I grew up in cancel culture. I know cancel culture.
My childhood was spent in a fundamental Baptist subculture. Fundamental Baptists represent a small, extreme corner of evangelicalism, which in turn is a significant portion of Protestantism.
If you are not familiar with that culture, the key thing you need to know is that it is hyper-exclusive. Christianity is, as we all know, an exclusive religion anyway. Unlike other religions, only one god is allowed and heaven is only available to those that go through that god. Fundamentalism is even more exclusive in that it thinks that it has a corner on the correct way to interact with that god. Fundamental Baptists do not just disagree with non-Christians; no, they condemn/shun the practices of other Christians including evangelicals. In many cases, they do not consider them authentic Christians at all.
My childhood was happily spent listening to various preachers screeching against the pet sins of the day: women in “britches,” going to the movie theater, skipping church, rock music, and being late for choir practice. The harder and more animated the preacher got, the more we liked it. We called that kind of preaching “convicting.” We were quite entertained by such attacks on sins of which we were not guilty.
Those preachers canceled everyone, including the Southern Baptists down the street where the women did not follow the approved dress code and some of the men were known to drink an occasional glass of wine. I sincerely did not think a Southern Baptist could even be a real Christian. I felt sorry for them on Sunday mornings when I passed their large churches undoubtedly filled with bands performing “worldly” music. They were, after all, just playing church. My church was a real church.
Remarkably, after leaving college, when I had my chance to escape, I chose to go right back into the same kind of situation. I moved far away from home but found another screeching pastor that reminded me of my youth. I remember proudly sending my dad cassette tapes of that pastor’s sermons, picking out the ones where the preaching was the “hardest” (most obnoxious). It took me decades to escape that kind of thinking. I still have not fully escaped if I am being honest.
And, thanks to my music career, I also know what it is like to be on the other side of that cancel culture, at least in a fairly modest way. I performed mostly within the evangelical orbit and sometimes, I was canceled for things I publically said or wrote. I am far from a victim, but I do know the pressure of trying to walk a tightrope of producing professional music within a culture that is quite capable of canceling you as soon as you misstep.
So yes, I know all about canceling people that don’t march in lockstep with my beliefs. My credentials are airtight.
When I look at what is happening with cancel culture in broader society today, I can’t help but think of my past. There are enormous similarities. Regardless of the issue, political leaning, or ideology, the same basic things happen. A group identifies a set of pet sins for which to hold another group accountable. Judgment is swift and brutal. Hypocrisy is rampant.
No, judgmentalism is not just limited to the fundamental Baptists or even broader Christianity. It is not a religion thing; it is a people thing. If you have not figured this out yet, you will eventually. (It took me over four decades.)
There is one big difference between the church culture I just described and today’s cancel culture though, and this is where the Christian worldview shines: Christianity has a mechanism for dealing with past transgressions. Embedded within it is a simple but ingenious system of forgiveness and repentance.
Forgiveness is a concept that we take for granted today, and in fact, it is hard to see how a society can survive without it. Yet, it is a relatively new thing, at least in western culture. Just two thousand years ago, it was Jesus that introduced the concept of forgiveness to the world in the way we know it.
You won’t find much in the way of relational forgiveness in Judaism as defined by the Bible’s Old Testament. There are no significant commands to forgive in the original Jewish law; instead, you find a bizarre, revenge-oriented vigilante system.
This notable omission is consistent with all other western religions up until that time. When Jesus discussed forgiveness, it was radical and probably came across as very idealistic. Today, we understand both the idealistic and pragmatic need for forgiveness, but likely, that was not the case then.
In Christianity, forgiveness is only half of the equation. Both sides have a responsibility. Yes, the offended party has the responsibility to forgive. But just as importantly, the transgressing party has the responsibility to repent (fix their thinking and not repeat errors of the past).
The beauty of a system of repentance and forgiveness is that it allows us to move on from the past. Relationships can be restored and people can move forward in acts of service. Society can progress.
Whether this system of forgiveness/repentance actually existed in the subculture I grew up in (or even broader Christianity) is admittedly debatable. I think it sometimes did and sometimes did not. I heard hundreds of sermons directed at people that needed to repent, while sermons directed at those that needed to forgive were scant. The scales were most definitely tipped more toward justice than mercy. But at least, lip service was paid to the idea of forgiveness.
Not so in today’s cancel culture. That culture is fixated on only half that equation–the repentance side. An offending party is severely punished, forced to grovel and search for magical words to prove that he/she is really sorry in order to retain some of their former status/career. I suppose you can sort of call this process a type of repentance.
But the offended parties? They form like packs of rabid dogs on social media, establish themselves as judge and jury, and blithely destroy lives, casting aside the sincerest of apologies as insufficient, and meting out punishment that is often not even remotely proportionate to the alleged offense. They feel no compulsion to forgive, and in fact, seem to find that concept a form of weakness. Even a suggestion that a bit of forgiveness might be in order is likely to put a poor soul next on their cancel list.
Normally, these “offenses” are in the past, sometimes long ago when the culture was very different. Thinkers understand that you have to apply cultural filters before judging people for what they did/said decades ago; however, no one has ever accused cancel culture of being composed of thinkers. They are simpletons, intellectual lightweights more than ready to blindly judge anyone with their own enlightened, modern yardsticks and brand their scarlet letters on the sinner-of-the-day.
If you have not picked up on it already, I have a lot of disdain for cancel culture…
So why is this important?
Here’s why: I mentioned earlier that the words of Jesus on forgiveness came across as idealistic rather than pragmatic. But as it turns out, forgiveness is not just idealistic, at least in the kind of society in which we want to live.
A modern society without forgiveness gums up. Nothing can get done because everyone has past transgressions, and without a mechanism to move beyond past transgressions, no one is qualified to act in a way that moves society forward. No one, no matter how worthy of contribution, can act, because he/she is paralyzed by the past.
Many decades ago, perhaps in anticipation of what she saw coming, Hannah Arendt said it this way:
Without being forgiven – released from the consequences of what we have done – our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to a single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever.
Arendt always seemed to be writing for the future, but I wonder if she could have imagined today’s world where a reputation could be permanently destroyed because of a Civil War costume party back in college or a few words spoken decades ago to a friend. She may not have imagined how bad it would get, but her words definitely hit the mark in 2021.*
And that is the danger of cancel culture. A culture without forgiveness is not a good culture; in the long run, it probably will not be a culture at all.
*As an aside, Arendt herself had a brief affair with German philosopher Martin Heidegger. While the facts are controversial, it appears that Heidegger was at least somewhat sympathetic to Nazism and was even a member of the Nazi party for a while. By today’s standards, Arendt should be canceled. If, however, you dismiss her writing because of that, it is your loss. Read The Origins of Totalitarianism to learn what she thought of Nazism.