A Wall Street Journal assistant editor who attends Redeemer did a piece on Tim Keller, yesterday. Her presentation of Pastor Keller reminded me a lot of Peggy Noonan's presentation of Ronald Reagan; genial, kind, and self-effacing in a splendid sort of way. Nothing new($) including this:
Mr. Keller talks about a few problems for evangelicals, and one of them is politics. “A significant percentage of evangelical churches have been too aligned with certain political movements,” he says. He doesn’t go into detail, but it’s no secret that white evangelicals in the Bible Belt tend to vote with the GOP. ...In this sense Redeemer is unusual: The congregation splits about 50-50 for both parties in the straw polls the church has conducted, Mr. Keller says.
He can’t always avoid the intersection of religion and politics, however.
For decades, when I stopped to read a newspaper, it was the New York Times, and I always noted the Times never ever did a political piece that didn't lay out the candidate's position on (or the implication of the policy for) abortion before the piece ended. I don't read newspapers any more, but now the online news has replaced abortion with sodomite marriage. So, for three decades the intersection of religion and politics has been the wholesale slaughter of our unborn children—and African American babies out of all proportion to white or Hispanic babies—and the wholesale perversion of God's precious gift of sexuality.
The woman who wrote the piece starts by identifying Pastor Keller's audience...
5,500 city folk file into ...Redeemer Presbyterian, at eight packed services across three Manhattan locations, the Greenwich Village campus of which I attend on Sundays. The service is traditional, the congregation less so: Most who show up, if you can believe it, are single and under 35, whether bankers, lawyers, actors or artists.
Bankers, lawyers, actors, artists, and journalists like myself, she writes. In New York City. And their pastor is a man who can't always avoid the intersection of religion and politics.
Back in the late thirties, Dad left Flushing (Queens) for Wheaton College. The big preacher in New York City in his day was Norman Vincent Peale. Dad lamented the hold Peale had over his parents—particularly, I think, his mother. Back then, Margaret Sanger called abortion "murder" and her precursor to Planned Parenthood was trying to repeal laws against contraception. Now, Planned Parenthood specializes in the slaughter of African American babies; it's made itself rich off that slaughter; that slaughter has been going on so long across America that Christians are blasé about it; Times Square is filled with Sodomites; and Reformed Christians pat themselves on the back that 5,000 young single bankers, lawyers, actors, artists, and journalists show up Sundays at a church preached by a pastor who can't always avoid the intersection of religion and politics. Honestly, although some readers will be shocked and embittered by my saying it, I'd prefer the inanities of Norman Vincent Peale to this summary of the preaching of Pastor Tim Keller given us as the opening paragraph of this piece:
‘Cheer up, you’re worse than you think,” Rev. Timothy Keller says with a smile. He’s explaining that humans are more weak, more fallen, more warped than they “ever dare admit or even believe.” Then comes the good news: At the same time people are “more loved in Christ and more accepted than they could ever imagine or hope.”
This has always been the perfect summary of every sermon in the Presbyterian Church in America. It's why the preaching of Redeemer and her clones has had no spiritual impact on New York culture and the preaching of Covenant Theological Seminary grads has had no spiritual impact on the culture of these United States of America—even down in the south in cities where PCA churches have achieved something approximating hegemony such as "the Help's" Jackson, Mississippi. She notes that Pastor Keller says it with a smile:
‘Cheer up, you’re worse than you think, ever dare admit or even believe. [But also you are] more loved in Christ and more accepted than [you] could ever imagine or hope.
Sodomy and the sacrifice of children to Molech are not political issues. They are THE religious issues of these United States, just as ripping open the bellies of pregnant women was THE religious issue of Ammon. So said God's prophet Amos (Amos 1:13).
The New York Times knows sodomy and the slaughter of unborn black babies are the heart of the religion of New York City. The man who pastors Manhattan's young single bankers, lawyers, actors, artists, and journalists should know sodomy and baby-slaughter are the center of his congregants' lives.
Yet by his own admission these are the political issues Pastor Tim Keller avoids.
Tim serves Clearnote Church, Bloomington, Indiana. He and Mary Lee have five children and big lots of grandchildren.
Want to get in touch? Send Tim an email!
