Thread:
I'm thinking about Tim Keller's influence.

There is the curious fact that Keller is well-regarded among the culture elite (or at least has not suffered the sort of vilification one might expect given his influence). How can we explain this?

Looking at Prodigal God and other writings, you see that his approach to urban ministry is deeply political in a way that appeals to Democrat-heavy cities. It involves two moves:
1) equalizing sins: elevating the sin of hypocrisy, "moralism," and "religion" (the sins of "conservatives") and equating these with the sins tolerated among liberal (e.g., homosexuality)
&
2) emphasizing "self-righteousness" as a sort of chief sin (the sin of "red states").
Keller effectively downplays the sins that liberals tolerate while elevating the sins of their political enemies, the red state conservatives.
But the greatest appeal to liberals is that critiquing the "self-righteous" vilifies political action, particularly the action of social conservatives (e.g., anti-gay marriage). And the equalization of sins eases concerns over changes in social policy (e.g., gay marriage).
Keller does not deny that the liberal sins are sins. Instead he posits a third-way that critiques both "right" and "left", which allows people to be above the sexual deviancy and above the hypocrisy.
But the equalization/elevation described above still appeals to those who are unwilling to directly confront and wholly reject the liberal zeitgeist which dominates urban areas.
It effectively neutralizes conservative political opposition to the zeitgeist on social issues.

His ministry theme or ethos has been very influential in every region of the US. It is captured in the language of "brokenness" and the "church is for messy people".
Now that equalizing homosexuality and self-righteousness is no longer effective (bc people are unwilling to call homosexuality something deviant or sinful), they've switched to race...
The emphasis on "racial justice" follows the same program: the "self-righteous" conservatives (whites) refuse to reflect on their complicity in injustice, while we (white) liberals rightfully want racial justice but tend to be too "secular" about it.
One thing to notice is that this political posture is not fundamentally political; it is an urban ministry apologetic. But it has become the dominating political theology of elite evangelicalism.
Evangelical elite political theology is ultimately an apologetical approach that appeals to urban liberals by demonizing non-urban conservative Christians.
And it strongly suggests that the elite evangelical program of "moral witness" is oriented toward the sensibilities of educated, white urbanite liberals, and that it relies on the vilification of non-educated white, non-urbanite conservatives.
[End]

More from Health

I applaud the #EUCancerPlan *BUT* caution: putting #meat 🥩 (a nourishing, evolutionary food) in the same box as 🚬 to solve a contemporary health challenge, would be basing policy on assumptions rather than robust data.

#FollowTheScience yes, but not just part of it!
THREAD👇


1/ Granted, some studies have pointed to ASSOCIATIONS of HIGH intake of red & processed meats with (slightly!) increased colorectal cancer incidence. Also, @WHO/IARC is often mentioned in support (usually hyperbolically so).

But, let’s have a closer look at all this! 🔍


2/ First, meat being “associated” with cancer is very different from stating that meat CAUSES cancer.

Unwarranted use of causal language is widespread in nutritional sciences, posing a systemic problem & undermining credibility.

3/ That’s because observational data are CONFOUNDED (even after statistical adjustment).

Healthy user bias is a major problem. Healthy middle classes are TOLD to eat less red meat (due to historical rather than rational reasons, cf link). So, they

4/ What’s captured here is sociology, not physiology.

Health-focused Westerners eat less red meat, whereas those who don’t adhere to dietary advice tend to have unhealthier lifestyles.

That tells us very little about meat AS SUCH being responsible for disease.

You May Also Like

The entire discussion around Facebook’s disclosures of what happened in 2016 is very frustrating. No exec stopped any investigations, but there were a lot of heated discussions about what to publish and when.


In the spring and summer of 2016, as reported by the Times, activity we traced to GRU was reported to the FBI. This was the standard model of interaction companies used for nation-state attacks against likely US targeted.

In the Spring of 2017, after a deep dive into the Fake News phenomena, the security team wanted to publish an update that covered what we had learned. At this point, we didn’t have any advertising content or the big IRA cluster, but we did know about the GRU model.

This report when through dozens of edits as different equities were represented. I did not have any meetings with Sheryl on the paper, but I can’t speak to whether she was in the loop with my higher-ups.

In the end, the difficult question of attribution was settled by us pointing to the DNI report instead of saying Russia or GRU directly. In my pre-briefs with members of Congress, I made it clear that we believed this action was GRU.