KATA MATTHAION (According to Matthew)

Redeemer Times NYC Equals Orthodoxy?

After months and months of phone calls, Michael Luo--the new religion-beat writer for the New York Times--finally hunted down Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church and convinced him to cooperate for a front page article in the Sunday Times Metro Section. Most of you might be asking: Why would Keller (or any pastor) disapproave of such exposure? The truth is, Redeemer shies away from the media since it is a church of 4500 and growing.

What might be more interesting than the article itself (an article which I personally found to be a bit flat), is that Luo, an "evangelical" himself, has communicated to the Times that they need to take religion in general and "evangelicals" in particular more seriously. The Times for many years has associated evangelicals with mainstream American fundamentalism, and as a result, mocked this group of readers. But if you can recall, one of the subtexts of the article was to clearly point out Redeemer's discomfort with the term "evangelical" due to all the cultural baggage attached to it, and instead opt for the term "orthodoxy." Personally, I'm more comfortable with the term "orthodoxy" too, since it connects the church at large and Redeemer in particular to the historic Christian church of all times and all places.