Tag: Tim Keller

Snarky Saturday (Which It Still Is on the West Coast)

Published on by D. G. Hart41 Comments

So here I was, opening up my browser with a beautiful view of the Rogue River Valley in southern Oregon overlooking a pear orchard (where I am speaking), with a cup of java, and lo I behold two blog posts that didn’t cause me to wretch (so I wasn’t drunk) but did force me to double down on my objections to transformationalism in its various guises. Turns out both posts were responding to Ross Douthat’s new book, Bad Religion.

The first was Peter Leithart’s defense of worldliness. In an interview with Ken Myers, Douthat talks about worldliness in the church and how “A lot of the most influential theologies in American life today are theologies that take various worldly ends as their primary end.” Leithart agrees that the church should not capitulate to earthly powers. But then he offers a reading of redemptive history in which God identifies with the world in such a way that orthodox Christianity is worldly. Toward the end Leithart concludes:

The great Reformed theologian Karl Barth pushed the point back to the pre-dawn of the world. In his stirring re-envisioning of the Reformed doctrine of election, Barth emphasized that election is not only God’s decision concerning human beings and the world but his decision concerning himself. By election, God chooses what kind of God he will be in relation to the world he creates in freedom. He wills to be God only by being God-for-us and God-with-us. He refuses to be God-without-us or God-without-world.

What Barth says about God’s choice before the beginning is consistent with what Christians believe about the end. Christians don’t expect to leave the world behind when history reaches its consummation. Scripture holds out the promise of a new heavens and a new earth, this world transfigured into the kingdom. Christians hope for the resurrection of the body, this flesh transfigured by the Spirit.

I’ll let the praise of Barth go — ahem, but I sure do which guys like Leithart, when thet go on riffs like this, would try to do justice to remarks by Christ like “my kingdom is not of this world,” or Paul like “flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom.” In fact, the New Testament is rife with an anti-worldiness theme that doesn’t quite dovetail with the remark that Christians do not expect to leave the world behind. Anyone who wants to claim that anti-worldliness is gnostic will have to deal with Paul who was anti-gnostic and otherworldly. So can we at least acknowledge a paradox here? Or do we simply ignore the Bible’s talk of not being conformed to this world (or by implication expect the new heavens and new earth to be like this one)? Whatever the answer, it sure makes sense that neo-Calvinism’s baptism of the world and efforts to make it ours (in the name of Christ, of course) appeals to baby boomers getting over their fundamentalist upbringing. It may make sense, but it is not right.

The other post came from Tim Keller, again in response to Douthat. According to Keller (I haven’t read Douthat’s book yet), the New York Times columnist says that the kind of church that may respond well to the current world’s needs is one that has the following attributes:

First, it would have to be political without being partisan. That is, it would have to equip all its members to be culturally engaged through vocation and civic involvement without identifying corporately with one political party. Second, it would have to be confessional yet ecumenical. That is, the church would have to be fully orthodox within its theological and ecclesiastical tradition yet not narrow and harsh toward other kinds of Christians. It should be especially desirous of cooperation with non-Western Christian leaders and churches. Third, the church would not only have to preach the Word faithfully, but also be committed to beauty and sanctity, the arts, and human rights for all. In this brief section he sounds a lot like Lesslie Newbigin and James Hunter, who have described a church that can have a “missionary encounter with Western culture.”

Again, according to Keller, Douthat mentions Redeemer Big Apple as an example of this kind of church. Maybe. But New York, I understand, is a big city, and Douthat who at least works there may not know all the goings on at Redeemer or what his recommendation involves. At the risk of disagreeing with Douthat and in the hopes of keeping Redeemer honest, his point about ecumenism is a poignant one. A church has to do justice to its own tradition while not being mean or harsh to other Christians.

The problem here is how well Redeemer and Keller honor their own tradition or the churches that share the Reformed heritage. For instance, I recently learned that Keller is starting a Sunday school series to be published by Zondervan. It’s a free country and anyone can publish anything they want is such a land of free milk and democratic honey. But Douthat may want to consider that Redeemer belongs to the Presbyterian Church of America, a denomination that co-owns (with the OPC) Great Commission Publications. And GCP already publishes a Sunday school curriculum that is Reformed, covenantal, and Presbyterian. It may not have the urban bells and cosmopolitan whistles that hipster Presbyterians desire. But it is decent curriculum. To my knowledge, Redeemer has not contacted the publisher to talk about how the material might be improved so that Redeemer can use it (whether they can sell it is another matter). But if Keller and Redeemer wanted to do justice to their tradition and communion, they could show a little of the team player spirit that is supposed to characterize a Presbyterian communion.

Ross Douthat can’t be blamed for not knowing the inner workings of Reformed Protestantism in the United States. Then again, journalists are known to have some awareness of fact checking.

By the way, the idea that churches should equip members to be culturally engaged is remarkable. As it stands, churches have all they can do simply to catechize members and disciple them in the ordinary aspects of church life. To add yet another task to the church is to make ministry well nigh impossible. Not to mention that asking pastors — no offense — whose cultural standards may not be up to part with the grandeur of Western Civilization to school their members on the glories of Shakespeare, Homer, and Percy is borderline laughable. In fact, I don’t know of any church, mainline or sideline, whose cultural instincts I would trust. Thankfully, the Lord doesn’t add cultural engagement to the Great Commission.

Despite the rocky start to the morning, I had a delightful time with the saints here in Medford, contemplating the other world that transcends this one, our reminder of that world on Sundays when we ascend Mt. Zion with all the saints and angels, and enjoying the delightful weather and produce of this world available to the residents and visitors of southern Oregon.

Why Isn't Otherworldliness a Christian W-W?

Published on by D. G. Hart69 Comments

In a moment of piety this morning (don’t worry, didn’t last long), I read this from Martin Luther in a 1535 sermon on Romans 8:17:

And now he (St. Paul) begins to comfort Christians in such sufferings, and he speaks as a man who has been tried and has become quite certain. And he speaks as though he can see this life only dimly, or through coloured glass, while he sees the other life with clear eyes.

Notice how he turns his back to the world and his eyes toward the revelation which is to come, as though he could perceive no sorrow or affliction anywhere on earth, but only joy. Indeed, he says, when we do have to suffer evil, what is our suffering in comparison with the unspeakable joy and glory which shall be made manifest in us? It is not worthy to be compared with such joy nor even to be called suffering. The only difficulty is that we cannot see with our eyes and touch with our hands that great and exquisite glory for which we must wait, namely, that we shall not die for evermore neither shall we hunger nor thirst, and over and above shall be given a body which cannot ever suffer or sicken, etc. Whoever could grasp the meaning of this in his heart, would be compelled to say: even if I should be burnt or drowned ten times (if that were possible), that would be nothing in comparison with the glory of the life hereafter. For what is this temporal life, however long it may last, in comparison with the life eternal? It is not worthy to be called suffering or though of as a merit.

This is a perspective on this world and the world to come that seldom surfaces among the transformationalists (from Kuyper to Keller). It is supposedly too pessimistic about this world, and overestimates the differences between temporal and eternal existence. But at the same time, it is hard to deny that Luther has missed a large streak of Pauline teaching and outlook. So even if the transformers can dismiss such otherworldliness as Lutheran (as opposed to Calvinism as perpetual change machine), how do they get around Paul? And if they try to get around Paul, how is their effort different from the way that liberal Protestants tried to separate the kernel from the husk of Scripture?

As troubling as these questions may be, I do understand how Luther’s outlook on the temporal world and a Christian’s experience of it would force the revision of countless Christian school mission statements and tempt believers not to look to New York City as the new Jerusalem.

New England Theology Unmedicated

Published on by D. G. Hart29 Comments

For all of the efforts to link certain contested views with a southern California city, why has no one spotted the ties between Tim Keller, Tim Bayly, David Bayly, Richard Lovelace, and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary? Why not a South Hamilton Theology? After all, all of the above (except for the seminary, which is independent like Westminster California), are Presbyterians of the New School variety. That is, unlike the Old School which at least made a place for the spirituality of the church as part of its understanding of ministry, these New England New Schoolers believe the church should transform culture. It may be the hard transformation advocated by the Baylys, or the soft variety coming out of Keller’s Redeemer NYC. But it is transformation nonetheless and it goes hand in hand with Lovelace’s high esteem for revivalism, pietism, and the quest for personal and social holiness.

Speaking of hard, the Baylys’ recent rant about 2k is jaw dropping in its invective. Here are a few savory bits:

The brave members of the Escondido Theology R2K Sanhedrin out at Westminster Seminary (Escondido) wage war against pastors and elders who warn their flocks and neighbors about the growing bloodshed and totalitarianism of these United States. Old people are regularly murdered, little babies are subject to the wholesale slaughter protected by SCOTUS and all its law enforcement apparatus, these evils will only grow under Obamacare’s nationalized healthcare…

Meanwhile the R2K Sanhedrin is desperate to silence all those Reformed voices speaking out against the Third Reichification of nursing homes and hospitals and Ethical Review Committees.

You have, of course, noticed all those Reformed pastors and elders speaking out against the Third Reichification of our hospitals and nursing homes, haven’t you? Likely you yourself have a Reformed pastor or session in your own community that regularly pickets your county nursing home. Your hospital. A graduate of Covenant Theological Seminary who writes letters to your state’s board of medical ethics…

Aside from mixing up their seminaries — coherence is not one of the Baylys’ long suits — where do you go from an introduction like this? How about here?

Even if we thought the Escondido Theology R2K storm troopers were right in calling down fire from Heaven on pastors betraying their Gospel calling for politics, we’d look around and wonder where on earth these pastors and sessions are? I mean I have a pretty broad knowledge of the Reformed church in these United States and, for the life of me, I can’t think of even a single church anywhere that lets out a peep about politics or takes the first step toward clothing the naked public square as righteous Lot did.

These R2K men working hard to gag Reformed pastors and elders really have no one at all to gag. And they know it.

This may explain the reference in the title to medication. One of the indications of mania is conspiratorial thinking, which doesn’t let contrary evidence get in the way, no matter how close at hand it is. The piece of evidence that might challenge this hysteria is the fact that no one has yet to shut down the Bayly Blog and it would be good of Tim and David to produce evidence of anyone attempting to silence them.

But the fault in my logic could be that I don’t understand that for the Baylys disagreement constitutes tyranny. Just look at the way they jump from the martyrs of the early church (who last I checked actually lost their lives) to the contemporary social conservatives (who merely lose the respect of their fellow citizens, especially if they follow the logic of the Baylys).

Intolleristas are bloodthirsty for exclusivists. It was this way with the Early Church under Rome and it’s this way with the Late Church under Western Secularism. Separation of church and state is the death of Christian evangelism and discipleship unless Christian evangelism and discipleship becomes as vapid as the R2K monomaniacs.

Christian life, worship, evangelism, and discipleship are utterly incompatible with Western Secularism’s pluralism. Every single time a man under the Lordship of Jesus Christ tries to clothe our naked public squares, he will be shouted down by those convinced they don’t have gods and they don’t worship and they are as broad-minded and tolerant as can be.

And if that man escapes the priests and priestesses of tolerance, on the way home he’ll be cornered by the R2K Sanhedrin who will beat the tar out of him for giving Reformed copaceticdom a bad name.

I keep thinking that at some point some of the folks who have it in for 2k will back away from their prejudices because of nonsense like the Baylys’. It would be like the kind of angst that fans of Indiana University basketball experienced when Bobby Knight was doing his impersonation of John McEnroe. You might still root against 2k, but you might also begin to think that the case needs a better expression. But apparently critics of 2k are so opposed that they will turn a blind eye to God’s law and common decency.

The Black Man's Burden

Published on by D. G. Hart79 Comments

I understand that some readers think I have an axe to grind about certain figures in the Gospel Coalition. But surely even those predisposed to discount Old Life in favor of the youthful, restless, thing that aspires to be Calvinistic — surely they can spot the difficulty with this. Tonight John Piper and Tim Keller are going to talk about Christianity and race. They are going to do so with an African-American on the platform. That man will be Anthony Bradley. But Bradley will not be one of the primary interlocutors. Instead, he will be the moderator.

Having been a moderator of various groups, I understand that the work is not difficult but is also not front-and-center. A moderator facilitates. He does not get in the way of the persons assembled to deliberate.

Maybe tonight’s format will be different and Bradley will be more than a “typical” moderator. But is it really unreasonable or uncharitable to wonder why Bradley himself is not one of the prime participants in this conversation about race, and why either Piper or Keller could not back out of the limelight to take the seat of moderator? I mean, even if evangelical Protestants are inclined to see nothing odd about this program because of their abiding appreciation for Piper and Keller, can’t they at least imagine how outsiders might see the billing for this event and the unfortunate implications of having a black man play a supportive role to white men can answering questions about Christian and race?

Postscript: I am dumbfounded that in the video promoting this event, Piper does not even mention Bradley. Holy smokes!

Why Calvinism Is More than Five Points and Why the Young and Co-Allies Need to Know

Published on by D. G. Hart57 Comments

In my daily update from Google Alerts on Calvinism came a link to an Emergent dude (“minister” seems to be the wrong term) who comments on the recent further shenanigans at Mark Driscoll’s network (“church” seems to be the wrong term). I gather that another case of discipline has revealed another round of hip servant-leaders with a heavy hand and despotic disposition. The blogger, Tony Jones, believes that he detects a pattern.

I am posting it because I think it’s a cautionary tale. I think, as my headline indicates, that the particular theology that Mark Driscoll has embraced since he left the emergent posse (n.b., he was not a Calvinist when I met him in 1998) is untenable. John Piper excommunicates his son, C.J. Mahaney is removed from leadership because he is jerk to his colleagues, and now it turns out that Mark Driscoll has fired pastors and elders who had the gall to question his leadership.

Jones ends by hoping that these celebrity-servants will find a theology different from Calvinism, one that is “more open, loving, and progressive.” Yikes! Progressive!!?? Doesn’t Tony watch Glen Beck?

If only we lived in a world where discussions of Calvinism were not limited to the five-points (or even merely the one of God’s sovereignty). But that is not where we are. The Young and Restless Ones, with their Gospel Coalition enablers, have reduced “Reformed” to three or four points of theology and all the religious affections that Jonathan Edwards could fathom. What is missing is attention to the whole counsel of God, which includes teaching on the sacraments and church office, for starters. Chances are that if Driscoll, Mahaney, and Piper were in communions reformed according to the word where they received assessment and review from presbyters, they might not have the problems that Tony Jones notes. But if you have to go to classis or presbytery four times a year, you might not have time for the conferences, interviews, and books. Which suggests that the cure for celebrity pastors is Reformed Protestantism.

But as long as Calvinism is popular because of celebrity pastors and the politics that comes with it (just see the Larry Sanders Show), the branch of Protestantism associated with cities in Switzerland will be associated erroneously with the genuine errors of Baptists and charismatics.

Charles Finney Wasn't the Only New York Pastor to Defend Revivals

Published on by D. G. Hart97 Comments

The Redeemer Report features an article by Tim Keller defending revival and conversion as biblical. Keller’s outspokenness on revivalism should not be a surprise since he was a student of Richard Lovelace (Dynamics of Spiritual Life), and since he has defended revivals on other occasions. Followers of Keller’s career and writings may be forgiven if they wonder how revival goes down with the upwardly mobile and aesthetically informed Manhattanites who gravitate to Redeemer Church. (You can take the boy out of Gordon-Conwell, but can you take Gordon-Conwell out of the boy?)

Keller’s latest column offers a succinct biblical theology of revival. What caught my eye, though, was less the theology or revival than the unspoken interlocutors behind Keller’s argument. Why all of the biblical data he assembles needs to be called a revival or a conversion is a question Keller does not answer. Revival itself is a confusing metaphor for spiritual life. It suggests someone who was alive, died, and is now brought back to life. How helpful can it be to use this image with reference to a person who is not regenerate? And just as pertinent, can it ever be used for a saint? Do saints die spiritually and then need resuscitation? If so, doesn’t revival imply that saints won’t persevere? This might explain the appeal of revival to the likes of Finney.

But back to Keller’s unidentified readers. He writes with a measure of hostility rarely seen:

As I sat looking at my computer screen at the title I’d written for this article, I was somewhat bemused by the fact that a defense of conversion and revival was even necessary. But so it is. There are quarters of the church now questioning whether or not conversion, the new birth, giving oneself to Christ, etc., are topics that should even be raised. Conversion, and its corporate expression, revival, are thought to be manifestations of Western individualistic thinking.

Keller adds, again with a surprising edge:

The point of this article is not so that you (or I) can win arguments with those of a different persuasion. Christians throwing theological brickbats at one another is only amusing the Evil One. Rather, we should move forward positively to seek revival in our own lives and churches and to joyfully share the Gospel with those who do not yet know Christ. Changed lives and changed community will both glorify God and fill us with the joy unspeakable.

Let me be clear, I am critical of revivals and revivalists not for the sake of throwing brickbats (whatever they are). I am interested in the ways in which revivals have undermined reformation. I would contend (and have) that the better word to use for improvement in the church is not revival but reform. The rise of Protestantism was not a revival. It was a reformation. Meanwhile, the interior turn that experimental Calvinism nurtured and that gave rise to revivalism, acted as a solvent on those marks of reformation by which we identified a true church — proclamation of the gospel (creeds), rightly administered sacraments (liturgy), and discipline (polity). If revivalists were not inherently anti-formalists, they might be more willing to consider the importance of these formal aspects of church life. But ever since George Whitefield, revivalists have been more concerned with “the heart” than they have with the churchly qualities that manifest the heart and unite believers to the body of Christ.

Of course, other good reasons exist for raising questions about revivals and conversion. From Charles Finney’s New Measures to Jonathan Edwards’ — another pro-revival New York pastor — gullibility over the conversion of four-year olds, revivalism has a checkered past. If Keller is such an effective apologist for revival, he needs to be as empathetic with revivalism’s critics as he is with Christianity’s unbelieving opponents who live in large metropolitan centers.

I Didn't Know Brian McLaren was Asian-American

Published on by D. G. Hart9 Comments

Preoccupation with Jeremy Lin continues among evangelicals and it has produced an effort to distinguish Asian-American evangelicalism from white evangelicalism. The result, in the case of Carl Park’s piece, is an attempt to avoid the constraints of one kind of particularity (the white kind) by appealing to the experience of another kind of particularity (Asian-American). (Why folks can’t recognize that Asian-American is as much a construction devoid of particularity as “white” I do not know. After all, Park is a name associated with Koreans and Lin is of Thai Taiwanese descent and Asian hardly does justice to differences among all the ethnic groups produced by Asia. China and Taiwan are vying for Lin, which raises an entirely different problem for the concept of Asian-American.)

Asian American evangelicals also have a different history than white evangelicals. We have, by and large, never been a part of the Religious Right. We never marched after Roe v. Wade, and we didn’t know who Pat Robertson was. We knew James Dobson from Focus on the Family tapes, but we did not know his politics.

We weren’t a part of the fundamentalist-liberal divide from the early 20th century. So we, as gospel-pondering Christians, might attend a debate about whether or not social justice is an essential part of the church’s mission, but we’re sort of perplexed by the question. In our history, immigrant churches preached the gospel and took care of the everyday needs of the immigrant community—explaining the water and electric bills, providing loans to one another, helping each other’s children get into college—without any bifurcation or angst.

Our Presbyterians spoke in tongues, our mainline pastors preached the exclusivity of Jesus. We wondered how any Christian could have qualms about something called “liberation theology,” until we read Cone and Guttiérez, and we were shocked to learn that some “Christian” seminaries do not confess the Nicene Creed. Our piety and worship tend to feel trans-denominational. Today, Asian American evangelicals in New York who don’t join a predominantly Asian American church are happy to be a (large) part of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, but we are also happy to be with Times Square Church. Both churches’ spiritualities feel familiar.

We aren’t quite Emergents or New Calvinists, because we’re not emerging from a white 80s-and-90s megachurchish spirituality that those groups take to task. We can identify with some aspects of those groups—we are urban and charismatic-friendly, and we were the Other long before it was cool to be—but much of the rhetoric does not connect. We have had more than our share of problems, but a mechanistic or programmatic model of church has not been one of them, and our parents’ churches sang plenty of hymns.

If Park’s point is that evangelicalism a religious identity that obliterates ethnic differences and the history of distinct peoples, well, he has a point. And that point applies in spades to distinct Protestant communions (which happened to fall along ethnic [read: national] lines). Evangelicalism can’t do justice any more to Thai-American Protestants than it can to Reformed Protestants.

But what is curious about Park’s piece is how he is willing to affirm the particularity of ethnicity but not grant a similar import to the specificity of fundamentalism, neo-evangelicalism, or the Religious Right. It is a denial similar to the one that emergents make of evangelicalism; you reject the political provincialism of Falwell for the social justice cosmopolitanism of Campolo. But how that works for affirming ethnic identity is a question that needs more attention. (BTW, interesting to see how this cosmopolitan, yet ethnic, faith is comfortable at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City where Presbyterian particularity is often in short supply compared to identities supplied by modern urban demographics.)

Things You Won't Hear the Young and Restless Say

Published on by D. G. Hart13 Comments

This video has not gone viral the way that the one about Jesus hating religion did, but it offers another window into Calvinism among the millennials and shows that the likes of Driscoll, Mahaney, Piper, and Keller don’t have a corner on the demographic. Deciphering the logos on t- and sweatshirts and interpreting the prayers indicate that this fellow is from a southern PCUSA background, likely went to Clemson, participated in PCUSA youth culture retreats at Montreat in North Carolina, and is now studying for the ministry at my alma mater (name dropping alert!), Harvard Divinity School.

I know this video is meant to be funny and lighthearted, but by implication it has a serious side. This fellow who is clearly capable will likely find out once he passes his ordination exams that many of the PCUSA’s orthodoxies on women, gender-inclusive language, and church bureaucracy will not be laughing matters.

Some viewers have commented that this video is a great example of “inside baseball humor” for Presbyterians. It is that. But it is also an indication of how easily mocked are some of the seismic shifts from the recent past that now define the mainline Protestant denominations.

I could well imagine someone making a funny video about the culture of Orthodox Presbyterians (and if anyone is inclined to do this please make sure that you feature untucked shirttails drooping beneath suit coats). But I also think an insider would have trouble poking fun at the beliefs that have mattered to conservative Presbyterians. It could just be me, but I always find mainline efforts to accommodate women and evangelical endeavors to promote real manhood much funnier than the nature and meaning of Christ’s sacrifice.

(Thanks to our Roman Catholic correspondent)

Comments Open and Closed

Published on by D. G. Hart17 Comments

Alliances close comments, churches open them.

That conclusion is hard to avoid after recent developments in the PCA and at the Gospel Coalition. The PCA sponsored an enclave of fifty officers, a “Meeting of Understanding,” to discuss challenges and differences within the denomination. The rationale for the meeting was akin to marriage counseling. Spouses who live and work together have differences and the way to overcome them is through better communication. (I wonder if that would be Mark Driscoll’s advice since it sounds overly feminine, as in girls want to talk, guys reach for the remote).

Meanwhile, the Gospel Coalition (doing a pretty good imitation of the Presbyterian Church, USA’s apologetic acceptance of Pearl Buck’s resignation) said so long to James MacDonald. At the blog of D. A. Carson and Tim Keller (who appear to be the co-arch allies), MacDonald’s departure received these warm words:

James MacDonald publicly announced his resignation as a Council member of The Gospel Coalition. James was one of our founding members, and we would like to thank him and Harvest Bible Chapel warmly and publicly for their years of service and support. As the reason for his departure, James notes that he “has very different views on how to relate to the broader church.” He added, “I believe their [TGC’s] work will be assisted by my absence, given my methodological convictions.” We acknowledge that James feels called of God into these spheres, and we wish him well in his far-reaching endeavors, and many years of ministry both faithful and fruitful.

But that is the only talk going on at TGC. Comments are closed at both the Carson-Keller post, and Justin Taylor’s aggregation of it.

Some in the PCA are concerned about the nature of the meeting in Atlanta. From worries about irreconcilable differences that talk won’t address to concerns about a buddy-buddy system that excluded some from the meeting, the Meeting of Understanding has arguably escalated misunderstanding within the PCA.

At least our Presbyterian brothers in the PCA are talking about their differences, both at their meetings, and in comments about the meeting. Our Presbyterian allies in the Gospel Coalition are not.

Any Tie to John Frame?

Published on by D. G. Hart21 Comments

I wish so, but I don’t see one.

Also, if a connection between the Baylys and the Gospel Coalition existed, I’d like to find it. But I can’t. Old Life is a responsible blog, after all.

Though there is a Tim Keller reference here that is not of my doing (mmmmmmm TKNY).

The Baylys have continued their hysteria on matters sexual with a post about a New York Times article on toys and the way they reinforce differences between boys and girls.

Girl toys are responsible for gender apartheid. So says the New York Times. With its newspaper of record such a nag, could anyone really be surprised that Manhattan’s most marketable church is pervasively androgynous?

Isn’t this a little like shooting fish in a barrel, sort of like the New York Times going after Pat Robertson to perform a dig at Christianity? Do any of their parishioners in Toledo or Bloomington actually care what the New York Times says? And do ministers of the gospel really want to pick Barbie dolls as a battle for the church militant?

Still you can’t help but love the reference to Keller’s Redeemer Church. As if Keller alone is responsible for gender confusion in the PCA, as if the residents of Toledo and Bloomington have thoroughly worked out a theology of sexual identity.

And that raises a question the Brothers Bayly seldom if ever consider: if Keller is to blame for (and a symptom of — it is a sloppy two-way analytic street) what’s wrong with New York City and cosmopolitan culture in the U.S., are the Baylys to blame for what’s wrong with the American heartland (because they certainly are not a symptom)? Can their cities really withstand the standards they set for Keller’s Manhattan? Can any? (By the way, could we please have a side of the gospel with that large plate of law?)

Update: I believe I have discovered the tie between Frame and Tim and David Bayly.