Whose Fault Is It?

Tim Keller (click here for a bio) has written a series of 4 articles on the fall and possible restoration of the American Church. His first article is about the falterings of Mainline Protestant churches. However, it is difficult to know whether the first article is more about the disarray in the American Church or in America itself because of the loss of influence that the American Church has had on society. He does have a concern for both falterings (click here for the article). 

In this article, Keller gives too rosy of a picture of both America and the American Church prior to the fall of Mainline Protestant churches and the 1960s. In fact, his view of how America has changed seems to be a bit white-male-Christian-centric. The failures that existed in America before the fall of the Mainline Protestant churches and the 1960s were glossed over and almost described as exceptions to the rule. What Keller misses from the good old days of America was when there seemed to be a national consensus on values that included:

1. Love of country
2. Love of family
3. Serving the community/caring for neighbors
4. Sexual chastity
5. Thrift
6. Generosity
7. Respect for authority

But this is where Keller's view of the past might be distorted by the lenses through which he sees America's past. White males had good reason to love their country back then. Did blacks? Many family problems were hidden. The fact that women were stuck in dysfunctional families because societal practices that made women significantly dependent on men to exist. Before the 1960s, women could be refused jobs or the buying of a home because of their biological sex. Women often needed their husbands' approval to get a loan or a credit card. A landlord could refuse to rent property to a woman with children.

Up through the 1960s, blacks had to endure Jim Crow laws and culture in the South and harsh segregation and intense prejudice in the North. Blacks could be beaten, tortured, mutilated, bludgeoned, and murdered by whites, both civilians and police, without accountability. Their basic rights were denied including the right to vote. And gone with the right to vote was the privilege of sitting on a jury. That meant that both blacks accused of crimes and whites who were accused of visiting violence on blacks were often tried in front of strongly biased juries. And all of that does not include many of the indignities and injustices that blacks suffered in this nation. An indicator of how bad it was for blacks before the 1960s could be seen in what America's first black MLB baseball player, Jackie Robinson, said about singing the national anthem. Interracial marriages were illegal in the majority of states.

Other races didn't fare well either. Native Americans were horribly treated. Latinos also faced brutal violence and harsh discrimination.

Though they were receiving better treatment by the 1950s, America's labor history is replete with government violence as local and state federal officials would persecute and questionably convict. There was also the murder labor activists and leaders.

As for the LGBT community, homosexual acts were criminalized and homosexuality itself was considered to be a mental illness and even a 'sociopathic personality disturbance and the government considered homosexuals to be security risks (click here for the source). They also suffered discrimination and violence.

Keller sees the 1960s as the turning point by which failures in the Mainline Church were beginning to have their full negative effects on the nation. Beginning in the 1960s, Keller sees the switch from more of a united, community-centered American society that had a shared set of religiously conservative Christian values to a society that was based on individualism and relative morality. And the result of the emphasis on individualism and relative morality is a fracturing of American society that produced hard-line schisms both in society and the Church.

In short, when Keller talks about the problems we see in American society today, he seems to compare them with the state of white America in the 1950s and before.

Now Keller doesn't believe that all was bad in the 1960s. He had expresses respect for Martin Luther King Jr because his movement appealed to a universal values and a higher authority. But that is the only rights movement that Keller expresses respect for.

According to Keller, the failures of the Mainline Church could be due to its embracing of Liberal Theology. That embracing began in either the late 19th or early 20th centuries. What Liberal Theology did was to deny the existence of the supernatural character of Jesus, His works, and His death and resurrection along with the supernatural method in which the Scriptures contain revelation rather than a progressive reflection on life. Liberal Theology then sought of find significance in the Scriptures by identifying the general principle of life and justice that could be found there. The Mainline Church then became a place where political causes and identity replaced the orthodox Christian view that the Church was a place for redeemed sinners. 

As a result, according to Keller, the population and influence of the Mainline Church lessened because people began to realize that they didn't need such a church to do what the mainline Church was doing. This is where individualism and moral relativity replaced reliance on a higher moral authority and natural law in both the Church and society. And because the values that Liberal Theology produced were not widely enough accepted in America, there are no common set of values in America today.

The time period that existed before the 1960s was a period of Christendom in America. Here we could define Christendom as a period where religiously conservative Christianity had a dominant hold on American values and its laws. While Keller wants to scapegoat the Mainline Church for this fall of Christendom and the fracturing of America, we really have to ask ourselves whether the pivotal time period of the 1960s was pointing out and protesting not just inconsistencies in America's Christendom, but its glaring errors and moral failures.

Here we should compare our current time period the religiously conservative Christian Church seeking to restore the Christendom that was lost with the Church during the time of the Apostles. During the latter time period, there was no Christendom. And as we read the New Testament, we don't see any effort or concern to establish Christendom during that time period. Now that doesn't prove anything about the value, or lack thereof, of Christendom. However, the 1st century Church was concerned with evangelism and maintaining a peaceful unity, faithfulness, and purity of the Church. That doesn't mean that we should have no concern for social justice. It is that such a concern should be a part of our evangelism and maintaining faithfulness in the Church. Thus, when we open our eyes to the full failure of Christendom in this nation, perhaps we would do better to follow the 1st century Church in doing the same. I say that as someone who disagrees with a significant portion of Keller's analysis of the past but shares his religiously conservative Christian theology.

A final word must be added here about the state of religiously conservative American Christianity today. While universal values and natural law has been portrayed by Keller as predominantly being a conservative concern and practice, many of these same Christians are exhibiting the greatest difficulty in accepting widely held views of our current situation consisting of climate change, the continued presence of systemic racism, gun violence, and the pandemic. Yes, our current situation and moral values are not the same things. However, accepting commonly held truths, whether they be factual truths or moral truths should be strongly connected with holding to universal values. And yet, Keller seems to be scapegoating Liberal Theology and the mainline Church for what ails this nation.