{"id":45647,"date":"2014-08-26T19:00:38","date_gmt":"2014-08-26T19:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/tim_keller_on_the_decline_of_the_mushy_middle_in_american_christianity\/"},"modified":"2014-08-26T19:00:38","modified_gmt":"2014-08-26T19:00:38","slug":"tim_keller_on_the_decline_of_the_mushy_middle_in_american_christianity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=45647","title":{"rendered":"Tim Keller on the Decline of the &#34;Mushy Middle&#34; in American Christianity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Blogger Trevin Wax, at his Kingdom People blog (one of the Gospel Coalition website blogs), has some interesting excerpts of a recent forum at which NYC pastor Tim Keller spoke on the increasing polarization of attitudes towards Christianity in American society:<\/p>\n<p>In a recent forum, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/eppc.org\/publications\/dr-timothy-keller-at-the-march-2013-faith-angle-forum\" title=\"Conservative Christianity After the Christian Right\">Conservative Christianity After the Christian Right<\/a>,\u201d\u009d Tim Keller predicted moderate growth of conservative evangelicalism even as the culture at large has grown more secular. In these remarks, he explains why these trends are leading to increasing polarization:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When I say \u201cgrowing moderately,\u201d\u009d I mean that the number of the devout people in the country is increasing, as well as the number of secular people. The big change is the erosion is in the middle. The devout numbers have not actually gone down that much. It depends on how you read them. But basically, they are not in freefall by any means.<\/p>\n<p>    <b>You don\u2019t so much see secularization as polarization, and what is really disappearing is the middle<\/b>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Keller sees the middle as having once leaned toward nominal Christianity, out of a sense of respect, tradition, or for social reasons. He says:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It used to be that the devout and the mushy middle \u201d\u201d nominal Christians, people that would identify as Christians, people who would come to church sporadically, people who certainly respect the Bible and Christianity \u201d\u201d the devout and the mushy middle together was a super majority of people who just created a kind of \u201cChristian-y\u201d\u009d sort of culture.<\/p>\n<p>    The mushy middle used to be more identified with the devout. Now it\u2019s more identified with the secular. That\u2019s all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What does this mean for conservative Christians? Keller uses the analogy of an umbrella:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>So what\u2019s happening is the roof has come off for the devout. The devout had a kind of a shelter, an umbrella. You couldn\u2019t be all that caustic toward traditional classic Christian teaching and truth. I spoke on Friday morning to the American Bible Society\u2019s board. American Bible Society does a lot of polling about the Bible. The use of the Bible, reading the Bible, attitudes toward the Bible. They said that actually the number of people who are devout Bible readers is not changing that much.<\/p>\n<p>    What is changing is for the first time in history a growing group of people who think the Bible is bad, it\u2019s dangerous, it\u2019s regressive, it\u2019s a bad cultural force, that was just never there. It was very tiny. And that\u2019s because the middle ground has shifted, so it is more identified with the more secular, the less religious, and it\u2019s less identified now with the more devout.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/trevinwax\/2014\/08\/26\/tim-keller-on-the-disappearing-umbrella-over-conservative-christians\" title=\"Read the full entry.\">Read the full entry.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blogger Trevin Wax, at his Kingdom People blog (one of the Gospel Coalition website blogs), has some interesting excerpts of a recent forum at which NYC pastor Tim Keller spoke on the increasing polarization of attitudes towards Christianity in American<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=45647\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":832,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-watch","category-religion-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/832"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45647\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}