Tim Keller's Final Word
Plus, the history of the personal brand and how the internet makes us immature.
A Note from Phillip and Andy
We are making all the content of our courses free for everyone on our new Courses page.
Now that we have your attention, here’s a bit of explanation. Since January 2022, we’ve been conducting an “experiment in courses.” We wanted to see if we could use this humble newsletter as a vehicle to do a bit more direct teaching on subjects of interest to the community.
This experiment has gone very well! Many of you have taken us up on the invitation to explore ideas together in that format. To date, we have done courses on violence in the Bible, the Beatitudes, deconstruction, symbols in the Bible.
Up to now, all of that content has been paywalled for members only. While it will still be true that members are the only ones who can join and contribute to those courses live, we are making all the content of our courses free for everyone on our new Courses page.
Happy listening! Now, on to the issue…
Tim Keller’s Final Word
The late pastor and apologist on The Decline and Renewal of the American Church
I (Phillip) did not expect to cry at the news of Tim Keller’s passing. I’d known for a while that the legendary New York City evangelist and pastor had pancreatic cancer and likely didn’t have long to live—but the finality of the news hit me uncommonly hard.
I soon realised why. Yes, I’ve received an education from his books, complete with their treasure trove endnotes. But even more profoundly, listening to Tim Keller’s preaching was the first time I really felt love for Jesus. His words were the Spirit’s instrument to open my heart to the reality of God.
In the wake of Keller’s passing, it has been heartening to read the various tributes coming in and the astounding accounts of his legacy. He was, as they say, the real deal. This from Tish Harrison Warren in the Times is representative:
The Christian Scriptures describe “the fruit of the Spirit” — what grows in us as we walk with God — as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Tim’s life was marked by these things. And these dispositions are not a political strategy. They are not a part of a brand. They are not a way to sell books, gain power, win culture wars or “take back America for Christ.” Tim inhabited these ways of being, not as a means to any end, but as a response to his relationship with God and love for his neighbor.
Keller published a beautiful book on forgiveness in late 2022, but his final missive was an eighty-three page white paper written for Christian leaders called The Decline and Renewal of the American Church. There are hard times coming, Keller writes, and a significant fracturing is inevitable. But Keller describes a new movement emerging from this fracture with characteristics every Christian can aspire to, and that accurately describe his own ministry:
We should evangelize and edify far more than we engage in polemics. The divisions in our culture and in our churches are fueled by those on the Left and the Right. Both sides want to co-opt as much of the church as possible for their political agenda. Both sides insist they have the moral high ground and are fighting on the side of truth and justice. Each side produces enormous numbers of attack videos, memes, and articles targeting church leaders and others who are not aligning with them. Polemics are sometimes necessary—but they are medicine, not food. You can’t live on medicine. In the long run constant polemics are exhausting and they don’t build us up spiritually. The movement will succeed that becomes the most famous for preaching and writing and teaching and pastoring that is astonishingly good and that spiritually nourishes and changes the readers or listeners right in their seats.
Read Tish Harrison Warren’s tribute to Keller, check out The Decline and Renewal of the American Church, or simply listen to Keller preach about being a Christian from John 3 in the video above.
Does Maturity Still Matter?
Samuel James on the trouble with activism
Modern culture pushes us relentlessly toward activism. Visible productivity, results and effectiveness become imperatives and quickly form our expectations for ourselves—and even for our churches. How many stories have we heard of visionary church leaders who call their congregants to do great things for God, only to produce a wave of burnout, exhaustion and wrecked relationships?
As Samuel James points out in a recent article, at the root of these expectations is the reality that all of us are inevitably shaped “by the liturgies and values of the online attention economy.” This environment produces an “endless self-consciousness that’s a hallmark of adolescence.” We need people to see how effective we are. And when this is our focus, maturity goes out the window.
But, as James writes,
we need to seriously consider the possibility that the spiritual maturity and spiritual effectiveness of movements and organizations are deeply connected, and that it is impossible to expect genuine effectiveness where the structure of the organization fails to push members toward maturity—and fails to put real obstacles in the path of the immature.
Read Does Maturity Still Matter? over at Mere Orthodoxy for a discussion of the tough but necessary choices that foster mature leaders. For more from Samuel James, check out his Substack, Digital Liturgies.
The History of the Curated Identity
Tara Isabella Burton on the freedom and burden of self making
Have you ever felt the pressure to manage your image online? To curate your identity in a way that feels somehow more authentic, real and true to your “personal brand”?
Feelings like this are inevitable in our time—and there is a deep, often subconscious assumption buried beneath them: that “we are most real when we present ourselves to the world as the people we most want to become.”
That’s Tara Isabella Burton from her new book Self Made: Curating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians, an exciting history of how we got here with a cast of characters ranging from the Marquis de Sade and Frederick Douglass to Kim Kardashian and Caroline Calloway.
Unlike some treatments of the modern self, Burton shows how truly liberating the notion of self-making has been for people throughout time, especially when compared to the stifling hierarchies of ages past. But she also doesn’t shy away from the shadow side:
If we accept that some people have the natural ability or the determined willingness to change their circumstances, then how do we avoid coming to the very conclusion that self-making at its most idealistic tries to overthrow—that some people are simply better than others?
Listen to Tara Isabella Burton walk through the story of Self Made on The Tikvah Podcast. The book releases this month.
Phillip timed his family’s America visit perfectly during three weeks of gloom and rain in the UK that only broke the day after the coronation. The Johnstons returned to lush greens and purples, the smell of lilac on the breeze, 10pm sunsets and coronation beer marked down to 90p a can. Happy spring.
Listening: Phillip is late to the party on the latest Fleet Foxes album titled Shore, but it will be getting a lot of play as temps rise. The music highlight of the past month, however, is the sonic banquet curated by Charles III for his big day. Recorded live in Westminster Abbey with with 192 microphones, 7 miles of cable, and released to the public on the very same day, the album is worth blasting at high volume from any speaker, beginning with the greatest of all Bach choirs belting the king’s favourite JSB. Pure delight.
Andy’s busy month included the buying of a house in St. Louis (Tower Grove, anyone?), writing a liturgy on board games for the Rabbit Room’s upcoming Every Moment Holy Volume 3 as well as a poem about Paul’s conversion, and a popping over to the UK for the Hutchmoot conference.
Listening: One of Andy’s favorite finds at Hutchmoot UK was the Faith in the Arts podcast by Ally Gordon, Marlita Hill, and Jonny Mellor. The three Christian artists have conversations about the theology of art, their favorite works, and their own stories of coming to understand themselves, their art, and their faith over the years. Very good stuff.
Reading: The Gift by Lewis Hyde has deeply influenced my ideas of community and hospitality over the years. Recently, this podcast by two friends has reminded how impactful Hyde’s ideas are: The Gift Economy and the Generosity of Art. Of course, there is also Andrew Fellow’s seminal lecture, “How a Gift Can Change the World: Living in the Creator's Gift Economy.”
New from The Darkling Psalter (Andy’s poetry and Psalm project): Psalm 16—The Light No Night Allays.
Favorite Books On…: Let’s do Andy’s favorite books on marriage and relationships. These are in no particular order but if I could only recommend one, it would be The New Rules of Marriage by Terry Real. The rest of the list is:
Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. John Gottman and Nan Silver
Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Sue Johnson (and a follow-up written from a Christian perspective, Created for Connection).
Getting the Love You Want. Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt
Tim and Kathy Keller's The Meaning of Marriage