Journalists were confused by why so many “yuppie Manhattanites” would attend this “conservative evangelical” church. Yet over the decades that followed, Redeemer grew into a booming congregation of several thousand people, including many young doctors, lawyers, bankers, and artists who never considered themselves the churchgoing type. Walking the city streets, Keller was struck by how many grand historical church buildings had been repurposed as clubs, coffee shops, and condos-visible signs that New Yorkers seemed to have moved on from church. When Tim and his wife, Kathy, founded Redeemer Presbyterian Church in 1989, the prospects seemed dismal. But in all of this, two fundamental ideas propelled him: Biblical Christianity is not a political position, and secular liberalism deserves theological critique-because it is not simply how the world really works, but is itself a kind of faith. The flood of articles noting his death have remarked on the flourishing megachurch he built in supposedly godless Manhattan the hundreds of new congregations he helped plant around the world the best-selling books he wrote that made the case for Christianity to a popular audience. Keller, who died May 19 at age 72 after a battle with pancreatic cancer, was the most influential Christian apologist and evangelical leader of his generation, even if his name is unfamiliar to many secular people. Timothy Keller: American Christianity is due for a revival Just try looking at all of that through Christian lenses, and you’ll see idolatry, the worship of self: the real things that wreck our world. Don’t look away from economic or racial injustice don’t stop hating war, or stifle your anger at corrupt and lying leaders. “They didn’t get much of a response-mostly mocking and eye rolls,” Collin Hansen writes in his recent biography of Keller.īut some bystanders did bite: How could Jesus possibly be relevant when the world was on fire? Keller, manning the books table, was in his element, quietly suggesting that they set aside political categories for the moment. Instead, they set up a table nearby with a stack of Christian books and made a sign with bold lettering: The Resurrection of Jesus Christ Is Credible and Existentially Satisfying. They did not commandeer the microphone to rail at classmates about their sins even single-minded evangelicals can read a room now and then. But at the moment, he and his friends in the campus chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship were trying to decide how to participate in this tense moment, when their peers were angry and probably not interested in talking about God. Keller, a new convert to Christianity and a religion major, ordinarily would have been busy with courses in existential philosophy, Buddhism, and biblical criticism. Students were protesting in the aftermath of the Kent State shootings they crowded onto the quad, half-listening to speakers who vied for the open mic. One spring day in 1970, a tall, slightly awkward undergraduate named Timothy Keller was standing with friends on the main quadrangle of Bucknell University’s campus in central Pennsylvania.
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