Big Think

Brendon Desrochers commented on Tim Keller on Churches and Race on April 17, 2009, 1:35 PM

I think you’re making some mischaracterizations and assumptions here, Musycks. 1) "The ubiquity of religion in society is apparent, but it's a glue that is losing its hold, I think." Statistically speaking, Christianity is growing in leaps and bounds throughout most of the world, and while the self-identifying of Christians as a whole has declined in the United States, all of that is among "mainline," liberal churches. Orthodox Christianity is actually growing. A place like the U.S. isn’t becoming less religious but rather more polarized in its religiosity. The glue to the people still in the Church is actually much stronger, while the lukewarm are more likely to be entirely secular than to go to church because they’re expected to. 2) "It might realise that seeing the world through a religious prism is not desirable at all." What prism would you prefer? It's certain that Christianity specifically and religion in general has been a reason for divisiveness and abuse often in the last two millennia, and so I see your point. When "religious" views compel people to shout at each other instead of listen, it's certainly a problem. On the other hand, that implies that your ideas about how the world should be, about how political discourse should be handled is more valid than a "religious" person’s. The question then is, what’s the basis of your view? I can say that we should enter into political discourse with hearts of grace and charity and reconciliation because of Jesus' model. You can say that we should keep politics away from religion because it works better that way. Mine is based on the faith-based perspective that Jesus' model is a good one to enter into political discourse with, and yours is based on the faith-based perspective that things would be easier/better your way. You can't empirically prove your claim is more right than mine, so why should you say that I should keep mine out? That's at least what Keller would say. 3) "If it was only spiritual, how would they (black churches) hold up?" This implies that 1) community is unrelated to spirituality and 2) I didn't hear Keller mention political power at all. He refers to power more -- at least this is what I got -- as relevance to the community rather than in political terms. If a Korean church wants to become multiethnic, would it no longer be relevant to the Korea community? Would it meet the needs of Koreans in their unique Koreanness? Those are the questions he's posing. 4) "Interesting that he sees his slice of the religious market as ethnic percentiles." I'm not sure that anything he says indicates that the complete view of how he sees his congregation is as any kind of “slice of the religious market.” The topic was churches and race, and so he conveys the racial makeup of his congregation. If the question was churches and age or churches and SES background, he would probably cite those statistical realities. 5) Paraphrasing...Color and race should be redundant under Christianity. That’s not how a lot of churches see it. To say that race shouldn’t be an unconquerable barrier to connecting and building relationships because of Jesus’ ability to break down barriers is true. But to go the next step and to say that Christianity makes color and race irrelevant is counter-productive and false. Christians believed that God enabled human uniqueness and that differences in race, culture, etc., help all Christians to see the fullness of God because it shows a wider spectrum of God’s creation. Therefore, race is not redundant. Moreover, in order to be relevant to different cultures and races, it’s important that Christians/the Church understands the needs of different people groups. That’s not to say that all people of a given race represent a monolith, but it would also be naïve to think that Christians of all races can connect on every level without understanding and attempting to reconcile cultural differences

Brendon Desrochers commented on Tim Keller on The Reason for God on April 17, 2009, 12:37 PM

Musycks, I'll start with more of a semantical response, but you'll notice that "The" is capitalized in the headline of this "idea" and not in other Tim Keller headlines. That's because "The Reason for God" refers to Keller's book and not simply to the fact that he's going to give the reason why he thinks God exists in a soundbite. I've read his book, and while most vehement atheists do not find it entirely convincing, it is generally compelling, and it's not intended to be a complete tome to shoot down the Dawkinses and Hitchenses of the world. Each of Keller's chapters could be expanded into its own book, so it's hard to expect him to be complete in his explanation of each idea in even one chapter, and, of course, it's even more difficult to expect him to give an explanation that would address every concern of an skeptic in a 2-minute clip. If you do read his book, you'll notice that he has a couple of main theories/themes -- 1) All perspectives on the world and how the world should be are, to the extent that they're not empirically provable, faith-based positions. Therefore, it's not just the "religious" or "faithful" who make assumptions and judgments about the world based on faith but indeed everyone. He expands on this idea often in the book. 2) (And this is more of an argument for Christianity rather than simply for God.) Keller claims that, based on the scholarship of folks like N.T. Wright and Richard Baukham, the New Testament is trustworthy as a set of historical documents in part because of how those books were first recorded and in part because those scholars indicate that the explanation of Jesus' life, death, after-death/resurrection in the gospels makes more sense (based on the scholarship, writing, culture of the time) than any other explanation for those events. He's not saying that it's provable, but he is saying that the gospels and the scholarship can get you to the point where it's not hard to determine that it's very possible and indeed more likely than any alternative explanation. And, if it is true -- that Jesus rose from the dead -- then he is who he says he is (God) and we must respond to him from there. Allow me to caution you before you read -- if you end up reading it, and I think it's worthwhile -- that Keller is not primarily trying to rebut or refute the arguments of the popular atheist scholars/writers of this time. He ends up doing that to some extent and in some places, but Keller's primary goal is to respond to problems with faith/God/Christianity that he's encountered as a pastor at a church in New York City for the last 20 years. Thanks for reading. I hope I didn't misrepresent any of Dr. Keller's points.