Cancel culture looks a lot like old-fashioned church discipline
The story is good, as far as it goes, and makes many useful points. At the end the author discusses an interesting religious example of reconciliation where mutual listening and reconciliation occurs, but stops short of providing a secular example of same.
Admittedly, it is difficult to think of any in these polarized times.
An astute commenter grasps the salient points:
The key difference is Southern Baptists only disciplined members…free to leave and join rest of society if you want…today’s cancel culture cancels you from society as a whole, not a small group which you are free to leave if you like.
Exactly.
The true analogy from the secular side is e.g. to Greek ostracism and exile. But even there exile was temporary by law and carried no stigma on expiry, and required a significantly sized quorum to be legal.
Some Biblical examples seem downright Draconian by contrast:
And the LORD said unto Cain ... a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.
-- Genesis 4:9ff.
Offenders against the Holy Ghost are irredeemable:
Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.
-- Matthew 12:31
For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.
-- Hebrews 6:4ff.
Paul, on the other hand, is all about reconciliation:
Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.
-- Galatians 6:1
But he recognizes that this is more of a vertical business than a horizontal one, dependent as it is on the divine action in Christ, not human initiative:
To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.
-- II Corinthians 5:19
And then we have Matthew's Jesus swinging back in the other direction again. Jesus is more sanguine about the appropriateness, necessity, and efficacy of human action in reconciliation than Paul is:
Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.
-- Matthew 5:24
And why is that?
Because Jesus isn't planning on dying for anyone's sins, let alone rising from the dead. He's planning, instead, on the imminent end of everything and God's final judgment, and it's up to his hearers to repent.
The cancel culture warriors probably have more in common with this flinty Jesus than we'd like to admit, and are about as unpopular.
