What's good – and bad – about cancel culture?

An ancient story of compassion inspires an ethical response to social censure.

Erin Crider

Erin studies and explains modern churches. She is an Adjunct Professor of Biblical Studies at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

Torn fly posters layered under graffiti on a wall.

Ripped-off posters and graffiti.

Jazmin Quaynor, via Unsplash.

You cannot ignore cancel culture today. In her 2022 BBC Reith Lecture, the writer Chiamanda Ngoni Adichie called it “social censure”. Even beyond universities and other public forums, many of us worry about the effects of cancel culture in everyday social settings. Saying the wrong thing, or trying to respond well when someone else does, can quickly lead to awkward family gatherings, strained meetings, and broken friendships, or awaken the ever-present social media trolls. In a post-pandemic moment, when people are already struggling to re-establish healthy human interactions, cancel culture can make social engagement seem even more challenging. How can we navigate this moment well?

Behind the fraught discussions and growing angst around cancel culture, we can perhaps detect something well worth preserving: compassion. Some of the most heated controversies today involve language concerning people who have been historically disadvantaged. Genuine compassion motivates many who want society to speak more kindly, with more understanding, in order to avoid perpetuating harm to people who have already suffered. People who have been hurt deserve to be acknowledged, and that means taking their pain seriously. This compassion is an important and noble instinct. Many faith traditions call us to honor the vulnerable and pursue justice.

'Silence out of fear of ending a relationship itself ends the relationship.'

At the same time, resistance to cancel culture also includes an element of compassion. Within the voices expressing concern about cancel culture can often be heard a humble awareness that we all are prone to say the wrong thing at times. We cannot hope to learn or grow without honest risk and mutual, human grace. A brief period of silence to let emotions cool can be helpful; ending a relationship permanently seems less helpful. It might seem easier to say nothing than to risk offence, but silence out of fear of ending a relationship itself ends the relationship. Seeking to continue a difficult but important conversation can also be an important and noble instinct. Many faith traditions also encourage humble self-assessment and generous engagement with others. As the Bible records Jesus saying, “Let the one among you who is without sin cast the first stone.” None of us is wholly above reproach, and we all need a bit of compassionate grace.

So how do we balance these conflicting calls of justice and grace?

This conflict might seem peculiarly modern, but in the story we re-tell every Christmas, we see a young man named Joseph wondering how to balance justice with gracious concern for someone who had deeply disappointed him. Joseph is engaged to Mary, but she has been found to be pregnant. Joseph is sure the baby isn’t his. In their culture, a woman who was pregnant outside of marriage brought shame to her fiancé, her family, and the whole community. Matthew’s gospel tells us that Joseph was “a righteous man,” which means that he appreciated the demands of justice. Ignoring her situation meant ignoring the pain they all felt, papering over a grave offense which they wanted no part of. At the same time, though, the text also tells us that Joseph was “unwilling to put her to shame.” Like many people today, Joseph wanted to leave Mary some way to move forward with her life, but their culture did not provide people much opportunity to learn from tragic mistakes. Sometimes, it can feel as if ours doesn’t, either. If you’re familiar with the story, you already know how it ends, but it’s important not to skip too quickly past Joseph’s dilemma. It feels strangely modern, Joseph’s desire for justice coupled with his equally strong desire not to see someone condemned because of a single mistake.

'Courageous compassion creates much needed opportunities to heal, learn, and grow.'

Thankfully, the story also describes a way forward from Joseph’s dilemma: the baby in Mary’s womb, Jesus. In Jesus, we see the depth of God’s compassion for all who suffer. Jesus never ignored the painful consequences evil can create. Indeed, he allowed himself to experience the absolute worst of humanity. As an adult, Jesus was thrown out of his home village and religious community. According to the gospels, he endured one of the most unjust trials ever recorded. Jesus was tortured, beaten, and sentenced to a cruel death. When we suffer injustice, we are not experiencing something alien to Jesus, and therefore, alien to God.

But there is another side to Jesus’ suffering that is equally important: Jesus also demonstrates profound compassion for people have made terrible mistakes. Jesus never mis-stepped or said a single cruel word, but he allowed himself to experience the full shame and isolation of being cast out of society. Crucifixion was the ultimate censure, being publicly put to death outside of the walls of the city. Yet even in this moment, Jesus demonstrated compassion for people who had harmed him. While on the cross, he forgave those who put him there. Jesus offered forgiveness to the man dying on the next cross to his own, who by his own admission deserved his fate. In contrast to aspects of cancel culture, Jesus’ actions at that moment of extreme injustice tell us that human redemption is always possible. Jesus created a compassionate way forward from guilt and shame. Whatever our situation, we can find life-giving grace and healing in Christ.

Compassion isn’t easy. It cost Jesus dearly, and at times it will cost us, too. Courageous compassion creates much needed opportunities to heal, learn, and grow. When we suffer and when we err, cruelty and failure do not get the last word. As it says in the last few pages of the Bible, Jesus is making all things new. Cancel culture ends conversations and damages relationships, but a better balance between the righteous demands of justice and the need for redemptive grace remains possible.

Column

Culture

Justice

Trauma

17 March 2025

4 min read

Do victim statements offer up drama or justice?

Recent tragic cases highlight the changing audience for impact statements.

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A classical court house with a statue on top of a dome.

The Old Bailey.

It’s a lesser-known irony of ancient history that it was Roman Emperor Tiberius who introduced Justitia to the pantheon of the gods, as the goddess of justice. Ironic in that it was Tiberius’s minion, Pontius Pilate, in remote Judea, who had history’s worst day at the office, administering Roman justice so cack-handedly on an insurgent preacher and miracle-worker from Nazareth that he sparked a chain of events on which a whole new system of (at least western) justice was founded.

Justitia was the antecedent of Lady Justice, whose statue adorns the dome of London’s central criminal court at the Old Bailey – and many other courts besides. She invariably holds the judicial symbols of weighing scales and a sword. And she is often blindfolded, though not on the Old Bailey, despite such constitutional eminences as the shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick erroneously claiming she is.

The blindfold, scales and sword symbolise Lady Justice’s impartiality, the primacy of evidence and the equality of all before the law. We’ve grown accustomed to the rule of law in our democracy being applied blindly and without emotion. Convicted murderers are often described as having acted in cold blood and we expect justice to be served on them in the same manner, coldly.

It’s in that context that I want to examine one way in which Lady Justice is going a bit wrong these days. It’s not about miscarriage of justice, so much as the dispassion of it. I’m talking about the victim impact statement, introduced in the UK in 1996, which comes between conviction and sentencing.

It was meant to be an opportunity for victims and their families to tell the court of the impact and effects of the crime committed upon them. And, in that sense, to assist the judge or other sentencing authority to deliver an appropriate degree of punishment. So it is about the impact of the crime on those most directly affected by it.

That appears no longer to be solely – or even in some instances partly – the case. The victim statement now seems to be an opportunity for the irreparably damaged to sound off at the defendant, to vent their pain and anger and contempt for and at the wretched convict.

Take John Hunt, the BBC correspondent who lost his wife Carol and two of their three daughters, Hannah and Louise, to a multiple murder (and rape) one day last summer. His victim statement was less about the unimaginable effect these crimes have had on him and his surviving daughter, Amy, than about the divine judgment he would wish to call down on the murderer, Louise’s former partner Kyle Clifford.

It really served no judicial purpose. It’s impossible to conceive that anything Hunt had to say had the slightest influence over the judge’s intention to pass down whole-life terms on Clifford, which he duly did. Its sole purpose seems to have been to allow Hunt to have his day in court, as it were, and who would wish to deny him that? But that does undermine the explicit purpose of the victim statement.

Hunt himself conceded as much at the start of his statement when he said of his victim statement:

“I initially misunderstood its purpose. Do I really need to detail the impact of having three quarters of my family murdered?”

He’s right – he didn’t. But he saw it as his “final opportunity” to address his family’s murderer. There followed an excruciating and heart-rending verbal attack on the convicted prisoner, culminating with the prophecy of his despatch to hell on his “dying day”:

“The screams of Hell, Kyle, I can hear them now. The red carpet will come out for you…”

I can’t know if Hunt would prefer the death penalty to be available to despatch his family’s killer immediately. One suspects he probably does. I oppose it, one reason being that it can leave no room for penance and redemption. We must surely all agree that Hunt gets a free pass on that rationale, but with no more severe sentence available than that which was passed, again we must ask what the purpose of the victim statement was.

If it is simply to wish a hellish death on the perpetrator, then again we need to ask what purpose is being served and, indeed, if it’s healthy both for the judicial process and for the victim who delivers the statement.

The same thought arose at a pre-sentencing hearing of the recent Nottingham murderer, when the son of one of the three victims, James Coates, told the killer:

“Valdo Calocane, you claim the voices told you to kill these innocent people. Now listen to me, kill yourself.”

Is that about impact? I don’t think so. I fear it has more to do with theatre in a media age that is insatiable for drama. Part of the purpose of the law is to maintain a distance between those affected emotionally and those who have committed crimes against them.

Remove that and we reduce not only some of the justice for criminals to mere spectacle, but also in some degree respect for their victims and, indeed, the quality of mercy.

Celebrate our 2nd birthday!

Since March 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,000 articles. All for free. This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you’re enjoying Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin

Editor-in-Chief

Give now