John 3:16 and the Feminization of the Church! – Part #2

Salt and Light: “The Charlie Kirk and Tim Keller Debate!”

By Richard Allen – October 27, 2025

Continuing this Blog series, let me say from the start, that we have been undergoing the “Feminization of the Church” for over a hundred years in the United States. And the results are what you would expect: Men today can only grasp that “God is Love,” and therefore, we are “Loveable Creatures.”  Just recently I came upon a podcast by Christian apologist, Allie-Beth Stuckey on a controversy resulting from Charlie Kirk’s death: A debate over which approach should be used in sharing the Gospel with sinners in an ungodly and unbelieving culture.  Apparently, since the death of Charlie Kirk – several Christian leaders who are on the “Left” politically, have made clear their displeasure with Charlie Kirk, and cautioned against singing his praises. Their main contention is that Charlie used “hate speech” in his approach, especially, in that he defended Conservative Christian values when engaging the unbelieving culture around us.

So, to draw the battle lines clearly, let me say that the debate is between the approaches of a well-known Christian pastor and author, Tim Keller and Charlie Kirk, another well-known Christian Apologist. The debate was about how to present the Gospel to the lost. Tim Keller, like virtually all the “John 3:16 God is Love” wing of the Church, only believe in preaching God’s Love and Mercy toward poor sinners. Whereas Charlie Kirk represents the “balanced wing” of the Church which believes that God is not only a God of Love and Mercy, but He’s also a God of Holiness. In order to preach the whole Gospel, we not only proclaim God’s “Love and Mercy,” but we also act as “Salt and Light” to a dying world that needs preservation from God’s Holy and Righteous judgment (salt).  We also provide illumination (light) to show what is wrong and false!

Like Allie-Beth Stuckey mentions in her podcast – I too have been blessed by some of Tim Keller’s writings – especially “The Prodigal God,” in which Tim does a wonderful job expounding the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. But like Allie-Beth mentions, I have long had concerns for Tim Keller and some of the very Liberal – clearly ‘woke’ tendencies of “The Gospel Coalition,” a group which Tim co-founded with D. A. Carson. Tim's approach to engaging the ‘pagan culture’ around us, strikes me as being a ‘compromise’ with the ‘woke ideology’ that grips our ineffective Church in order to be “winsome” with the Gospel. It is almost a “Stealth” approach to preaching the Gospel.  What’s most amazing is that Tim and others like him would claim that the Church is not called to engage a sinful pagan culture around us by preaching about “Sin, Righteousness and Judgment” (John 16:8), but rather to model Christ with a ‘loving and accepting outreach’ that won’t make men and women feel uncomfortable about their sin and rebellion against a Holy God.

Tim’s ‘winsome gospel approach’ says that we shouldn’t get political – neither Conservative nor Liberal – just preach the Gospel. On the surface that sounds well and good, but the truth is, no one preaches the Gospel in a vacuum, we all choose sides on what constitutes sin, and from which behaviors we should repent. If we are not calling upon men to “repent of their sin,” we are not preaching the Gospel of Jesus. The irony is, Tim’s Gospel does take sides, he often spoke about “white privilege” and “social policy” regarding the “Welfare State.” And he was especially winsome toward most of the social issues surrounding Sexual Sin: Abortion, Homosexuality and Transgender issues. Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally on board for Christians to be “winsome” in our approach, but we can’t compromise the message of the Gospel by just talking about “The Love of God” and how God wants us all to be happy!

The problems with Tim Keller’s approach are not just being “winsome and loving” in our temperament as we preach the Gospel, but in how we live righteously before God. The Great Reformer Martin Luther once said:

“If I profess, with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rages the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle-field besides is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at that one point.” [https://jimmylarche.breakawayoutreach.com/martin-luther-loyalty-of-the-soldier-is-proved/]

The truth is – the issues which Tim feels we should ‘Not talk about,’ are exactly the issues where the ‘culture war is currently raging.’ The big issue of our Day is: Sexual Sin, including Homosexuality, Lesbian-Gay behavior, the Murder of the Unborn, reducing sexual relations between a Man and a Woman to recreational sport, Gender Confusion and Genital Mutilation of Children, and even the Sexual Exploitation of Children by Adults. Luther would clearly see these as the issues where the battle is raging. Tim and others who have totally misunderstood the “winsome” approach to the Gospel, often plead for the “Third Way.”  They say: “Don’t preach the Gospel with Conservative Morality or Liberal Permissiveness, just show everyone the kindness that Jesus did when He spoke to the woman caught in Adultery – the very act – in John Chapter 8.  Jesus was kind and considerate, and in the end sided with this poor woman, driving her “hard-nosed” Pharisaical accusers away!  But examining this passage of Scripture shows a very different picture:

“Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, ‘Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So, what do you say?’ This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, ‘Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.’ And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No one, Lord.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more’ ” (John 8:2-11).

The truth is, Jesus was both “winsome” and “engaging” toward those trapped in sin. But He was also “intolerant” with those who were “self-righteous” and full of themselves. Jesus didn’t just accept this woman in her sin, and tell her to continue in a lifestyle that would lead to judgment. Rather, He exhorted her: “Go, and from now on, sin no more!” This is the Gospel!  It is “winsome,” and yet “calls men and women to repent” and change their ways. The Democrat version of Social Justice is not “just” at all.  Welfare policy that completely “emasculated” Black Men and drove them from their homes has ‘Not been compassionate!”  Marvin Olasky in his wonderful book: “The Tragedy of American Compassion” makes it clear that Liberal and Woke policies are neither kind nor compassionate – and are not driven by love to our fellow man. In fact, Liberal Democratic policies have caused untold deaths, imprisonment, abandonment and dying on the streets in our “inner-city” war zones. This is not just the opinion of those who are politically conservative, but the stark reality for sociologists and the data they’ve gathered over the past 60 years since the Democrats’ “Great Society” started systematically destroying the “Black Family” and gutting all the large Blue Cities across America.  This is Not Social Justice!  Also, IT IS NOT THE GOSPEL! 

Sadly, Tim Keller has spent too much time expounding Woke Socialist jargon about “Systemic Racism,” which is actually a message of Racism against white Americans – Judged Guilty, just because they were born white. Let me also point out that any preacher talking about “white privilege” is not being “winsome,” much less preaching the truth!  What Tim Keller hates about a conservative moral message that men like Charlie Kirk preach, is: Tim’s Gospel is not neutral either, he’s chosen sides and clearly preaches Liberal Doctrines and Social Policy.  I’m not claiming that Charlie Kirk was without fault or flawless in his engaging of young men and women. But he certainly was cordial, kind and considerate in the way he carried on dialogue. He never strayed from the only real message: “That the Gospel of Jesus Christ alone could restore lives and make America a great nation once again.” And I’m not saying that Tim did not also point men and women to Jesus Christ as the only Savior. But Tim’s message was not a message of the Church being ‘salt and light” to a dying world, but rather one of ‘abandoning America and its culture’ – especially in the marketplace of ideas, to Marxist-Socialist-Communist Elites. In several previous generations, these Elites failed to accomplish their Socialist Revolution through traditional ‘class envy.’ So these forces have moved on to other imaginary victims of oppression. Racial envy was the Gospel of Barack Obama, and when that largely failed, the Democrats latched onto oppressed victims of “transgender discrimination.” These forces have reveled in the destruction of normal “male-female” relationships as well as destroying families – always offering total dependence on the “nanny state” as the remedy.

After hearing the message of “Good News through Jesus Christ,” both Charlie and Tim appear to go in very different directions: Charlie opted for Jesus’ message of “Go and sin no more.” Whereas I fear that Tim, not wanting to offend the sinful culture around him (except white, male, cisgendered or Christian – he was OK with condemning them as privileged oppressors), seemed to tell broken inner-city sinners seeking forgiveness: “Go, and know that God forgives and accepts you in your sin.” God does tell us to come as we are, but He has no intention of leaving us in our sin and rebellion. The Apostle Paul asks the Roman Church some serious questions regarding continuing on in sin:

“Well then, shall we keep on sinning so that God can keep on showing us more and more kindness and forgiveness?  Of course not! Should we keep on sinning when we don’t have to? For sin’s power over us was broken when we became Christians and were baptized to become a part of Jesus Christ; through his death the power of your sinful nature was shattered.  Your old sin-loving nature was buried with him by baptism when he died; and when God the Father, with glorious power, brought him back to life again, you were given his wonderful new life to enjoy” (Romans 6:1-4).

I fear that Tim’s problem was his politics, which he couldn’t leave behind. They colored his application of the Gospel! This is what the Feminization of the Church looks like up close!  It is the inability to preach “the whole counsel of God’s Truth!”

Soli Deo Gloria!