Last time we met up, I showed you how Tim Keller addressed what he called defeater beliefs. We found his self-titled “deconstructions” in a handout hosted by a college evangelism group called Cru. That’s not too surprising, given that the handout is meant to help evangelicals recruit new members to their churches.
It’s also not surprising that those instructions are wildly counterproductive. Evangelism isn’t exceptionally effective, and evangelicals themselves are well aware of that fact. The flocks refuse to do much of it at all, despite belonging to a flavor that specifically named itself after their divinely-mandated command to evangelize. So today, we’ll see just what audience these instructions are meant to reach.
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SITUATION REPORT: Tim Keller totally ‘deconstructs’ defeater beliefs
During his lifetime (1950-2023), Tim Keller cultivated a reputation for being that one evangelical who could totally talk to skeptics. He did this deliberately. And evangelicals fell for it hook, line, and sinker. On an evangelism site for the campus ministry Cru, we find a handout of his about how to “lead the secular to Christ.” In it, he offers suggestions for handling “defeater beliefs,” which he defines as cultural beliefs that make evangelism difficult.
As we discussed last time, however, these “defeater beliefs” aren’t beliefs at all. They’re observations of reality. Any one of them presents aspiring evangelists with a complete dealbreaker: the existence of numerous other religions making similar claims, the existence of evil and suffering, the high-control nature of evangelicalism itself, the sheer amount and unfathomable depths of Christian hypocrisy, the nature of Yahweh as an ancient god whose wrath can only be assuaged by blood, and the complete unreliability and narrative incoherence of the Bible.
(I’d also add: The nature of Yahweh as one god in a large Middle Eastern pantheon, the other gods of which his priests whittled away, supplanted, or absorbed over time into their own particular god’s lore. Yahweh wasn’t even its leader until later on. I wonder if Keller even knew about that. Either way, it was a big eye-opener for me at least. I was already deconverted by then, but I suspect it would have been one of the largest drains in my faith pool.)
In his handout, however, Keller argues that these dealbreakers are simply “culturally-based doubt-generators which people call ‘objections’ or ‘problems’ with Christianity.” (Yes, he used scare quotes!) See? Nothing to see here. They’re just doubt-generators, not actually any kind of issue. They’re just culturally-based beliefs. They lead heathens to think there’s no need “to give Christianity a good hearing” before rejecting a recruitment attempt.
Because obviously, that’s a moral imperative, right? We must always give a high-control, high-pressure recruitment agent “a good hearing,” right? We’re not allowed to just dismiss them out of hand and refuse to give them a moment of our limited time! How very dare we!
As I read this handout, I became certain that Keller isn’t actually selling an approach that works to persuade “the secular.” He’s selling an approach that justifies and vindicates evangelicals’ beliefs and self-image.
Today, let me show you how to tell an evangelical leader isn’t actually targeting us heathens, and then let’s see why this approach works so grandly on the flocks.
Why these apologetics tricks are extremely unlikely to persuade heathens: First, look at how it treats the targets
First, in assessing the real target of evangelical advice, we look at how effective it is at its own stated goals. Here, the goal is very easy to discern: “Leading the secular to Christ.” It’s the handout’s subtitle. So this handout should be teaching evangelicals how to approach secular people with persuasive evangelism.
And it fails so hard at that stated task that one has to wonder if Keller deliberately set evangelists up to piss on their own shoes. His description of heathens presents us with a parade of condescending insults to our intelligence and character. He even manages to work in some insults to people who convert and then drift out again (because they weren’t real Christians, you see).
In the handout, Keller constantly asserts that people who reject Christianity do so for invalid reasons: They’re meaniepies who refuse “to give Christianity a fair hearing,” as if anyone is morally required to sit still for a sales pitch. In fact, in cultures with particularly strong “defeater beliefs,” the people there are so dense they think “Christianity simply looks ludicrous” and they’re “hostile” towards the religion.
Man alive, Tim Keller really doesn’t like heathens
In these “hostile” cultures, Tim Keller thinks people deceive themselves. They think “‘it is true if it works for me.'” Like wow, aren’t heathens just so dumb? They love objective truth so much, but they just don’t realize they’ll never have it without Jesus!
Later on, Keller asserts that nobody ever rejects his religion for valid intellectual reasons. Nope! Their hostile culture indoctrinates them into thinking it is false! As he writes:
You [meaning the heathen] actually already believe in God at the deep level, whatever you tell yourself intellectually.
It’s presumptuous and completely repulsive. But Keller clearly enjoys painting heathens as complete idiots. Yes, evangelicals must painstakingly lead us to civilization.
Seriously, evangelicals are worse than pickup artists. I can only imagine they don’t ever think heathens will see them talking like this. It reminds me of that classic 2013 Daily Show interview where the interviewee, Don Yelton, was so incredibly racist that the interviewer (Aasif Mandvi) literally asked him, “You know that we can hear you, right?”
But far worse are Keller’s absolutely sneering accusations of colonialism:
To say “all religions are equally valid” is itself a very white, Western view based in the European enlightenment’s idea of knowledge and values. Why should that view be privileged over anyone else’s?
That’s not a white or Western view. Reality doesn’t have a color bias. And his typically-evangelical hatred of the Enlightenment is showing here. He is weaponizing liberal ideals here—and doing it solely to make his targets feel obligated to listen to his recruitment attempt. In reality, Christianity itself has a long history of colonialism and unearned privilege.
I wish evangelicals understood what a nuclear bomb their breathtakingly arrogant behavior is for their credibility.
They know that we can hear them, right?
Second, look at how the advice-giver presents the tribe
Next, we examine what the advice-giver says about the tribe. As I mentioned earlier, Keller thinks evangelicals are entitled to the attention of their evangelism targets. He sounds miffed at us heathens for our refusal “to give Christianity a good hearing.”
In response, he instructs TRUE CHRISTIANS™ to lower themselves to heathens’ level to evangelize:
What then of the claim that “post-modern people don’t want arguments – they just want to see if it works for them”? All right – as with any form of contextualization, let us as evangelists enter – adapt partially – to the culture of expressive individualism. Let us show them the reality of changed lives. Let us use narratives rather than long strings of logic. But at some point you must also challenge the sovereignty of individual consciousness. Jesus is Lord, not my personal consciousness.
Evangelicals are not like those ickie heathens, see? They don’t care at all if their religion works for them! (But it most certainly does.) They don’t suffer from expressive individualism! (But they most definitely do.) Their lives have totally been changed! (But they haven’t.) And they have narratives instead of logic! (But they have no logic, only narratives that don’t map to reality very well.)
In short, they project their own shortcomings onto their enemies.
When you encounter evangelical leaders painting the flocks as TRUE CHRISTIANS™ and their beliefs as perfectly rational and reality-based, it’s time to give that advice a second look. In reality, nobody’s more postmodern than an evangelical, and the fact that their beliefs are untrue is so long past wondering about that it astonishes me any of them dare to trot that one out. Only evangelicals themselves could be the target of this combo of unwarranted glazing and postmodernism hate. Nobody else would accept it.
How to spot apologetics aimed squarely at evangelicals themselves
With its many foundational missteps, Keller’s suggested apologetics approach has zero chance of success.
This handout wasn’t meant for heathens. Rather, it’s intended for evangelicals as an evangelism guide. It offers apologetics tricks that the creators of it promise will work to persuade heathens.
But in reality, none of these tricks work. I cringe to imagine bright-eyed young evangelicals even trying them. This handout never offers anything beyond wishful thinking, unsupported claims, and implied insults. If this is Tim Keller’s idea of making Christianity “attractive” to heathens, as he puts it, then I hate to see what he considers bare-knuckle evangelism!
Consider this example from the handout:
As we said above, people’s eyes will ‘glaze over’ if you start your presentation with ‘reasons Christianity is true’. Christianity must be attractive to people before they will sit still for a presentation of intellectual credibility. A person must come to the point where he or she says, “that would be great if it were true – but is it?“
And his suggestions for getting to that point? Apologetics based on hand-waving away evangelicals’ sexism, racism, classism, and xenophobia. Apologetics based on hand-waving away evangelicals’ typically high-control, authoritarian culture. And apologetics based on hand-waving away evangelicals’ belligerence and desperate, frantic desire to feel both powerful and persecuted.
These apologetics aren’t for us. They’re for evangelicals themselves—and more than that, they’re for the particular evangelicals feeling a little uneasy about those shortcomings in their tribe.
None of these apologetics tricks work on anyone but evangelicals themselves
The literal only people who could accept this handout at face value are evangelicals themselves. They’re the only ones who could accept that Keller’s “defeater beliefs” are beliefs in the first place. They’re the only ones who could feel aggrieved about heathens refusing to listen to their evangelism.
Nobody who’s followed evangelical news for any length of time could ever believe that evangelicals have the secret to “living at peace” or “personal freedom.” It’s beyond obvious that their members suffer the complete opposite of both. Nor do they actually live like people who take their own ideology seriously. Keller writes:
In any case, there is no religion with a more powerful ground-motif for accepting enemies and the ‘Other’ than Christianity.
So it’s really weird that evangelicals keep not accepting their enemies and “the ‘Other'”. They’re famous for it. They’re about the most fighty and nasty religious people I’ve ever encountered. Pagans, on the other hand? There’s a religious group that seems genuinely open to living in harmony with all kinds of different people.
(If you’ve never attended a meetup of different kinds of neopagans, you’re really missing out. It’s a real treat to watch Hellenics party down with Asatruar and British Traditionalist Wiccans. They’re also far more hospitable and generous, in my direct experience. Meanwhile, I was almost rendered homeless when I was Pentecostal.)
As the cherry on the rejection sundae, I’d also venture to guess that very few non-Christians these days would consider evangelicals’ good news to be good at all. “I love you. Now change” is not loving. Christian evangelism is, by its very nature, a disrespectful power play. Evangelicalism, doubly so. And Calvinist/Reformed evangelicalism, triply so. There’s no way whatsoever these guys are winning friends and influencing people through their sheer winsomeness and lovingkindness.
Apologetics hucksters aim for the paying seats
It makes perfect sense for Tim Keller to aim at evangelicals. If I still haven’t made my point somehow that this is what he’s doing, just look at who financially supports Tim Keller’s work. (And ask who supported Keller in life, for that matter.)
Is it heathens?
Are we buying his books? Attending seminars based on his ideas? Praising him on social media?
Or is it really only evangelicals themselves doing that stuff?
The last time I saw someone try to tell the truth about apologetics, it was Myron Penner in the mid-2010s. And the flocks tore him apart for (correctly) asserting that apologetics is ridiculously bad at persuading heathens.
Nothing has changed since then.
Tim Keller’s apologetics also send a clear message to the flocks about leaving the sheepfold
Remember that insult I mentioned earlier about fake Christians leaving? Tim Keller’s smearing of them reveals what he’s really all about. This quote might be extensive, but it’s necessary:
There have been many times in New York City that I have seen people make professions of faith that seemed quite heart-felt, but when faced with serious consequences if they maintained their identification with Christ (e.g. missing the opportunity for a new sexual partner or some major professional setback) they bailed on their Christian commitment. The probable reason was that they had not undergone deeper ‘world-view change’. They had fitted Christ to their individualistic world-view rather than fitting their worldview to Christ. They professed faith simply because Christianity worked for them, and not because they grasped it as true whether it is ‘working’ for them this year or not!
Remember, King Tim Keller refuses to accept any rejection as valid. To King Tim, all rejections are invalid. Also, he does not accept anyone leaving due to Christian hypocrisy and harmful ministers. To King Tim, those are just “defeater beliefs,” not real dealbreakers.
So nobody leaves because they realized none of the promises evangelists make are true. Nobody leaves because the actual behavior of Christians indicates that even they don’t take their own religion seriously. Nobody leaves because they realized Christians make a number of untrue claims about their religion, then insist members pretend they’re all true. Nor that Tim Keller’s own flavor of Christianity is a high-control, high-pressure authoritarian environment whose leaders force lockstep on members.
No, sheep only leave because they didn’t really commit. (Not like you, evangelical reader!) They didn’t really have that deeper world-view change they needed to maintain faith. (Not like you, evangelical reader!) They didn’t really rewrite their entire worldview according to King Tim Keller’s demands. (Not like you, evangelical reader!) No, Christianity just worked for them, so they fell in with it—and when it stopped working for them, they dropped out! (Not like you would ever do that, right, my dear evangelical reader?)
If any sheep were considering leaving, these implied future accusations would likely feel like a metaphorical shot between the eyes.
As for the rest, they’ll accept Keller’s words at face value. Whew, you can almost hear them sighing: Someone’s done the math! It really does make sense to believe!
Apologetics tricks aren’t preventing Christianity’s decline
I’m really glad I deconverted in the mid-90s, before Tim Keller’s strategies got popularized. It just wasn’t a commonly-seen situation—even when I deconverted, I didn’t know anyone in my shoes. That era was the very first tiny ripple of the decline wave, back when ministers clearly didn’t feel they had to issue preemptive accusations.
Things are very different now! Ministers nowadays are painfully aware of church members leaving through what some of them call “the back door.” (Thom Rainer wrote often about it, back in the day.) The term means that instead of making a big fuss and flouncing away, most members just quietly drift out of the church. They don’t give their church leaders much of a chance of talking them out of it. So if church leaders want to say anything at all to them, they’d better do it while those folks are still parking their butts in pews every so often.
I found this handout on a Cru website. That’s not coincidental, either. Cru is not just a Christian club for young-adult evangelicals. It’s also an evangelism-focused college ministry. The evangelicals seeing it are meant to absorb this handout’s messages—meaning both its stated and implicit messages. I’ve no doubt they’re meant to notice how Tim Keller describes those rejecting evangelism attempts, as well as how he describes those outside the sheepfold. They’ll doubtless notice how he insults Christians leaving the church, too.
Ultimately, these tricks might keep a few of the sheep in the fold a bit longer. They might settle out a sheep’s easier doubts, or give sheep a firmer self-image or some logical fallacies they can use to fuel those essential antiprocess shields. As long as the doubts haven’t gotten too serious, these strategies might work. It’ll let them push their concerns onto that Deal With It Later pile so many of us have.
But once that Deal With It Later pile collapses on top of them, as it did to me decades ago with my faith, no tricks will clear that mess. Only reality will do. And once the sheep get to that point, there’s no going back. I don’t think it’s possible to un-see what happens next.
Evangelicals are windmilling their arms at the very ledge of their next phase of decline. All they’ve got to counter it is apologetics bullshit like Tim Keller’s “Deconstructing Defeater Beliefs.”
And I can’t say I’m sorry to see that.
NEXT UP: The sequel to A Thief in the Night depends 100% on the Mark of the Beast being purely voluntary. We’ll explore why it always is. See you soon! <3
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