they ask me to remember
but they want me to remember
their memories
and I keep remembering
mine.

—Lucile Clifton, in why some people be mad at me sometimes

Dear friends in Christ,

I spotted an article in the Christian Century by Jennifer Kaalund on the subject of cancel culture.

It reminded me of a print of a painting housed at the Prado in Madrid by a fifteenth-century painter who vividly captures the zeal and fanaticism of book burning. Cancel points of view that do not fit into the imperial and acceptable ideology of the day. Get rid of what interferes with preconceptions that must now be forced onto people.

The Roman policy of damnatio memoriae was attacking of memories of dead public figures. Those figures represented a contrarian viewpoint that opposed what was being propagated in the present. At one point, an idyllic and romanticized perspective offered a sanitized picture of purity if not perfection.

Archaeologist Susan Aycock refers to the elites who dictated an acceptable yet false view of history as the “masters of memory.” Moral failures were erased and triumphs were exaggerated.

A uniqueness in the ancient world is Israel’s insistence in presenting its heroes honestly, realistically with warts and all. The Hebrew Bible shows Moses as an equivocator, Abraham as a liar, Jacob as a cheat and Joseph as a young man with his insufferable narcissism and arrogance. Such wisdom in this culture did not run from its truth. No need to aggrandize those who had led the way.

If shadowy dimensions of history, whether they belong to persons or countries, cannot be faced and worked through, those shadows will live on with great influence with detriment to ourselves. Fear of the truth diminishes potential for fuller and richer living.

We are told to remember.

We are told to remember in each Eucharist.

In remembering, we graft ourselves to Jesus the Christ and invite him anew into our hearts. Growing in Christ is the opposite of cancel culture.

Whatever happened back then can be faced and must be faced if healing is to occur.

Whatever happened back then in history must be faced if healing is to occur.

A Methodist cousin of mine in my hometown brought up one of the civil rights horrors to a church friend who replied, “Oh now, let’s not go there. Let’s talk about more pleasant things.”

She lived in her own cancel culture, choosing to overlook acts of violence that continue to ripple down over the decades. Our country has a low tolerance for remembering and facing historical shadows—”Let’s keep everything pleasant.”

How can the grace, mercy, and forgiveness of God do its thing unless what needs that balm be brought into the Light?

Jennifer Kaalund concludes her article with these words, “Memory binds us together and helps us become who we aspire to be. But it only does this when we remember the real and complicated stories, stories of those who got it wrong but tried to be better and who inspire us to do the same. Despite the temptation or decrees to erase or forget, we must keep remembering—not their memories, but our own.”

Your fellow traveler,

—Richard Mallory