhere.

1. Pippa Norris, “Cancel Culture: Myth or Reality?,” Political Studies 71, no. 1 (February 2023): 148, https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217211037023. ↑
2. Carol Tavris, “What Is Cancel Culture, Anyway?,” Skeptic 29, no. 2 (April 2024): 4. ↑
3. “At Last,Welby Says Something Mail Readers Can Agree with! Archbishop Condemns Cancel Culture’s ‘Appalling Lack of Forgiveness’. – Document – Gale OneFile: Business,” accessed November 12, 2024, https://go-gale-com.seu.idm.oclc.org/ps/i.do?p=ITBC&u=southec&id=GALE%7CA781202787&v=2.1&it=r&sid=ebsco. ↑
4. Hershey H. Friedman and Svetlana Vlady, “‘Being on God’s Side’: Biblical Leaders on Wokeness, Social Justice, Cancel Culture, White Privilege, and Other Controversial Terms,” Journal of Values Based Leadership 17, no. 1 (Winter/Spring ///Winter/Spring2024 2024): 201. ↑
5. JANSSENS, Jenny and SPREEUWENBERG, Lotte, “The Moral Implications of Cancel Culture,” Ethical Perspectives, no. 1 (2022): 89–114, https://doi.org/10.2143/EP.29.1.3290737. ↑
6. James 5:19-20 The Message ↑
7. Galatians 2:11 NLT ↑
8. Amy J. Erickson, “Proverbs’ and Cancel Culture’s Competing Moral Visions,” Theology 126, no. 5 (September 1, 2023): 362, https://doi.org/10.1177/0040571X231194980. ↑
9. Tavris, “What Is Cancel Culture, Anyway?,” 7. ↑