Cancel Culture?... Count Me In

He issued perhaps the most transformative sociopolitical declaration in history— “…all men are created equal… they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”

Martin Luther King referred to Thomas Jefferson’s pronouncement in the Declaration of Independence as the American “promissory note.” Abraham Lincoln invoked his statement in the Gettysburg Address by pointing back to a “new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Jefferson’s expression of transcendent principle has stood as an international beacon to which much of the world aspires.

Nevertheless, Thomas Jefferson’s statue, which has stood in the New York City Hall for over a century, was recently removed by unanimous vote of the city council. This was done because, though he was haunted that it breached America’s founding principles, Jefferson participated in the practice of slavery which he inherited from his father.

Jefferson is being targeted by what has come to be known as “cancel culture.” The Cambridge Online Dictionary defines cancel culture as “a way of behaving in a society… to completely reject and stop supporting someone because they have said or done something that offends you.”

Lincoln himself has also been evaluated for “cancellation” and for the removal of his statue by a Chicago city commission. This is because of comments he made before the Civil War reflecting a then commonplace assumption of a social distinction between the races.

The impulse to cancel Lincoln is despite his lifelong opposition to slavery, his issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation which led to the 13th amendment ending it, and his public assertion that, “…there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence… he is as much entitled to these as the white man.”

Our tendency to “cancel” or relationally cut off those who in our view possess flaws, not only impacts the status of historical figures. It also permeates our everyday relationships.

Recent polls indicate that a third of college students who identify with one of the two major political parties say they would not be friends with a person of the other party. Forty-one percent would refuse to shop at their business and over two thirds (71%) would not go on a date with someone of the other party.

According to the Cambridge Dictionary article on cancel culture, not to mention the everyday observation of many of us, social media is also a prominent vehicle for expressing harsh judgment and the utter disavowing of others.

But if cancel culture is problematic, perhaps it’s not because it goes too far. Maybe it’s because it’s not extensive enough, omitting far too many individuals meriting cancellation.

Afterall, the blemishes of American historical figures, as well as of our contemporary friends and neighbors, are the faults of all human history. Societal maladies including selfishness, greed, exploitation, ethnic prejudice--and slavery itself--have been prominent through the history of Europe, native America, Ancient Rome and Greece, China, India and, at the dawn of civilization, Mesopotamia.

Indeed, moral malady threads back even before earliest Mesopotamia to the first, archetypical persons in literature.

As portrayed in the first chapters of Genesis, the prototypical humans were created gloriously, in the image of their creator. It’s from this perspective that Jefferson ultimately derived his conviction of the equality and rights of mankind.

Unfortunately, according to the Genesis narrative, the first people, Adam and Eve, exerted their free will selfishly, rebelling against the divine being whose image they were intended to reflect. Subsequently, in true Freudian mode, they defensively minimized their responsibility by rationalizing, distorting reality and finger pointing, thereby devolving into a mere distorted shadow of what they were created to be.

The pristine “naked and unashamed” innocence and tranquility of the human soul dissolved into a churning cauldron of shame and nervous cover up, ego, anxiety, frustrated hostility and the like.

Regardless of how one understands the historical and metaphorical import of the early chapters of Genesis, it’s inescapable that they present a rudimentary but deeply profound portrayal of human nature—both the glory and the corruption of it. The darkness we see in human history, in contemporary societies and, if we’re honest, in our own hearts is a mirror reflection of what we see in the representative figures of Adam and Eve.

Intriguingly, the first persons are themselves judged and cast out of the Garden paradise--divinely cancelled. Ominously, as heirs of their magnificent but now tarnished human nature, all of us share their morally cancelled status.

Fortunately, there’s the promise of something called grace--unearned mercy. Grace restoration makes its appearance in Genesis for the first “cancelled” persons, symbolically pointing to the restoration ultimately proffered through Jesus Christ, who is called the “second Adam” and “lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”.

But Christ made clear that redemption is only for the one who is willing to redirect his finger pointing, cancelling energies toward himself, acknowledging his own brokenness. “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick,” he said, “I have not come to call the righteous, but the sinners…”

Jesus was once confronted by a self-righteous mob of finger pointing, “cancel culture enthusiasts” who were in the process of publicly humiliating and potentially stoning a woman caught in adultery. He stopped them in their tracks when he picked up a fist sized rock, extended it to them and challenged, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone”.

Consequently, whenever I find myself with a pious stone of judgmental condemnation in my hand, and with the inclination welling up to smugly reject or “cancel” another person because they offend my values, my politics or my personal sense of propriety, I try to remind myself to set the stone aside and instead take another look at myself.

Afterall, regarding those who are flawed, stained and worthy of being cancelled, if I’m honest I’ve got to say, “count me in”.

Sources:

National Review, October 21, 2021 "Canceling Thomas Jefferson"

Martin Luther King – I Have a Dream Speech, 1963

New York Times, Feb 18, 2021 "Chicago Lists Lincoln Statues Among Monuments to Review"

Generation Lab- poll of college students, November 18-22, 2021

Lincoln-Douglas Debate… Ottawa, Illinois August 21, 1858

Genesis 2-3; Luke 5:31; John8:10-11

Contact Bob Levin at: bob_levin@sbcglobal.net