Chip and Joanna Gaines just gave Christians a test — and backlash confirmed it

Are Christians really trying to “cancel” Chip and Joanna Gaines?

The Magnolia power couple faced backlash last month over their new reality show, “Back to the Frontier,” because it features a homosexual couple with two children acquired via surrogacy. Understandably, Christians voiced dismay and disapproval that Chip and Jo — who once faced leftist wrath for being members of an evangelical church that opposed LGBTQ ideology — had capitulated to the rainbow mafia.

It’s possible to love people while still being honest about sin. Christians do this every day.

But according to New York Times columnist David French, the backlash is not about concerns over biblical fidelity. No, it’s really an example of “Christian cancel culture.”

In his telling, conservative Christians are behaving “exactly like their cultural opponents” because they feel “powerful” and wield “influence” to abuse it. And, of course, French accuses conservative Christians of hypocrisy because many of them support President Donald Trump.

Worse yet, French describes these Christians as “budding authoritarians.”

French’s broadside is as predictable as it is shallow (he regularly smears conservative Christians). He paints biblical conviction as “hypocrisy,” hides behind the “But Trump!” distraction, and pretends that calling sin by name amounts to silencing people.

But this isn’t an example of cancel culture. This is Christians exercising biblical discernment and refusing to support what God calls evil.

Not cancel culture

Everyone knows what cancel culture is. We’ve all seen it. It’s about seizing on people’s worst moments and erasing them: silencing them, destroying their careers, and driving them out of the public square.

But that’s not what’s happening here. Christians aren’t trying to strip Chip and Jo of their Magnolia empire, remove them from television, or erase them from polite society. Christians are not even demanding that “Back to the Frontier” be canceled.

What’s happening here is quite different — but much simpler.

Faithful Christians are calling out Chip and Jo — whom Christians have supported for more than a decade — for giving a platform to an anti-God lifestyle that harms children by depriving them of God’s design for a mother and father, a lifestyle the Bible explicitly condemns and Christianity has never endorsed.

That’s not cancel culture. It’s moral clarity and biblical accountability.

RELATED: Chip Gaines tells us not to judge — but we won’t pretend any more

  Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Warner Bros. Discovery

French deliberately blurs this distinction because his argument collapses without it. He wants his audience to believe that public disagreement with someone’s decision is equivalent to the mob-driven erasure tactics of progressive cancel culture.

But scripture makes this distinction clear. When public sin is celebrated, public correction is often the prescribed remedy. Such accountability is not about “cancellation” but protecting the witness of the church and encouraging fellow Christians back to the truth.

The Christian problem with “Back to the Frontier” is obvious: Chip and Joanna Gaines decided or agreed to use their platform — one that Christian support helped build — to normalize sin. This is bad because it confuses believers, distorts the gospel, and damages the church’s witness.

‘But Trump!’

Like a playlist on repeat, French can’t resist making this, in some form or another, about Trump. In his view, conservative Christians lack the moral credibility to critique Chip and Jo because many of those same critics also support Trump.

But this is a tired and overused false equivalence.

I dare say not a single Christian voter who supports Trump endorses his sins — just as they don’t endorse the sins of anyone else. Voting for a candidate in an election is not the same thing as endorsing the candidate’s personal decisions. In fact, many Christians who support Trump vote for him in spite of his moral flaws. And, of course, the truth is that many Christians believe Trump’s policies more closely align with a biblical worldview than whatever gobbledygook the Democrats have on offer.

Here’s the real hypocrisy: While French lectures Christians about morality, he supports Democrats whose worldviews, ethics, morals, and political platforms are empty of anything that resembles Christian ethics or a biblical worldview.

How can someone who endorsed Joe Biden and voted for Kamala Harris seriously lecture other Christians about the morality of their vote, then use that vote as a cudgel to smear them? If French were serious about rooting out Christian hypocrisy, he’d start with his own politics.

A time for courage

Christians don’t want to cancel Chip and Jo. We’re simply being clear about what’s true and false, what’s good and evil in an age where everything is upside down.

Now is the time for Christians to stand up and courageously proclaim God’s truth with love.

What we cannot do is celebrate, excuse, justify, or normalize sin, especially sin of this magnitude, an issue that is foundational to creation and shapes the very fabric of society. And we definitely shouldn’t capitulate to the culture for the sake of pluralism, as French suggests we do. That’s not cancel culture. It’s what Jesus calls being “salt” and “light.”

After all, what good is salt if it has lost its saltiness?

On this issue, French is like a light hidden under a basket. He is not only dead wrong about his conclusions, but his framing is dishonest. This isn’t about cancel culture or partisan politics. The real issue here is whether Christians will be faithful to God and His ways or whether they will bend to a culture that hates God and His truth.

It’s possible to love people while still being honest about sin. Christians do this every day. Love does not require complicity.

The Christian faith isn’t a private hobby. It’s a comprehensive worldview that speaks to every part of life. If God’s design for sexuality and family is true — and it is — then pretending to be neutral in the public square is just another form of surrender.

That’s why Christians must reject French’s false equivalences and cheap moralism. Because in the end, this isn’t about Chip and Joanna Gaines. It’s about whether the church will have the courage to tell the truth and discern the difference between light and darkness.

Chip and Jo just gave Christians a test. The backlash — epitomized by David French’s absurd accusations — only confirmed how urgent it is for Christians to pass that test with flying colors.