Charlie Kirk’s assassination has fired up a long-standing evangelical wrangle about “third-wayism.” Keen to avoid being boxed in by either the right or the left, third-wayists say Christians must follow a third path. Opponents claim third-wayism always drifts, or cascades, leftward.
It is not an illuminating debate. As is so often the case, the adversaries can’t come to genuine disagreement (much less agreement) because they share a common framework. Those who attack third-wayism deploy the left-right binary as a handy weapon to gain, expand, and maintain power, to rally friends and demonize enemies, to humiliate third-wayists or club them into silence. Third-wayism is a rhetorical trick that positions the speaker as the balanced, reasonable adult in the room, calmly walking the straight path, casting scornful glances at the wreckage in the ditches on either side. But “third” is a tell: One chooses a third way in a world where two and only two other ways exist.
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