It’s strange how the death of someone you took to be a deeply good man can both sadden and encourage you. I was, I think, a very stereotypical evangelical follower of Tim Keller in my 20s. In the hundreds of hours of commuting in a 2008 Toyota Yaris, I listened to dozens of his sermons downloaded on my iPod, many on repeat. I wanted his insight in my head, so that I could stand as confidently and gently as he did.

I saw him preach once, about a decade ago, at Redeemer’s downtown location, when I was in New York City volunteering with some friends at the Bowery Mission. Unsurprisingly, I remember nothing from that sermon, but I do remember how excited I was to be there. In the age of celebrity pastors and YouTube sermons, it’s rare to sit in the same room with the people who seemingly affect you the most. But actually attending Keller’s church was, for me, very unlike seeing a famous person or musician “live.” It was in this city, on this street, in this church, that he lived and dedicated so much of his life to. It’s a different feeling and one that I still remember.

I was profoundly shaped by two of Keller’s books: The Prodigal God and Generous Justice. Both books turned very central ideas of Christianity around for me—changed the outlook, the responsibility, and the experience of being a Christian in fundamental ways. And both are books I would still highly recommend.

In more recent years, I didn’t follow much of what he said or did, though I heard and read his name mentioned from time to time. Sadly, those mentions often came in a negative light. Culture warriors don’t have time for Tim Kellers. (Though they have the deepest possible need for them, whether they know it or not.) The funny thing is just how telling it was every time, how easily and automatically every criticism of him (that I read) failed its own test the moment I started reading it. In an essentially not-so-strange way, he became something of a litmus test: If your “Christian” politics requires that you take down Tim Keller, it’s a sign, to me at least, that you are basically full of shit flim-flam and doing something very much other than Christian politics.

Though I have no idea what one word is best, if I could pin down one characteristic of Keller’s, it would be his calm and sympathizing largesse. Nothing was too ancient or too backward to be given our modern attention. There was nothing that couldn’t be seen in some better light, a light which he modestly and tirelessly worked to shine everywhere. In approaching the world he lived in—approaching the history of it, life in it, or preaching about it—he was not abrasive or even defensive but essentially optimistic, embracing and celebratory of that world. And he managed to do this with rare skill and dedicated orthodoxy.

As a self-described exvangelical, I may have moved on in many ways from that time in my life, but it is a wonderful thing to look back with fondness at the inspiration and the example of a central figure like Tim Keller. I may no longer fit as comfortably as I once did in Keller’s theological shoes, but one of the greatest gifts in life is to know this sort of difference or separation and to know it, not only without animosity or pride, but with absolute love and respect and humility. And this status-of-peace was infinitely emanated in, through, and around Keller’s life.

The last time I read anything from Keller was, oddly enough, just last December, in a small basement-turned-medical-unit in eastern Ukraine. Though we had no cell phones or individual internet access, every few days we did receive, along with letters from home, a pdf of headlines from The New York Times that we could browse. Just headlines, no articles. But there was one exception that came through early in December: Tim Keller’s article in the Times on forgiveness. I remember reading it with a sort of nostalgia and affection.

And that seems fitting to me. The tensions that existed in that basement are difficult to define, but what better thing to be reading there? In a world defined by difference, fueled by outrage, plagued by war—what more significant quality could be called forth, pleaded and prayed for, than forgiveness? And I can think of few modern pastors who have championed this attitude better than Keller did.

It fits, it all fits. You couldn’t be this confident and accepting of the world if you hadn’t already forgiven everyone and everything in it. Or, more to the point in Keller’s case—it is The Point in Keller’s case—it would mean that you really do trust and love the knowledge that God has done this already.

When you embrace the idea that Jesus’ self-sacrifice was done for you, the Crucifixion becomes an act of surpassing beauty that, when brought into the center of your being, gives you both the profound humility and towering happiness, even joy, needed to forgive others.

Tim Keller really believed and embraced it to the end. So should we.

Samuel D. James:

There is always an intrinsic danger to telling one’s story. We are all fallible narrators. Even the purest intentions cannot cure a mistaken memory or a misunderstood moment. These things do not make our self-histories worthless; they simply make them human.

Yet telling our stories of theological, political, or intellectual transformation carries a distinct risk: that our gratitude for where we are now lures us into ignoring or distorting the grace that met us at a much different place. This isn’t just a factual problem. It’s a spiritual one as well.

Many of us raised in evangelical subcultures must admit that we are very different people today than we were while living with our parents, attending this Sunday school class, or sitting under that youth pastor. Many of us will look back at the things we were taught and see problems—some minor, others serious.

Yet this transformation shouldn’t leave us with contempt for the people and places of our past. When we’re honest with ourselves, we should acknowledge that even the ways we change are deeply rooted in the things that were poured into us when we were too young to refuse them. […]

… Indeed, this is the peril of all our testimonies[:] We see even our own lives only as through a mirror dimly.

I have not read Jon Ward’s new book, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation, which James is reviewing. And I’m not sure I will or need to read it. The title resonates, but my experience so far with these kinds of narratives has remained a bit standoffish. When it comes to evangelicals and deconstruction and all that, there are levels both of offensiveness and defensiveness that I have not been able to get on board with.

In Ward’s defense, there’s plenty, plenty more that should be fleshed out regarding generations of evangelical failure. I also take Ward at his word (in this interview) when he says he acribes no malice to the evangelicals his book is directed at. And James’s defensiveness (and anger?) toward the book is much more evident in this follow-up post to the CT article. However, the above excerpt/warning from James is spot-on.

(Also, just to get this off my chest, this interview with Jon Ward on MSNBC’s Morning Joe is unwatchable. I could not finish it. It’s like Ward was brought on to the show to watch Joe Scarborough interview himself on his own high-flying opinion of the topic of Ward’s book. After all the Morning Joe SNL skits, you would think they would have caught on at least a little.)

A friend recently sent me a link to Kevin DeYoung’s review of Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism. I read the review on a flight from Krakow to Amsterdam last week—and I had most of a reply written before I hit the ground. So I have some thoughts, though they are not likely to be very comprehensive. In short, I appreciate that DeYoung is trying to point people away from Christian nationalism, but his review itself still worries me.

The first thing that caught my attention is DeYoung’s critique of those who “seem to prefer a society hostile to Christianity.” He says, “I’ve seen pastors in my own denomination look wistfully at Christians losing power and becoming a minority in the country, as if Constantine ruined everything and our influence would be so much greater if we only we [sic] could lose power and become more marginalized.”

I think DeYoung is right to be wary of a kind of attitude like the one he’s describing, but I don’t like the way he has phrased it. It would probably be better described as an attitude that fails to appreciate the good things “Christendom” has produced—the things that some us (myself included) might often take for granted. That’s a true and noteworthy warning. (As Nathan warns Wendell Berry’s Hannah Coulter: To wish away all the things that have made you could be a more dreadful thing than we can know.) But the description he uses is far from helpful, since I don’t know anyone who would describe the decline of Christian culture—if such a thing is even occurring (more on that below)—as a means of increasing our “influence.” The closest thing might be the hope that a decline of influence—or, better, a decline of desire for influence—would result in a stronger Christian life/community. Less focus on influence should lead to better, more authentic practice. To the degree that the people DeYoung has in mind believe a more authentic Christian community would also have more influence, then sure, he could put it in those terms. But that would simply be to describe the paradox of Christian life and practice, and the paradox of Christ’s death on the cross. Again, the way DeYoung is framing his criticism seems very unhelpful to me, since I am sure that most of the people he’s speaking of, like myself, have little or no interest in making decisions about Christian life based on what might be most effective; we simply believe that it is not the role of Christianity—or any religion—to claim state power for itself.

(I think DeYoung is similarly unfair in his criticism of Russel Moore. I think Moore has been more thorough in his critique of Christian culture than either Wolfe or DeYoung give him credit for, at least in this article.)

DeYoung goes on to give a summary of a “mini-speech” which he says he has used often. In that argument he says “people are drawn to [popular defenders of Christian morality in the culture war] because they offer a confident assertion of truth. Our people can see the world being overrun by moral chaos, and they want help in mounting a courageous resistance; instead, they are getting a respectable retreat.” He has a point about sympathizing with the attraction to strong voices in the culture war, and I think that learning to first sympathize is crucial for all of us, no matter where you find yourself on any given divide. But, for me, everything in DeYoung’s mini-speech is useless unless we’ve answered a couple questions: What do we think constitutes a “courageous resistance”? And how exactly are we describing a “respectable retreat”? We only need “courageous resistance” over “respectable retreat” if those terms are properly defined, and for the Christ-follower, they will be particularly difficult and counterintuitive. The fact that those tempted by Christian nationalism continue to seek out the leaders that they do, whether they be politicians or the popular writers and speakers DeYoung mentions, suggests that many of us who grew up in the Evangelical world were not given good definitions—or were not shown a life consistent with the definitions we were given. (Is it not also a problem that, if I didn’t know any better, DeYoung’s mini-speech could just as easily be describing how the disciples of Jesus felt when their leader failed to mount a “courageous resistance” and instead chose a “respectable retreat” to a cross?)

Granted, as DeYoung says, “many Christians are tired of always being on the defensive,” and I truly, truly want to sympathize as much as I can. But, speaking very personally, as long as I have known anything of the evangelical community, local and national, that raised me and thrust me out into the world, being defensive in politics is almost all they have ever known or been taught how to do—whether they needed to or not. I am not saying that Christian concerns for the culture and its direction are never valid, nor am I denying that many of the Evangelicals I know live wonderfully praise-worthy lives, but their engagement in American politics is characteristically inflammatory and insecure. A Christianity that calls for boycotts of businesses that don’t sufficiently support their favorite religious holiday and then complains of being tired of always having to defend itself is a Christianity that is asking to be taken less seriously. Likewise, a Christianity that will not take the time to count their many and compiling legal victories, for themselves and for their Black brothers and sisters, is a Christianity that will and can never be anything but defensive in all the ways that it says it does not want to be.

Most of these things are critiques of Christian culture that I have held in general, and increasingly, for the last seven(ish) years, and even of DeYoung himself, at least ever since he threw his hat into the David Frenshism ring. The main feature of this Christian culture, the central problem as I see it, is the ability to make excuses for itself—or, rather, an inability to not make excuses for itself. As DeYoung himself admits in the review, for all our faults in the U.S., “you’d be hard-pressed to find a country where orthodox Protestants wield more political power, have more cultural influence, and have more freedom to practice their faith according to the dictates of their conscience.” And yet, he still goes on to praise Aaron Renn’s “negative world” thesis and to say that “a big sort is underway” to determine “which Christian institutions and individuals will remain faithful.” I won’t go down the rabbit hole of Renn’s negative world thesis (about which I have my doubts/completely disagree), but, as I’ve said before, maybe there is some big cosmic sorting going on in the culture wars of America in which God is seeking to prove his true church, and maybe there isn’t. But I sincerely doubt whether our Christian legitimacy will be based on our commitment to being strong, mighty, powerful cultural warriors—nor on our commitment to finding a warrior who will do the fighting for us. More likely, our faithfulness will be found in our ability to accept that true courageous resistance will often look like respectable retreat—and in learning not to mind that this is The Way.

While I have listened to Wolfe explain and defend his book, I have only read the introduction to it (and have no plans to read further, for now), and I’m not even a good layman historian, so it’s hard to know what to do with the references to early Protestant political thought. Assuming that DeYoung is correct that Wolfe has been faithful in his retrieval of that thought—so what? The argument being made by Wolfe (and others) is that a nation such as ours can and should be “Christianized”—he wants what he calls “nationalism modified by Christianity.” This way, all the people who call themselves Christians can have good and trustworthy neighbors, because of course it’s good that we should always prefer to be around others that are just like us. Is this not clearly, based on his own descriptions, a movement in the other direction: a Christianity that itself becomes nationalized (and ethnicized—he uses the terms “almost synonymously”). Honestly, I cannot see how Wolfe’s book is anything other than self-defeating. He can pull from early Protestant sources all he likes, history will only prove the point: it was a bad and bloody idea then and it is the same today. Besides what should be the obvious terror in Wolfe’s idea of state-sponsored religion and ethnicity, the reason this seems worth pointing out is that, behind the question of whether Christian nationalism is a good idea, there is a more essential question: is Christian nationalism, as a practice or even as an idea, anything other than a contradiction in terms? Is it even possible? I think not. And I think that something-called-Christianity has to be significantly distorted to even begin to go down that road. No matter how faithfully Wolfe has treated his 16th and 17th century sources (which I am sure is debatable), the fact that many early Protestants distorted the faith in exactly the same way is not a moving argument to me.

(It’s interesting that the topic of early Protestant support for state power also came up in the one book that I had with me while I was travelling for the last month, Lewis Hyde’s The Gift. I could not summarize it well, but suffice to say, I did not expect to find it there. DeYoung touches on Wolfe’s treatment of the subject, and while he happily points to the development of Protestant political thought away from state control, he does not offer a helpful critique of Wolfe’s reference to earlier practices. Of the horrors involved in Martin Luther’s support for merchant princes and the suppression of the Peasants’ rebellion, and much more, DeYoung only shrugs. Wolfe is apparently to be commended for having the courage of his convictions. Needless to say, Wolfe’s entire approach bothers me, and the fact that The Gospel Coalition is publishing a review that seems modestly to conclude “this is not the best way” is more worrisome still.)

I want to be grateful for DeYoung’s critique, since he is, ultimately, saying “no” to Wolfe’s argument. “‘The world is out to get you, and people out there hate you’ is not a message that will ultimately help white men or any other group that considers themselves oppressed.” This is exactly right, and I hope that DeYoung and others repeat it often and widely. Equally to the point, DeYoung says “we should hold to our political blueprints . . . loosely and charitably. I fear the practical payoff from this discussion will be very small, but the potential for division in the church will be great.” I hope I am wrong about this, but I am guessing that the only result will be more division. And I also worry that DeYoung’s (in my opinion) charitable review itself will only add to it.

Again, I do want to cheer on many things DeYoung preaches, particularly in his closing paragraphs, but I can’t get very far without tripping. Just when I think I’m reading a paragraph I can agree with wholeheartedly, he drops back again to “lament that America is much less Christian than it used to be.” Really? Whose America is “much less Christian” and in what way? There may be understandable reasons why many Christians feel this way, but, as a statement of historical fact, I would be hard-pressed to defend it as much more than a slightly subtler declaration of victimhood, which DeYoung has tried to denounce.

As I mentioned before, sympathy is crucial, absolutely crucial. To quote a very often used line from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains… an un-uprooted small corner of evil.”

More than anything else this passage should move us to have all the sympathy toward other people that we can muster and then some, and it is a sympathy that we should want from others, one that we should, in fact, be very afraid to live without.

That said, I want to point to a few things from the bookshelf that seem relevant and worth considering.

The first comes from one I’ve been picking at called Balkan Contextual Theology. In it, one of the authors quotes Branko Sekulić, who says, quite harshly, of “ethnoreligiosity” that it is a “cardinal facet of confessional desertion and perpetual treason, entrenched in the incessant denial of Jesus’ life and martyrdom, for the satisfying of superficial interests and worldly needs.” (Yikes.) Granted, not every proponent, or temptee, of Christian nationalism is deserving of quite so harsh a response, but, to his point, I have never heard a description of anything even close to Christian nationalism that did not seem entirely antithetical to the gospel of the crucified God. But, equally importantly but more practically, the author also goes on to describe the collection of essays that Sekulić was contributing to: “What emerged from this first step towards a ‘Balkan Theology’ was a prophetic type of judgement, a theology aware of and very critical towards the ‘sins’ of the church, as well as those in the church who are responsible for those transgressions.” If there is one thing that Christian nationalism, by any definition that I have ever heard, will certainly not produce, it is a confessional and sacrificial church which takes its own sins more seriously than the sins of others. What it will produce is pharisaical purification of the church in conjunction with strong and perpetual condemnation of the church’s many (perceived) enemies.

Second, both DeYoung and Wolfe would benefit from a piece of advice from the prelude of Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnnally-Linz’s recent book, The Home of God:

Narratives of crisis and decline do offer their own sickly sort of comfort, but pseudo-romantic nostalgia is a Siren’s song. Many things have always been amiss, and we gain nothing from a quantitative accounting of the degrees of amiss-ness at various times and places. In an important sense, everything is awry and has been awry, the primordial and indestructible goodness of the creation notwithstanding. There is an abiding out-of-jointness to things, witnessed (but not exhausted) by the abiding disquietude of human hearts. The pressing need isn’t that we accurately divine the overall trend line in the course of history but that we carefully discern how things are in fact awry—the texture of our dislocation—her and now.

Beneath or alongside or mingled with the disquietude, perhaps you have felt an amorphous but insistent longing—a yearning for truer modes of belonging, for fulsome forms of resonance that do not depend for their depth of intensity on the thrill of novelty, fascination with the forbidden, or the gravity of violence. In a word, a longing for home.

This is the message that those tempted by something-called-Christian-nationalism need to hear. DeYoung sometimes seems to get this, but what he gives with one hand he takes away with the other. To Wolfe and to those drawn to his argument, the desire for home, even a national home, is normal, but the means of finding or establishing it that they are seeking is not just wrong—it is historically naïve and it is entirely antithetical to Christianity itself.

Lastly, I’ll end with a quote from Karl Barth, which I consider one of the closest descriptions of my own theology:

“When he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion” (Mt. 9:36). And the fact that He was moved with compassion means originally that He could not and would not close His mind to the existence and situation of the multitude, nor hold Himself aloof from it, but that it affected Him, that it went right to His heart, that He made it His own, that He could not but identify Himself with them. Only He could do this with the breadth with which He did so. But His community cannot follow any other line. Solidarity with the world means that those who are genuinely pious approach the children of the world as such, that those who are genuinely righteous are not ashamed to sit down with the unrighteous as friends, that those who are genuinely wise do not hesitate to seem to be fools among fools, and that those who are genuinely holy are not too good or irreproachable to go down “into hell” in a very secular fashion.

The solidarity of the community with the world consists quite simply in the active recognition that it, too, since Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the world, can exist in worldly fashion, not unwillingly nor with bad conscience, but willingly and with good conscience. It consists in the recognition that its members also bear in themselves and in some way actualize all human possibilities. Hence it does not consist in a cunning masquerade, but rather in an unmasking in which it makes itself known to others as akin to them, rejoicing with them that do rejoice and weeping with them that weep (Rom. 12:15), not confirming and strengthening them in evil nor betraying and surrendering them for its own good, but confessing for its own good, and thereby contending against the evil of others, by accepting the fact that it must be honestly and unreservedly among them and with them, on the same level and footing, in the same boat and within the same limits as any or all of them. How can it boast of and rejoice in the Saviour of the world and men, or how can it win them—to use another Pauline expression—to know Him and to believe in Him, if it is not prepared first to be human and worldly like them and with them?

[The church] manifests a remarkable conformity to the world if concern for its purity and reputation forbid it to compromise itself with it. The world only too easily sees itself as a community which has no care but for its own life and rights and manner and which thus tries to separate itself from those around. The world itself constantly divides into individual cliques, interested groups, cultural movements, nations, religions, parties and sects of all kinds, each of which is sure of the goodness of its own cause and each anxious within the limits to maintain and assert itself in face of all the rest…. As distinct from all other circles and groups, the community of Jesus Christ cannot possibly allow itself to exist in this pharisaical conformity to the world. Coming from the table of the Lord, it cannot fail to follow His example and to sit down at table with the rest, with all sinners.

Not a cunning masquerade, but an incarnational unmasking in which we make ourselves known to others as akin to them, rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep. Truly, there is no other line for us to follow, no other kind of Christianity—no matter if it uses the name or not.

I highlighted this from David French’s The Third Rail newsletter last week:

I can name many people who know who Jesus is and embody those virtues as well as imperfect people can.

But when the Church leads with its moral code—and elevates that moral code over even the most basic understandings of Jesus Christ himself—the effect isn’t humility and hope; it’s pride and division. When the Church chooses a particular sin as its defining apostasy (why sex more than racism, or greed, or gluttony, or cruelty?), it perversely lowers the standards of holy living by narrowing the Christian moral vision.

The result is a weaker religion, one that is less demanding for the believer while granting those who uphold the narrow moral code a sense of unjustified pride. Yet pride separates Christians from each other, and separates Christians from their neighbors.

Millions of Christians are humble and hopeful. Millions are also prideful and divisive. Why? One answer is found in the LifeWay-Ligonier survey. In the quest for morality, they’ve lost sight of Jesus—but it is Jesus who truly defines the Christian faith.

Along with Alan Jacobs and I’m sure many others, I say a hearty “yes and amen!”

Buuut…

It’s fitting that Jacobs decided to quote French and the survey on his blog, since Jacobs is the first person I thought of when I read it.

Maybe this is a stretch, but I would be very curious to see Jacobs do something similar with the data from the Lifeway-Ligonier survey as he has done with the romanticized ideas of lost literacy and readership. He says, in nuce, that we don’t know enough about the history of literacy at any given point in any given society to make any meaningful comparisons, and therefore there is no point in making comparative judgments between us and our ancestors. And, perhaps even more relevantly, he adds another point:

I will just say this: I think the hidden assumption in essays like Harrington’s and Garfinkle’s [on the subject of Literacy Lost] is that if people weren’t on social media and staring at their iPhones they’d be reading books instead. And I don’t believe for one second that that’s a safe assumption.

Again, it might be a stretch, but I think that very similar questions can be asked, and criticisms made, of this new survey on “orthodoxy.” Maybe there are other studies to compare here, but I would very much like to know: When exactly in the past did we, as Christians (self-identified or otherwise), have a clear grasp on orthodoxy?

That seems like a question worth asking. But the main point I would like to make is this: I would not be the least bit surprised if there is absolutely no significant correlation between “orthodoxy” and genuine Christlike conduct.

A few years ago, while I was finishing my bachelor’s degree, I took a history class called “Genocide in Our Time.” One of the assignments each week was to respond to a given question in our own journal-essays. One week’s question was on the topic of “raising awareness” and its effectiveness.

I don’t remember the exact question that was asked, but here is my response, titled “A Cynic’s Take on Awarenesss”:

I’m no scholar of the Protestant Reformation, but I grew up being taught that the reformers believed in three distinct but related elements of conversion: notitia, assensus, and fiducia. A person could hear all the details (notitia) and agree that they are true (assensus), but it was not until people actually placed their confidence in that truth—had “cast themselves upon it”—that they could be said to have faith (fiducia). I’ve never heard them used outside of the Reformation, but those three little Latin words seem to me to have significance far beyond the ecclesia.

I mentioned in the discussion this week that I’m a bit of a cynic when it comes to the topic of “raising awareness.” If I was being truly honest (and more willing to risk offense) I would have said that “raising awareness” is almost an entirely meaningless phrase to me. Even now I’m a little hesitant to admit this, partly because I’m afraid that what someone will hear is that I am somehow against truth or justice, or that anyone who operates under the task of raising awareness is doing meaningless work. This is certainly not what I mean. I think one way to say what I mean is this: in the same way that the reformers believed that notitia and assensus were nothing if they did not include the commitment of fiducia, hearing the details about genocide and believing them to be true are (almost) meaningless acts if they do not include the “faithfulness” required to prevent or respond to them. That in no way means that awareness doesn’t matter. Sticking with the analogy: if raising awareness amounts more or less to the notitia and assensus of the truth of genocide, someone need not fear that I’m in any way calling that task meaningless, since the reformers also believed that one couldn’t have fiducia without first having the awareness.

Here, however, just when I think I’m starting to clarify myself, is where I make a slight turn.

In some ways I’m not entirely faithful to my reformed roots. Without getting into too many of the details, I am (these days) inclined to reverse the above formulation—much to the chagrin of my own father, Reformation man that he is. Though it seems at times very counterintuitive, I think that fiducia almost always comes first, and that you can have it without—strictly speaking—having the other two. Put simply: if one doesn’t have the character of commitment (fiducia), then notitia and assensus won’t really matter. Character is infinitely more important than any amount of knowledge or awareness. T.S. Eliot asked, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? / Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” Somehow we have learned—though this is not a new problem—to speak about the truth without becoming wise. Or, more to the point, we often act as though getting all the facts straight will somehow make us wise, but ages upon ages of humanity tell us that this is simply not true.

I believe as much as anyone in the importance of calling a thing by its true name, especially when it comes to genocide, but the question is not so much about how we can get more people to admit of atrocities or to acknowledge the word “genocide.” Instead we would do better to ask how we might, each and all, be and become a people who are, in the words of Albert Camus, “resolved to speak out clearly and to pay up personally.” Forget those who consider themselves “aware.” Give me ten men and women who know nothing about the history of genocide but who live truthfully and sacrificially today, and I think it will be those faithful (fiducia-filled) people who prevent the next genocide long before anyone else. A people who live in this way will know what to do with the truth when they find it. For those who do not, the truth may not matter at all. As Norton Juster’s character Canby laments in Phantom Tollbooth, “You can swim all day in the sea of knowledge and still come out completely dry. Most people do.”

As mentioned before, I am not saying that spreading the truth about genocide awareness is unimportant; indeed, I think it is massively important. But no matter how important it is, I do think that the truth about genocide at least can be meaningless. We must speak the truth, but if we don’t do more than that, all the awareness in the world will not help the Rohingyas of today or the Yazidis of tomorrow. And in that way, unless some sense of fiducia is central, no awareness project will be, in any meaningful sense, successful.

While in this case I was borrowing an idea to answer a question about genocide prevention, I think, for obvious reasons, that every single word I wrote in that short essay could be said about “orthodoxy” among the “faithful.” In fact, it seems to me that this is one of the core elements that make up the stories and teachings of the Bible, and particularly every encounter with Jesus: Your ability to pass the test—on sexual morality or on theology—is irrelevant.

Again, there could be some more informative data out there that I’m not aware of, so I say this as humbly as possible. Maybe there was a time, in the near or distant past, when a majority of proclaiming Christians had there theological i’s and t’s dotted and crossed and italicized. And maybe these orthodox practitioners were the ones most likely to be sacrificing life and limb for the glory of God and the love of neighbor. But I don’t believe for one second that that’s a safe assumption.

How can it be that believers called to radical inclusion are the most hostile to refugees of any group in the United States? How can anyone who serves God’s boundless kingdom of love and generosity ever rally to the political banner “America First”?

That question comes from Michael Gerson at the Washington Post, in an article that almost everyone I respect would like to (and many could) have written. It is the common, basic Christian grievance that cannot be said too many times or in too many ways.

In the present day, the frightening fervor of our politics makes it resemble, and sometimes supplant, the role of religion. And a good portion of Americans have a fatal attraction to the oddest of political messiahs — one whose deception, brutality, lawlessness and bullying were rewarded with the presidency. But so it is, to some extent, with all political messiahs who make their gains by imposing losses on others and measure their influence in increments of domination.

Jesus consciously and constantly rejected this view of power. While accepting the title “Messiah,” He sought to transform its meaning. He gathered no army. He skillfully avoided a political confrontation with Rome. He said little about history’s inevitably decomposing dynasties. He declared instead a struggle of the human heart — and a populist uprising, not in the sense of modern politics, but against established religious authorities. […]

Jesus rejected the role of a political messiah. In the present age, He insisted, the Kingdom of God would not be the product of Jewish nationalism. It would not arrive through militancy and violence, tactics that would contribute only to a cycle of suffering. Instead, God’s kingdom would grow silently, soul by soul, “among you” and “within you,” across every barrier of nation or race — in acts of justice, peacemaking, love, inclusion, meekness, humility and gentleness.

Gerson asks “why so many American evangelicals have rejected the splendor and romance of their calling and settled for the cultural and political resentments.” One answer, as he goes on to point out, is that this rejection of the flow of political tides can be difficult and lonely. But, while it certainly is difficult and lonely, faith isn’t only or even mainly those things. And all of us, whether stuck in the tide or tired of resisting it, can at any moment find in Jesus a better way:

What I am describing, however, is not a chain or a chore. When we are caked with the mud of political struggle, and tired of Pyrrhic victories that seed new hatreds, and frightened by our own capacity for contempt, the way of life set out by Jesus comes like a clear bell that rings above our strife. It defies cynicism, apathy, despair and all ideologies that dream of dominance. It promises that every day, if we choose, can be the first day of a new and noble manner of living. Its most difficult duties can feel much like purpose and joy. And even our halting, halfhearted attempts at faithfulness are counted by God as victories.

God’s call to us — while not simplifying our existence — does ennoble it. It is the invitation to a life marked by meaning. And even when, as mortality dictates, we walk the path we had feared to tread, it can be a pilgrimage, in which all is lost, and all is found.

Before such a consummation, Christians seeking social influence should do so not by joining interest groups that fight for their narrow rights — and certainly not those animated by hatred, fear, phobias, vengeance or violence. Rather, they should seek to be ambassadors of a kingdom of hope, mercy, justice and grace. This is a high calling — and a test that most of us (myself included) are always finding new ways to fail. But it is the revolutionary ideal set by Jesus of Nazareth, who still speaks across the sea of years.

Ross Douthat:

The pro-life movement was an always-marginal and embattled cause, and in [1992] it did seem defeated.

Yet 30 years [after Roe], here we are. And for all the contingency involved, future scholars of mass movements will find in the pro-life cause a remarkable example of sustained activism against substantial odds, of grass-roots mobilization in defiance of elite consensus — of “democratic virtues,” to borrow from the political scientist Jon Shields, that would be much more widely recognized and studied if they had not been exercised in a cause opposed by progressives and the left.

But the story doesn’t end here. While the pro-life movement has won the right to legislate against abortion, it has not yet proven that it can do so in a way that can command durable majority support. Its weaknesses will not disappear in victory. Its foes and critics have been radicalized by its judicial success. And the vicissitudes of politics and its own compromises have linked the anti-abortion cause to various toxic forces on the right — some libertine and hyperindividualist, others simply hostile to synthesis, conciliation and majoritarian politics.

I would at least add that, more significantly, the pro-life movement does not command any sort of durable moral or integrity-filled support, which is far more important than majority support.

But here’s David French:

The culture of political engagement centers around animosity. Church and family life is being transformed, congregation by congregation, household by household, by argument and division. The Dobbs ruling has landed in the midst of a sick culture, and the pro-life right is helping make it sick.

Writing in the New York Times, Ross Douthat rightly cautioned that “the vicissitudes of politics and its own compromises have linked the anti-abortion cause to various toxic forces on the right — some libertine and hyperindividualist, others simply hostile to synthesis, conciliation and majoritarian politics.”

That’s true, but it doesn’t go far enough. The vicissitudes of politics haven’t just linked the anti-abortion cause to various toxic forces on the right, they’ve transformed parts of the anti-abortion movement, making many of its members as toxic as their “libertine and hyperindividualist” allies. […]

…the Republican branch of the American church is adopting the political culture of the secular right. With a few notable exceptions, it not only didn’t resist the hatred and fury of the MAGA movement, it was the MAGA movement. And this is the culture that’s going to lead the effort to heal our nation, love the marginalized, and ask young women to face an uncertain future and endure a physical ordeal for the sake of sacrificial love?

It’s worth emphasizing that French has consistently sought and now celebrates, if cautiously, the undoing of Roe. But, as he points out, that doesn’t mean that the situation on the ground is worth celebrating. As French aptly summarizes that situation, “A movement animated by rage and fear isn’t ready to embrace life and love.”

I think not only is the movement not ready, but, more pointedly, regardless of legal “victories,” that movement cannot offer, foster, or encourage what it does not possess.

Wesley Hill, with a needed word:

At various points in my life, I’ve taken up the partisan banner with gusto. Although I planned to vote for Barack Obama for president in 2008, I remember being unsettled by Obama’s then-pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s remarks that emerged during the course of the campaign. “God damn America!” Wright had said, and I had absorbed enough Hauerwas at that point to sympathize with the point. But I still couldn’t look my GOP-voting parents in the eyes and say that I was ready to defend Wright as someone with whom I was in full, unimpaired communion. Then I read this from the “progressive” evangelical Jason Byassee in the “conservative” evangelical magazine Christianity Today:

“Charity requires that evangelicals do business with Wright. He, like them, is part of the body of Christ. Not less than John Hagee or Rod Parsley — extremist ministers aligned with John McCain —Wright’s churchmanship means he is more brother than enemy.”

Did I really believe the bonds I share with fellow Christians like Wright — and my parents — required me in some way to believe that all of us were part of the same dysfunctional kinship network? And what would it mean for my speech and action if I really did believe that? And what would it mean for me to learn from Wright, as a fellow Spirit-filled believer, even when I thought he was wrong? […]

I left the SBC myself, for reasons of conscience and doctrinal considerations, so I can’t very well cast stones on anyone else who does. But I hope that those of us who have left won’t view ourselves as having somehow succeeded where our Southern Baptist siblings have failed, as having escaped unscathed from the judgment that’s coming for us all. I hope we’ll view ourselves as all alike floundering about in the ark of salvation, opposing each other on vital, urgent matters but, for that very reason, occupying the same space and trying, however haphazardly, to listen the same Lord. And I hope we’ll be granted the repentance and amendment of life that these awful days surely call for.

I think Hill could be much more clear about his support for Russell and Maria Moore (et al), but to do that would require him to say something about what he is specifically not saying here: that it might actually be better to leave than to continue making bets in a burning house.

Hill’s advice is, at its core, wise and godly and, in its relational implications, utterly necessary and needed. I myself have much to say and praise in thanks to connections within the SBC. But Hill’s own faith-enabling “second naivety” did not occur by staying in the SBC. It would hardly be fair or even true to think that others couldn’t (or shouldn’t!) find their own faith deepened and widened outside of a house that has been burning for decades.