CNN political analyst Kirsten Powers complains about Christian groups that aren’t up front about their controversial views. Specifically she cites the “He Gets Us” promotional campaign, which included Superbowl commercials, and which highlight Jesus’s concern about social outcasts. But she also complains about a similar supposed disingenuousness at the New York evangelical church where her own faith was renewed.
That church was, presumably, Tim Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, which for 30 years has successfully appealed to educated urban professionals like Powers. Redeemer Church belongs to the Presbyterian Church in America, a conservative denomination with traditional stances on sexuality and abortion, among others. Yet it has thrived in a socially liberal milieu. Perhaps part of its success has been that it has not highlighted its controversial traditional Christian social views while at the same time not hiding or compromising them.
As Powers recalls, she was then, years ago, a lapsed agnostic Episcopalian who went to church to please her boyfriend. She describes this church:
Long story short, it was an evangelical church that sought to be “seeker friendly.” They led with the good stuff: Jesus was an immigrant; a radical when it came to treating women equally and a champion of the downtrodden. It was an intellectually stimulating format, including sermons that were laced with poetry, art references, philosophy and pop culture. I was intrigued, to say the least.
Powers became very involved in the church, and only later did she realize its conservative theology:
If the day I walked into that Upper East Side church service the pastor had given a sermon calling homosexuality a sin or said that women should submit to their husbands I would have gotten up and walked out. I only learned that these were core teachings after I had been attending a year and a half and was in too deep. Abortion was never addressed from the pulpit (at least to my knowledge), but once I started asking, I found the church community fairly homogeneous in their anti-abortion beliefs, a view that the pastor expressed publicly many years after I left the church.
Powers calls this “secretiveness” a “red flag” and complains that “seeker movements hide what they really are.” Instead, they “focus on the things that will draw people in, and that ironically ultimately play a tiny” role in the church’s overall ministry. Powers claims that the controversial views are only revealed “casually” after new believers are already embedded in the community, and feeling at that point that it’s “almost impossible to leave.”
The people at this church, Powers admits, were nice people who genuinely wanted to save souls. They were also educated, sophisticated, intellectual, credentialed and liked to distinguish themselves from “intolerant, unsophisticated, overly-politicized brand of evangelicals outside of major Metro areas.”
Powers likens this seeker friendly church to advertising campaigns like “He Gets Us,” which she notes was seemingly funded by conservative Christians like the Green family of Hobby Lobby. She complains about the lack of transparency about the campaign’s donors. She wonders why progressive Christians likely played no role. (Answer: progressive Christianity isn’t usually very interested in evangelism.) And she says when such campaigns “co-opt the language of social justice to draw people in, then they need to be clear about who is funding this and what the people they attract into churches with these ads will be told. Without such transparency, many people may very well get hurt.”
Perhaps Powers has a least a partial point. Churches and Christian ministries should be transparent. But such transparency does not automatically necessitate heavy emphasis on potential controversial points. Powers, when she became active in Redeemer Church, could easily have researched the Presbyterian Church in America and its official stances.
Churches, modeled on Jesus Himself, if they are evangelistic, mainly focus on the simple message of Jesus as Savior who came to save sinners. They don’t, especially with new believers or visitors, focus on the intricacies of the Trinity, the detailed forensics of justification and sanctification, or the wide tradition across 2,000 years that informs the church’s ethical teachings. Jesus says: “Come, whosoever will.” So does His church.
Learning the details of the Christian faith, including the church’s ethical teachings that are often at odds with the world’s, typically comes later as new believers grow in faith and are catechized by the church. Powers seems to have found this process deceptive and manipulative. But St Paul distinguished between the milk and the meat of the faith, with the former reserved for new believers, and the later for more mature believers.
Powers doesn’t recount in her column, but she left the evangelical church later to join the Roman Catholic Church, whose teachings, like Redeemer Presbyterian, she also finds vexing from her more progressive perspective. Presumably she was fully aware of Catholic teaching before she joined.
Every new believer and prospective convert has the agency and even duty to discover what their prospective church officially believes. Many conservative Mainline Protestants, even now, are shocked to learn about the very liberal stances of churches to which they’ve belonged their whole lives. Clergy of conservative and liberal churches typically don’t stress the most controversial stances of their denominations or traditions. Usually, their purposes are not specifically manipulative but an effort to draw people together.
Churches and ministries shouldn’t disguise their beliefs. But neither should they be faulted for not heavily advertising to the wider public the most controversial aspects of their faith.
Comment by Dan W on March 30, 2023 at 9:55 am
Ms. Powers book on grace was released in paperback format March 7th. I haven’t read it, but based on Amazon.com customer reviews, she talks about the importance of grace but refuses to show grace to people with different political views. Is she an expert on grace? Buy the book and let us know.
Comment by MARK on March 30, 2023 at 10:55 am
What “serious harm” is caused by somebody – anybody, visiting a theologically conservative church? Because their feelings were hurt that the church doesn’t espouse their preferred political or social agenda? And she joined the Roman Catholic Church because they’re pro-choice and ordain women? Ridiculous!
Ms. Powers epitomizes what’s wrong in our culture today; she confuses her political preferences with truth; Christianity with a left-wing political view. She clearly wasn’t seeking a deep or mature Christian faith. She’s a self-absorbed whiner that a religious doesn’t validate her political and social views.
Comment by Luke Landers on March 30, 2023 at 2:03 pm
A year and a half? I question her fitness as an analyst of anything.
Comment by Tom on March 30, 2023 at 5:43 pm
I think MARK above has it right. Miss Powers, along with many others, thinks the church should be primarily a political organization and that it should reflect their political views.
Wrong. The church is a spiritual organization and should reflect the views expressed by God in the Bible.
I recently had cause to thank the Lord for the faithfulness of our pastor over the last 13 years that I’ve been there in never, ever once, deviating from preaching the Biblical text. People are free not to like that. But they will one day answer to the Lord for elevating the golden calf of politics, especially leftist politics, over His word.
Comment by Michael on April 3, 2023 at 4:22 pm
Churches would be foolish to focus on the same “detail” on every sermon. On the flip side, to ignore those details would be just as bad.
I oppose abortion for example. But went to one church for a while that the opposition to abortion was in the sermon – EVERY week. For months and months (this was not a sermon series type of thing). Did I agree, yes – but it was such a part of the sermon, that all else seemed to not matter. I was put off by it, so I can only imagine that someone who was anti-life was really going to be put off. That is not how you convert/educate/teach (insert your favorite word) someone.
Same could be said for any topic. It comes across as changing the church from promoting Jesus, and his saving grace, to being some social construct. Preaching on a social contruct (either conservative or progressive) over and over and over does nobody any favors.
Comment by Michael Murphy on April 3, 2023 at 4:56 pm
This is how the church is supposed to behave. Which way the members of the church lean as far as American politics is concerned, is neither here nor there. It is not the mission of the church.
The mission of the church is the preach Jesus Christ in season and out of season. Everything else is very secondary.
I applaud this church! While some churches squabble over money, land, and politics, this church seems to be about the great commission.
And make no mistake: as Christians, this is what we are called to do. The Bible is pretty clear on this. If you believe the Bible, then the great commission is among your marching orders.
Conversely, if you are not concerned with preaching the gospel and making disciples of all nations, then what is your faith worth?
Comment by Bill F on April 3, 2023 at 11:15 pm
About a dozen years ago I met Kirsten at a “Socrates in the
City” event in Washington, DC. If you’re not familiar with “Socrates…” these events are hosted by author/conservative radio host Eric Metaxas, and the DC event featured Eric interviewing Dr. Stephen Meyer, prominent in the Intelligent Design movement. Neither
Eric nor ID should be confused with theological liberalism. And Kirsten spoke with me about her long friendship with Eric. So, Kirsten, do you just have a bad sense of theological direction, constantly blindly wandering into conservative venues?
Comment by Joetta on April 4, 2023 at 5:59 am
I agree with all these points, having been part of a PCA church before though now attending a nondenominational church due to relocation. But I’m grateful for all who are holding on to the faith. And we love Him with our minds as well as our hearts. We believe God is able to protect that which we entrust to Him. Thank you for these articles and discussions.
2 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Col. 3: 12-17 ESB)
We do what Jesus tells us to do; we try to do all things in love. By our love they will know us. “He Gets Us” is rooted in love and I was so encouraged and grateful to see those ads during the Super Bowl. I’m praying for us all to have peace in our hearts because all of these attacks on the Church are disturbing but yet we can stand firm. Let us encourage each other today for as long as it is called Today…
Comment by David on April 4, 2023 at 9:20 am
Perhaps Mrs. Powers is not as exceptional as she seems to think she is. A LOT of people don’t do their “homework” before really connecting with a church, but then blame the church for not aligning with the beliefs THEY brought to the table.
We all remember what “assume” really means!
Comment by Gary Foster on April 5, 2023 at 11:33 am
When I was a Pastor I did not go into the theological distinctives that I knew were not accepted by my flock. My original plan was to ease into it after I was firmly in place at a church that had a history of contention. I was just a young guy then. This was a great article with great points. Taking people where they are and working with that is more important than pushing ideas that will repel people early into the game. I ended up leaving for a more appropriate denomination.
IMHO churches are better off without people with fevered brains fueled by anger and preconceived notions. Too many laypeople are very badly informed and most come at you with notions picked up in childhood that are so bound up in them that they are a closed book.