#56: Where the Gospel Meets Cancel Culture

#56: Where the Gospel Meets Cancel Culture

Note: The Love Thy Neighborhood podcast is made for the ear, and not the eye. We would encourage you to listen to the audio for the full emotional emphasis of this episode. The following transcription may contain errors. Please refer to the audio before quoting any content from this episode. 

JESSE EUBANKS: This podcast is made possible because of generous supporters. If you would like to help this ministry continue to make this podcast, you can sign up to become a Patreon supporter. You would have options to unlock bonus interviews, be a part of exclusive livestream events, even be a part of an LTN book club. It’s really easy to join. Just go to patreon.com/lovethyneighborhood. We’d love to have you with us as we explore discipleship and missions in our modern times. Again, go to patreon.com/lovethyneighborhood, and sign up today.

—————————————–

JESSE EUBANKS: Lachlan, okay, so the first reference to being canceled – what do you think it was, and when do you think it was? 

LACHLAN COFFEY: I would not know this answer. (laughter) I feel like – feels like Donald Trump would be involved somewhere in –

JESSE EUBANKS: Uh-huh. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: – the history –

JESSE EUBANKS: Uh-huh.

LACHLAN COFFEY: Of canceling. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Not Donald Trump. You’re gonna have to go a little further back.

LACHLAN COFFEY: Okay.

JESSE EUBANKS: And, uh, it’s actually gonna be pretty different. So the first documented use of someone getting canceled actually comes from a 1991 movie called New Jack City. It’s an American crime thriller, and in that movie, the main character, Nino, breaks up with his girlfriend by saying, “Cancel that B.” 

LACHLAN COFFEY: B stands for “best friend”! It does not, does it? 

JESSE EUBANKS: No, he’s – it’s not. He does not say B. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: It’s a no-no word.

JESSE EUBANKS: But that’s actually not the point. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Okay, so canceling goes back to a nineties movie. Okay. I’m with you now. New Jack City. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay. One line in a movie though really wasn’t enough to catapult “being canceled” to mainstream culture. That actually didn’t happen until 2014 in an episode of the reality TV show Love & Hip Hop. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: I love love. I love hip hop. I’ve never thought about mashing those together, so (laughter) this sounds like a, a good art form here. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So in that episode, the character Cisco has a fight with his girlfriend Diamond and tells her that she’s canceled. Uh, here’s actually a clip from that conversation.

LOVE & HIP HOP CLIP: Get away from me. You canceled… Canceled? 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Wait, (laughter) I heard – can we just play that one more time? 

LOVE & HIP HOP CLIP: Get away from me. You canceled… Canceled? 

LACHLAN COFFEY: (laughter) I love the snicker.

JESSE EUBANKS: (laughs) I love how like –

LACHLAN COFFEY: I don’t even know how to make that sound. 

JESSE EUBANKS: – she, she’s just like, “Canceled?” Like she’s offended, but she’s also confused. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yeah, she’s like –

JESSE EUBANKS: It’s like, “I don’t know exactly what to be offended about.”

LACHLAN COFFEY: You know what she hasn’t watched? New Jack City. (laughter)

JESSE EUBANKS: Right. Yeah, but Cisco did, uh, ’cause actually in a later interview he admitted that he was watching New Jack City just the night before this all happened. 

CISCO INTERVIEW CLIP: I was just watching New Jack City the night before I met with her that day. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So what’s even more funny is that, like, after Diamond gets canceled, she starts just, like, knocking things off the table where they’re sitting and walks away and he just keeps repeating it.

LOVE & HIP HOP CLIP: Canceled. Canceled. You canceled. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: (laughter) That’s amazing. 

JESSE EUBANKS: She’s like the cats, like the meme online where the cats just push things off the table, and I love that he’s almost like – 

LACHLAN COFFEY: “You’re canceled.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: – he’s the David Attenborough of this moment. Like he’s, like, narrating, like, “Canceled, canceled.” 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yes. It feels like a Oprah, like but a bad version of Oprah. Instead of like, “You get a car, you get a car” – like, “Canceled, canceled, canceled, canceled.” (laughter)

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so, like, as ridiculous as all this was afterward, you know, the term “canceled” started gaining momentum on Twitter. People were posting things like, “I’m gonna start telling people ‘You’re canceled'” or things like, “Meg likes the color orange. She’s canceled.” 

LACHLAN COFFEY: And so it’s, like, a joke sort of sound to it. It’s not something serious. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, yeah. Like initially it started off, like, in the mainstream culture like as a joke, but then, you know, the last several years, like, that’s not really where we are anymore. You know, being canceled – it’s gotten a lot more serious than just like dating breakups or silly tweets. Okay, so example – in 2021, author J.K. Rowling was canceled for making a social media post that was seen as transphobic. Uh, actress Gina Carano, if you remember her – she was in The Mandalorian – she was canceled for comparing today’s political climate with Nazi Germany. In fact, the website Good to Know actually lists 14 celebrities that have been canceled in the past year alone, losing fans and even losing jobs.

LACHLAN COFFEY: But all of these examples – the Love & Hip Hop, the celebrities you’re talking about – like, all this has to do with media and entertainment and Hollywood, but I keep hearing about canceling even happening with just normal, everyday people. So talk about that. What about you and me? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, you know, like being canceled has a lot to do with us because the battle of cancel culture – it’s not just something that, like, happens out there in society. Cancel culture has even made its way to the church.

—————————————–

JESSE EUBANKS: You’re listening to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks.

LACHLAN COFFEY: And I’m Lachlan Coffey. Every episode we hear stories of Christians trying to follow Jesus in our modern times. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Today’s episode is where the gospel meets cancel culture. We’re gonna be exploring what exactly is cancel culture, what impact has it had on the church, and in a world of judgment and retaliation, does Jesus offer us a better way forward? Welcome to our corner of the urban universe.

—————————————–

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so in 2019, Macquarie Dictionary named “cancel culture” the Word of the Year, and it’s actually only seemed to grow in popularity. Since then, the term “cancel culture” – it’s been discussed by The New York Times, by Fox News, NPR, The Washington Post, dozens of other news sites. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yeah, because of that, I feel like it’s one of those terms that just gets thrown around willy-nilly, but before we go on, we need to just stop and define it. What exactly is cancel culture? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good question. Okay. So I really like how Sean McDowell puts it. So Sean’s an author and an apologist, and he spends a lot of time thinking through how Christians relate to culture. Here’s how he defines it. 

SEAN MCDOWELL: Typically when people talk about cancel culture, they’re referring to something somebody says or does that is offensive to somebody else. So they A, either stop following them, and then B, more actively try to cancel their platform, try to cancel their job in some cases, try to cancel their reputation, and try to make things difficult for the person for holding a position that they think is out of bounds. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, like, so when it comes to cancel culture, you have two parties. You’ve got the offender and the offended. It’s like a way for us to remove power or influence from someone we believe either has done something wrong or holds the wrong beliefs, and cancel culture might seem like a, I don’t know, recent phenomenon, but this stuff is not new. In fact, people were getting canceled all the way back to the time Jesus was on earth.

In the gospel of John chapter four, Jesus comes to a town of Samaria and he’s tired, so he sits down by a well. And then we’re told two things back-to-back. One – that the time of day is around noon, and two – that a woman comes to get water from the well. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: And that might not mean much to us, but the reality is, is that this would’ve been very strange because in those days women went to get water in groups and in the evening. This woman is going alone and in the middle of the day.

JESSE EUBANKS: And later, as Jesus talks with her, we find out why. This woman had had five husbands and was currently living with a man that she was not married to, and this would’ve been viewed as disgraceful. So she had likely been canceled by her community as the town sinner, thus she is relegated to going out in the afternoon when there aren’t others around to shame and mock her.

LACHLAN COFFEY: And that’s the vibe I get from cancel culture. It’s a sort of like, “you gotta walk on eggshells, be careful, can’t upset the masses that are like a sleeping dog that could awaken at any moment.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: Right, and when we think of cancel culture today, we likely think of politics and the left versus the right. But I think we would be foolish to think that cancel culture hasn’t infiltrated the church. In fact, a woman named Aimee Byrd can testify to that herself. So Aimee’s a wife and a mother. She’s also a writer, but she’s also really into theology and discipleship. And when it came to the church, she didn’t find many avenues to explore those things. 

AIMEE BYRD: I became an author because of the loneliness that I was finding as a thinking woman in the church.

JESSE EUBANKS: So Aimee gets an idea – “What if I write some books for women, some books full of theology and deep thinking?”

AIMEE BYRD: You know, I had a book in my head (laughs) from a problem I saw in the church, and my husband was just like, “Well write it.” You know? And so I did. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Her first book was called Housewife Theologian. 

AIMEE BYRD: So my first book was really about, you know, “Hey women, we’re theologians too,” (laughs) and I thought maybe this would be a tool to help encourage women but also be able to think more theologically about their lives. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And the book – it was a success. Aimee actually started getting requests to speak at different churches. She got hired by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals to write for their blog. The Alliance also asked her to be the co-host of one of their podcasts called Mortification of Spin. 

AIMEE BYRD: So that was received pretty well. So that gave me a lot of opportunities in like, uh, speaking, podcasting, and, and further writing. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And so Aimee actually went on to write more books as well, but then she actually decided to tackle a lightning rod topic. She decided to write about gender. So in 2020, Aimee wrote a book called Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and the title was actually a play off of a popular book from the nineties written by John Piper and Wayne Grudem called Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Aimee felt that the teaching in that book was actually full of really narrow views of how each gender can express their gender and the roles that each gender has in the world and that the Bible actually allows for way more breadth within our genders. 

AIMEE BYRD: What I really wanted to do was just give an alternative resource to all the books that are marketed under the banner of biblical manhood and biblical womanhood that had a lot of error in them and a lot of fluff. You know, femininity and masculinity was based a lot on not only like 1950 stereotypes, but even just kind of ancient, you know, Greek anthropology.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so what she’s referring to there is women in ancient Greece not being valued much more than slaves. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Okay. Yeah, I’m tracking with you ’cause I remember Love Thy Neighborhood did a three-episode series on gender, right? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: And I would agree that much of the time the church gets too narrow in defining gender expression, in defining gender roles in the church.

JESSE EUBANKS: In a prescriptive way.

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yeah.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, yeah. So we’re actually not gonna get into a gender discussion here. For that, you can actually go back and listen to that three-episode series, and they actually start with episode number 36. So Aimee writes this book, but even before it comes out, the social media comments start.

AIMEE BYRD: So then there was this group of men and women, but it was led by some church officers in my denomination, who were starting to go on social media and warn people that I’m dangerous. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So this group – it was a Facebook group called “Genevan Commons.” Their description is “This group is dedicated to the promotion of the reformed faith in its churchly historical expressions.” So it’s a private group, but anybody can ask to join. And at the time, Aimee herself was not part of the group, but someone who was in the group actually reached out to her and told her about some of the comments that were being posted. 

AIMEE BYRD: So somebody shared with me some screenshots of what was being said on this Facebook group.

JESSE EUBANKS: And at first, like, these comments, you know, they were rude, but in a joking sort of manner, like this one – “Why can’t these women just take their shoes off and make us sandwiches, winky face?” 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Can I just say I hate winky faces? (laughter) Especially like in text mode, comment mode. I loathe them. 

JESSE EUBANKS: But then, you know, the comments actually started attacking Aimee herself, like this one that actually mocks her appearance. So for example, like this person writes, “In this freeze frame, she’s looking butch, her femininity is withdrawn, and she looks hardened. Very sad.” Another person writes, “Her posture and clothing accentuate masculine traits – and that in a bad way. She looks like a rebellious teenage skater dude.”

LACHLAN COFFEY: Wow. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And then these, which actually attack her character. This person writes, “I personally think she has a number of similarities to Jezebel.” Another person – “She’s free to go and play devil’s advocate with human sexuality using the language of the Bible, very similar to what the serpent did in the garden.” 

LACHLAN COFFEY: What in the world is going on here? Like, why do these people hate her so much? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, yeah. Well, listen, here’s the deal. The people in this group – they held to certain things about gender, that women are to be submissive to men not just in marriage, that women shouldn’t teach men in any context. And because Aimee’s book was stepping outside of their box, they actually saw her as promoting feminism and egalitarianism, which is basically the belief that there is no distinction between the offices, the roles, and the expressions that can happen between men and women.

LACHLAN COFFEY: So, was she? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, Aimee actually says that she wasn’t writing about those things at all.

AIMEE BYRD: And I think that complementarianism is a great word. I do think that there’s something beautiful about the distinction between male and female and that, you know, we should explore that more. I wasn’t writing about, you know, women becoming leaders in the church. I wasn’t writing about marriage even. Um, I was writing about plain-old discipleship, agency and discipleship. So it was just mind-blowing. 

JESSE EUBANKS: However, you know, some people in this group – they were convinced that Aimee was in their words, quote, “an evil person” and, quote, “a false teacher.” So our producer actually spoke with Shane Anderson. He’s one of the admins of that Facebook group, and here’s what he had to say about the reasons for those comments. 

SHANE ANDERSON: And so that was the goal, was to protect families and churches and people from un-wholesome teaching. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And so you can see what’s at stake for both Aimee as well as for this group. Like this group believes, “We wanna uphold the biblical view, which is to say their view of reality is, ‘Men have been designed for this and women have been designed for this and families have been designed for this,'” and they wanna uphold that.

LACHLAN COFFEY: And she’s saying, “I have a different take on that biblical view.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yes, yes. So she’s appealing to the exact same source, the Bible. You know, they’re both trying to answer the question, “What is God’s vision for us as men and as women?” And they are disagreeing. And so the response from some of the people in the group was to try to stop Aimee, and the place to start that was actually in the comments section in this group.

AIMEE BYRD: I mean, like, this person sent me – I would say over two weeks, all day long, I was getting screenshots as they were coming in real time, and just, it was overwhelming. You know, there’d be hundreds of comments in these threads, you know, “If her husband really loved her, he’d shut her up,” and, you know, they would just say horrible things. You know, some things that I couldn’t, I wouldn’t even say when, when on a podcast out loud. They were just so vile. 

JESSE EUBANKS: But then things actually went beyond the Facebook group. Some of the people actually started attacking her on blogs, like this one that says, “The reform churches have found themselves at war. The battle lines are drawn, and the conflict is underway. This article is the beginning of a series in which I make a plea to godly readers to recognize the enemy and to take up arms against it. The enemy is feminism. Here I begin to prove this claim by introducing the generals of today’s feminist army. They are women, and three of them in particular. First in prominence is Aimee Byrd.”

LACHLAN COFFEY: Geez, that escalated. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. And then they actually started targeting her speaking engagements. 

AIMEE BYRD: You know, a week before I was going to one of my speaking engagements that was in the middle of nowhere, you know, that was one of the ones that I found out they were actually calling – ’cause, you know, it was multiple churches feeding into this retreat – they were calling all the churches in the area warning them to guard their families and their churches from me. They called the director of the retreat center saying that I was dangerous. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Here’s another post in the same Facebook group. Uh, it actually has a link to one of Aimee’s upcoming speaking sessions with this comment – “Aimee Byrd being promoted in the OPC. Guard your families and churches.” The OPC – it’s Aimee’s denomination, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Then, in the comments below that post, someone says, “They wanted to get her this year for my Presbyterian ladies’ retreat. I told them my concerns with her, and they got another lady instead.”

AIMEE BYRD: Um, so it was, like, affecting my vocation.

LACHLAN COFFEY: So how did we get to this place? How did we get to the point where justice means “I revile you” and try to get others to do the same? How did we get to a point where in order to solve a problem, we cancel someone? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, it’s a good question. You know, there’re actually three factors that make our society a breeding ground for cancel culture, and we’re gonna take a look at those after the break. We’ll be right back.

COMMERCIAL

JESSE EUBANKS: You’re listening to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: And I’m Lachlan Coffey. Today’s episode is where the gospel meets cancel culture. 

JESSE EUBANKS: We’re following the story of Aimee Byrd. Aimee is an author who has now been canceled for her book Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Okay, I have a lot of questions, but here’s my main question – where does this come from? Like, why do we have a cancel culture in the first place? If I disagree with you on something, why is my first instinct now to simply just cancel you? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Dude, great question. Okay, so remember Sean McDowell who gave us the definition of cancel culture at the beginning of the episode?

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yeah.

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, he sees three main reasons why cancel culture is so popular right now. Let’s take a little detour and explore those briefly. Okay, why do we have a cancel culture? Number one, we are living in an age of a lot of hurt. Here’s Sean. 

SEAN MCDOWELL: I think one of ’em is that we have just a, a culture and a generation of hurting people right now, whether it’s depression, loneliness, joblessness, anxiety, and Rick Warren, you know, pastor and author, said, “Hurt people hurt people.” 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Okay, that makes sense. If we’re hurting, our natural human response is to extend that hurt to others. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Right. You know, without God’s spirit to intervene, we simply do to others whatever we’re experiencing. So that’s the first reason. The second reason is we live in an age of extreme polarization.

SEAN MCDOWELL: As we just have such clashing worldviews right now within the church and outside of the church on so many issues. I’m talking race, LGBTQ, the environment, gun control. Because of social media we have access to what everybody views on everything nonstop, and so it creates this sense of just this, this cancel culture of reacting against people who view the world differently. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Okay, I get what he’s saying. That’s why cancel culture is so prevalent because we’re at a point where everyone has an opinion about everything and we can’t help ourselves to give it. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, which actually brings me to the third point. Okay, so number one, we’re hurting. Number two, we’re polarized. Number three, we’re constantly connected online. 

SEAN MCDOWELL: Now we’re expected to speak up on issues. In fact, we’re told that you are not loving and not caring and hateful if you don’t hold certain views, express them a certain way on social media. And now everybody has a platform, whether it’s through Twitter or Instagram or TikTok or YouTube, to speak up, and you’re immoral in the eyes of some if you don’t.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so before social media, you know, you and I have been friends for about 25 years. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yeah.

JESSE EUBANKS: And through the years we’ve had disagreements, we’ve had times where we have not seen eye to eye on things, and how have we talked through those things? 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Pure, unadulterated rage. (laughter) I’m just joking. I’m just joking. Most time we talk about it. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: You know, there’s –

JESSE EUBANKS: And we don’t always agree. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yeah.

JESSE EUBANKS: And we sometimes even have impassioned ideas about things and we don’t come to the same conclusion, but we don’t have to destroy the friendship – 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Exactly. 

JESSE EUBANKS: – in the course of it. But, like, that’s not how things work anymore. You know, now people sort of argue from their homes into their phones, you know, with strangers, and people tend to say way more extreme things online than they would ever say face-to-face. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yeah. It’s like we have the perfect conditions now for cancel culture, true cancel culture, to thrive, even within the church because these are all things that are present in the church today as well.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. So going back to Aimee. You know, it was the fact that she was being canceled within a church context that just added a whole other layer for her. 

AIMEE BYRD: Okay. Critiquing my work, that’s fair game. You know, and, and I’m used to that already. And there’s even this, “there’s gonna be jerks on the internet.” (laughs) You know, no getting around that. But for me it was church officers who were harassing, reviling – um, it really does something to you. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Aimee said that she could take pushback, but she didn’t know how to take such cruel words and actions from people who were leaders within her own denomination because most of the people who were commenting and involved in trying to get Aimee canceled were pastors or elders. And for Aimee, it was the fact that this behavior was coming from brothers in Christ who were leaders in the church that really started to affect her psychologically, but also physically. 

AIMEE BYRD: My body at that point was starting to break down from the trauma. You know, I was, I went hiking with a friend and come back and, you know, four hours later and I left my keys in my car running the whole time. You know, it’s just things like this, like brain fog. It’s just, you know, “I left my gas grill on all night long, um, after making dinner.” You, you know, I started to not be able to trust myself. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So in light of being canceled by members within her own denomination, Aimee actually sought to figure out what action she should take.

AIMEE BYRD: The first thing I did was I tried to get some counsel. You know, I went to my pastor, my elders. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And they agreed that the way things that had transpired – it wasn’t right. So they told Aimee to file a formal complaint. 

AIMEE BYRD: You know, they said to me like, “Let’s take this through the proper formal channels.” You know, first, informally, you want to confront these people, you want a change of heart. Um, they were resistant to anything like that. And so then, you know, it was kind of like, “Let us handle it. We are gonna do our jobs, and we’re gonna address this.” So that’s what I did. 

JESSE EUBANKS: But while Aimee was waiting for the leadership to look into things, some of her supporters decided to take matters into their own hands.

SHANE ANDERSON: Byrd and others developed a doxing website in which statements were taken out of context, emphasized, and applied to her or to others in ways that, um, were not the case. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So again, this is Shane Anderson, one of the admins for the Genevan Commons Facebook group.

LACHLAN COFFEY: Timeout. He used the word “doxing.” I think it – we need to explain that for a moment here.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, okay. So “doxing” means making private information public online. So what happened was that Aimee began documenting the public proceedings on her blog, and when some of her followers read what was happening, they took it upon themselves to create a document of all the members of this Facebook group. And then people started looking them up and trying to cancel them.

SHANE ANDERSON: People talking about us likely being child molesters. You know, I’m not like a super macho guy, so like a lot of Aimee Byrd’s, you know, followers would talk about how effeminate I was. They were texting my wife and other people’s wives and saying, “You know, if you’re being abused, we’ll help you get outta your marriage and stuff” – just bizarre, bizarre behavior. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Okay, so now this has become a tale of two cancels, and I think you know the old saying, Jesse.

JESSE EUBANKS: Which is what? 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Two cancels don’t make an un-cancel. (laughter)

JESSE EUBANKS: Right.

LACHLAN COFFEY: I think it’s an old adage. It’s a motto. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Sure, sure, sure, sure. That’s the thing when it comes to cancel culture – canceling begets more canceling. There’s no end to it. You offend me, so I cancel you, which means you’re offended, so you cancel me back. 

SHANE ANDERSON: She doesn’t engage her critics in any sort of a responsible, respectful way. They criticize her, and then she instantly goes to, “They’re a monster. They’re misogynistic. They’re, you know, they’re terrible.”

JESSE EUBANKS: In reality, we found evidence that Aimee did try to answer her critics. When she was part of that Facebook group, she responded by saying, quote, “I am not an egalitarian” and, quote, “I don’t appreciate being called a feminist as a conversation closer instead of engaging with such important issues.” She was actually removed from the group shortly after. But from Shane’s point of view, they didn’t do anything wrong by the comments that they made. 

SHANE ANDERSON: And just because she could get all these spies to come in anonymously and clip little phrases together onto a PDF doesn’t mean that any of us disrespected her personhood on any level that was worth making a public matter.

JESSE EUBANKS: And remember, like, Shane and other members of this Facebook group – they believe they’re doing what’s right. They believe that they’re defending truth, which is a good thing. We need sound doctrine. But here’s what’s tricky about cancel culture, is that it masks itself as a form of accountability. And as Christians, you know, we believe in accountability. People stumble, they mess up, they sin, and they need help getting back on track sometimes. The difference though between accountability and cancel culture is cruelty. Accountability holds up restoration and correction and forgiveness, while cancel culture holds up an eye for an eye. So if you believe that you are simply holding someone accountable but the methods you are using are public shaming and bullying and cruelty, that is cancel culture. That is not accountability. And you can see some of this happening both ways in this whole situation. 

BRANDON SMITH: And so the shame actually I would say goes both ways. 

JESSE EUBANKS: This is Brandon Smith. He’s a therapist and the executive director for the Christian Psychology Institute. 

BRANDON SMITH: That obviously we’re shaming the individual for the perceived immoral act. But really and truly, I think it has a lot to do with our own shame. But if we can take that, that force and turn it into a spotlight and project it onto other people or another person, then, um, our stuff stays in the dark. You know, it’s, it’s very much like a spotlight would operate in a theater. The person behind the spotlight is the hardest to see, and the person in the spotlight is the easiest to see.

JESSE EUBANKS: You know, we live in this culture that’s really quick to cry victim, and I don’t wanna downplay actual victims. There are people who are truly victimized, and we should be standing up for them. But we have also become this polarized society where either you’re a victim or you’re a victimizer and victimizers receive shame, so you better be a victim so that no one can come after you. But the truth is, like, the Bible actually says that we are both victims and victimizers, so we are both victims of sin and we are victimizers through sin. Tim Keller, he writes this. He says, “Cancel culture ends up valuing fragility over strength, creating a society of constant good versus evil conflict over the smallest issues as people compete for status as victims. It sweeps away the very concept of forgiveness and reconciliation.” And here’s the thing – for Shane, he believes that Aimee is the real canceler in this whole thing. 

SHANE ANDERSON: It’s a little surreal at the end of this to be like Aimee talking about cancel culture when she’s the queen of canceling. I mean, she, she has targeted people that have no power to defend themself. I have many people – like 10, 20 – that could testify today that their employers were contacted by Byrd’s surrogates to be harassed. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So we looked into it. We couldn’t find any evidence of Aimee contacting people and harassing them, only outside people who were following her story. And this is where cancel culture leaves us – divided, blame-shifting, shaming one another. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: So, if these are the results of cancel culture, why do we do it? I mean, what’s the incentive? It doesn’t sound fun. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, because cancel culture seems to give us three things that we as humans value, and those three things are power, community, and affirmation. Okay, so first – power. Again, here’s Brandon Smith. 

BRANDON SMITH: If you think about cancel culture, it’s about removing power. That part of what it means to be a human is not just to be in relationship with each other and with God but to also have some, some power, and so the removal of power is something that we should be aware of. 

JESSE EUBANKS: “If I can take power away from you, that means that I have power.” So, much of the nature of cancel culture is about power struggles. The second thing that it provides is a sense of community. 

BRANDON SMITH: Cancel culture forms these artificial communities, and so cancel culture gives us sort of like a, a team to be a part of, to be against this thing. It’s just reactive though. You know, it’s not like a, a group of people that are for their particular sports team. You know, they’re, they’re not cheering for something. They’re just cheering against something.

JESSE EUBANKS: With cancel culture, we can rally together around something that we’re against. It gives us a sense of belonging to a group. And finally, cancel culture provides us with affirmation.

BRANDON SMITH: Which really speaks to, you know, the thing that we all need and we’re trying to sort of create and reverse by shaming another person. If we got, you know, online and said, “Hey, look at this person. They’re doing a terrible thing,” and then other people agree with us, it’s a weird type of affirmation. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: So power, community, affirmation. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yep. And Brandon sees cancel culture as providing a sort of backwards way of getting these three things. 

BRANDON SMITH: And so the power and the, and the community and the connection can only exist as long as the, the force against the thing that they’re against is there.

JESSE EUBANKS: And this can lead to real consequences. The whole situation caused such a stir that after a year Aimee was fired from her writing job with the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, as well as her co-host position with the Mortification of Spin podcast. Even Shane agreed that Aimee’s being fired was probably not done well.

SHANE ANDERSON: I mean, in my view, the people who promoted Byrd should be clear about why they no longer promote her and her work. They shouldn’t just simply, you know, sort of like “she’s here today, gone tomorrow.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: Eventually Aimee left her denomination, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, altogether. 

AIMEE BYRD: I wrote a post called “Leaving the OPC” on my blog that explains my decisions and, you know, my love that I had for the denomination and really wanting to see this through and what I was hoping to get out of it because I just, I think Christ is so dishonored in this whole thing and we’ve missed him in this.

JESSE EUBANKS: And Aimee continues to reap the consequences of being canceled. 

AIMEE BYRD: I mean, like, just today, you know, somebody retweeted something from me saying that Aimee Byrd is a wicked false teacher. (laughs) Wicked. You know, like, wow. Um, so, so that’s just a, a normal thing for me now.

LACHLAN COFFEY: Man, this breaks my heart. Where’s the gospel in all of this?

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. We actually asked Aimee where she sees Jesus in this. 

AIMEE BYRD: I still see Christ’s presence with his people. You know, I’m still going to church. This has not rocked my faith, um, at all. Like I’ve left the OPC and, you know, I have some very hurt feelings and, and some very strong convictions even about that denomination right now, but I wouldn’t want to cancel the OPC. 

JESSE EUBANKS: We asked Shane the same question – “Where do you see Jesus in this?” 

SHANE ANDERSON: I think where I see the Lord Jesus is high and lifted up as King of kings over the church and over history and in the end as the judge of all of men’s thoughts and actions in the midst of this controversy. It has been very freeing to know that if I were able every night to lay my head down on my pillow and thank the Lord for the strength he had given me to serve him that day and then the next day to serve him again that I would be fine.

LACHLAN COFFEY: Can I tell you the thing that bums me out about this thing? 

JESSE EUBANKS: What’s that? Yeah. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: It feels like cancel culture is such a recipe to just jump so quickly to this negative action and there’s no air of grace or forgiveness that Jesus so readily speaks about. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. Yeah. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: It just drives me crazy because oftentimes there could be a much healthier conversation that would allow for that grace and forgiveness to be extended to our brothers and sisters in Christ, but too often we just wanna immediately run to, “No, you’re wrong. And not only are you wrong, but I’m gonna stop you in your tracks.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. To be clear, this is not saying that we can’t disagree with one another or even hold different views, but I think that we need to remember what are gospel issues – so issues of salvation, issues of the deity of Jesus, the authority of the Bible – and what are secondary or even tertiary issues. And a topic like gender roles – that is not going to be a gospel issue. We can disagree about those things and still be Christians. And when it comes to those things, I just think that we need to take a step back and look at how are we treating people, especially how are we treating people that we disagree with.

LACHLAN COFFEY: So as Christians we’re left with, you know, trying to figure this out. Like, what is the way forward here? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: How can we do better? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, okay. So let’s go back to Sean McDowell. We’ve heard from him a couple of times already. You know, he was asking that same question, and the answer came to him by actually role-playing as an atheist.

LACHLAN COFFEY: Wait, what? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Stay with us.

COMMERCIAL

JESSE EUBANKS: Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. Jesse Eubanks. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Lachlan Coffey. Today – where the gospel meets cancel culture. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so before the break you asked the question, “How can we as Christians do better amidst a society that says canceling people is okay and it’s actually the right thing to do?” And Sean McDowell, who we’ve heard from a couple times – he actually learned how to answer that question during something that he calls his “atheist encounter.”

SEAN MCDOWELL: One of my favorite presentations at schools, university, churches is I role-play an atheist – and people will know I’m a Christian – put on glasses, and I just 15, 20 minutes role-play an atheist, take questions, and respond as an atheist might. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Wait. Why is he putting on glasses? (laughs)

JESSE EUBANKS: I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s like a Superman, Clark Kent thing. (laughter) So Sean actually likes doing this to help Christians learn how to better defend their faith, but also to help them see how they tend to treat those who think differently than they do. 

SEAN MCDOWELL: When I step outta character, the first question I always ask is this – “How did you treat your atheist guest?” And the looks on people’s faces tell it all. I mean, I could tell you stories of the way Christians stormed out, yelled at me, insulted me, knowing that I’m role-playing.

JESSE EUBANKS: So one day Sean is actually scheduled to do this atheist encounter talk at a school in Florida, but one of the teachers actually proposes this crazy idea for Sean to do things a little different this time. 

SEAN MCDOWELL: And the Bible teacher goes, “Hey, we’ve got a unique segment of people. I think a lot of the students won’t recognize you.” He goes, “What if I tell him you’re really an atheist? A buddy of mine in town coming by to talk about why you’re an atheist.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: No one would know Sean was actually a Christian until the very end, after it was all over. No one would realize that he was role-playing. 

SEAN MCDOWELL: And I thought about it. I was like, “You know what? That would definitely make this a much more spicy interaction and raise the stakes. So let’s do it.” 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Sean is a little bit – he’s a little loco. (laughter) Sean’s one of those spicy (unclear). (laughter)

JESSE EUBANKS: So Sean does his talk, and the conversation actually ends up going really well. People were respectful. They asked good questions. Sean was really pleased with how it went, and apparently so were a lot of other people because the school posted the talk on YouTube and it exploded. 

SEAN MCDOWELL: And then all of a sudden I’m getting all of this positive feedback. He put it on his website and it’s been a few weeks, but last I checked it was over 4 million views on YouTube.

LACHLAN COFFEY: 4 million? That is pretty close to viral. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, like Sean’s getting comments, emails, texts saying how great and helpful the video was. But then, out of nowhere, the comments take a turn. 

SEAN MCDOWELL: All of a sudden, I started getting some of the most mean, hateful emails and comments ever.

JESSE EUBANKS: Calling Sean a liar, a horrible atheist, and other things that are not appropriate to repeat in this podcast unless we bleep them out.

SEAN MCDOWELL: And I thought, “What happened?” 

JESSE EUBANKS: What had happened was this. Two separate YouTubers who are atheists found the video of Sean and did a review of it on their own channels. Now, the reviews themselves were not done in a mean spirit. They were actually critical reviews. Here’s some clips from those reviews. 

YOUTUBE CLIPS: By the time I reached the end, I felt the need to speak out on it… My concern is that Sean’s performance may be creating an impression that putting forth false scholarship is a characteristic typical of non-believers. 

JESSE EUBANKS: But those who watched the reviews took it as a signal to start trying to cancelSean. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Wait, this feels like inception to me. 

JESSE EUBANKS: (laughs) Right. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: What’s happening? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, okay. They thought that Sean was misrepresenting them as atheists. In fact, one of the guys who did the review suggested that Sean stop role-playing and have people hear from an actual atheist, which, you know, I could see making a case for that. So things start heating up in all these comments about Sean, and Sean knew he needed to do something. 

SEAN MCDOWELL: And I thought, “I’ve gotta respond here,” because one of ’em had, I don’t know, three, 400,000 subscribers on YouTube, huge audience. And a bunch of my YouTube Christian buddy friends reached out, and they’re like, “Hey, come on my show. Do a response.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: Basically, “Hey, these people are blasting you. Let’s blast them back.” Like I said before, canceling begets more canceling, but Sean didn’t wanna do that. 

SEAN MCDOWELL: But it didn’t sit with me in the sense of, you know, “Christian does a presentation, atheists respond, Christian goes right back at him,” so I thought, “I’m gonna reach out to this atheist personally.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: Sean wanted to have a conversation with one of the YouTubers who did the review. His name is Drew, and his channel is called “Genetically Modified Skeptic.” 

YOUTUBE CLIP: I’ve been Drew of “Genetically Modified Skeptic.” Stay skeptical. 

SEAN MCDOWELL: I said, “Hey, would you be willing to just zoom with me?” And he goes, “Sure.” So we zoomed privately – and a lot of that was a private conversation – but for an hour-plus, I just listened to his story. And here’s a young man who grew up in the church and experienced so much pain and hurt when he left the church. He said it was worse than some of the bullying he experienced as a kid. My heart broke for him. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: I mean, when we’re fixed on canceling others, it’s like we forget that the, there’s a human being on the other end. And that person – they have a story, they have thoughts and feelings and history. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, you know, instead of turning the situation into this faceless back and forth social media war, Sean actually wanted to step up and put a face and a name to it. Now, Sean had actually recorded a public response to put on his own YouTube channel, and in it he had a proposition for Drew. And he told him about it during their conversation.

SEAN MCDOWELL: This was on a Friday. I said, “Hey, I’ve actually already made a response video. I’m gonna post on Monday. Here’s my cell number. I want you to watch it and see if you accept my invitation.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: And here’s the proposal that he made to Drew in his own response video. 

SEAN MCDOWELL: I said, “Now that I think about it, I’ve got an invitation for you. I brought in dozens of atheists to speak to my students, but I’ve never had one on my YouTube channel. Will you come on my YouTube channel and just share your experience of leaving your faith and talk about what you think Christians can do better to love their atheist neighbors?” And he agreed.

JESSE EUBANKS: So Sean and Drew sat down together and recorded a video, a Christian and an atheist talking about what each side could do better to love the other. 

SEAN MCDOWELL CLIP: Drew, I really appreciate you coming on. I have to ask for starters… 

DREW CLIP: Really be able to reach across the aisle… 

SEAN MCDOWELL CLIP: We care about the big issues of life, but we also care… 

DREW CLIP: I am admittedly putting a lot of pressure on myself to represent atheists and, and myself well in this dialogue. 

SEAN MCDOWELL: It now has over 200,000 views, and some of the comments – you know, there’s some haters on there. There always is – but there’s a ton of people that are just like, “Thank you for having a civil conversation. Thanks for listening to each other. Thanks for finding common ground.” And it just hit me – we’re so quick to cancel, we’re so quick to defend. In many cases, let’s reach out to somebody and just show charity, grace, and humility, and so much positive can often come out of that. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And for Sean, perhaps the most positive thing that has come out of this is that he’s continued his relationship with Drew.

SEAN MCDOWELL: Well, he’s come back on my channel. You know, a few months after that we did a live Q&A. Uh, we zoomed a couple weeks ago. There was another video that he did, and I said, “Hey, I’d love to debrief this with you.” We jumped on, we debriefed for an hour. I’m gonna have him back on my show soon. And so the best part to me is just the relationship that has come out of it.

LACHLAN COFFEY: Jesse, what I love about that story is we have the ability as Christians to stop the cancel and pivot to something that is more loving and kind and gracious. I think we’re foolish if we think, “Oh, we’re just gonna get rid of cancel culture.” It’s just – I mean, we live in a fallen world, right? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: But here we have a clear example of like, “Don’t fall for the bait, church.” Like you have the ability to stop it in its tracks for the sake of the gospel. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. You know, and like in this situation, Drew was receptive to sitting down and talking with Sean, but we recognize, like, that may not always be the case. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yeah.

JESSE EUBANKS: Sometimes people are going to be hostile no matter what you do, but as Tim Keller writes, “Patience, mercy, and forgiveness of wrongdoers has always been part of the Christian ethic.” So how can we do better? Sean believes it’s by the church recovering her call to and practice of forgiveness and grace. 

SEAN MCDOWELL: So you gotta be ready to defend your faith, but second, you gotta do it with love and charity ’cause if you have great arguments but you have not love, Paul says you’re like a clanging symbol. You have nothing. So rather than pointing the fingers at others, let’s use this as an opportunity to look within and say, “You know what? Have I contributed to cancel culture in an unhealthy, unbiblical fashion, whether in person, on social media, the way I’ve treated people?” I’d love to see the church lead by lending forgiveness and charity and kindness rather than leading with canceling, and I think honestly that would please God’s heart.

JESSE EUBANKS: So this is not a conversation about disagreeing about theology or ideas or our convictions as people, but it’s about how do we deal with and handle those with whom we disagree. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yeah.

JESSE EUBANKS: And if we are treating people that we disagree with, with venom, with vile remarks – if we find ourselves going online and feeding off of all of the anger and the bitterness, then the reality is that we have found ourselves in a place of where we are incapable of loving.

LACHLAN COFFEY: Yeah. I mean, you could see the, the root of evil being planted in your heart at that point. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Uh, which is just gonna eat you up. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: You know? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: So I would love to see a, a church that is breaking the norm – just like you, you just read out of that passage – and going against the grain, and we should stand out as Christians that we don’t fall into that.

JESSE EUBANKS: In the gospel of John the Samaritan woman had been canceled by her community, and we may think justifiably so. After all, the woman was a sinner. But Jesus doesn’t follow the crowd or the societal norms. He has a conversation with her, he extends kindness and hope, and she becomes one of the first people that he reveals his identity to. The woman says, “I know that Messiah is coming, He who is called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.” Cancel culture just does not have a place in the gospel. You know, at its heart, cancel culture is about shaming, it’s about vilifying, as opposed to, like, the gospel, which is about patience and mercy and forgiveness. I think of Proverbs 15. You know, it says, “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” You know, if we continue to speak harshly with one another, we are going to perpetuate a society that is angry, that is at odds. We are called to something different. We are called to speak with kindness and love. If we want people to give us audience for truth, we also have to be people of grace. So yes, stand up for truth. Stand up for justice. God calls us to do these things, but Jesus tells us the world will know that we are disciples by the love that we have for one another. Cancel culture ignores grace. So who is it that you wanna cancel, and how might you have a conversation that leads with grace instead?

—————————————–

JESSE EUBANKS: If you benefited at all from this podcast, please help us out by leaving a review wherever it is that you listen to podcasts. Your review will help other people discover our show.

—————————————–

JESSE EUBANKS: Special thanks to our interviewees for this episode – Sean McDowell, Aimee Byrd, Shane Anderson, and Brandon Smith. Listen, we’ve got some great links in this episode’s show notes, including the full interview with Shane Anderson, as well as links to all of the videos that Sean McDowell mentioned. To check those out, make sure that you read this episode’s show notes. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: Our senior producer and host is Jesse Eubanks. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Our co-host today is Lachlan Coffey. Our media director and producer is Rachel Szabo, who during her last annual review threatened to release snakes in my office. 

SEAN MCDOWELL: That would definitely make this a much more spicy interaction and raise the stakes.

LACHLAN COFFEY: Anna Tran is our audio engineer. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Music for today’s episode comes from Lee Rosevere, Poddington Bear, and Blue Dot Sessions. Theme music and commercial music by Murphy DX. 

LACHLAN COFFEY: If you want a hands-on experience of missions in our modern times, come serve with Love Thy Neighborhood. We offer internships for young adults ages 18 through 30 through the areas of service, community, and discipleship. You’ll grow in your faith and in your life skills. Learn more at lovethyneighborhood.org. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Which of these was a neighbor to the man in need? The one who showed mercy. Jesus tells us, “Go, and do likewise.”