Satisfying Yourself: Response #2 to Timothy Keller
Brad's second (and hopefully final) response to Timothy Keller. Brad discusses Keller's reductionist view of modern conceptions of selfhood; the problematic approach he takes to criticisms that his sexual ethic erases queer people--and creates the context for violence against them; and the ways Keller uses academic and theoretical sources (Taylor, Asad, Foucault) to cover over what are classic evangelical maneuvers: reduce sexual identity to choice, label those who don't fit the heterosexual fold as deviant, and blame them for it by tracing their path to sinful desire.
Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC
Order Brad's book: https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-War-Extremist-Christian-Nationalism/dp/1506482163
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Axis Mundi One of the things I love about Anchor is that it's free and it's easy for anyone to create their own podcast.
Anchor provides creation tools that allow you to record and edit your podcast right from your phone or computer.
You can even add songs from Spotify directly to your episodes.
The possibilities are endless for what you want to create, whether it's music, analysis, Your own radio show, or something the world's never heard before.
Anchor will distribute your podcast for you, so it can be heard on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and many more.
I encourage you to check it out.
If you're thinking about starting your own show, this is the place to start.
It's everything you need to make a podcast in one place.
Download the free Anchor app, or go to anchor.fm to get started.
You're listening to an Irreverent Podcast.
Visit irreverent.fm for more content from our amazing lineup of creators.
Hello, welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
I'm Brad Onishi, faculty in religion, Skidmore College.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB.
I want to just have a very brief episode today to respond one more time to Timothy Keller.
And after this, I am done.
I think it's time to be done with all of this.
But for those of you who have been following on Twitter, Timothy Keller, who is part of the Gospel Coalition and a minister, pastor, Presbyterian leader in New York City with half a million Twitter followers, has been posting some incredibly provocative is a nice word to say Tweets about sexuality and community and selfhood.
And so one more response and then I think we're going to be all done.
Yesterday, Chrissy Stroop, friend of the program, published a great article at Religion Dispatches on Keller's tweets.
And I am quoted in the piece, just full disclosure.
But one of the things that Chrissy tweeted today is this in response to Keller, that When certain beliefs are enforced in a cultural and institutional structure, human experiences that don't fit into the prefab abstract framework lead not only to the erasure of those who can't fit in, but also to violence against us.
So Chrissy was responding to a number of things, but the baseline of Keller's tweets started about a week and a half ago when he said that sex outside of lifelong heterosexual marriage is dehumanizing.
Okay.
And so Chrissy is saying that, look, you have a certain structure here about human experience that lifelong heterosexual marriage is the only place for sex.
And if that is not the case, then it's a dehumanizing experience.
So Chrissy's saying, look, those of us who can't fit into that framework, i.e.
people who are queer in any way, trans, bisexual, gay, lesbian, and so on and so forth, right, are erased.
They're erased from the framework altogether.
The category of the person in question is not even considered as part of the framework.
So they're erased and there is violence against them.
We have talked about this on our show so many times when it comes to the trans community.
The rates of suicidal ideation, of self-harm, of other Aspects of being a trans person in this country, especially a young person are through the roof.
The statistics regarding violence against people in the trans community are just they tell a story of violence.
Okay, so I think Chrissy has a very good point.
Now Keller responds that he understands the concern.
He's tweeting this, right?
So it's all there if you'd like to go look at it.
And says, you know, heaping abrasive language on people and trying to shame them doesn't does not That's not a good thing.
However, he says, and I'm quoting now, in the end, everyone asks people to, quote, fit in to their community or leave it.
Every community, including ex-evangelicals, has boundaries, gatekeepers, heresies, and orthodoxies, and ways of exercising constraint on members' behavior and language.
So he's saying, look, every community has a kind of set of boundaries, and those have to be kept, and that's all that you're doing, and that's all that I'm doing.
There's a kind of sense here of like, hey, you're in one community, I'm in another.
We have different standards.
We have different ideas of what is good, what is humanizing.
And so we just have to kind of like accept that, right?
He says in the next tweet, we all have standards about what is healthy sexuality and what is good for people.
Mine are different than yours.
We must urge people to align with the community standards in a non-abusive way.
But to do that urging is an unavoidable reality and does not constitute erasure.
It does though, Timothy Keller, if Your community standards do not even recognize trans people as existing, if they don't even recognize bi or gay or lesbian people as having a legitimate identity.
It does constitute erasure, period.
The framework assumes erasure from the beginning.
In another set of tweets, Keller says that Chrissy has sort of misread Keller's approach to ethics.
And says that There is a need to Recognize quote we have two different visions of what leads to joy and thriving for human beings We are each contending for our vision of the good and opposing those visions We think are harmful by telling people they should not believe in a creator God who made us for sex only inside marriage is to urge them to adopt your capital
I'm telling them they should hold the view of the good.
Or my view of the good.
Let's be honest about what we are both trying to do.
And again, I appreciate your engagement.
Couple of things here, right?
We are each contending for our vision of the good and opposing the visions we think are harmful.
Chrissy is saying your vision of the good assumes I don't exist or tries to erase me.
Thanks for listening to this free preview of our SWADGE episode.
In order to get access to the full episode and so much more, become a Straight White American Jesus Premium Subscriber by clicking the link in the show notes.
It'll take you like two clicks, I promise.
In addition to getting access to this episode, you'll have access to the entire SWADGE archive, over 550 episodes.
You'll also get an extra episode every month, ad-free listening, Discord access, and so much more.
All that for less than six bucks a month, and it helps us keep our flag up and continue to safeguard democracy from religious nationalism, extremism, and rising authoritarianism.
