Seth Udinski, FISM News
Cancel culture appears to be invading the Church, as a recent poll revealed that nearly half of all evangelical pastors say they have been blacklisted or experienced some other type of ousting by other professing Christians.
The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), a cross-denominational ministry with the goal of uniting evangelical Christians with the gospel, conducted a poll this past summer exploring the effects of cancel culture within the church.
The results revealed that 48% of evangelical leaders “have been disinvited, blacklisted, or excluded by others as a way of expressing their disapproval for the leader or the leader’s point of view.” The poll was clear that this definition of cancellation was not meant to include termination of a relationship due to unrepentant sin, but rather simply due to differences in doctrine or public opinion.
One example was Daniel Henderson, who serves as president of Strategic Renewal. He said,
I served as the primary speaker for an annual event (for about nine years) at a major Christian university. Although my ministry remained consistent — and my views had not changed at all — my relationship with people outside their doctrinal distinctives caused me to be disinvited.
NAE president Walter Kim stated,
As a society, we need to find a way to hold individuals and organizations accountable for their actions, but not punish people for holding beliefs that may be different. We need to encourage conversations across differences.
Author’s Biblical Analysis:
What do Christians make of this report? There is much truth we can draw from this, but we must be careful to discern that which is true from that which is not. Several truths come to the forefront, and please bear with me, because they may seem contradictory at first. In the biblical worldview, however, they are both equally true and fully edifying for the believer.
The first truth is this: doctrinal clarity and doctrinal fidelity must be upheld. I am in no way defending cancel culture. However, for the protection of the body of Christ, safeguards are necessary for the health of the flock to prevent those who are unfit for leadership to be put in that position.
While this report infers that leaders were canceled because of their biblical fidelity, the church can also be guilty of canceling individuals who stumble in their walk rather than reaching out in love and seeking to help restore the individual.
For example: if a pastor comes under discipline for a public sin, he should not be canceled. However, for the health of the church, neither should he be allowed to take the pulpit nor perform a speaking engagement until he has shown true repentance and consistent growth. That growth is very often not immediate. Instead, it is a process that can take weeks, months, or even years depending on the severity of the infraction.
This is where we see the glorious difference between a “churchy” version of worldly cancel culture and the biblical model for the confrontation of sin found in Matthew 18. If cancel culture pervades a church’s worldview, then every time a pastor sins, the elder board simply fires that pastor and hires a new one. He sins once, and the cycle starts again. You can see how foolish that would be.
Conversely, when the biblical model of accountability is used, the pastor is appropriately disciplined with the end goal being restoration. This being said there are certain sins that disqualifies a person for leadership in the church, though no one is ever disqualified from the grace and love of Christ.
This leads to the second truth: We all deserve cancellation. By God’s grace, we have instead received restoration.
The insidious nature of cancel culture, and why Christians must be so vigilant to keep it out of our churches and our hearts, is that it profanes the gospel of grace and presumes that we, the ones doing the “canceling,” are somehow innocent.
Christian, if you are tempted to cancel another Christian, ask yourself if you have ever sinned. The answer for you, no matter how “good” you presume to be, is undoubtedly yes. This means you, like those who have been “canceled,” are equally deserving of eternal perdition.
If we took cancel culture to its logical end, there would be no one left to cancel. We would all be nixed because we are all sinners who have woefully missed the mark of God’s goodness. Romans 3 tells us,
None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.
Cancel culture is based on a dual system of condemnation of others and simultaneous ignorance of our own wickedness. It would behoove us to remember that Jesus’ greatest foes on this earth, the ones he most often publicly condemned, were the Pharisees, those who were experts in pointing out the sins of others while completely ignoring their own. May this be found in none of us!
Conversely, the good news of Jesus Christ tells us that God has, for the sake of His beloved Son, treated us graciously and welcomed us as sons and daughters at His table. This grace is entirely a gift, entirely a work of God, and entirely ours when we simply repent and believe in the name of the Lord Jesus.
We, who have been shown so much grace, must therefore be the first to show this same grace to others.
Christian, praise God that you and I have not received cancellation but restoration. May we show that same grace to others, and may the one thing we are vigilant to cancel in our lives be the sin that so easily entangles us.
Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more… (Romans 5:20)