There's plenty to criticise about Tim Keller, New Calvinism
and the modern Social Justice/Woke movement. These are neither mutually
exclusive nor are they synonymous. The landscape is complicated but it's
further complicated by the spectrum of criticisms and the critics themselves...
some of which deserve equal condemnation.
The 'Enemies Within the Church' article can be more or less
categorised alongside the efforts of John MacArthur and the producers of the
'Statement on Social Justice' also known as the Dallas Statement. And in
keeping with that now growing body of work, this article evokes the dictum...
the cure is worse than the disease.
The critics of the Social Justice movement are right in
suggesting that it's not the Church's task to remedy the wrongs of the world.
It's not the task of the Church to transform society and bring about a regime
of universal justice. However, the critics are often guilty of rank hypocrisy
for all too often they have likewise embraced a series of political and
economic assumptions regarding the Kingdom. These narratives often find a very
comfortable home within the Right-wing sectors of the Establishment.
Some temper this by insisting the world is permanently broken
and thus the established order (which they support) is not to be confused with
the Kingdom. All well and good but in suggesting the established capitalist,
American or Western order somehow represents morality, justice or truth is to
give it a spiritual endorsement. In other words, like it or not they are in some sense equating it with the
Kingdom or at the very least its values. When put in direct terms they will
rescind a bit and suggest the Western Order which they celebrate and glory in
perhaps represents only a pale reflection of the Kingdom (as they see it) but nevertheless
it would seem they are willing to wholeheartedly support it and fight for it.
Their downplaying of commitments is belied by their actions and the zeal of
their polemics.
Or to speak in terms of culpability, their guilt more often
lies in the fact that their actions belie their statements. They are dishonest
in what they say about the Kingdom. Their theological frameworks temper their
publically stated goals but their actions suggest their support of the Western
Order, along with its wealth, power and violence are essentially equated with
the agenda of the Church and thus the Kingdom.
In the end this isn't all that different from what the Social
Justice folks are saying. Both camps wed the Kingdom to culture and power. The
debate is more over style and perhaps whether to think in terms of past glories
or to think in terms of improving on how things are today. To call the Social
Justice advocates Marxists is frankly laughable and these waters have only been
muddied by the mostly unhelpful discussions surrounding the Frankfurt School.
Tim Keller is on the record. He supports Wall Street and the
order it represents. He praises investment bankers and his congregation(s) are
filled with Wall Street types. This is the antithesis of Marxism. Tim Keller is
not a Marxist.
Does Tim Keller for all his worldly wisdom (and theological
and ethical corruption) nevertheless see that American history and culture have
proven to be something less than Christian? A Dominionist (which again is
antithetical to Marxism) he believes it's the Church's job to transform society
and make the Kingdom of Christ manifest. Given that his whole framework for
understanding the Kingdom and the doctrine of the New Testament is flawed, he
can perhaps be forgiven in thinking that some of the values of reconciliation,
forgiveness, and golden rule economics might play out in his understanding of how
the Church is to make the Kingdom manifest. His overtures to these concepts are
weak but even evoking them is apparently a gross theological and ethical
violation by those who would defend the status quo and the system that has in
many aspects wed American Evangelicalism to the unprecedented power of the
American Empire.
Keller is misguided on many levels but in the end no more so
than many of his critics. Their remedy to Keller's 'Marxism' is to buttress the
political and economic order that has for generations exploited and killed the
weak of the world. I guarantee Keller has no problem with Christians being in
the military or being in law enforcement. A true Kingdom ethic would eschew
these roles as anti-Christian along with the Wall Street order Keller,
MacArthur and the whole Evangelical spectrum supports.
Keller should be criticised. On many fronts he's been
demonstrated to be a corrupter of the Church but is MacArthur any better?
Bloated by his treasure chests, a supporter of war, state violence, a theologically
wicked foreign policy, an advocate of a deeply anti-Christian economic order
and ethos, MacArthur would divorce Kingdom aspirations from politics, even
while he pours his energy and sermonic application into supporting the Western
system. Do Keller and the SJW movement fall prey to historical myths? Perhaps,
but no more than MacArthur and his triumphalist myth-narratives about the West
and its role in the world.
Are we to be impressed by Cary Gordon's resume' and his proud
support for Rick Santorum, an Opus Dei style Catholic whose policies and
worldview are reiterations of Francoism? Is Francoist fascism somehow better
than the supposed 'Cultural Marxism' of Keller? While Keller isn't actually a
Marxist, many of the SJW critics are in fact quasi and proto-fascists. They
will chortle at the suggestion but this is largely due to their own
ignorance... of both their own views, the realities of the American system and
of history itself. Santorum whom they largely supported eschews open
acknowledgment of Francoism but it's clearly what he represents. There's a
reason why Evangelicals were drawn to him.
As a Biblicist I abhor and detest the so-called Gospel
Coalition and much of what is the New Calvinism. But their foolish critics have
confused patronage and Capitalist largesse with socialism. Is Keller calling
for nationalisation of utilities, of resources or of industry? Does he want the
state to nationalise the banking system? These would be basic socialist ideas.
No, what is his socialism? It's some watered-down redefined
notion of throwing some coins... ill-gotten at that.... to the poorest, to the
exploited and the downtrodden. Is the US Constitution socialist? Via the 14th
Amendment it demands the state provide equal protection under the law. As a
Christian I care not one whit for the US Constitution or the American system as
a whole but since many Evangelicals have deeply wedded their Americanism and
its jurisprudence to their theology is Keller wrong in assuming there's a Christian
democratic obligation for state intervention? Contrary to the myths of some the
Founders were not wholly laissez faire
in their views of the state. They were not Libertarians. Read the Declaration
of Independence again and more closely if you doubt my claim. And that's just
for a start.
Sadly through the efforts of some on the Christian Right and
the millions of dollars of funding flowing from the Koch's and others, the
Evangelical community has largely come to embrace forms of libertarianism and
anything which challenges this system is decried as collectivist and socialist.
Memories are short and many academics, politicians and church leaders are
dishonest and play the revisionist game. And yet there are some of us that
clearly remember the truth and there are others that still passionately argue
that the Christian political movement, the Christian Right was always opposed
to Libertarianism. With some embarrassment I must admit that I actually voted
Libertarian at one time in the past and I remember being rebuked for it by
fellow Evangelicals. And yet today, the Libertarian arguments concerning the
role of the state, taxation being theft and all their other unbiblical notions
are embraced as gospel. I say this as one who has no stake in the political battles
of the Christian and Evangelical world. I reject them in toto and am a conscientious objector on all political fronts.
That said, I believe it is our duty as Christians to speak
out and warn the Church of false teachers and their doctrines. And this true of
both the SJW's and their critics. It's true of Christian socialists,
libertarians and fascists. There are very few Christian socialists and almost
none in the United States and yet libertarianism and fascism are both on the
rise. Democracy is not a Christian concept, neither are the Enlightenment
categories which undergird the US Constitution and its various incarnations.
There is no Christian political order. It's impossible, a contradiction in
terms. Our citizenship is in heaven and it is that Kingdom we labour to build.
Earthly citizenship is incidental. It can provide pragmatic conveniences but
'rendering to Caesar' has nothing to with civic duty, obligation or affection.
Once this is understood much of the debate becomes moot and
all sides are exposed as being in error.
Once again Keller is to be rejected and yet in the face of
such bogus criticisms offered by such as Cary Gordon I will for a moment take
up his defense.
Keller's affection for the system will certainly take on a
different hue and part of this divide is understood in terms of the cultural
divide between urban cosmopolitanism and rural provincialism. Living in New York
City, Keller would not find many of the attitudes and narratives of rural
Mid-western folks to be compelling. As an educated man he knows such narratives
neither represent the America of the past and certainly do not represent the
America that has arisen over the past century.
I live in an area that is about 99.5% white and I've noticed
that when local people visit the metropolitan areas along the Eastern Seaboard
or even venture near a thriving tech-hub like today's Pittsburgh they are
shocked and upset by the overwhelming presence of minorities. The areas in
which I live have been largely divorced from what's been happening in American
culture over the past 50-100 years.
Recently I listened to a rather well-to-do local man who went
over to Normandy for the D-Day anniversary. Leaving aside the stupid things he
said about the war, France and the French I was struck by something else he
said. He was genuinely amazed at how prevalent minorities are in the US
military. All the 'Blacks' and 'Hispanics' really surprised him. He kept coming
back to it. This is not uncommon and reflects a grave misunderstanding of what
drives military recruitment and from what pools the enlisted community is drawn
from. There's a story there and it's part of a larger story about what's
happening in American culture, the changes and well, the misunderstandings.
Keller lives in a multi-ethnic metropolis. He sees what
America is and what it's going to be in just another generation. The George
Wallace understanding of America lives on and yet quietly. It only comes out at
family gatherings and when the old guys are drinking their morning coffee at
the local gas station-eatery. Keller rightly rejects that value system and
believes it's both un-American and un-Christian. Whether it's un-American is
something I think can be debated and Keller might grant that point and thus the
way to remedy it... is to deal with it. Expose the reality to people and then
they can't pretend not to see it.
But the attitudes are un-Christian. Saying that does not mean
one has to sign on with Keller and the advocates of SJW.
Why were people trying to expose the ugly side of
globalisation in the 1990's? Because many people had just been sucked into the
super-consumerist mainstream, the new decadent lifestyle of the post-Cold War
decade, and yet it had largely happened in ignorance. People for the most part
didn't understand what was happening and what the new lifestyle cost in terms
of the larger world. Once informed, you couldn't plead ignorance.
And yet some fought back in protest, defending consumerism in
the name of prudence and investment, demanding their 'right' to drive
over-the-top SUV's, to build McMansions and to profit off sweatshop labour, the
international marketplace and Wall Street speculation. And that same spirit
lives on in some of the folks fighting the SJW movement. They're not opposed to
Christian politics and the policies and ethics of the Right. Far from it. But
they don't want to hear the SJW message and become accountable. If they 'hear'
it then they have to 'act' and think differently. From their standpoint it's
better to silence it and crush it.
Likewise on the basis of a Christian political order the
Church has at times spent more time persecuting sodomites than evangelising
them. The concerns are valid. That said many Evangelicals are in danger of
getting too friendly with the waxing sodomite clique and the ascendant feminism
of the hour. It's one thing to criticise how the American Church has dealt with
social issues, or rather has politicised many issues...
But it's another thing to compromise the message due to
allegiance to some misguided sense of justice.
In the end I'm left with what I've said before... a plague on
both their houses. Keller stands condemned and his overall trajectory is
diseased. However the physicians that would bring a cure are only bringing an
equally lethal disease.... which in reality is just another strain of the same
sickness that has plagued the Church for centuries.
But until people get off the train and step back they're not
going to be able to take in what's really happening. Additionally Scriptural
ignorance has reached new levels and ignorant people caught up in the moment
have little hope in being able to assess the situation let alone interpret it.