Dr. Peter Jones, Director of truthXchange and Adjunct Professor of New Testament at Westminster Seminary, examines the new character of shame. In today’s culture, shaming is used to “punish speech against the new reigning orthodoxy of politically correct relativism, rather than to condemn personally reprehensible moral acts.” He writes,
Fifteen years ago James Twitchel’s For Shame: The Loss of Common Decency in American Culture argued for the socially redeeming character of shame: “Shame is the basis of individual responsibility… It is where decency comes from… shame inhibits behavior — that’s the point. It retards action, it increases reticence, it invokes self censorship. Its final object is not banishment, but reintegration.”