Atlantic article, Evangelicals, and the culture war

That is not what Tim Keller is saying. What Keller is pointing to is how all of these religious leaders are excusing completely reprehensible behavior with this president when they would have been frothing at the mouth with anger if the previous president had done 1/100th of what the current president has done. It’s not so much about policy, although there are certainly points that could be raised on that topic, but about the worship of Trump (i.e. Dear Leader).

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And that’s a great question too… sometimes Christians can get so fixated on “not of this world” that we forget we’re a part of the world just as much as everyone else. It also reminds me of the “sacred/secular divide” that I’ve unknowingly subscribed to for a lot of my life, which I think brings about the desire to label things “secular science,” “secular psychology,” “Christian music,” etc. as if these were disciplines that could be neatly split down the middle into opposing camps. (A speaker at my church once demonstrated the absurdity of this by playing a note on a piano, saying that it was a “secular C”… then went back and played the same note again saying he was now playing a “Christian C.”)

I try to remember Ephesians 6:12 (“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood…”) when I find myself getting into “war” mode. I know I don’t do it perfectly, but I know I have often made enemies of things and people that it was not right for me to do (and still do), and lost focus on what’s important as a result.

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And how does Tim Keller differ from those he accuses?

Tim Keller doesn’t excuse Trump’s reprehensible behavior and anti-Christian values.

“Trump supporters tend to dismiss moral scruples about his behavior as squeamishness over the president’s “style.” But the problem is the distinctly non-Christian substance of his values. Trump’s unapologetic materialism—his equation of financial and social success with human achievement and worth—is a negation of Christian teaching. His tribalism and hatred for “the other” stand in direct opposition to Jesus’s radical ethic of neighbor love. Trump’s strength-worship and contempt for “losers” smack more of Nietzsche than of Christ. Blessed are the proud. Blessed are the ruthless. Blessed are the shameless. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after fame.”

Can you imagine Pat Robertson saying this, or Franklin Graham?

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I don’t. Focus on the gospel, my friend

How can someone who is focused on the gospel excuse the values and behavior that Trump stands for? That’s the question Keller is asking.

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DID YOU EVEN READ SOMETHING BY TIM KELLER? The Atlantic article was written by Michael Gerson. It included a brief Tim Keller quote. How you get all you get out of that brief quote about the meaning of Evangelicals is beyond me. I seriously question your reading comprehension skills.

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@T_aquaticus

Please ignore all attempts by @Wookin_Panub to bait us into a political discussion.

@Wookin_Panub

I am going to start ruthlessly deleting your posts if they are off-topic. I don’t think you have managed a single on-topic post in this thread.

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I was just going from your article. You gave an article specifically mentioning politics. I was not being political, but Keller is SO WRONG! Anyway, I apologize if I violated any of your rules.

I know Tim Keller, and if it is article based off of what Tim Keller wrote. Anyway I am leaving. Don’t want to upset you any further. God bless

THE ARTICLE IS BY MICHAEL GERSOM NOT TIM KELLER. And I specifically noted that we weren’t going to discuss the political aspects, just the idea of Evangelical social engagement on science. I noted that three times.

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Gerson appears to be saying what other Christians have been saying since St. Augustine in the 5th century AD.

Moreover, in making their case on cultural decay and decline, evangelicals have, in some highly visible cases, chosen the wrong nightmares. Most notable, they made a crucial error in picking evolution as a main point of contention with modernity. “The contest between evolution and Christianity is a duel to the death,” William Jennings Bryan argued. “If evolution wins … Christianity goes—not suddenly, of course, but gradually, for the two cannot stand together.” Many people of his background believed this. But their resistance was futile, for one incontrovertible reason: Evolution is a fact. It is objectively true based on overwhelming evidence. By denying this, evangelicals made their entire view of reality suspect. They were insisting, in effect, that the Christian faith requires a flight from reason.

This was foolish and unnecessary. There is no meaningful theological difference between creation by divine intervention and creation by natural selection; both are consistent with belief in a purposeful universe, and with serious interpretation of biblical texts. Evangelicals have placed an entirely superfluous stumbling block before their neighbors and children, encouraging every young person who loves science to reject Christianity.

Compare this to what St. Augustine said:

It is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel [unbeliever] to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn … If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well, and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books [Scriptures], how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?

The mistake some evangelicals made was to be thoughtlessly reactionary. There were some who mistakenly claimed that if evolution were true then the Bible is false. The unfortunate reaction by some in the evangelical community was to agree with them, and then oppose evolution because of that agreement. If social engagement means opposing anything that non-Christians hold to be true, then that social engagement won’t work. People shouldn’t have to sacrifice reason and intellect in order to be Christians.

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I am not talking about what he said (or what you falsely represented him as saying). I am talking about what you said. It is breathtaking to me that anyone calling themselves a Christian could say what you said.

I suggest you pause on that thought.

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There was a time when many Evangelicals and Fundamentalists were old Earth creationists during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They included the famous orator William Jennings Bryan. Yong earth creationism as a doctrine is a relatively new and recent development in Christianity.

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I wouldn’t say YEC is new. However, its rise to dogmatic prominence and its use as marker to define what is bona fide Christianity might have been a historically recent development.

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Should mention an old joke…
Q: "What do you get when you mix religion with politics?"
A: “Politics.”

What’s surprising is that: A) People expected otherwise, or B) assumed any political party could be definitely and exclusively associated with religious ‘goodness’.

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I think you’re right and said it better than me.

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Today it is hard to separate a certain religious view with politics, because it appears that certain religious leaders deliberately combined their brand of religion with a certain brand of politics. The shocking thing to me is that so few have not rejected the excesses of that brand of politics. The current situation could be a blessing to the church in giving those involved the opportunity to reject the excesses ands assert its independence, but this has not been done as far as I can see. There is still hope.

In my observation much if conservative church have become legalistic along very clear conservative lines. Jesus demonstrated the danger of legalism, but it is an easy alternative to true faith. I do not think these comments are political in that they are not partisan, just concerned about the spirituality of the church.

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In an article written several years ago, Brad referred (via a current National Geographic article) to our still living in the long shadow of H.L. Mencken (reporter on the Scopes Trial).

This Atlantic article raised a perceptive question regarding Mencken and Bryan. Below is the quote from the Atlantic article, referring to Mencken and his reporting of that trial:

The journalist and critic, H. L. Mencken provided the account accepted by history, dismissing Bryan as “a tin pot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the forlorn pastors who belabor half-wits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind the railroad yards.” Fundamentalists became comic figures, subject to world-class condescension.

It has largely slipped the mind of history that Bryan was a peace activist as secretary of state under Woodrow Wilson and that his politics foreshadowed the New Deal. And Mencken was eventually revealed as a racist, an anti-Semite, and a eugenics advocate.

[…much later in the article…]

What if Bryan and others of his generation had chosen to object to eugenics rather than evolution, to social Darwinism rather than Darwinism? The textbook at issue in the Scopes case, after all, was titled A Civic Biology, and it urged sterilization for the mentally impaired. “Epilepsy, and feeble-mindedness,” the text read, “are handicaps which is it not only unfair but criminal to hand down to posterity.” What if this had been the focus of Bryan’s objection? Mencken doubtless would still have mocked. But the moral and theological priorities of evangelical Christianity would have turned out differently. And evangelical fears would have been eventually justified by America’s shameful history of eugenics, and by the more rigorous application of the practice abroad. Instead, Bryan chose evolution–and in the end, the cause of human dignity was not served by the obscuring of human origins.

I hesitate to focus on this snippet, because in even calling attention to how Bryan won the trial, but lost the nation, I might inadvertently throw fuel on the fire of the sickeningly mistaken delusion that populist evangelicals now indulge in that they are somehow a feeble minority shamefully in need of a bully leader to protect them – a concern that the author rightly addresses and laments.

I only bring it up to show the complex messiness of history in which the “hero” of sophistication turns out to be a villain and the “villain” who makes a poor choice about where to focus his opposition turns out to be the hero despite his scientific blind side. W.J. Bryan has been a figure of political fascination to me, and the more I read and hear of him, the more my respect for him grows.

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I did not know this about Mencken!