Keller, here, defends Christianity in the face of fanatics. He tries to explain that what people think of fanatical Christians, people who loudly voice their opinions on a myriad of topics and look down on those they disagree with, are not fanatical Christians at all. He stresses that the essence of the Christian faith is not a moral improvement plan (told you they’d make poor doctors, see Character Flaws) but salvation by grace from God. He says such a notion is profoundly humbling and that the bible teaches to be humble, sensitive, empathetic, etc. He says that those thought of as fanatical Christians are in fact not Christian enough.
This is one of those sections where what Keller says is true, but it doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t mean what he wants you to think it means. He doesn’t disagree that those people commonly thought of as fanatics exist, which is good, because everyone knows they do, he just says they’re not Christian enough. However, this doesn’t remedy the problem that fanatics exist. They are still there, part of religion, and a reason to dislike it.
Keller also implies that it’s not Christianity’s fault that those people are like that. That Christianity is about forgiveness and empathy and those fanatics are just going off on their own. The problem is that the stuff the fanatics say is also in the bible, or whatever religion is in question. The notion that you are the chosen people, and everyone else is going to hell, is in there, and it provides a lush environment for fanaticism. Also, the rest of the church, the non-fanatics, provide cover for the fanatics, willingly or not. They do not separate themselves completely from them and often defend or use the fanatics selectively, when it suits them. The tacit support afforded by being the member of such a large, popular group as a religion emboldens a fanatic. In all these ways religion is still producing the fanatics, even if you believe that the fanatics are missing the point.
Further, if you think about it, Christianity does pretty much tell people to be fanatics. It’s true it also tells them to be humble and nice, but if you really believe that God is going to send someone to Hell, someone the Bible tells you to love, unless you convince them to join the church, it seems completely reasonable to do almost anything to try to convince them.
So for the reasons above, Keller’s arguments in this section are wrong, intentionally obfuscating, and also irrelevant.
A note on violence:
This section’s issue, fanaticism, is just a scaled down version of the previous section on violence. Instead of worrying about whole nations being influenced by a few fanatics, he’s concentrating on the fanatics themselves. It seems telling to me that he doesn’t use them same argument as he did in that section, that people will tracendentilize something even without god, here. He doesn’t, I suspect, because it seems obvious on this scale that it is not true. We all know examples of people who are pretty normal, nice, and fun to be around, except when it comes to religion, and it is difficult to think that if it wasn’t for religion the same would be true with those people, but the subject would be politics or philosophy or something else. This seems to strengthen my argument from that section that societies would not necessarily trancendentilize a new idea, if we could somehow abandon god.