The mindset Keller has expressed — that most political positions aren’t absolute spiritual battlegrounds — was accurate in yesterday’s sanctuaries (and for most of Keller’s career, considering he planted Redeemer Presbyterian Church in 1989). It reflects what Renn calls the “neutral world” in what he’s dubbed the “three worlds of evangelism.” Following the pre-1990s “positive world,” in which most of Western culture looked favorably at Christianity and its values, the “neutral world” reigned until roughly a decade ago, when Western society’s attitude toward Christianity soured into a “negative world.”

In a neutral world where the most controversial political topics were tax cuts or foreign policy, the apartisan approach Keller has espoused was likely wise for the average Christian. However, American politics in the past decade has ceased to be chiefly about policies like taxes or welfare spending or even immigration — issues on which Christians can make good-faith arguments for a variety of political stances.

Fighting a Culture War in a Hostile World

Now, in Renn’s “negative world,” the political left has become the party of celebrating abortion on demand until birth; of chopping off the breasts and genitals of confused, manipulated children and ripping them from their objecting parents’ custody; of inflaming hatred based solely on the color of a person’s skin; of obliterating the nuclear family; and of inundating schoolchildren with pornographic books and the performances of cross-dressing male strippers. America’s leftist factions have used the highest office of law enforcement to terrorize a pro-life pastor, shuttered church gatherings, and continue to demand that Christians proclaiming simple truths like God’s design for marriage be excommunicated from their jobs and public discourse.

America is neck-deep in a culture war, and some of the most prolific instigators of it are in our highest political offices. Keller’s right that no political party is perfect and that Christians should not make an idol of a party or of politics in general. But unless we go the way of the early 20th-century fundamentalists, we’re going to have to meet the cultural onslaught — and some of the biggest arenas of the cultural fight have been made political. I’m sure Keller would agree that it shouldn’t be a partisan position to protect kindergarteners from being coached into sexual confusion by their teachers, but alas, that is where the political left has chosen to draw its battle lines.

With the announcement of the Keller Center, there’s hope Keller and The Gospel Coalition are catching up to what time it is. Keller’s narration in the announcement video mirrors the language of Renn’s “three worlds” almost verbatim:

We now live in a post-Christendom culture. For at least a thousand years, Western culture has been what you might call Christendom culture. Even if most people were not devout Christians, there was a positive understanding of Christianity in the culture. … The culture instilled in people a certain amount of background beliefs that the Bible assumes. … [But] now, you’re in, how do you win people to Christ in a post-Christendom era? And the church does not have any idea how to do it. //

Keller criticized evangelicals who are “turning to a political project of regaining power in order to expel secular people from places of cultural influence.” While Christians should not seek out power for power’s sake, we should defend the vulnerable from the harmful lies and agendas of those in positions of cultural authority.

Jesus rejected the zealotry of those who expected him to overthrow the Roman empire, but He also denounced the faux moralism of the Pharisees, the prominent cultural leaders of the society in which he lived. That faux moralism has a parallel in today’s false gospels that actively promote sin in the name of “inclusivity” or “a woman’s right to choose” — and one of the chief avenues perpetuating those false gospels is political.