In 2020, several former staff of the daytime TV star Ellen Degeneres labeled her the ringleader of a toxic work environment, filled with incidents of inappropriate language and activities. Accusations against Degeneres included staff being fired for taking medical leave/bereavement days, racist comments and microaggressions. None of these accusations had yet been investigated or substantiated, and no evidence beyond social media testimonials of former employees had been presented. Though she had the reputation publicly of being a kind and funny host, within a matter of hours she was “cancelled”. Social media attacks were followed by media scrutiny and demands for apologies and recriminations. When Ellen returned to TV following the pandemic, she had lost a million viewers, a 43% ratings decline. Her reputation in tatters, Degeneres announced her retirement after the 2022 TV season.
Here’s another example of cancel culture. Three black students entered Gibson’s Bakery near the campus of Ohio’s Oberlin College in 2016 and began stealing wine bottles. The bakery staff called the police. The students were arrested and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. This was a time of racial unrest nationally, and the college itself accused Gibson’s actions of being racially motivated. Gibson’s denied wrongdoing and asked for a public apology from the college.
But the educational institution attempted to cancel the bakery. Faculty joined student protests and handed out stacks of flyers decrying the bakery’s “racist” actions. The college, which regularly purchased goods from the bakery for its student dining service, stopped buying. Faculty members urged students not to shop there. The bakery sued the school, and in April 2022 an Ohio appeals court upheld a ruling against Oberlin College for damage by libeling the bakery with false accusations. Gibson’s was awarded more than $30 million.
“Cancel culture” combines two dangerous things: mob rule and public reaction.
Cancel culture is this: the removing of support for a leader or public figure in response to objectionable behavior or opinions. Canceling goes beyond simply disagreeing publicly with someone’s words or actions. The prevailing thinkers of culture may call upon the offending individual or organization to be fired, de-platformed or put out of business.
Most of the time, people are “cancelled” because they are a public figure with influence over a huge audience and what they’ve done or said is alleged to have caused harm to a particular person or group. Many who have been “cancelled” have received this backlash following accusations of violent, sexist or racist activities or comments. Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K. and R. Kelly were all “cancelled” due to allegations of sexual abuse.[1] In these cases the allegations largely turned out to be true. But the “cancelling” of these individuals came as the result of public opinion on the accusations, versus the methodical investigation of claims and subsequent legal response.
The challenge for the leader is significant. A Christian flower shop owner doesn’t believe she should prepare arrangements for a gay wedding on religious objections and her shop receives protests. A fast-food CEO espouses pro-life beliefs publicly and the chain is boycotted nationwide. A company whose leaders are Catholic are forced by a law to provide contraceptive coverage to employees, which goes against their religious tradition, and thousands of negative reviews suddenly appear on social media. Parents fight a school board which allows sexually explicit books in their schools’ libraries, and are kicked out of board meetings and threatened with arrest. If you scan the news regularly, you know each of these is a real story in today’s United States. The people at the heart of these situations risk being “cancelled”—losing jobs, businesses, employees, even their own freedom—for their earnest beliefs and practices.
No forgiveness, no mercy. On “cancelling,” Father Randy Dollins of Colorado comments, “The principal error of this phenomena is that it lacks mercy. No apology is good enough for those who are offended. It also lacks respect for life, failing to see the other as a person, a subject, and instead making them into a mere object of scorn that needs to be eliminated. Once people can be relegated socially, causing them actual harm or physically eliminating them becomes a possibility.”[2]
How does a leader respond? Cancel culture is not a modern phenomenon. Jesus Himself was not only immersed in cancel culture in dealing with His own teachings while on earth, He also predicted how cancel culture would continue to manifest after His departure. Jesus said, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:18–19).
Can you lead and espouse the beliefs of the Bible in a culture that rejects them outright? More importantly, can you do this successfully? Can you engage others who disagree with you and who may be offended by your words and beliefs? Can you truly be Christ-centered without being cancelled? The classic book Christ and Culture by Richard Niebuhr[3] gives us five possible means by which to lead for Christ in a cancel culture, which still make much sense today, over 45 years after it was written:
The leader against the culture. One way to avoid cancellation is simply to retreat from the culture. You are far less likely to be cancelled if you simply don’t say anything offensive. And since what is offensive to the cultural middle is constantly changing, this means you say little if anything at all. As Dr. Jim Denison explains, “This approach is difficult to reconcile with our call to be salt and light in our culture (Matthew 5:13–16).”[4]
And in John 17:14-18 we read Jesus’ prayer for His disciples, “I have given them your Word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your Word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” Clearly we understand Jesus’ intent that we as His disciples, are to engage in the world with the truth of Scripture, and not retreat from it entirely.
The leader with the culture. A second option would be to simply move with the culture itself and adopt its changing stances on issues. The culture will stand opposed to objective truth—our beliefs that do not change over time because they are based on commands handed down by God in Scripture. We might instead forgo objective truth for subjective thinking. We could accept the prevailing view on homosexuality or transgenderism, for instance. The culture may laud us for our tolerance and more realistic viewpoint. The great danger here is that end up looking and living exactly like the culture we are in, and there is no significant difference between the Christ-follower and everyone else. Which then begs the question, “Why follow Jesus at all?” In this view, loyalty to the culture trumps loyalty to Jesus.
The New Testament speaks down to this view. 1 John 2:15-17 says, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.” These verses draw a dividing line between the Christian and the culture (“world”). We live in the culture, but we are not to embrace it.
The leader above the culture. In this stance the Christian rises above the culture and separates religion from the rest of their life. On Sunday morning, we retreat safely to the confines of our sanctuaries to worship, study God’s Word, and pray. On Monday we go back out into the world resigned to the fact it is against us. We huddle with our Christian like-minded friends as much as we can, as we risk criticism for our beliefs. The world is fallen, full of sin. Thank God Jesus saved us, and now we just have to ride it out until we get to eternity.
The leader in paradox to the culture. We might approach the culture for the sake of ministry and evangelism, but not focus on transforming the culture itself. This view is similar to living “above the culture”, but we “dip down” into it from time to time to pluck those we can out from its grasp and into a relationship with Christ and the relative safety of the church community.
But if we follow the example of New Testament disciples, we see them engaging in the culture at a much deeper level to reach people for Jesus. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23, “For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.”
The leader transforming the culture. In adopting this attitude, we seek to live fully in our culture and use our influence to change minds, lives and society. Through our service to others, genuine love and concern, and kind response to calls for cancellation, we seek to influence others toward Jesus. We extend grace and forgiveness where we often find none in return. In short, we live persecuted lives for the sake of our faith.
The Apostle Paul confirms this approach, writing, “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and imposters will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:12–13). When faced with these difficult choices—to live for and by what we believe, what Christ teaches—and confronted with the culture’s opposition to it, we have but one choice. We must choose Christ over the culture.
Consequence #1: Many people will not like you. “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” stands in stark contrast to the words of Christ in John 15:19, “…the world hates you.” The reality is that if we are going to lead according to Scripture in our culture today, we will face opposition in a way that our parents and grandparents did not.
If you were brought up in the church, perhaps you read of the terrible circumstances that many Christians faced in other parts of the world—being harassed, imprisoned, tortured, even killed for their faith. Living in a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles it’s natural to say, “Thank you God, that I live here and that’s not me.” Yet the advent of social media, vast online opinion and instant communication has made extreme beliefs mainstream and traditional beliefs threatening.
How does a leader respond practically to a culture that may want to censor or shun them for what they say… or even think?
This happened to Paul when he shared his faith in Thessolonica. Acts 17:1-5 records, “Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, ‘This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.’ And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women. But the Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd.” If we desire the approval of the culture and yet attempt to lead for Jesus, we will be sorely disappointed.
Consequence #2: We must love others anyway. It’s easy to love people who agree with you. It’s easy to love people who respect you. It’s even relatively easy to love people who are opposed to you but are considerate and kind. But Jesus commands us to love those who are none of these things. Luke 6:27-30 says, “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.”
This is the great challenge for the leader in a cancel culture—not returning cancel for cancel, but instead genuine love and concern for those who would cancel you. A Christian leaders’ beliefs and values, in this age, will be seen by many as offensive and ripe for cancellation. Jesus knew we would stand in opposition to the culture when He said, “A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35). This command is despite the fact that we will not be embraced by the culture, and in fact may be overcome by it. But Christ also said, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
[1] https://www.goodto.com/entertainment/what-is-cancel-culture-607262
[2] https://denvercatholic.org/cancel-culture-a-christian-response/
[3] https://www.amazon.com/Christ-Culture-Torchbooks-Richard-Niebuhr/dp/0061300039/
[4] https://www.denisonforum.org/resources/what-does-the-bible-say-about-cancel-culture/