French is misleading his readers about how Christians are to behave with one another and in the world.
David French writes this week about “Christian cancel culture” as experienced by Chip and Joanna Gaines, of Fixer Upper fame. The couple, in partnership with HBO, had devised a new show about families forced to go without the luxuries of modern life, putting the lot of them out on the frontier to shift for themselves and see if our modern families can thrive once deprived of the many systems and integrations that make our lives as pleasant as they are.
The sticking point for many viewers, myself included, is that the show features a gay couple with twin boys they acquired via surrogacy. As one would expect, the conservative viewership that the Gaineses (a fruitful Christian couple with a healthy marriage and several successful businesses) have cultivated over the years objected. Enter David French, arguing in the New York Times:
A large number of conservative Christians are in the midst of their own shame campaign. It turns out that they didn’t hate cancel culture so much as they hated feeling powerless and vulnerable. When they felt powerful, and when they had influence, they behaved exactly like their cultural opponents.
Yes, there is hypocrisy here. It’s a bit much to hear that it’s vitally important for Chip and Joanna Gaines to reject two gay dads (and their children!) from Christians who are also all in on Donald Trump. A gay couple on reality television is a bridge too far, but supporting a thrice-married man who was featured on the cover of Playboy magazine and was once good friends with Jeffrey Epstein is not?
But in another way, they’re not hypocrites at all: They’re budding authoritarians, and for authoritarians, a principle like “tolerance for me and not for thee” is entirely consistent. Authoritarians, after all, are supposed to rule.
Are these Christians demanding that AG Paxton prosecute the show? Are they calling for the governor to send in the state National Guard? Oh, no, they’re sounding off on Twitter. Authoritarians indeed.
French appeals to 1 Corinthians 5, a portion of Paul’s letter to the believers in Corinth, writing:
“What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?” Paul asks. “Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. ‘Expel the wicked person from among you.’”
One of the fundamental problems with the American evangelical church is that it so often gets that equation exactly backward. It is remarkably permissive of abusive Christian individuals and institutions — especially if those individuals or institutions are powerful or influential — even as it can be remarkably hostile toward those people outside the church.
Again, we observe projection in defense of the indefensible. Yes, it is wrong for Christians to support Trump without reservation, just as it is vile for Christians to defend confirmed offenders who prey on congregations and the public. But what does that have to do with Christians promoting gay activists on a television show they oversee?
Might I rejoin with 1 Corinthians 10:23–31, which instructs that we be gracious when in another’s home; that we are to “eat whatever is put before you without raising questions of conscience.” But we are also called to, in our own lives and households, “do it all for the glory of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether, Jews, Greeks, or the church of God — even as I try to please everyone in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they might be saved.”
It would be one thing for the Gaineses to appear on another program, perhaps one hosted by gay men and their legal sons, and go about it as witnesses to Christ through their words and actions. But I think it another thing entirely for the Gaineses to provide a platform for the family, formed from the broken union of a mother and her sons, and suggest that this is somehow the equal of a healthy, God-honoring union between a man and a woman.
The Gaineses, and French for that matter, fail to grasp what they are elevating as a good is a false equivalence that may very well cause others to stumble. These men are affiliated with Teddy Bear Party, an LGBT group with surrogacy center sponsors, as well as the corporate entities one would expect (Coca-Cola, Southwest Airlines, and Tito’s). The organization’s proceeds go to Family Equality and Equality Texas, groups that lobby on behalf of transgender bathroom access and provide resources for other gay couples to acquire children. In other words, this couple is not just another couple; these men are, with every moment of publicity provided to them, directing viewers toward organizations opposed to the traditional family structure and all the benefits it provides.
To simplify my point for the good of the order: The Gaineses allowing for one of their shows to be used by gay activists — to “normalize” unhealthy and un-Christian relationships after tacitly and overtly promising their fans an alternative to an increasingly secular, gay-coded HGTV that had long departed from its Protestant Holmes on Homes days — is like Chick-fil-A offering itself as the warmer, kinder, Christian fast-food joint just to turn around and donate to an organization like the Trevor Project.
Online commenters are in error for allowing their condemnation to focus on the gay couple. The couple’s treating the creation of a family as if it’s picking out a bespoke BMW interior is indeed troublesome, but one must expect such things of the world and not allow it to distract from greater transgressions within the church body. It is the Gaineses who have erred in permitting TV execs to dictate the content of an otherwise laudable show, just as they now err in defending what was an embarrassing oversight. And David French, too, has erred in misleading his readers about how Christians are to behave with one another and in the world. Dwarfs, Puzzles, and Shifts abound, and each party can be wrong in its own way.