A Rebut­tal to Tim Keller’s Polit­i­cal Third Way

How Chris­tians Should Think About Vot­ing

In an arti­cle titled “How Do Chris­tians Fit into the Two-Par­ty Sys­tem? They Don’t” (Sep­tem­ber 29th, 2018) Tim Keller out­lines how Chris­tians should approach pol­i­tics. First­ly, I will high­light what I agree with in Keller’s arti­cle, and then I will pro­vide sub­stan­tive cri­tique of his claims.

To the sur­prise of many, I actu­al­ly agree with Tim Keller in the title of his arti­cle. I do not believe that Chris­tians fit into a two-par­ty sys­tem; to believe this you must resign to Duverger’s Law [i]. Duverger’s Law always leads to choos­ing “the less­er of two evils” and I believe it is wrong for a Chris­t­ian to choose evil. I com­mend Tim Keller in right­ly see­ing this issue with­in the polit­i­cal alliances of Chris­tian­i­ty in today’s Amer­i­can cul­ture. I also agree with Keller that it is not enough for Chris­tians to sim­ply just “preach the gospel” and ignore pol­i­tics, as he is cor­rect in say­ing “Those who avoid all polit­i­cal dis­cus­sions and engage­ment are essen­tial­ly cast­ing a vote for the social sta­tus quo.” Once again, I com­mend him on see­ing the prob­lem with­in Chris­tian­i­ty, but it is not enough to sim­ply see the prob­lem, we must also have the cor­rect solu­tion. As Tim Keller starts to high­light solu­tions, my view and his view start to dra­mat­i­cal­ly divide.

What one choos­es not to say often speaks loud­er than what one actu­al­ly says, this cer­tain­ly is the case for Tim Keller. In his arti­cle Keller writes, “Nev­er­the­less, while believ­ers can reg­is­ter under a par­ty affil­i­a­tion and be active in pol­i­tics, they should not iden­ti­fy the Chris­t­ian church or faith with a polit­i­cal par­ty as the only Chris­t­ian one.” Now I can half-way agree with this state­ment, but we can­not for­get con­text. The whole premise of the arti­cle is toward a two-par­ty sys­tem and it doesn’t take a rock­et sci­en­tist to fig­ure out that Keller is speak­ing of the Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ties in our cul­ture. Though I agree we should not call either of these par­ties a Chris­t­ian par­ty, bib­li­cal­ly, it is impos­si­ble to call the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty a “Chris­t­ian Par­ty” due to their stance on abor­tion and homo­sex­u­al mar­riage. I am not say­ing that the Repub­li­can par­ty doesn’t have its warts; rather, I say this to high­light basic Chris­t­ian moral­i­ty. I find it quite telling that through­out his entire arti­cle Keller con­ve­nient­ly avoids the top­ic of abor­tion and, per­haps, only vague­ly refers to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and it is clear Keller implies it is not only pos­si­ble but right for a Chris­t­ian to sup­port the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty despite their rejec­tion of the Bible con­cern­ing the Ima­go Dei [image of God] as it relates to mur­der­ing babies and the only right­ful insti­tu­tion God gave the world for cre­at­ing lives – Holy Mat­ri­mo­ny between one man and one woman. Sim­ply put, Keller is avoid­ing the two most impor­tant issues that face Chris­tians in pol­i­tics today and is mis­lead­ing the gen­er­al pub­lic who may have an inter­est in becom­ing Chris­tians.

There are a cou­ple of top­ics that Keller does repeat­ed­ly touch on though: wealth redis­tri­b­u­tion (he refers to it as help­ing the poor) and racism. As Keller touch­es on giv­ing relief to the poor he claims that the solu­tion is not found in “bib­li­cal com­mand but of prac­ti­cal wis­dom”. Keller states

“How­ev­er, there are many pos­si­ble ways to help the poor. Should we shrink gov­ern­ment and let pri­vate cap­i­tal mar­kets allo­cate resources, or should we expand the gov­ern­ment and give the state more of the pow­er to redis­trib­ute wealth? Or is the right path one of the many pos­si­bil­i­ties in between? The Bible does not give exact answers to these ques­tions for every time, place and cul­ture.”

I dis­agree that the Bible is silent on this issue, giv­en that it clear­ly states, “Thou shalt not steal.” When reliev­ing the poor, it must be done through Chris­t­ian char­i­ty, not by com­pul­sion. If it is done by com­pul­so­ry means, then it vio­lates the Ten Com­mand­ments. This means that to be com­pat­i­ble with the Bible, Chris­tians must vote against giv­ing the state more pow­er to redis­trib­ute wealth. After all, a gov­ern­ment is just an inan­i­mate func­tion of orders, restric­tions, process­es, and sys­tems. A gov­ern­ment can­not cry. It does not feel. It does not have skin, or bones, or brains. A gov­ern­ment is inca­pable of char­i­ty, and cer­tain­ly inca­pable of Chris­t­ian char­i­ty. Keller goes on to write about “pack­age-deal ethics”. He states:

“This empha­sis on pack­age deals puts pres­sure on Chris­tians in pol­i­tics. For exam­ple, fol­low­ing both the Bible and the ear­ly church, Chris­tians should be com­mit­ted to racial jus­tice and the poor, but also to the under­stand­ing that sex is only for mar­riage and for nur­tur­ing fam­i­ly. One of those views seems lib­er­al and the oth­er looks oppres­sive­ly con­ser­v­a­tive. The his­tor­i­cal Chris­t­ian posi­tions on social issues do not fit into con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal align­ments.”

Keller sub­tly implies that the Repub­li­can Par­ty is against the poor, and that it is racist against non-white peo­ple. These accu­sa­tions are sim­ply untrue. The Repub­li­can Par­ty is found­ed on the tried-and-true belief that cap­i­tal­ism is the best way to alle­vi­ate the poor (pre­vi­ous­ly in the arti­cle he cit­ed this as a “”Chris­t­ian lib­er­ty). More­over, the Repub­li­can Par­ty doesn’t believe that Crit­i­cal Race The­o­ry and inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty com­prise the means to “racial jus­tice”. Keller demo­nizes the Repub­li­can par­ty by call­ing Repub­li­cans oppres­sive (“oppres­sive­ly con­ser­v­a­tive”), and he implies that they are racist. He base­less­ly asserts that con­ser­v­a­tives do not care about the poor.  Read­ers should note that Tim Keller did not have harsh words toward the Demo­c­rat par­ty, as to him, their view just seems “lib­er­al,” but not oppres­sive­ly lib­er­al.

Keller points out two com­mon con­clu­sions that Chris­tians come to that he rejects, “So Chris­tians are pushed toward two main options. One is to with­draw and try to be apo­lit­i­cal. The sec­ond is to assim­i­late and ful­ly adopt one party’s whole pack­age in order to have your place at the table.” I agree with him that nei­ther of these options are accept­able. To become apo­lit­i­cal is to be a poor stew­ard of what God has giv­en us in this nation, and each per­son we vote for should be deter­mined on an indi­vid­ual basis. The issue that Keller once again ignores is that, at the foun­da­tion of the Demo­c­rat par­ty, there is a rejec­tion of our God-giv­en right to life and a cor­rup­tion of God’s design for mar­riage. Though vot­ing Repub­li­can may not always be an accept­able answer for Chris­tians, unless there is repen­tance in the Demo­c­rat par­ty, vot­ing Demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly is nev­er the answer for Chris­tians.

[i] Duverger’s Law holds that plu­ral­i­ty-rule elec­tions struc­tured with­in sin­gle-mem­ber dis­tricts tend to favor a two-par­ty sys­tem.