Criticism isn’t cancellation

It is a day that ends in “y,” so that means the New York Times’ David French, the supposedly conservative Christian columnist for the paper of record, has done what he has done for the last several years, and that is to use his national platform to smear evangelicals.

While his columns have become redundant in their criticisms at this point, he occasionally overreaches in a way that requires pushback. Last week, French penned a newsletter where he took evangelicals to task for engaging in what he calls a Christianized “cancel culture.” In his view, the criticism that Chip and Joanna Gaines received from their fellow evangelicals for including a homosexual couple in their new television series is evidence that a brittle fundamentalism defines the spirit of American evangelicalism.

In French’s view, Christians shouldn’t object to this because American evangelicals need to take the log out of their eye and leave judgment to those inside the church. This is a familiar and biblical refrain, but it is misapplied in this context. Recognizing the log in our own eyes (as we should), and holding special judgment for those inside the church (as we also should), does not suspend all moral judgment—especially in areas that touch upon creation order issues, such as marriage and family. Marriage and family are creational institutions, not church ordinances. They precede Israel, the Church, and even the Fall. To treat them as purely internal matters, as French ostensibly does, is to abdicate Christian witness in the public square. Marriage and family are creational issues that shape the very fabric of society. Moreover, nowhere in the New Testament are Christians commanded to turn a blind eye to the sins of society (just read Romans 1).

French’s response is to accuse evangelicals of hypocrisy and budding authoritarianism in refusing to “extend the sphere” (to quote James Madison) of American pluralism to include homosexuals who have gone out of their way to deprive children of a mother.

French completely misleads his audience in suggesting that Christians are engaging in “cancel culture.” While Christians are not happy about the mainstreaming of homosexuality in American culture, we’ve been around the block long enough to know that this is now, sadly, a common feature of American life. We do not celebrate that. We accept that millions of Americans do not live or think like Christians. We participate in the free market like anyone else, which includes not watching these programs or celebrating the types of familial arrangements they want to make routine. I cannot think of a single Christian shocked that a mainstream television studio would profile a homosexual couple.

What Christians are objecting to is a Christian couple using their national platform to promote a family arrangement that we believe runs counter to the common good. To use French’s own argument, if we are to focus our judgment internally, isn’t it the case that we should criticize the Gaineses since they are professed Christians? French’s argument is incoherent as it is shameless for lobbing tireless bromides at evangelicals who largely voted for Donald Trump, while at the same time, he endorsed Kamala Harris. He has no moral high ground to stand on.

He’s also wrong in casting evangelicals as somehow “pro-discrimination” when it suits them. No one compelled the Gaineses to feature a homosexual couple. They chose to do so, presumably with the freedom and influence that comes from their stature. That is precisely why Christians are raising objections—not because the culture did something, but because fellow believers did.

But French completely misunderstands what cancel culture is in this instance. “Cancel culture” is not simply shutting someone up who steps out of line. “Cancel culture,” properly understood, is the coordinated effort to socially or economically punish someone for violating ideological taboos that may or may not actually be wrong, not the ordinary moral evaluation of public behavior. It’s not cancel culture when a public figure is criticized for moral failings that violate the integrity of their platform or mission. There is no more “cancel culture” at play in this instance than when one Christian lovingly confronts and corrects an erring believer.

No one thinks it is “cancel culture” when someone does something so deserving of criticism that the guilty culprit needs to apologize. For example, it is not “cancel culture” when the Astronomer CEO gets criticized for a very public affair at a Coldplay concert. That is justifiable critique.

But that is what French frames as the evidence of cancel culture—that Christians are, without justification, criticizing the Gaineses for platforming a homosexual couple.

It’s not “cancel culture” to object when fellow believers publicly promote behavior and familial arrangements that Scripture clearly condemns. Using a prominent platform to normalize sin is not a matter of Christian liberty—it’s a matter of biblical fidelity. And it is not something that Christians should defend in the name of American pluralism, especially when that pluralism undercuts the very notion of the common good by denying children maternal love.