“Historical Christian positions on social issues do not correspond to contemporary political orientations. » wrote Superstar Presbyterian pastor Tim Keller in a September 2018 op-ed for The New York Times titled “How Do Christians Fit Into the Two-Party System?” This is not the case. Keller, who pastors a large church in New York and has long called his approach to evangelism “seductive,” has been criticized by other thinkers such as James R. Wood And Aaron Renn for taking an approach that “did not denounce secular culture, but confidently engaged that culture on its own terms in a pluralistic public space,” as Renn puts it.
But last week announcement of a Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, a project of Keller and The Gospel Coalition, offers hope that Keller is more intentionally engaging with the reality of the culture war.
Tim Keller and the “neutral world”
Keller has rightly earned his place as a leader in the modern evangelical church. Although I have not digested every one of his books and sermons, I have gleaned insightful insight into the Christian life from the many books I have read and listened to.
But Keller would be the first to admit that he doesn’t know everything – and how a declining Western Church should engage with the increasingly militant culture around it is fair game for debate. Keller himself acknowledged that his approach to evangelism and cultural engagement is not a “one-size-fits-all” approach for every generation or society. Throughout his ministry, however, he expressed some distrust of political alignments (but not of politics itself).
His opinion piece in the New York Times is representative of his approach to politics as a Christian – which, in modern America, means his approach to the culture war. While Keller admits that some moral issues that have been political throughout history, such as slavery, have necessary biblical battle lines, he offers care of the poor as an example of a political issue for which each side can find biblical reasoning. “Most political positions are not biblical commandments but practical wisdom,” he says.
Last April, Keller made a similar argument in a lengthy Twitter thread that included this point:
I know that abortion is a sin, but the Bible does not tell me what the best political policy is to reduce or end abortion in this country, nor what political or legal policies are most effective for that purpose. Today’s political parties will say that their policies are most morally consistent with the Bible, but we are allowed to debate it and therefore our churches should not be divided over questionable political differences!
This might have been a good argument during the Clinton administration, where one could agree on the need to minimize abortion and still disagree on whether the best solution was to ban it or making it “safe, legal and rare”. But today, one of the two parties has proudly adopted a position that encourages women to “cry out their abortion,” no longer in the shameful corners of the party but in the mainstream. Last year, 219 of 220 House Democrats vote for a sweeping bill that would effectively legalize abortion on demand during all nine months of pregnancy, thereby erasing state protections for the unborn child. No serious person would claim that such a position is consistent with the Bible.
The mindset Keller expressed – that most political positions are not absolute spiritual battlegrounds – was accurate in the sanctuaries of yesterday (and for most of Keller’s career, given that (he planted Redeemer Presbyterian Church in 1989). This reflects what Renn calls the “neutral world” in what he considers. double the “three worlds of evangelization”. After the “positive world” before the 1990s, in which most of Western culture viewed Christianity and its values favorably, the “neutral world” reigned until about ten years ago, when the Western society’s attitude towards Christianity has transformed into a “negative world”.
In a neutral world where the most controversial political issues were tax cuts or foreign policy, the partisan approach Keller took probably made sense for the average Christian. However, over the past decade, American politics has moved away from focusing primarily on policies such as taxes, welfare spending, or even immigration—issues on which Christians can make good-faith arguments for from various political positions.
Waging a culture war in a hostile world
Today, in Renn’s “negative world,” the political left has become the party that celebrates abortion on demand up until birth; cutting off the breasts and genitals of confused and manipulated children and tearing them from the custody of their parents who object; to stir up hatred based solely on the color of a person’s skin; to erase the nuclear family; and to flood schoolchildren with pornographic books and transvestite stripper shows. America’s left-wing factions have used the highest levels of law enforcement to terrorize a pro-life pastor, shut down religious gatherings, and continue to demand that Christians proclaiming simple truths like God’s design for marriage be excommunicated from their work and public speech.
America is embroiled in a culture war, and some of the most prolific instigators of this war are in our highest political offices. Keller is right that no political party is perfect and that Christians should not make an idol of any party or politics in general. But unless we follow the path of the fundamentalists of the early 20th century, we will face cultural onslaught – and some of the biggest arenas of cultural struggle have become political. I’m sure Keller would agree that I should not be a partisan position for protect kindergarten children of being lured into sexual confusion by their teachers, but alas, this is where the political left has chosen to draw its battle lines.
With the announcement of the Keller Center, there is hope that Keller and the Gospel Coalition will catch up. Keller’s narration in the ad video reflects the language of Renn’s “three worlds” almost verbatim:
We now live in a post-Christianity culture. For at least a thousand years, Western culture has been what we might call the culture of Christianity. Although most people were not devout Christians, there was a positive understanding of Christianity in the culture. … Culture has instilled in people a number of basic beliefs that the Bible assumes. …(But) now you wonder how to win people to Christ in a post-Christianity era? And the Church has no idea how to do this.
The concept of a “post-Christianity West” is not a new idea for Keller, who three years ago published a book titled “How to Reach the West Again.” In it, he expressed a similar point about the growing hostility of Western culture, but maintained that “When the Church, in the interest of acquiring political power, aligns itself too much with the secular left or right of the current era, it loses both its spiritual power and its credibility among non- Christians. »
Just last week, Keller critical evangelicals who “turn towards a political project of reconquest of power in order to expel secularists from places of cultural influence”. Although Christians should not seek power for power’s sake, we should defending vulnerable people from the lies and harmful agendas of those in positions of cultural authority.
Jesus rejected the fanaticism of those who expected him to overthrow the Roman Empire, but he also denounced the false moralism of the Pharisees, the primary cultural leaders of the society in which he lived. This false moralism has a parallel in today’s false gospels that actively promote sin in the name of “inclusiveness” or “a woman’s right to choose” – and one of the main avenues for perpetuating these false gospels is political.
We have not yet seen the fruits of the Keller Center, but we can hope that it will respond to the cultural and moral struggles on the political battlefields to which they have rushed, and not shy away from them for fear of the appearance of political allegiances. Among other things, the Keller Center states that its mission is to to assist “Pastors seeking help in applying gospel truth to complex cultural issues” and “Professors, teachers, authors, and thought leaders seeking to identify and criticize the contradictions and lies of modern secular culture.” »
These “complex cultural issues” have reached a point where a Christian’s perspective – one who reveres the sanctity of life, the sacred duty to raise and protect children, and the goals and differences created between men and women who reflect the love of Christ himself for the Church – is interpreted not only as a political opinion, but as a political vision extremism.
I hope that Keller, whom I admire as a theologian, will use the project to boldly respond to the cultural onslaught where Christ’s justice and redemption are so desperately needed, and where the conviction of the Church is so often sorely lacking. By the grace of God, such an undertaking would be worthy.
Elle Purnell is an associate editor at The Federalist and received her bachelor’s degree in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow his work on Twitter @_etreynolds.
