Left-Framing, Moral Equivalency, and Caricatures
Given the recent surge of articles and videos on the so-called third way approach to politics and social issues, it is easy to get lost in trying to understand what exactly the third way is and what the third way actually does. One constant refrain from proponents of the third way is that its critics often attack the third way in its caricature and rarely define the term correctly, so it might be best to start here: How do prominent people, generally in favor of the third way, define the term? Here are three definitions from Chris Watkin, Gavin Ortlund, and Neil Shenvi, respectively.
[The third way] refers, as I quickly learned, to a stance that rejects the either/or political or cultural alternatives on offer in our society and seeks a third, different approach.
What is third wayism? In a nutshell, it is very simple. The thinking is this: Contemporary conservative politics—especially in the United States—has important differences from historic Christianity. And even if those differences are not as dire as the political left, they are still important enough that they are worth pointing out. From our perspective, this is not really a third way; it’s just the first way. We just want to follow Jesus, and it is that simple.
Keller rejected the idea that “truth is found in the middle between extremes.” Instead, he insisted that “Christians should never seek a middle ground for its own sake.” His foundational argument was that Christians should “take positions that do justice to the Biblical teaching, regardless of whether the world sees you—in its categories—as an extremist or a moderate.”
One could reasonably amalgamate these three definitions into one by stating that the third way is “to follow Jesus” by “do[ing] justice to Biblical teaching,” which will require a rejection of the “either/or political or cultural alternatives on offer in our society.” This is what I will refer to as the motte of the third way—a nearly unassailable position that can conveniently be used whenever the third way is under attack: “Hey man, we just want to follow Jesus!”
Yet what does the third way look like outside this definition, outside of its motte? What does the third way look like in practice? What does the third way look like when its proponents are cultivating it in the bailey?
Briefly, the motte-and-bailey fallacy is an analogy where the motte represents a fortified, unfalsifiable, unassailable position on some idea. The bailey is the area surrounding the motte and represents parts of the position that are much harder to defend when challenged. When people get challenged on the parts of the position arising from the bailey, they will retreat to the motte and insist that the motte’s position is the only position they are promulgating. The fallacy is that the motte’s position and the positions cultivated in the bailey are treated as if they were the same position, when in fact they are not.
Gavin Ortlund demands steel manned critiques of third way. “Let it be critiqued at its best.” In following this directive, I will look to Tim Keller who is often associated with third way thinking and favorably cited in arguments defending the third way.
In 2018, Keller wrote an op-ed for the New York Times with the title, “How Do Christians Fit Into the Two-Party System? They Don’t.” Four years later, and just prior to his death in 2023, he published a long white paper titled The Decline and Renewal of the American Church. In this paper, he outlines his vision for how the American church can be renewed. To do this, he overviews four “zones” that evangelical Christians generally fall into (Zones 1 – 4), he splits two in half (Zone 2a and 2b; Zone 3a and 3b), and then argues that the renewal of the American church will come primarily from Zone 2b and Zone 3a. This op-ed and long paper (hereafter, “zones paper”) demonstrate how the third way, when it is outside of its motte and is being cultivated in its bailey, has serious problems. It may be easy to retreat to the motte when the third way is called out—“We just want to follow Jesus”—but proponents of the third way should be forced to defend how it is enacted in practice, especially by its leading figures.
I specifically chose Keller’s op-ed because the subject matter is based on third-way thinking, a good summary of Keller’s thinking, and is still cited favorably when discussing the third way. Keller’s zones paper further illustrates the way Keller thought one could choose a “third way” (via the Zone of Renewal).
Cultivating Acceptance of Left Framing
Outside of its motte, the third way endorses and promotes left-framing on issues. Keller’s op-ed is a clear example of this: Nearly all the examples in the op-ed shade left and are based on issues that are often perceived to be left-coded. Over and over and over again, in a short op-ed, Keller discusses “the poor” and “racism” as his examples. When he discusses a specific example of a “man from Mississippi who was a conservative Republican,” he notes how this man was “humbled and chastened” because he realized that even his “socialist” friends were “grounded in their Christian convictions.” Why not pick an example of a man from New York City that becomes “humbled and chastened” because he realizes that even his “strongly conservative” friends were “grounded in their Christian convictions”? Also, think about this specific example Keller uses: It not only warms the reader up to left-leaning things, it warms them up to an extreme of leftism: socialism! Of all the examples Keller could have used, he chose this one.
Later in the op-ed, Keller does mention an example of a right-leaning issue (“sex is only for marriage”), yet he again runs this issue through a left lens: “Christians should be committed to racial justice and the poor, but also to the understanding that sex is only for marriage and for nurturing family. One of those views seems liberal and the other looks oppressively conservative.” Did you catch it? “One of those views seems liberal and the other looks oppressively conservative.” The liberal view is described as passive and normal, but the conservative view is described as aggressive and abnormal, again illustrating the left-framing.
The zones from Keller’s The Decline and Renewal of the American Church paper are also left-framed or coded. For example, in Zone 1, which Keller describes as the Fundamentalism zone, Keller’s first words are, “Anti- any talk of social justice.” This sentence is left leaning for multiple reasons. First, the sentence is framed from a negative perspective. Similar to those who describe prolife as “anti-abortion,” framing justice as anti- social justice is to accept the left’s framing of the issue.
Second, social justice’s opposite is traditional justice, and Thomas Sowell goes through much detail to describe the “inherent incompatibility” of these two types of justice. In one instance, Sowell equates social justice with envy. He also wrote a book called Social Justice Fallacies. Is Sowell a Fundamentalist? The reader must be “believing in systemic racism and structural injustice” just to enter Keller’s Zone of Renewal—ideas Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Walter Williams, Voddie Baucham (and so forth) would take issue with. And, of course, “fundamentalist,” in our culture, is an inherently negative label that implies “evil” attitudes or posture according to a leftist moral frame: intolerance, rigidity, anachronism, etc.
The point in all this is that the framing takes on a left bias when it talks of justice by the term “social justice” instead of “traditional justice,” or simply, justice. Keller could have just as easily framed Zone 1 as “pro justice,” but he did not. He chose instead to adopt left-coded terminology, and was not ignorant of the implications of said terminology. (In his 2010 book, Generous Justice, Keller cast “evangelism” and “social justice” as “inseparable.”)
This brings me to another example of left-bias in Keller’s zones. In Zone 1, Keller mentions that these people are “anti-vax.” Being anti-vax in the post-Covid era is right-coded, just like being “pro-science” is left-coded. Keller mentions the pandemic when discussing Zone 1. For all the remaining Zones—Zones 2a, 2b, 3a, 3b, and 4—Keller does not bring up the pandemic nor vaccination status. In order to be consistent in his comparison of the groups, Keller would need to thread positions on the vax throughout the zones. For example, by Zone 4, would these people be described like this: “Take every vaccination and booster possible. Are first in line to do so!”? We do not know, because again, vaccination status is only mentioned in Zone 1. Not properly threading the vaccination status throughout the zones is evidence of bias alone, but the way the vaccination status is described is also negative (“anti-vax”) compared to positive (e.g., “pro-choice,” “pro-bodily autonomy,” etc.), again illustrating the left-bias of the description.
From these examples it should be evident that, outside of the motte descriptions of the third way, the acceptance and promotion of left-leaning values is markedly apparent when cultivating in the bailey of the third way.
Cultivating Moral Equivalency
Outside of its motte, when the third way is not endorsing and promoting left-leaning values, the third way engages in moral equivalency between political issues of the right and left. I am fully aware that proponents of the third way will insist the third way is not engaging in moral equivalency, but this is a motte position, and there is plenty of evidence of moral equivalency found in the bailey.
Implicitly in both the op-ed and the zones paper, Keller morally equivocates racial issues with family issues. For example, as we have already seen in the op-ed, Keller compares “racial justice” with “sex is only for marriage,” implicitly morally equating the two issues while keeping them separate. In the zones paper, Keller compares the “traditional family and sexuality” with “race and justice.” The idea here—although not explicitly stated—is to morally equivocate an issue typically associated with the left (racial justice) with an issue typically associated with the right (the traditional family).
There are other examples of moral equivocation from the zones paper. For example, Keller describes people in Zone 1 as “[m]ilitant,” and uses the same description for people in Zone 4. In other words, those in Zone 1 are morally equivalent to those in Zone 4, they are just on opposite ends of the value spectrum. Keller makes a case for moral equivalency explicitly: “Some have with fairness said that this group [Zone 4] is as militant and inflexible as the fundamentalists they so fear.”
Two other examples, outside of Keller, help demonstrate how the third way—in its bailey—cultivates moral equivalency. First, J. D. Greear, in the same video acknowledging the “problematic moral equivocation of the so-called third way,” almost immediate follows this up by saying,
“You see, all my life, I was warned about the danger of the left ditch on the Christian road: liberalism…but nobody ever mentioned the right ditch, which is Christless conservatism. It’s like that old Scottish Proverb says, ‘For every one mile of road, you got two miles of ditch.’”
Although Greear insists we should not equivocate the two (motte), this is precisely what he is doing (bailey). Both sides are described as ditches, both are described as being on opposite sides of a middle road, and both ditches are described as harmful. It would be more convincing if Greear had said that on one side was a cliff, and the other side you have a ditch. In this instance, I would be forced to concede that Greear is not morally equivocating the two. But this is not what Greear said. He described both sides using the same term: ditch.
The second example comes from Gavin Ortlund, who, soon after saying it was a caricature to claim the third way engages in moral equivalency, said this:
“But there’s a lot in the New Testament that corresponds to those words: gentleness, kind to all, patient. Lot of our discourse now does not look like that. Those are some of the issues on the right we’re seeing. Of course, you also see them on the left. That’s the point. That’s the point. And all we’re saying is we want to follow Jesus.”
This statement morally equivocates the left and the right. The left is bad at gentleness, and so is the right. The left is not kind to all, and neither is the right. The left is not patient, and neither is the right. If Ortlund wants people to take him seriously that the third way does not morally equivocate, he should not engage in the practice in the exact same video.
Cultivating Caricatures
Outside of its motte, the third way cultivates caricatures. In his op-ed, Keller asserted that Christians are “pushed toward two main options”: They will either “withdraw and try to be apolitical” or they will “fully adopt one party’s whole package in order to have [their] place at the table.” Keller states, “Neither of these options is valid.” Gavin Ortlund, just after chiding critics of the third way for only attacking its caricature, says something similar: “There’s this all or nothing, package deal way of thinking.” Ortlund goes on to explain that he is prolife yet he also “believe[s] in climate change” to illustrate how he is not an all or nothing, package deal type of guy.
After recounting a story of how Donald Trump was “loudly booed and heckled” at a recent TPUSA conference because of Trump’s stance on abortion, Jamie Bambrick, in an excellent video related to the topic of this article, stated, “And so while it’s true that we can’t equate one political party’s platform with Christianity 100%, there’s also not anybody doing that. That’s not what Christians on the right are doing.”
To say that one must accept the third way because one’s only alternatives are to “fully adopt one party’s whole package” (emphases added) or be “apolitical” is a sneaky way of forcing you into a false dilemma. You can reject this false dilemma by understanding that you can still get a seat at the table of a political party while also not fully endorsing everything that party does or stands for.
Again, it is a caricature to paint a picture that rejection of the third way means one must be either apolitical or fully onboard with one party. This oversimplifies the analysis in the extreme, yet the argument is still used because it conveniently allows its proponents to then insist their alternative option must thus be correct. While being frustrated with caricaturing the third way, the third way engages in its own caricaturing.
Non-thinking
Outside of its motte, the third way cultivates non-thinking. For example, as discussed earlier, one of the main points that Keller makes in his op-ed is that “Christians are pushed toward two main options.” Christians can be “apolitical” or accept “one party’s whole package.” Yet in Keller’s zones paper, Christians can fall into six different places (Zones 1, 2a, 2b, 3a, 3b, or 4). So, in effect, Keller argues we are forced to accept the whole package from the op-ed, but yet we only need to accept one portion of the package from the zones paper. This inconsistent narrative is indicative of non-thinking and instead is indicative of arguments of convivence.
Another instance of non-thinking is when issues are contrasted with each other when they should not be. For example, in Zone 2a, Keller says, “Much more stress on traditional family and sexuality than on race and justice.” Here, as in other places (e.g., in discussing Keller’s book Generous Justice, John G. West claims Keller’s “mentions of family breakdown were glancing and dismissive”), Keller appears to contrast the traditional family with racial issues instead of showing a clear link between the two. For example, Thomas Sowell has shown how marriage lowers the poverty rate for blacks compared to “Americans as a whole,” leading Sowell to ask, “If black family poverty is caused by ‘systemic racism,’ do racists make an exception for blacks who are married? Do racists either know or care whether blacks are married?” In other words, there is a clear link between racial issues and the traditional family, and they should not be contrasted with each other. To think well is to understand that care for the traditional family is care for racial issues.
To step outside of Keller again for further illustrative examples, writing for The Gospel Coalition, J. D. Greear argues that Christians should “[p]reach 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.” But we cannot both (a) preach the whole counsel of God and (b) only preach the essential message. Greear’s sentence is self-refuting. It is emotive but thoughtless. Neither can we (a) preach the whole counsel of God and (b) have this entire counsel be easily accepted by others. Some of the counsel of God is hard to accept, especially at first. Greear admits this earlier on in the article, stating, “We’re to preach the whole counsel of God, in every situation, regardless of its unpopularity…” Regardless of its unpopularity! This is all very confused. Given Greear’s other commentary on social and political issues, he seems to have a one way (rather than third way) street in mind. We should not preach, or at least soften, what is offensive to holders of left-coded positions on race, sex, and “social justice.” Has Greear instructed Christians to be similarly sensitive to right-coded positions?
Cultivating Circular Reasoning
Outside of its motte, the third way is cultivated in a soil of circular reasoning. Proponents of the third way will say that its critics might be correct, but these critics are not attacking the real third way. Just as real communism has never been tried, the real third way apparently has never been tried either.
When a skeptic of the third way searches for how proponents of third way define the term, the skeptic will find answers according to the motte, something along the lines of “following Jesus and scripture.” The skeptic will provide evidence that this is not how the third way is enacted in practice. Then proponents of the third way will make videos or write articles stating that those enactments of the third way are not enacting the real third way. And so, the skeptic will go back and see how the third way is defined, finding again that it is defined according to the motte, something along the lines of “following Jesus and scripture.” The skeptic will provide evidence that this is not how the third way is enacted in practice. And then proponents of the third way will make videos or write articles stating that those enactments of the third way are not enacting the real third way. And so, the skeptic will go back and see how the third way is defined . . . and around and around they go. It appears one will recognize the real third way because it will be following Jesus, and one will know it is following Jesus because it is the real third way.
The third way sounds reasonable when defined in its motte, but when examined in practice, including examining its leading figures, the stratagem found is evidently confused, contradictory, condescending, and not very convincing. When enacted in practice, the third way cultivates acceptance of left-leaning framing, moral equivalency, caricatures, non-thinking, and circular reasoning. No matter how hard its proponents insist that the third way is simply about following Jesus, when what it cultivates in the bailey is examined, the third way is anything but this insistence.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
