![]() In later years he was fond of calling Lewis his patron saint and quoting him on the reason to believe in God.Īfter graduating in 1972, Keller went to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He soon became convinced that Christianity was true and devoured the works of British evangelicals, especially John Stott, F. He went to college in 1968, and got involved with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in part because the Christians there seemed to care about the civil rights movement. Young Timothy went to two years of confirmation classes, but he mostly learned that religion was about being nice. He was born in September 1950, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, to parents William and Louise Clemente Keller. Keller himself heard this message as a college student at Bucknell University. “To hear that He Himself had met those demands for righteousness through the life and death of Jesus, and now there was no condemnation left for anyone who trusted in that righteousness-that was an amazingly freeing message.” The people of Manhattan “had lived their whole lives with parents, music teachers, coaches, professors, and bosses telling them to do better, be better, try harder,” Keller reflected in 2021. And then tell them that they could be free. The task of “relevance” was to identify the idols that had a hold of people’s souls. The modern creative class that he was trying to reach, however, was beset by many more pernicious sins jostling to take the place of God’s love in their lives. But when many people hear “sin,” they only think of things like sex, drugs, and maybe stealing. Keller explained to New York magazine that this was, in a way, an old-fashioned message about sin. We want to feel significant,” he preached in 2009, “and that’s why we’re working so hard and that’s the source of the evil.” Only God’s grace can satisfy their deepest longings.Īt his church in Manhattan, Keller told the nation’s cultural elites that they worshiped false gods. But they haven’t grasped that only Jesus can really fix them. Keller maintained that people are broken and they know that. He rejected culture-war antagonism and the “own the libs” approach to evangelism, and people accused him of putting too much emphasis on relevance and watering down or even betraying the truth of Christianity out of a misplaced desire for social acceptance.īut a frequent theme throughout his preaching and teaching was idolatry. Keller was frequently accused-especially in later years-of cultural accommodation. “The gospel is this,” Keller said time and again: “We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.” ![]() ![]() Keller planted and grew a Reformed evangelical congregation in Manhattan launched a church planting network cofounded The Gospel Coalition and wrote multiple best-selling books about God, the gospel, and the Christian life.Įverywhere he went, he preached sin and grace. Tim Keller, a New York City pastor who ministered to young urban professionals and in the process became a leading example for how a winsome Christian witness could win a hearing for the gospel even in unlikely places, died on Friday at age 72-three years after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. ![]()
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