Keller - We Don't Know How to Persuade, We Can Only Denounce

I hate being such a groupie, but yeah, I'm a Tim Keller groupie and yes, my heart is atwitter with the news that he has a book coming out in February.  Keller is well-known but what is less well-known is that a couple of his sons have a blog called "Name Pending."  They don't post all that much but the blog is worth looking through the archives - some very good and interesting stuff.  Here's an excerpt from a post in August of 2005, announcing the publication of Keller's new book.  I am wondering if this is the one that is coming out in February of 2008?  Regardless, Keller has some good words about the cultural impasse we find ourselves in today.  These words are reminiscent of James Davison Hunter's in Culture Wars, where Hunter pointed out that one of the most notable features of the "culture wars" is the way both sides continually talk past each other.  Here's Keller:

Do we have a secular society in which skepticism and relativism reign, making orthodox faith both exotic and deviant? Or do we have an increasingly religious social order in which fundamentalism flourishes and non-belief is stigmatized? In an unforeseen and unexpected turn of events, we have come to a cultural moment in which both secular skeptics and orthodox believers feel their existence is threatened. We have neither the western Christendom of the past nor the secular society that has been predicted for so long.We have something else entirely. Both doubt and faith are on the rise in significant, powerful ways.

On the one hand, the number of unchurched people in the U.S. and Europe is increasing rapidly. U.S. universities went from being formally Christian to being overtly secular. As a result, there are many educated circles no one knows anyone (well) who is a Christian believer. Belief in traditional religion has little foothold in the institutions of cultural power. A century ago most.

On the other hand, there has been a new surge of belief in Christianity at the same time. Churches with supposedly obsolete beliefs in an infallible Bible and miracles are growing in the U.S. and exploding in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Stanley Fish, in The Chronicle of Higher Education, thinks that even the western university will soon be influenced by a new wave of faith. “When Jacques Derrida died I was called by a reporter who wanted know what would succeed high theory and the triumvirate of race, gender, and class as the center of intellectual energy in the academy. I answered like a shot: religion.”

We have neither a religious nor a secular society—but instead a culture divided. This wasn’t supposed to happen, and it has created a crisis.

Because both doubt and belief are on the rise, our political and public discourse on matters of faith, truth and morality has become deadlocked, shrill, and deeply polarized. The culture wars are taking a great toll. Emotions and rhetoric are intense, to the point of hysteria. Those who believe in God and Christianity are out to ‘impose their beliefs on the rest of us.’ Those who don’t believe are ‘enemies of truth and purveyors of relativism and permissiveness.’ We don’t know how to reason with or persuade those with whom we disagree. We can only denounce.

What can we do about this situation?