What is cancel culture and why has it burst on the scene so dramatically the past few years? How can Christians best navigate our current cultural moment of canceling people with whom we disagree? In this episode, Sean and Scott discuss the recent book The Cancelling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott.


Episode Transcript

Scott: We hear a lot about cancel culture in the media today and have been hearing about this for the last two, three years or so, but what exactly is it? Why do we see it on both the right and the left? What's so damaging about it? Or is there anything positive coming out of cancel culture? Sean and I will take up this hot button cultural issue around a new book by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott called "The Canceling of the American Mind." This is Think Biblically from Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. I'm your host, Scott Rae.

Sean: And I'm your co-host, Sean McDowell.

Scott: Hey, this is a great conversation. I think something we're long overdue to talk about. Let me say a little bit just about the authors of this book. It's kind of interesting combination. Greg Lukianoff is the co-founder with Jonathan Haidt. For viewers and listeners, maybe familiar with Jonathan Haidt. He was one of the first ones to come out with an alarm about the erosion of free speech on college campuses. They co-founded an organization called FIRE, F-I-R-E, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. The co-author of this, Rikki Schlott, is a student of Jonathan Haidt's at NYU, is a Gen Z, still under 30, and is co-authored this particular book. And so she brings, she's a libertarian Gen Z person who brings a pretty different worldview than Lukianoff, who's I think maybe a little bit more to the left of center on some things. And neither of them, as far as we can tell, have any particular religious leanings.

Sean: Sure.

Scott: So anyway, I think it's a fascinating book and I think it's long overdue to expose some of the flaws and foibles, as well as some of the positive things about the cancel culture environment that we're living in today. So, Sean, let's be clear right at the very beginning. When we say the term cancel culture, what exactly do we mean by that?

Sean: I think we're talking about there's a certain mob mentality and movement that targets an individual who says something deemed offensive or did something offensive, with an attempt to ruin or cancel this person's reputation, platform, or livelihood. So it's a modern phenomena of using social media where the voices just grow when there's a certain kind of mob just mentality and activity to get somebody who seemingly has more power and to take that power or influence or livelihood away from him or her.

Scott: So it's not because the person has been out debated.

Sean: Certainly not.

Scott: It's just because they've been overpowered by the mob.

Sean: Yeah, one of the draws of cancel culture is rather than having to deal with your arguments and do the work, I can just cancel you and it feels virtuous to do so and it's a lot easier.

Scott: Okay, now the book is full of examples.

Sean: It is.

Scott: Of people who, in fact, I think it's probably, it's mostly anecdotal, but it's just overwhelming the number of anecdotal things that they cite in here. Most of which I think have come from complaints about the erosion and free speech have come to fire to the organization.

Sean: That's right.

Scott: That they've been cataloging and they will, I think they refer out to represent people. They advocate for professors and students who have been canceled in their various institutions, but it's not just about college campuses. What are some of the other arenas that cancel culture has spread to?

Sean: Oh, well, this also would be in say, for example, the workplace, it would be in individual relationships. You see it within the church, you see it within government. So almost every realm you can imagine, there's going to be some feasible kind of canceled culture because everybody has social media access now.

Scott: Interesting part is you also see it in the media. You definitely see it in the media. Where the media are, in some respects, canceling their own.

Sean: Yes, they are.

Scott: For various offenses to the received wisdoms or the cultural consensus of the day. All right, so let's start out on the positive side.

Sean: Okay.

Scott: What's good has come out of this emphasis on canceled culture?

Sean: Well, broadly speaking, there's a form of accountability that people can bring when there are abuses that take place. So you can think of an obvious example would be like Harvey Weinstein using his power within Hollywood. And this is a movement that Christians might note is against Hollywood as opposed to being in the church, which is interesting. And clearly he was abusing women, his power, sexual abuse. And so people started moving towards canceling him by sharing their stories, calling him out, positively took somebody down with power. So that's the positive. When there's a kind of accountability brought in and somebody does something clearly wrong and people who are victims, people who don't have that power or that platform can create a movement to draw attention to a kind of injustice. That's positive.

Scott: Yeah, I would say, going to prison is sort of the ultimate of being canceled. Fair enough. Which was also appropriate, I think in that case. But I think you're right. The degree of accountability for people who say things that are just outrageous or do things that are outrageously offensive is maybe a good thing to come out of this. Now, like any good thing, this can be overused and go way outside the bounds that it was originally intended. Although I'm not sure the original intent was just for accountability. Although I think that's a part of it. I do think part of the original intent was to be able to circumvent debate about some of the subjects that people either don't want to debate or don't feel like they can carry the day in a debate. And so it's easier to just cancel somebody's platform, basically throw them off the platform as opposed to engaging their arguments. Okay, so here, the reverse side of this is what makes this phenomena of cancel culture so harmful and damaging?

Sean: I don't know that anybody could read this book and not walk away with a level of a broken heart knowing the number of individuals who have been targeted and have been maligned and have lost college scholarships, have lost jobs, have lost relationships, have lost livelihood. It's not just numbers that are out there. There are individual people who have been targeted and gone through incredible pain and suffering. We forget about this on social media because there's no face-to-face connection. Some people don't even use their real names on social media. And so when dozens and sometimes hundreds and sometimes thousands or tens of thousands of people piling on, I mean, that can be devastating to an individual. There's even cases of people just taking their own lives because they've been shamed so deeply. So that's one of the things is just that we can't forget the people that have been harmed through this. I've had people try to cancel me and come after me in different ways and not nearly the level of some of the people we may talk about, but it doesn't feel good and it hurts. And sometimes I think, gosh, I'm 47 years old and I can deal with this to a degree because of my family and my faith and my friends. If I was 12 years old, if I was 13 years old, if I didn't have this faith and I was attacked the level of other people, this would be absolutely devastating. The other thing it does is it just shuts down genuine debate. One of the things I love they talk about in this book is they're really pro free speech. And they're saying the positive of free speech is I should be able to say, I believe A and you say, I believe B and I think you're wrong. I'm not gonna attack you. I'm not gonna try to cancel you. We are going to reason through different ideas with a commitment to truth. Well, now because of cancel culture mobs, people afraid to say certain things on gender issues, afraid to say certain things on issues tied to race, afraid to certain say certain things on fill in the blank almost any issue because they'll be canceled. So it stifles debate, which is why in their stats in this book about professors, students, American public as a whole, a high percentage saying like 62% saying I'm afraid at times to publicly even say what I believe about something for fear of cancel culture. So it wrecks good debate and really undermines free speech.

Scott: So it forces people to keep their head down.

Sean: It certainly does strongly encourages them.

Scott: For fear of getting beaten in by the particular mob. And I think it's not just individual lives that are ruined. It's just, we've lost the concepts of human fallibility. We've lost the ability to show grace to people when they make a mistake. And we've lost the ability, I think, to show some sort of compassion for things that people said when they were young and stupid.

Sean: Oh man.

Scott: And several times I've said to my wife, I said, it's a good thing that the walls in my fraternity house in college don't have eyes and ears because how many dumb things did we do as college students? I won't ask you to testify on that. But we did a lot of dumb things, said a lot of dumb things in a different era. I mean, I went to college in the seventies when a lot of the things that would be really offensive today were not considered that way when I was going to college. And if somebody unearthed some of the things that I said, I'm guessing that's probably true for most people that if they could bring to light some of the things that you said in your adolescence, in your early twenties, I think most people would probably have grounds to be canceled.

Sean: And most people isn't 51%. It's the vast majority of people. I mean, I think not even stupid stuff in college. I think about like when I first started speaking in my twenties and I've looked back at my old notes, I'm like, what was I thinking? Theologically, what on earth? I didn't have a clue, it was well-meaning. But I look back, I'm like, my goodness, I'm glad no one has a recording of that. I was just off base easily somebody could use that. To cancel.

Scott: Yeah, in addition, I think we've lost culturally the notion of repentance and forgiveness. Now we don't forgive people for mistakes that they make. You know, we assume that if you make a mistake on something that goes against the cultural consensus, you're evil.

Sean: That's right.

Scott: And you don't deserve a livelihood, you don't deserve a hearing. And there's no place for allowing someone to repent of a mistake and find redemption and forgiveness going forward. It's like we draw irrevocable conclusions about someone's character based on a small snapshot event in their lives or a small, just a sentence or two that they've said, even if it's in context.

Sean: Yeah.

Scott: And that I think that's the part that really troubles me about this. I think we've lost some, what I would consider some really important cultural virtues that we need to sustain us as a culture along the way. And I don't, I'm not optimistic about us getting those back anytime soon. So this is, the book is about the canceling of the American mind. Is there also a canceling of the European mind, of the Asian mind, the African mind?

Sean: I can't speak for the African context, but I'll give you one example why I think this is bigger than just America. Just a few weeks ago, I was invited to speak at a huge conference in the Philippines that has footprints all over Southeast Asia. And they asked me to speak on cancel culture. That, well, that's interesting. How am I as an American gonna come into your context? I wanna have some humility and hesitancy. And so I did some research and found there's so much in common there. Now there's some differences. Some of the LGBTQ conversation and say racial conversations are very different in that context than they are in ours. Although there's elements of that. A lot of it was political, is that politics can be so heated. And there were some studies done in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. And said people have moved to canceling their friends, canceling their neighbors, canceling their family members. Over the past two or three years, there's a sense of urgency here. So I think if we went to these different contexts, there'd be some differences in Africa, some differences in Europe, but we still have social media and we still have some of the same factors taking place being quick to cancel people. So I would argue it is a global phenomenon that we're seeing, although it might be as bad in America, if not worse compared to anywhere else, maybe.

Scott: Okay, I think that's fair. Yeah, I think you see, in fact, they mentioned some of the episodes they mentioned come from the UK and from France and from other parts of Europe too, less so in other parts of the world. So I think for, and to give them credit too, they were focusing on the US.

Sean: Yes, fair enough. And the US, by the way, we still have maybe half that are conservative, half that are liberal. So we are divided and have a larger net where in a lot of these other places, there are some people that don't fit the larger narrative, but not as wide. So there's just different dynamics.

Scott: Okay, so how big a deal is this actually? This is, I think, one of the most interesting parts of the book.

Sean: I agree, so I want to read some of these. Oh, sorry.

Scott: Spell it out for us.

Sean: So I want to read some of the statistics here to make sure we get this. So 62% of American adults, including a majority of Democrats, Independents and Republicans alike did not feel comfortable expressing their opinions in public. So six out of 10 people afraid to express their opinions in public.

Scott: Almost two thirds, yikes.

Sean: From 2014 to mid 2023, we know of more than a thousand attempts to get professors fired, punished, or otherwise silenced. This is just their organization that they're aware of. A thousand professors. And so they write this, they say the modern era of cancel culture, which they say is 2014 to the present, by contrast has resulted in almost 200 professor terminations. That exceeds even the estimated 100 to 150 professors terminated in the second red scare. So they make the case that historians are going to look back at this era and study. In fact, here's what they write.

Scott: So much worse than the McCarthy era.

Sean: Way worse. So they say cancel culture is happening at such a scale that historians will be studying it in 50 to 100 years, much like we study the red scare and the alien and sedition acts. So I think they're right about that. Now they write a few more things that are interesting. They say it's concentrating the most influential universities in the country. So again, they're focusing uniquely on the university. The top 10 of US news, top ranked colleges account for more than 10% of all cancellation attempts. The top 100 account for more than 40%. And then this is where it gets fascinating. They say at the top 10 colleges, less than a quarter of cancellation attempts are launched by conservatives. In the rest of academia, conservative cancel culture accounts for as much as 40% of all incidents and about a third of sanctions. So in the elite universities, it's like 90% is going from the left. But when it comes to the rest of the universities, it's about 60% from the left. So it's primary to the left compared to the right, but it's both. Yet they say when it comes to students, most of them get canceled by the left. So bottom line, it's a big phenomena. People on all sides of the political spectrum are worried about it, aware of it. But when I talk to individuals, I get a lot of questions in people that are less concerned about getting kicked out of university and losing their job. They just feel like I'm getting canceled by my family. I'm getting canceled by my friends. That level of personal fear a lot of people have, I think is palpable and very real.

Scott: So what does that mean? When they tell you they're canceled by their family, what do they mean by that?

Sean: Well, whenever someone says they're canceled by their family, I have two thoughts, I think. Number one, maybe you've been canceled because of the view that you hold and that's on your family. Number two, it might be because of you, like just the fact that way you've acted or you've treated people. So it can be for political things. It can be for religious things. The hard part is people are just posting stuff all over the place in family group chats on social media that family sees, not thinking through how is this going to land with my family? Or I don't care how it lands with my family. And so people just decide, I don't want anything to do with it anymore. Stop inviting parties, stop connecting with them, sometimes kicked out of a group. Like these dynamics are happening all the time on families.

Scott: See, that's a really helpful distinction to make between what do I intend to say and how do I think this is gonna be heard? Those are two completely different questions. And oftentimes it's the latter of those questions that is the one we ought to be paying a lot more attention to. Because we are so clear about what we want to communicate ourselves, but oftentimes the tone of voice, the facial expression, that sense of disgust or condescension that accompanies it often communicates way more than the verbal content itself.

Sean: That's right.

Scott: And so chances of somebody responding well when they're being condescended to at the same time is like minuscule.

Sean: It's human nature, right? That is human nature on all sides of this. And by the one thing I throw in here, there was an op-ed in the New York Times a while ago. And I forget the title, but it was like something like, "Trump Ruined My Family Relationships." And I saw that and I thought, Trump has no power to ruin anybody's relationships. But because he's so divisive, and that's only one example of a myriad of other hot topics today, if we talk about it in a certain way, in the wrong time and in the wrong place, the way we talk about it in those issues is going to bring a wedge between people. So it's not Trump, it's not vaccines, it's not critical race theory, it's the way we talk about them. It's when we talk about them. It's what we post that often leads towards that canceling right or wrong, people have just had enough.

Scott: Yeah, again, I think that's a really helpful distinction to make because I think what the book is about, and what we're really more concerned about is people being canceled for the views that they hold, as opposed to how they hold them. If I had some people in my life who were expressing their views to me in ways that were hostile or condescending, or just treated me like I'm an idiot and should know better, I'd be inclined to cancel them too. I'd be inclined to say, for one, I'm not listening to your point, but for another, if you're gonna attack me personally, as opposed to debating my view, I'm out for that. I mean, in academic circles, we call those ad hominem arguments where you attack the person and not the position, or as a friend of mine put it, he said, when you find yourself on the horns of a dilemma, you shoot the bull instead.

Sean: Exactly.

Scott: And there's no, there's just, I think that's one of the things we've lost as a result of this because we've lost giving reasons for our views because somebody will state a position, and if you don't like their position, you don't argue for a competing view. You most of the time dispense with reasons and rationale, and you go straight to name calling.

Sean: That's right.

Scott: And labeling, and trying to put somebody in a box so that you can dismiss their argument without having to engage it. That's, I think, that's a part of the fabric of, what makes for healthy societies and democracies in the first place. And if we can't disagree with each other and still be friends, then that doesn't bode well for the future of democracy, in my view.

Sean: I think you're right about that.

Scott: So we've said it exists on both the left and the right. Would it be fair to say that the right has sort of come to the party a little bit more recently than the left on this, or has it been in the water for both for some time?

Sean: I don't know if I can answer that question historically. I'm not sure if it's more recent. I think what's interesting is, as we go back, it used to be the left that was arguing for free speech. Now, many of the left say free speech is violence, and it's the right who's arguing for free speech. That's an interesting shift, going back to the '60s and the '70s. I think human beings have always made ad hominem arguments, done a lot of the things underlying cancel culture, but I think really the big difference was and is social media. Both the left and the right have that. Now, there's a quote in here. They quote David French, who says, "The left cancels the right, and the right cancels the right." Like the right, they cancel each other, and the left cancels the right. And I thought, well, that's interesting. You could probably come up with some exceptions to that, but there might be some truth about as a whole, the way that plays itself out.

Scott: So cancel culture on the right is more like friendly fire.

Sean: If he's right about that, there's probably a lot of truth to that.

Scott: I can see where at the beginning, I think the cancel culture and political correctness sort of went together. And I think that's changed today, because I don't think there's any one specific agenda that's driving the predominance of cancel culture. My sense is that the left was probably on board with this a little earlier, and that the right has joined in, not Johnny come lightly, but joined in much more recently on this. So yeah, I think there's quite a bit that we both need to plead ignorance on when it comes to the historical roots of this.

Sean: That's fair.

Scott: I think maybe in the last, political correctness has been around for what, the last 15 years or so?

Sean: Probably, well, I remember people talking about when I was an undergrad and that was 25 years ago. So we can leave it at that. As far as the roots behind it, I wanna make this point, is I think they have a great section here talking about Herbert Marcuse. Born in Germany, he fled in 1934 as the Nazis came to power, immigrated to the US.

Scott: Jewish.

Sean: Jewish to teach first at Brandeis University and then at UCSD. Interestingly enough, my father-in-law had him for intro to philosophy at UCSD early 70s. So he was telling me some of what he remembers about him. They right in here, they said, "Just as freedom of speech seemed poised to triumph as vision of the left," he published in 1965 this essay called, "Repressive Tolerance." He argued that tolerance for speech is only useful in a totally equal society. And that getting that point paradoxically requires intolerance and suppression of certain viewpoints. So Marcuse flat out argued that there should not be free speech for right-wingers. He was arguing that back in the 60s and that's what we are seeing as a whole from the left or the liberal left being pushed and promoted today. So I think some of the roots are more Marxist, but conservatives are sometimes using them in some ways today too.

Scott: Okay, I think that, yeah, I think that's fair to go back to Marcuse. What would you say are some of the other intellectual factor or worldview factors that contribute to the rise of, or the formation, the rise of cancel culture?

Sean: So I think it's a combination of relational factors and worldview factors. So I think one of them is that we just have, we've seen cancel culture emerge at the same time we've seen mental health and depression and anxiety emerge at the same time. And I don't think that's a coincidence. Both of those, I think are fruits of a deeper relational brokenness at the root of our culture. We've lost how to have human relationships with friends. We've lost how to have healthy marriages. We've lost a relationship with the divine. We've lost how to have relationships with people who see the world differently. And when we don't have healthy relationships, we're going to treat people in an unhealthy fashion. We've heard it say, "Hurt people, hurt people." And this week I heard somebody saying, "I love this." They said, "Healed people, heal people." Well, cancel culture in many ways, when I see somebody lashing out and just demonizing and attacking, one of the first thoughts I have is where did that person learn how to treat a human being that way? And I'm telling you, you're going to find some brokenness in that person's life. So I just see cancel culture as a symptom of brokenness. Of course, social media massively plays into this. And social media favors demonization, polarization, hateful rhetoric, far more likely to get retweeted than not. I mean, simple example, I did two videos on YouTube, seven bad Bible translations, seven good Bible translations. And the one on bad translations got way more than the good one, wasn't try and manipulate the system, but there's something that just causes that. And so social media plays into this cancel culture. If I cancel you, I can virtue signal to my friends, feel good about myself, get retweeted, be held up as a hero, that plays into it as well. And I think we just have a more polarized culture than we've ever had, not only from the church to outside, but within the church. I mean, we are being, I literally feel Scott, I've never said this publicly, but I feel like my life is getting squeezed more and more by people who say, you've got to hold this view, got to hold that view, or you're no longer in the inside. I'm like, where's somebody who can just say, we're trying to argue for mere Christianity here. People are divided over critical race theory, people are right over vaccines, people are divided over every single issue in the book, and it's just ripping us apart. And so we respond by canceling others rather than a way that we should. Now, with all that said, I'm not saying those issues don't matter, I'm not saying don't have convictions about them, I do, and have expressed those. But I think it's like I'm feeling it being squeezed more and more on certain issues. And so it makes sense that we'd have a canceled culture because we're so polarized, because we're so divided.

Scott: And you raise a really good point, and it's one of the reasons that I've been thinking for some time, that maybe our suggestion that relativism was the order of the day culturally, I'm not so sure that's true. I think we're in the middle of a new absolutism. And you see it every time the canceled culture mob emerges. It's something that is not worthy of nuance, it's not worthy of any back and forth, it's simply described as evil and the mob descends. And God helped the poor person who is at the bottom of the mob on that. Now, let's take one more sort of swing at the intellectual roots of this, because it seems to me that the postmodern turn that we took in the '60s and '70s has something to do with this too. Because once we grew skeptical about the notion of truth and about universal and about knowledge that transcends time and culture and moral values that are absolute, once we grew skeptical about that, then I wonder if in its place we put the notion of power. And I mean, this is not new with postmodernism, this goes well back to Nietzsche, but if there is no, if we're skeptical about absolute truth and skeptical about absolute morality, then we don't really have any other option to settle our disputes than the raw mere exercise of power, which is precisely what Nietzsche predicted. And so cancel culture seems to me is a manifestation of that will to power, because if I can use my power to push you off the stage, that's as valid a strategy in a postmodern world as anything else.

Sean: That I agree 100% with that, I think that's really well stated. When I was in college in the '90s, we were talking about postmodernism. Now we saw like in the book, "Cynical Theories" by Helen Plekros and James Lindsay, we have applied postmodernism that we used to think, this is an idea that shaping culture, now we're seeing it played out on issues. We see it play out with a gender issue, we see it play out with a whole bunch of other issues. It makes sense that if we haven't learned how to reason, confidence that there's such a thing as truth, and we can know it through debate and discussion and analysis, then what's the point in doing that? What's the point? I might as well cancel you to get what I want, which is power, rather than reason with you.

Scott: Well, maybe, I'm just thinking out loud here on this one. I may retract this at a later date, but if our listeners will allow me to do that.

Sean: Too late, you said it, we're gonna cancel you.

Scott: Moving right along then. Yeah, I think maybe part of this is that, the reason the cancel culture phenomena has grown like it has is because people have discovered that it works, that that appeal to power is very effective when it's used with overpowering force. So we can deny a platform to speakers that we don't like, under the guise of being sensitive to the harms that their speech might bring.

Sean: Being more moral by doing that. So I shut you down and I'm more moral for doing so. I'm on the side of justice.

Scott: Something like that. When in reality, it's really just an exercise of power to get your way.

Sean: I think it's an exercise of power and it's an exercise of weakness. That if you don't have confidence in your position, then I'm gonna use power over you. Somebody who has that confidence and has thought it through is not gonna feel the need to do so.

Scott: Now in the book, they spend a lot of time talking about what's going on on college campuses. And these are mostly, I didn't see a lot of Christian colleges being mentioned here. I don't think they're- I don't think places like Biola and others are on their radar for this. But I will say, this is more than a decade ago when Dennis Prager was on our campus. And he spent a couple of days with us. And I remember him making the statement publicly that there was more free speech, more diversity of thought on Biola's campus than there was at his alma mater, which was Stanford. I thought that was a remarkable thing. And then it dawned on me that, well, we actually, in contrast to many, many elite universities actually have conservatives on our campus. We have people who are registered Republicans on our campus. And one of the statistics they point out on the campus is of among faculty, and you've got that, I think pretty handy here, but among faculty, it's overwhelmingly people who are on the left or the center left. And the conservatives are, I think, be fair to say on many of these state university and elite secular campuses are an endangered species.

Sean: Yeah, that's right. I agree. Some of these stats I think are worth citing they put in here. So they said, the ratio of self-identified liberal to conserved professors was three to one in 1995. By 2011, it was five to one. So in 16 years, it's gone from three to one to five to one. Now, they do show here what's interesting is like engineering and chemistries and economics is a far more balanced perspective. But when you get to things like anthropology and communication and religion and sociology, it's way to the left, way more democratic. So they said, now, if you don't just take self-identified liberal to conservative, if you take Democrat now to Republicans, it's 8.5 to one, 8.5 to one. And according to the recent number from the Higher Education Research Institute, merely one in 10 professors consider themselves conservative. One in 10 professors consider themselves conservative. One in four identify as socialist. So on American campuses, there's a significantly higher percentage of socialists, at least self-identified, than conservatives, which is interesting. Couple of things they say. Again, this is the research. 76% of conservative faculty reported feeling that the climate in their department is hostile towards people with their political beliefs. So 76% of people say, given the political beliefs I have, others are hostile towards me. 45% of liberal faculty indicated they would be willing to discriminate against a conservative job candidate because of that conservative professor's opinions. And it may or may not have anything to do with the studies themselves. Now there's a stat, I gotta find it in here. I don't remember what page it's on. Oh, I think it's on, let me see, let me check one, 'cause I don't wanna miss this on page 75. This is really significant. Yes, here it is. At MIT, the faculty-Democrat-Republican ratio is seven to one. Princeton, it's 40 to one. Harvard is a whopping 88 to one. Now they say this is not the entire faculty, but it's anthropology, sociology, biology, chemistry, economics, English, math, philosophy, and psychology. So very balanced representation, 88 to one. So you take a complete imbalance of conservatives and Republicans, a high percentage of those in the left saying we are intentionally willing to discriminate because of political beliefs. Of course you see far more cancellations and discrimination on universities coming from the left again as a whole.

Scott: Yeah, now I've got a good friend who was acting in Hollywood for some time, he's not any longer. And he said, "Hollywood's a microcosm "of Harvard and Yale and Princeton." And in fact, he told me, he said, "It is easier for me to be a Christian in Hollywood "than it is for me to be a conservative." And the animosity toward conservatives in some, you know, in some aspects of the broader culture is actually there's more hostility to some political views than there is of someone's religious views.

Sean: That's interesting.

Scott: I found that really interesting. Now, so would it be fair to say that free speech is an endangered species on secular college campuses today?

Sean: So I would say a couple of things. That would have been my instinct in research before reading this. They say in here, it's like hard to exaggerate how much free speech is really in jeopardy and how much has changed over the last decade. So they make the case, they lay it out, my experience and other research seems to match that up. And of course it's gonna depend on the department that you're in. Of course. It's gonna depend on the university that you're at. So they made a good distinction between elite and other universities, but in many universities, we are seeing increased concern for free speech.

Scott: Now, here, let's bring this down to the level of parents, kids and families. Because one of the things that if I were a parent and my kids were school aged today, which my kids are long since past that time, but I would wanna be sure that I was raising kids that were not vulnerable to cancel culture. How do we think about how to do that?

Sean: So this was interesting. I didn't expect them to get to the end and give parenting advice. That wasn't the lane I expected, but the more I thought about it, I was like, that makes sense. If we're trying to make people aware of cancel culture and raise up a new generation, here's some ways to like cancel culture proof your kids. And by this, I think they mean raising kids who won't cancel others and kids who can deal with efforts by others to cancel them. It goes both ways. So tactic number one, which I love, which is deeply biblical, it says revive the golden rule. I mean, my goodness, do unto others as you would like them to do unto you. What a simple, basic principle and apply that specifically to social media. I've done that with our kids. What is this comment to communicate? How do you think this lands? Is there a better way to say that and have modeled that through them? So the golden rule I think is great.

Scott: I think we've reversed the golden rule today, which is we say now do unto others before they do unto you tragically.

Sean: I think you're probably right about that. The second one I did not expect is that encourage free unstructured time. So they give the story here, they said, when we spoke to this fellow about what he thinks could be behind cancel culture, he acknowledged declining creativity could be impacting interpersonal interactions and causing young people to default to the narrow-minded tactics of cancel culture. I thought, well, that's interesting. If everything is structured, kids can't think for themselves. They can't resolve conflict. But when growing up, we had to go out and form a baseball team and make the rules and play and learn to deal with conflict. Unstructured time just in a sense creates healthy kids not stuck on a screen who learn how to just communicate through a screen. That makes sense. Third that I love, they said empathize friendships. Empathize friendships. I often think that people who cancel others don't know that person. They don't know somebody like that person.

Scott: A lot tougher to do that when you see that person's face.

Sean: Oh man, or just if you know that person personally, not impossible, but a lot harder. I remember it was Dennis Prager again who said one of his solutions to racism was if we could just take people of different races and just have a meal together and listen and talk and understand. He was like, that would go a long ways. So friendships, they said having real friends. Now the other piece of this is when you're attacked and people try to cancel you, you have that support network in your life. I mean, there was a time where there were a lot of people going against me online and I called a friend. He goes, first off, I love you. You have other friends who love you. Your family loves you. (laughs) I was like, that's what I needed to hear. So friendships are powerful. Fourth, teach kids about differences. My goodness, that rather than demonizing the other political side, you're certainly free to say why you disagree with them with your kids, but here might be why they're thinking. Here's where they're coming from. Here's what they're trying to do. Like it's a charitable understanding across politics.

Scott: Assume the best.

Sean: Exactly. And I took my son recently to a mosque, my 11 year old, he went to a mosque. It wasn't a debate. And I wanted to learn about how people see the world differently. And we shared a meal with some Muslims. And last they said, practice what you preach. So kids are watching us, like it starts with us. So as far as raising kids, unstructured time, emphasizing friendships, just teaching kids how to relate to one another in a healthy fashion, modeling for them, some good advice I think they offered.

Scott: That's really helpful. So one last question on this. How would you summarize, and maybe in a sentence or two, what a Christian response to cancel culture should be?

Sean: So I would add a few things that I think Christians could do.

Scott: Okay, maybe a few sentences.

Sean: Number one, yeah, I can't just do one. You emphasize this at the beginning. You said it lacks forgiveness and grace. You do one thing wrong, canceled, ruined. At the root of cancel culture is grace. Think of the story in Luke 8 of the woman who's described twice as a sinner and the religious leaders. Simon is like, why are you talking with her? Like they were basically canceling her. And Jesus is offering grace because she understood who he was. So that doesn't mean we compromise what is true, but do we have grace for people? And I think there's a lot of victims of cancel culture, a lot of people who've been hurt. There's a number of times, right? Seeing people, Christians are not, just get piled on, and I just reach out to them and go, hey, how are you doing?

Scott: That’s really good.

Sean: Hey, let's talk about this. I care about you. I mean, it's a painful, devastating thing to go through. So I hate to say it this way, but it is an opportunity when people are canceled. For Christians to just love people, which we're called to, I think we need to hear both sides. It's amazing to me how many Christians will see one tweet, they'll read one blog, they'll see one video, agree with that guy, pile on. My dad would always say to me, he'd say, have you considered the other side? Proverbs 18:20 says, “the first to speak in court sounds right until the cross examination begins.” So there might be a point to cancel, but we gotta make sure we understand, we gotta make sure we've been charitable, believed the best, done our homework, thought about this, and then respond in a Christ-like fashion. I just wish we would do that. Last thing I'll say is, the Bible says blessed are the peacemakers. And some of cancel culture can just be a way of piling on and creating division and more anger. What if Christians were to think about themselves as peacemakers? I think that would change the way we often engage others.

Scott: That's really good. Those are great suggestions. Especially I think the part about grace and forgiveness.

Sean: Amen.

Scott: 'Cause we've become a very ungracious culture today.

Sean: And the church sometimes too.

Scott: Yeah, yeah. Hey, good stuff here. Would you recommend this to our viewers?

Sean: I would highly recommend it. And what I liked about it in particular is it's written by someone who's libertarian, somebody who's probably to the left of us, and they call a spade a spade. They point out problems on both sides, give some practical solutions. It's a hopeful book. Now it's a long book. So if you're interested in cancel culture, it's a good book to read.

Scott: But yeah, it's not a difficult read. No, it's not. 'Cause there's lots of stories. They're really sadly depressing stories. But they have good input and good suggestions along the way. So it's the canceling of the American mind, Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott, followed by Jonathan Haidt. Really excellent book, highly recommended, and a good conversation.

Sean: Always enjoyed it.

Scott: Yeah. If you have comments or questions for us or guests you'd like us to consider or issues you'd like us to talk about, please email us at thinkbiblically@biola.edu. That's thinkbiblically@biola.edu. Thanks so much for listening. And remember, think biblically about everything.