My instinct tells me that Tim Keller’s fingerprints are on the PCA’s invitation to David French to participate on a panel on polarization in American politics. The people responsible for the invitation and the program continue to think of the PCA as an influential denomination that has pundits like David French in its network of influencers. I also suspect that the people who issued the invitation are unaware of how polarizing a figure David French is — mainly because they do not follow politics closely or the arguments in the conservative world carefully. They likely perceive that French, who used to be a member in the PCA, is a Christian with a presence at the New York Times and that makes him someone people in the church would likely want to hear. If French is receiving criticism, it must be from extremists because otherwise he is the political conservative that many liberals like to read. That must make him neither hard-left or extreme-right but safely in the faithful Christian middle.

Will those who offered the invitation think differently now that they see the way David French nurses a grudge? I actually hoped that he would rise above the rescinded invitation and go on with his opining. How could not speaking at 8:00 in the morning to Presbyterian officers from a smallish conservative denomination make any difference to a man who has risen through the ranks of opinion-journalism? If French were simply a professional, and tried to rise above whatever personal embarrassment came with the PCA’s about-face, he might keep score, be wary of future involvement with the denomination, but let the whole affair go. Instead, he used the convening of the PCA’s General Assembly (this week in Richmond) to write about his experience with and history in the PCA. No surprise, the meaning of the incident is all about hhiiiimmmmmm:

When I left the Republican Party, I thought a shared faith would preserve my denominational home. But I was wrong. Race and politics trumped truth and grace, and now I’m no longer welcome in the church I loved.

David French claimed to be a friend of Tim Keller. He was probably but a lot of people who looked up to the New York City and had spent time with him considered Keller to be a friend of some kind. Whatever is the case, when James Wood wrote a piece critical of Keller (sort of kind of), French pounced. Wood’s point was that Keller’s version of apologetics were no longer as plausible in a negative world. To which French wrote:

it’s because my friend Tim shuns political tribalism (emphasizing a “third way” between red and blue) and strives, in Wood’s words, to be “‘winsome,’ missional, and ‘gospel-centered’” in his approach. Wood says that Tim recognizes “though the gospel is unavoidably offensive, we must work hard to make sure people are offended by the gospel itself rather than our personal, cultural, and political derivations.”

The rescinding of the Kuyper Prize from Princeton Seminary to Keller was one of Wood’s examples of the change in American society. But French scoffed that this was some sort of leading cultural indicator:

Imagine trying to even explain this to an apostle. “There’s this famous and influential Christian pastor, and . . .” Paul would stop you right there. That very idea would be novel to him, as would the idea that revoking a prize but delivering a lecture would be evidence of any kind of crisis requiring one to change a “winsome, missional, and gospel-centered” approach to the public square.

Did David French imagine what Paul would have thought if a church had disinvited him from speaking at a conference? The apostles modelled being thick skinned only to make the world safe for French’s thin variety?

In fact, French’s admiration for Keller’s reaction to Princeton’s cancelling the award — the New York pastor even suggested to the seminary’s president how to save face by not giving the award and allowing Keller to go forward with the Kuyper Lecture — suggests he learned very little from Keller’s moderation. It’s as if being a friend of Keller gives French a sense of being on the right side of current Christianity, which in turn means that any critics are low, mean, and bigoted.

But if he could counter James Wood’s criticism of Keller with an appeal to the fruit of the Holy Spirit, couldn’t he self-apply that exhortation?

Paul called Christians to exhibit the fruit of the spirit even when they were being nailed to crosses and clawed by lions. Peter called on Christians to give a defense of their faith with “gentleness and reverence” even when they “suffer for righteousness.”

Someone is tempted to think — okay I am — that David French has no sense of optics and that without that awareness he makes life even more difficult for himself and his family than he can imagine.

And then you (I) remember that David French is a columnist at the New York Times, and if you can make it in New York you can make it anywhere.