The ethics of mercy ought to lead us to form judgments regarding what we are presented with today in the form of cancel culture. So many instances of cancel culture show a pointed failure to exercise mercy. Cancel culture is brutal, cold, and unforgiving. It destroys persons’ lives and livelihoods. It uses manipulation and deceit. Its weapons are slander and anger, to the point of rage and physical violence. As a culture it brands corporate leaders and well-known persons who used poor judgment in speaking on one occasion or another with the same hot iron as the likes of Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein. J. K. Rowling, Chick-fil-A, and police officers are thrown into the same category as pedophiles and serial rapists. Jewish people rightly take umbrage that present so-called “systemic racism” is compared to the Holocaust. Political conservatives are branded as Nazis.

The following paragraph, from a major newspaper, provides a good definition of cancel culture:

The acclaimed Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is known for speaking her mind. And recently, she tackled one of the most controversial topics of the year, on the BBC program Newsnight. When asked about “cancel culture”—the social media trend of demanding people who say objectionable things be “de-platformed,” stripping them of speaking engagements, livelihoods and reputation—Adichie said she found it lacking in basic compassion. “In general, I think that the response to bad speech is more speech,” she said. “The problem with just sort of no-platforming people, cancelling people, sometimes for the smallest things, I think that it then makes censorship become a thing that we do to ourselves. I often wonder how many people are not saying what they think because they’re terrified. And if that’s happening, how much are we not learning? How much are we not growing?”

As bad as it is and in spite of its name, cancel culture is more an ethical system than a culture. It is indeed one of the worst to appear in the history of mankind. It is a complex ethical system with various branches. Admittedly, it is not very organized. Yet it is organized and systematic enough to be a called a culture. It has such a consistency that it can be defined and described. As a system it is ethical in character and nature. It declares its distinctions between good and bad. It metes out punishment according to its applied distinctions. The proclaimed goodness of cancel culture it reserves only to itself. Cancel culture uses all its power to pronounce condemnation, never to exonerate. It is called cancel culture because its business is to cancel, that is, to destroy.

Its targets are many and varied, and they range from prominent individuals to corporations and to institutions. Conservative college professors are targeted for teaching about differences among cultures and nations throughout history. Recently a journalist for the New York Times felt compelled to resign because of her stand in support of journalistic freedom and integrity. She cited as a reason for her resignation the cancel culture in operation at her employer, formerly recognized as a pillar of journalism. Remarkable about her case was that she was an ardent supporter of the LGBTQ movement and identified herself as bisexual. Yet she faced powerful opposition and bullying in the workplace because of her willingness to entertain opinions disagreeable to cancel culture. Others like her—liberal journalists, authors, and prominent members of academia—together signed an open letter concerning the demise of intellectual and academic freedom due to the rise of cancel culture. Their letter brought on them a firestorm of criticism from their peers.

Institutions likewise have come under severe pressure and strain from cancel culture. Calls to defund the police are part of cancel culture. The office of the president of the United States was under fire by cancel culture because of the president’s opposition to cancel culture and most notably because of his support of law and order in the country. As Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed by the Senate to the Supreme Court, politicians attempted to use cancel culture to defeat her approval to become an associate justice in the highest court of the United States. Her crime was that she believed that the constitution of the United States was a valid legal and controlling document—not to mention that she was a Roman Catholic whose thoughts had an objective moral alignment to them.

Parentage of Cancel Culture

Regardless of whether cancel culture admits it or not, this movement has historical roots. Its roots are in boycott and other forms of protest, including civil disobedience. These roots developed in history from boycott and civil disobedience to rioting. Cancel culture is sympathetic toward anarchy and rioting both because they are partners in the destruction of rule of law and because together they are anti-institutional. In these roots are the movement’s present force and justification. Even though it is somewhat ashamed of its history, cancel culture is not afraid to make twisted use of history’s force and justification for present advantage. In light of cultural and intellectual history, it would seem that cancel culture, like anarchy, seeks to apply the philosophy of nihilism into concrete action.

Because cancel culture is truly an ethical system, it has criteria by which it imposes its judgment upon persons, companies, and institutions. The most basic criteria are political, but the criteria are divided. Cancel culture enjoys support from liberalism, while having none from conservatism. Because of this support, the movement justifies liberalism and determines conservative views to be unethical. However, cancel culture is actually too strident a movement for simple liberalism in the United States, its main base as a cultural movement. Cancel culture also condemns as unethical moderate liberalism, which supports historical institutions, law and order, and capitalist economies. Especially in this respect cancel culture represents the destructive force that historically has led to the beginning of communist regimes. “Leaders” of cancel culture will cite tenets of Marxism as justification for their actions.

An early manifestation of cancel culture was the Occupy movement, in which groups of young people made encampments near financial centers in various cities. Their first point was to try to condemn the wealthy by positioning themselves as poor persons who had the right to occupy the same ground as their wealthy enemies. Their first point was to serve a second: the only possibility for wealth to exist was the poverty of the poor, and to be wealthy was to be guilty of stealing from the poor. The Occupy movement pushed its particular form of civil disobedience into anarchist expression. It was remarkable that many in government expressed not only sympathy toward, but also solidarity with, the movement. One of the more troubling elements of cancel culture is that many government officials, trying to gain the favor of populist sentiment, approve anarchy.

The above leads to one of the revealing features of cancel culture: it has two kinds of targets. First and more apparent, it has persons and definable institutions in view. Second, it has everything historical in view. In the viewpoint of cancel culture, the past is so steeped in sheer prejudice and bigotry that it ought to be entirely canceled. Statues, not only of white male oppressors, are torn down. Torn down are also many simple, symbolic reminders of the past. Statues commemorating the abolition of slavery are destroyed because they are reminders of a history that ought not to exist any longer, even in the minds of a people. It is not hard to envision the movement, now directed at historical icons such as statues, soon to be directed against all history books.

Roots of Cancel Culture

There are two main forces that drive cancel culture: hatred and ignorance. These two forces are coordinated as an emotionalism that is so strong exactly because it defies reasoning. Reasoning generally tempers emotions. Seeing cancel culture in the light of scripture, the necessity of judging all things in the light of God’s word is meant to curb and control our emotions, so that we properly love good and hate evil. But the hatred of cancel culture is so strong exactly because it refuses arguments, pro and con.

This ignorant hatred that is characteristic of cancel culture is manifested. When asked for justification or explanation for the destruction of any victim, the response defies logic. Why must a particular statue be torn down? Because the commemorated individual was either a slave owner or represented racism. When the conversation continues with a suggestion that whatever those facts may be, it does not deny the individual’s contribution to history, the response is simply an angry recitation of the same line. Another way in which ignorant hatred is expressed is the angry shouting down of those presenting opposing arguments. Facts do not matter. History does not matter. Arguments do not matter. What matters is channeled anger—anger that is present in enough persons to justify itself, build up, and gather those persons together. Anger then focuses that energy to destroy persons, companies, institutions, and history itself.

Cancel culture presents itself then as mob rule. Having no basis in thoughtful, deliberative control of its force, it nevertheless expresses itself against identifiable targets. Consideration of these targets leads to two certain conclusions about the movement. First, its targets have a common feature. They represent a solid past, a past that is able to project itself into the future with a certain force. That force is orderly, structural, objective, and standardized and has the potential for shaping and molding the future. That force represents basic divisions in society and culture that project these divisions into the future. These are divisions that represent law and order and values of marriage, family, and parenting. These are divisions between conservative and liberal, between capitalism and socialism. These divisions represent a standard, in light of which the future can be judged. Cancel culture is truly revolutionary in the deepest sense of the word. It seeks to remove but has nothing to replace. It works to tear down but has nothing to build up. One can only guess at what will fill the vacuum that cancel culture is stridently and angrily creating.

The second conclusion concerns the nature of the movement’s control. Who or what is the guiding force behind cancel culture? The importance of this question becomes clear from a consideration not of its victims or targets but of those caught up in the sweep of its power. Those claiming to represent cancel culture do not control it. Many who claim to represent it show in their representation that they do not understand it. Attempts to explain or justify the movement all show a failure to reckon with its anarchist nature. Many who one day claim to represent the movement or even control it are the next day felled by it.

Both of these conclusions must be truly frightening to every thoughtful individual. But the Reformed believer must see the hand of God’s judgment in cancel culture. As man has tried to overthrow the rule of God and denied his sovereignty, he has substituted his own laws for the laws of God. He has rejected absolute truth in favor of a relativistic worldview. Morality and ethics have become increasingly relative, determined by a society’s own interests and values. Favoring selfishness over love of God and love of the neighbor for God’s sake, cancel culture represents the end of that selfishness: a building rage against all that smells the least bit of authority or absolutes. The Reformed believer is thus comforted when confronted with cancel culture, for it is but the manifestation of the righteousness of God against the wickedness of men who hold the truth under in unrighteousness.

At the same time, the Reformed believer has an answer for cancel culture.

First, he must know the condemnation of its building rage and anger according to God’s word. It is the very same rage at which the Lord laughs in Psalm 2, the rage of the nations’ seeking to cast off the sovereign rule of the living God. It is the anger fomented by Demetrius and the other silversmiths of Ephesus against the testimony of the gospel preached by Paul in that city, an anger that drew the whole city together. The people of the city were gathered into the theater as an aroused and angry multitude, ready to destroy whomever was presented to them as the public enemy. Yet, as we read in Acts 19:32, “the more part knew not wherefore they were come together.” Cancel culture is a violation of Exodus 23:2, God’s law prohibiting following a multitude to do evil. It partakes of the same character as the multitude of the Jews gathered together, whipped into a frenzy by their leaders, who cried out for the crucifixion of Jesus, saying, “His blood be on us, and on our children” (Matt. 27:25).

Second, the Reformed believer must go behind the rage and ignorance of cancel culture to consider its complete lack of any moral basis. Cancel culture has nothing to explain and no standard to apply. It does not move from an objective framework that can be understood and communicated to a set of actions governed by that objective framework. This aspect of cancel culture ought to be most outstanding to the Reformed believer. In one respect it signals to him a real end of the rejection of the objective standard of God’s word, particularly God’s law. What makes cancel culture so astounding is that its bitter viciousness rests on an avowed policy of being nonjudgmental. It even rejects the perverted standards of men that have ruled for so long in our society and culture, expressing outrage at the term “sexual preference” when used by Amy Coney Barrett at her appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Tide of Worldliness

Cancel culture is present in Reformed circles. Its anger and deliberate rejection of rational argument have crept in and become dominant. How is it that certain ministers are reviled and branded, with such hatred and contempt heaped on them? Derisive and contemptuous words such as slander and schism are aimed and thrown with no ground or basis in fact. A new magazine that simply defends and maintains the truth merits the worst opprobrium without its opponents delving into the contents and taking the time to understand what is written and judging it in the light of God’s word. Consistories, whose work is bound by article 30 of the Church Order, transgress the limits of the Church Order to censure the publication. The basis for that censure is said to be a violation of article 31 and the Formula of Subscription, without explaining how. Defense of the truth of sovereign grace, based on such historical creeds as the three forms of unity, meets with hatred and reproach. Upholding certain decisions of past synods and seeking the maintenance and application of those decisions in the present is attacked with the buzzwords slander and schism. A furious mob gathers with weapons at the ready, whereof the more part know not wherefore they are come together (Acts 19:32). Who pauses to consider the love of the truth as a proper motive for defending and maintaining it? Who stops to think things through? Far easier it is to let others decide and judge and simply follow their lead, rather than judging responsibly. To see civil government officials undermining their own rule and authority by promoting cancel culture should be a strong enough warning to ecclesiastical assemblies to keep them from doing the same. The power of cancel culture is indeed heady stuff!

A proper Reformed ethical response to cancel culture is to repudiate it for these reasons. The first is that its mode of destructive anger is condemned by scriptures such as James 1:20: “The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.” The second is that cancel culture denies the judgments of God in history, whether those judgments are the manifestations of his holiness against the sins of men or the simple outworking of his providence, even in such matters as rule of law and distinctions among men (Prov. 22:2). The third is that cancel culture denies the standard by which all things must be judged, the standard of holy scripture, according to 1 Thessalonians 5:21–22.

The child of God has a sure refuge from the raging force of the destructive power of cancel culture. The faces of men, though filled with fury and anger, cannot assail the righteousness of God (see James 1:20). Just as he who sits in the heavens laughs them to scorn, holding the heathen in derision (Ps. 2:4), the believer who possesses God’s righteousness by faith alone has nothing to fear from cancel culture. The name of God is the high tower to which he runs and finds and possesses all safety there. Being a redeemed servant of God, answering always and only to the God who has purchased him with his own blood, he need not wither before the angry faces of men. He answers not to them but to his faithful heavenly Father. He is freed from the snare of the fear of man, though so intricately laid and so deadly of force.