JD Greear, The Gospel Coalition Repackage Third-Wayism

The Gospel Coalition is famous for it “third way” approach to engaging the culture which assumes that both the right and the left are wrong and the truth is somewhere in the middle, even if closer to one side. This, derided as “Third-Wayism,” became a trademark of Tim Keller and the like, which would include JD Greear. Greear was the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention who led the SBC to adopt Critical Race Theory as an analytical tool. JD Greear is currently promoting a book Everyday Revolutionary: How to Transcend the Culture War and Transform the World.

This is especially ironic as JD Greear has been a social justice warrior from the pulpit for a long time, supporting Black Lives Matter as a gospel issue, gay rights, and cushioning the sin of abortion. Greear has failed to transcend any culture war and has always served the liberal cause. Now he seeks to revamp the Third-Wayism in his latest book. Along those lines, he has published an article in The Gospel Coalition titled, Faithfulness amid the Culture War.

Many wonder if the days of a nonpartisan approach to Christian cultural engagement are over. In recent years, they say, the lines have been more clearly drawn, and thus Christians—especially pastors—need to be less hesitant to align the cause of Christ with the right side of the political aisle. We should be willing to connect the dots, name names, and formalize our identification with the Republican Party, even lead with that in our church’s messaging to our communities. They say the response to Charlie Kirk shows us it works evangelistically, at least for a lot of young men. Words like “nonpartisan,” “nuance,” and “winsomeness” are code words for compromise and likely indicate a leader has fallen under the spell of the progressive gaze, even though these compromises sanctimoniously masquerade under the cloak of “for the sake of evangelism.”

One pastor friend even told me, rather cheekily, regarding his political views, “People need to know where their pastor stands. I’ve decided if I’d say it around the firepit, I’ll say it from the pulpit. Anything less is inauthentic.” Faithfulness, it’s believed, means making clear where we line up politically.

Let me (briefly?) explain here why I think this is not only a mistake but a lack of faithfulness to the mission of Jesus.

And before you dismiss this as simply a representation of the “same old third way,” it’s not. Parts of that approach need to be jettisoned, but parts need to be maintained.

What follows, however, is a lot of rambling in what amounts to a long-winded article where Greear attempts to reconcile his current views with how he has improved upon Third-Wayism.

I’m saying, however, that where God’s Word doesn’t speak directly, or the political application is only implied, we need to exercise self-control. For example, I don’t know of anywhere God spells out for us the ideal marginal tax rate, the proper number of refugees a compassionate country should take in, the godly posture toward gun control, whether health care should be nationalized, or exactly what our safety social net should include.

I have my opinions on all those—and not only do I think they’re right, but I think they’re informed by my Christian worldview. But they’re applications of Christian wisdom—applications that I could be wrong about and applications that others who believe the Bible as much as I do might see differently. While I always vote my conscience, where I can’t draw a direct line between a verse and a particular policy, I leave the authority of God and the reputation of the church out of it.

Perhaps the most stunning display of hypocrisy came here, where Greear encourages pastors to exercise self-control in spouting political beliefs after Greear has, on multiple occasions, used the pulpit to advocate for gay rights.

And so, early church leaders asked both Jews and Gentiles to hold their secondary convictions, preferences, and applications of Christian living in ways that wouldn’t make it hard for unsaved members of the other group to find their way to God.

I want to say this to church leaders in America: Don’t make it hard for Republicans or Democrats to find God. Don’t make it hard for black or white seekers, or for brown or Asian seekers. Don’t make it hard for police officers or for public-school teachers. Preach the whole counsel of God, but don’t make it hard for anyone turning to God by encumbering the message with things not essential to the message.

In Acts 15, the church maintained that converts must abstain from sexual immorality, a notion unpopular then as it is now. This example highlights the impossibility of making Christianity palatable to Democrats.

JD Greear goes on to demonstrate how his church was seeker sensitive for Democrats.

So, let me go back to what my pastor friend at the beginning said: “If I’d say it around the firepit, I’ll say it from the pulpit.”

I imagine James, in the spirit of Acts 15, might reply, “There should be all kinds of things you would say around the firepit that you wouldn’t say from the pulpit.” The pulpit is a place reserved for “thus saith the Lord” not “thus thinketh the pastor.”

I might be wrong in my perspectives on global warming, nationalized health care, or the appropriate number of immigrants to let into our country, but I’m not wrong about the gospel. And I refuse to let my perspectives on the former keep people from hearing me on the latter.

Gospel witness, not cultural transformation, is the tip of our missional spear.

JD Greear’s hypocrisy shines as he previously made Black Lives Matter a gospel issue.

One of the questions I often ask myself is what exceptions there might be—instances where we should connect biblical values to specific candidates or parties. If you lived in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1860, for example, it seems faithfulness would require us to do more than simply say slavery was wrong; it would mean refusing to support any pro-slavery candidates, even if we agreed with them on other things. Or, if you were a German Christian in 1940, you should do more than say anti-Semitism is wrong; you should say that faithful Christianity precludes membership in the Nazi Party.

Some would say that given the left’s wholehearted embrace of infanticide and the denial of the gender binary, we’re in a similar situation today, and therefore we must connect the dots for people. I certainly understand that reasoning and it resonates deeply with me. We should be clear what particular candidates say about these things and sometimes name names—I’ve done that with our people, and plan to do it again.

JD Greear exercises historic revisionism while ignoring the log in his own eye today with the Democrat Party, which is worse than the two former examples combined. His cowardice in being unwilling to go that far is paired with his commitment to the liberal ideological hegemony.