A recent New York magazine profile of the Manhattan minister Timothy Keller lists the types of congregants filling his auditorium pews: “A cross-section of yuppie Manhattanites—doctors, bankers, lawyers, artists, actors, and designers, some of them older, most of them in their twenties or thirties.”
Huh? We raise our eyebrows. How could this be, when the city runs on secular selfishness? Or at least, secular selfishness drives the creative class and their upwardly mobile professional counterparts to pursue material success and swami-organic “self-actualization.” The traditional mainline Protestant denominations may be mostly dead, making way for the ongoing rise of a new orthodox evangelicalism. But in Manhattan?
Timothy Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian, with its three Manhattan congregations, is an immensely popular church. His ministry, not strictly evangelical (Keller prefers “orthodox”), only grew with his first book, The Reason for God, a bestseller in 2008. Now, with his fourth and latest, he reaches further for the unreachable: the modern secularist. Making Sense of God grew out of Keller’s regular meetings for Christ-curious skeptics.
His sales pitch: Christian faith cures the cosmic seasickness of an all-too-common arrogant atheism. Rising numbers of Christian converts (although mostly in Africa and East Asia) testify to a universal human need to seek and find a satisfying answer. If the educated atheist’s ego-driven ailment is mostly confined to wealthy Western nations, so might be the perception of its pervasiveness.
Always kindly, Keller dismisses the idea that Christianity has no more claim on educated and accomplished men and women in this age of science. Believers in man’s capacity to tame the mysteries of heaven and earth take on a sublimely awful burden. The ego strains under the weight of a comprehensible universe. In a godless world, “we are liberated to construct our own individual meanings for our lives.” Keller argues, almost in the form of a mathematical proof, that “such created meanings are much more fragile and thin than discovered meanings.” No single mind can explain away the loose and unsatisfied core feeling of a lonely soul.
His range of cultural references targets a certain audience of seekers. He quotes Martin Heidegger and the FX series Fargo within the same hundred words. This borderline-bathetic blend of high and low reveals a charming and attractive 21st-century intellect. Being neither a chummy lightweight nor an esoteric stiff, he strikes the right tone for educated skeptics. And his quiet, learned charisma endears him to the elite.
Keller may preach to all walks of life, but remarkably many among the political power class join his flock and seek his private counsel. (Indiana governor and vice-presidential nominee Mike Pence is reportedly a fan.) They come to him having worked their way to the top, only to find something’s missing. They ask, “Is That All There Is?” And yes, Keller quotes Peggy Lee.
Public servants loosely committed to human-rights doctrine will feel the absence of a firm faith in God more consequentially than most. John Locke would be shocked by secular self-determination because (as Keller points out) “he was a Christian who believed in moral truths and obligations that were independent of our minds and feelings and which limited our freedom.” Can a Lockean democracy function absent any secure moral foundation?
Secular conviction that a vague humanist ethic and healthy living are the light and the way also requires a leap of faith, Keller argues. It’s a diluted Christian morality, and we’re convinced it’s elective. Happiness eludes modern men and women: Encaged in the “freedom to be you and me,” we’re cut off from God’s love and trapped in a quest to know and to improve ourselves.
While a yogi might offer meditational release, “an experience of Christ’s grace strikes a fatal blow to our egocentricity,” Keller declares. “The sight of Jesus dying for us out of love destroys both pride and self-hatred at the same time.” Keller reads like a self-help guru, or a 12-step sponsor; but his is the same old Christian pitch for an identity unconstricted by ego.
The truth remains: Megachurches from the Upper West Side to the Bible Belt draw mega-congregations. For Episcopalians, who can’t stomach evangelicalism, the rule is attraction rather than promotion. As empty pews and dwindling parishes testify, gospel-as-metaphor doesn’t attract troubled souls, particularly when the 21st-century’s troubled soul wants to know what’s it got to do with me?
It’s not news that yuppies, creatives, and masters of the universe have immortal souls, too. In 2016, it might take a minister like Timothy Keller to remind us what that means.
Alice B. Lloyd is a reporter and web producer at The Weekly Standard.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Fargo was produced by Netflix. It is a product of FX, available on Netflix.
