What Sort of Cultural Engagement?
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This rare mid-week edition of the newsletter is not about Tim Keller; it's about the weird conclusions white Christians make when we ignore the experiences of Christians of color. But to get there, we'll need to begin with the well-known pastor from Manhattan. Also, the man in this photo is Rev. Fred Shuttleworth, a man who once said he would either "kill segregation or be killed by it," standing in front of his house after it was bombed by the KKK. More about him in a minute.
Tim Keller, if you're unfamiliar, has been a pastor in New York City for a few decades. He's known for his thoughtful engagement with cosmopolitan culture of a particular middle-class, highly educated kind. He's written a bunch of best-selling books and is widely respected in Evangelical spaces, including by those who don't share all of his theological convictions. Part of his appeal over these years has been his approach toward secular society. He has repeatedly made the point that Christians should not be easily sorted by left-right partisan politics, that our cultural engagement should be compassionate rather than combative.
Last week, First Things published an article by associate editor James Woods which, in short, makes the claim that the day for Keller-style compassionate or, as the author puts it, winsome Christian engagement has passed. Woods had been deeply impacted by Keller and his approach to cultural interaction but that changed with the 2016 presidential election. "At that point, I began to observe that our politics and culture had changed... The evangelistic desire to minimize offense to gain a hearing for the gospel can obscure what our political moment requires."
Responding to Woods' claim that our times call for a more utilitarian cultural engagement, David French points out the following, seemingly basic, Christian truth. "The biblical call to Christians to love your enemies, to bless those who curse you, and to exhibit the fruit of the spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—does not represent a set of tactics to be abandoned when times are tough but rather a set of eternal moral principles to be applied even in the face of extreme adversity." Absolutely!
I want to point in a different but related direction. First, notice how Woods describes the dangers of Keller's winsome approach to cultural engagement.
And I started to recognize another danger to this approach: If we assume that winsomeness will gain a favorable hearing, when Christians consistently receive heated pushback, we will be tempted to think our convictions are the problem. If winsomeness is met with hostility, it is easy to wonder, “Are we in the wrong?” Thus the slide toward secular culture’s reasoning is greased. A “secular-friendly” politics has problems similar to “seeker-friendly” worship. An excessive concern to appeal to the unchurched is plagued by the accommodationist temptation.
Keller's “third way” philosophy has serious limitations as a framework for moral reasoning as well. Too often it encourages in its adherents a pietistic impulse to keep one’s hands clean, stay above the fray, and at a distance from imperfect options for addressing complex social and political issues. It can also produce conflict-aversion, and thus it is instinctively accommodating.
Woods makes two claims that can only be reasonably believed by someone whose conception of Christian witness is limited to white, culturally privileged Christians. First, he assumes that when winsome Christians are met with cultural hostility, their tendency will be to compromise on their convictions and accommodate to an unchurched culture. While reading this, I immediately thought about the strategy of nonviolent resistance demonstrated by many Black Christians during the Civil Rights Movement. In one sermon, Dr. King said that, "at the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love…It is the love of God operating in the human heart. When we rise to love on the agape level, we love men not because we like them, not because their attitudes and ways appeal to us, but we love them because God loves them." Elsewhere he claimed that nonviolence “does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding."
Granted, the winsomeness exhibited by Keller and King's agape-fueled nonviolence are not the same. Still, the idea that "heated pushback" from an unchurched society will cause Christians committed to loving cultural enagement to abandon their convictions seems silly. Perhaps Woods views our society today as being less Christian, less churched than it was in previous generations and therefore more hostile toward Christians. I wonder, what might the bruised and battered Christians who sacrificed their bodies at lunch counters, public parks, and bridges over muddy southern rivers think of this assumption. Do those who think Christians ought to abandon winsome cultural engagement really believe we face greater opposition today than did those faithful saints?
Second, Woods thinks that Keller's non-partisanship leads to a sort of quietism and conflict aversion which results in, again, cultural accommodation. To stick with the Civil Rights Movement, are we to believe that because most Black Christians of that era did not have a politically or culturally viable way of engaging their society they were left to "stay above the fray?" That they were conflict averse? I think of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth who, despite multiple attempts on his life while living in Birmingham, refused to surrender the fight for racial justice. Dianne Nash would later say of the seemingly fearless pastor, "He would not sell out, [and] you could count on that."
Again, there are countless differences between Keller's winsome approach and the non-violent, love-oriented ethos of so much Black Christian cultural engagement. My point is simply to notice the absurdity of the assumptions which lead Woods to his utilitarian conclusions. He can only get there by ignoring the witness so many Black Christians, past and present. Let's not make the same mistake.
I really enjoyed my conversation with Helen Lee and Dr. Michelle Reyes last week. We talked about their new book, the rise of anti-Asian hate, and a lot more. If you missed it, you can watch the video on my Facebook page.
On Friday I'm thrilled to welcome Dr. Jemar Tisby for another live video conversation. Register for the Zoom link or catch it on Facebook.