The Keller Center and Defining Cultural Apologetics

The Gospel Coalition recently launched a new initiative called The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics (henceforth referred to as TKC).

In an article announcing its launch, the editor-in-chief of The Gospel Coalition, Colin Hansen, writes, “We want to help church leaders around the world do the following: Close the back door. Open the front door. Send out the equipped.” He expands on each of these areas:

Close the back door: “The Keller Center wants to close that back door by giving you gracious answers and innovative strategies to help friends and family find God in the church. We want to stem the tide of the dechurching by cultivating spiritual depth and humility among Christian leaders.”

Open the front door: “Many of our secular neighbors can’t seem to comprehend the gospel, let alone admit they need it. They’d never think of coming to church.

We need churches with wide-open front doors, where our neighbors can connect the dots by meeting the body of Christ, a compelling community.”

Send out the equipped: “Even as we make the church a more hospitable place for skeptics and doubters, we must go to them—in their neighborhoods, in their schools, and in their workplaces. But how can we stand for Christ in a hostile classroom or work setting? How do we love our neighbors when they perceive us as the ‘bad guys’?

The Keller Center’s resources equip Christians with answers developed in collaboration between leaders in the academy, marketplace, and church.”

In conclusion, Hansen writes:

“The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics helps Christians show unbelievers the truth, goodness, and beauty of the gospel as the only hope that fulfills our deepest longings. We want to train Christians—everyone from pastors to parents to professors—to boldly share the good news of Jesus Christ in a way that clearly communicates to this secular age.”

Before proceeding further in this article, please know that I am very excited about this new endeavor. I admire many of the Fellows in the program, such as Trevin Wax, Alan Noble, Joshua Chatraw, Gavin Ortlund, and others. I look forward to consuming the content from TKC, and I like many articles on their website.

My concern is not in terms of quality but rather in terms of their self-identification

The title of the center explicitly claims to practice cultural apologetics. As one who has been involved in the field of cultural apologetics for many years, served as the managing editor of a journal of cultural and imaginative apologetics for five years, and is currently an adjunct faculty member at Houston Christian University, the premier institution for studying cultural apologetics, I am not sure that the content that will be forthcoming from TKC is actually going to be cultural apologetics.

First, it would behoove us to understand what cultural apologetics is. It is a term that has been used broadly and has been defined in a variety of ways. One might appeal to Paul Gould, who wrote a book entitled Cultural Apologetics and suggested that “cultural apologetics [is] the work of establishing the Christian voice, conscience, and imagination within a culture so that Christianity is seen as true and satisfying.”

While not explicitly using the term cultural apologetics, one may be drawn to TKC fellow Joshua Chatraw’s definition in his excellent book, Telling a Better Story:

“Opponents of Christianity are no longer simply arguing that it is untrue or illogical, but also that it’s dangerously oppressive. Many of the ethical commands of Christianity and the concept of divine judgment fly in the face of the prevailing norms of our culture. These kinds of moral issues are the chief apologetic challenge of our age. More than anything else, they make non-Christians deeply question the beauty and goodness of our faith. Central to our task, then, is learning how to help others see the splendor of God and his purposes by reimagining the world through the Christian story.”

One may also hear from people like Holly Ordway, one of my former professors and one of the foremost voices in the field of cultural apologetics today, when she said in an interview with Word on Fire:

“Reason and imagination are paired faculties: we need both in order to think about anything. In order to make reasoned judgments, such as whether something is true or false, we first have to have something meaningful to think about, and that’s where the imagination comes in: it creates meaning.

Thus, at its heart, an apologetics approach that is imaginative is one that is focused on the creation of meaning.”

You will also notice that the imagination is central to the central purpose of An Unexpected Journal, the publication I helped found that has featured contributions from many of the top experts in the field of cultural apologetics. “An Unexpected Journal seeks to demonstrate the truth of Christianity through both reason and the imagination to engage the culture from a Christian worldview.”

Central to all four of these definitions or descriptions of cultural apologetics is the role of the imagination.

You may ask why the imagination is so central to the purpose of cultural apologetics.

TKC rightfully emphasizes opening the front door and helping invite people into a compelling community. However, what makes a community compelling? Over the long term, it is not the facilities or the resources; communities are compelling because being a member has meaning. Being a member means being a part of the narrative of a particular institution.

This identification with a larger narrative than your own is a work of imagination. In this context, I do not mean to use the imagination as a derogatory term. Instead, the imagination is what gives meaning to this association and narrative. The church is not a physical body, but we imagine ourselves that way. Other Christians are not my brothers and sisters genetically, but our relationship is given meaning through that imagination. The imagination, as C. S. Lewis is reported to have said, is the organ of meaning.

Consequently, if TKC seeks to truly provide a cultural apologetic that invites people into a compelling community, the imagination will be a necessary part of that work, which, unfortunately, I do not see immediately on their homepage. I see many interesting articles, but I see considerations of critical race theory and neo-Calvinism. It is not that these are not important topics or that they should not be talked about in the field of cultural apologetics, but a cultural apologetic approach to these issues will help explicate the why rather than the what. The why is a question of imagination.

In its purest form, cultural apologetics ought to be the type of enterprise that appeals to a society through its imagination. Don’t just tell me I ought to be brave; show me the consequences of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s bravery as he sacrifices himself to Darth Vader so his companions can escape. The first statement tells me a fact; the second statement tells me why that fact matters.

What is it in our society’s imagination?

Movies, for example. Just tonight, Joseph Holmes published an outstanding work of cultural apologetics at Relevant Magazine. He asks why Hollywood believes that we live in a dystopia, and by evaluating our cultural artifacts, the stories that appeal to our collective imagination, he brings us to the Christian worldview's goodness, truth, and beauty.

Imagine, if you will, the hypothetical, non-Christian reader approaching Holmes’ article. She might start reading and realize that his observations about movies are consistent with her experience while watching them. In other words, he has connected with her imagination, her conception of the way that Hollywood tells stories. He then provides her with a reason to believe that there is a better story. The reader is brought along, through these cultural artifacts that appeal to her imagination, to the point where she is now considering the capacity of the Christian worldview to tell a better story.

Cultural apologetics is not just apologetics that factually comments on some element of our culture. It is much more complex and beautiful than that. Cultural apologetics tells a story that utilizes the imagination to give meaning to the facts.

Like I said before, I have no problem with TKC as a Christian organization. I admire several of the writers who have already signed on to work for them, and I look forward to regularly reading their content. However, I do hope they begin making a concerted effort to incorporate the imagination into their mission of cultural apologetics. This could either be done through the original creation of cultural artifacts or by engaging with the cultural artifacts people are discussing.

Cultural apologetics is a powerful and effective method for reaching our post-Christian world without a doubt. The introductory video on their website identifies the dilemma of a society that doesn’t even know the dots to connect that would lead them to Christianity. In order to be effective witnesses, it is undeniable that we will need alternative ways to communicate the truth of Christianity to these people in a way that they will be able to understand and will matter to them. What makes cultural apologetics unique is that it appeals directly to the imagination. If it doesn’t do that, which seems to be the case with TKC, it may still be incredibly good, true, beautiful, and valuable, but it does not seem to be cultural apologetics.