The Last Word From Evangelical Innovator Timothy Keller
(ANALYSIS) By count of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, the famous evangelist preached to some 215 million people in 185 countries during mass revival meetings between 1947 and 2005. People have naturally discussed who his successor as leader of U.S. evangelical Protestantism might be.
Well, Graham was incomparable in his special role. But if a strategic successor has existed, instead of another globe-trotting celebrity, one could make a case for a clever and thoughtful local pastor, Timothy Keller. The final book by this founder of New York City’s remarkable Redeemer Presbyterian Church, “The Stories We Live By,” was just published posthumously by Zondervan.
This intriguing and original work’s co-author is his son Michael, who leads one of the city’s six Redeemer congregations that now exist. The two worked on the book during the three years between the father’s pancreatic cancer diagnosis and his death in 2023. The ideas are largely Timothy’s, the prose largely Michael’s.
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Before turning to the book, here’s a bit about Timothy’s significance for those unfamiliar with his career. Keller was baptized Catholic, raised Lutheran, influenced profoundly by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship while at Bucknell University, earned a divinity degree at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and later a doctorate at Westminster Theological Seminary. He was ordained by the conservative Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) in 1975 and led a church in the small city of Hopewell, Virginia.
Then, in 1989, 15 believers began prayer meetings about New York’s spiritual needs, and the PCA assigned Keller to a task that others had declined: to “plant” a new congregation in seemingly unpromising Manhattan. By year’s end, worship attendance had already reached 250. Eventually, 5,000 or more would attend multiple services. Early on, Redeemer launched innovative charities and vocational ministries and began planting daughter congregations.
Though evangelicalism was expanding in the suburbs, Keller and his colleagues chose to replicate Christianity’s early centuries, when cities anchored evangelism and renewal of culture. Redeemer City to City, a $25 million-a-year urban outreach founded in 2001, has trained 219,000 church leaders in a network of cities across North America and internationally to plant or “replant” 2,800 local congregations that apply Keller’s evangelistic strategy.
Redeemer cooperates with churches of many types from many denominations, but Keller’s own congregation differed from many founded by American evangelicals this past generation. He was devoted to his denomination and Reformation roots even as looser independent churches proliferated. He came to prefer the label “orthodox” when “evangelical” became identified with Republican partisanship. Instead of stage bands and spotlights, his worship style was formal, and the music classical.
Most important, Keller’s pulpit manner avoided high-decibel emotionalism and mingled Bible immersion with wide reading and cultural analysis to address, in clear and approachable terms, the honest questions and anxieties of his clientele of yuppies, or young urban professionals. Keller’s near-magical persuasive skill on the ground in Gotham is reflected in his many writings.
It will be hard for the Kellers’ new book to match the impact of Timothy’s best-selling classic “The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism,” issued in 2008 when attacks by the “New Atheists” were a minor sensation. Publishers Weekly deemed Keller’s arguments “intellectually compelling,” and The Washington Post found this “a tight, accessible case for reasoned religious belief.”
That pretty much sums up the new book, whose subtitle is “Seven Cultural Myths That Fail Us and the Story That Never Will” (the last phrase referring to traditional Christianity). In each case, the Kellers portray a modern cultural “story” so appealing and seemingly self-evident that people absorb it without reflection. The authors analyze what’s attractive and worth valuing about each, diagnose the concept’s limitations, and propose why the Christian faith and life is the most satisfying and realistic option. Here’s a mere glimpse of some themes the Kellers develop as answers to current loneliness, confusion, depression and anxiety.
“Be true to yourself” above all. Self-discovery and liberation thus supplant old-fashioned duties toward others (or God). Think “you be you” or Sinatra’s “My Way.” Belief in each person’s unique worth is actually praiseworthy, but this attitude can create psychological ills because we still need other people’s validation and a moral framework. Better if self-worth is not “achieved” but “received,” believing we are persons created “in God’s image.”
To heal society, “take power from the ‘Bad’ and give it to the ‘Good.’” It’s correct that unequal socioeconomic power is a problem, but this solution is naïve. Thanks to sin, too often the oppressed, upon winning power, turn into oppressors. Also, this ignores necessary forgiveness. The wiser approach is well-designed Christian transformation focused on how power is to be used.
“Live free,” though don’t harm others. Yes, liberty is precious. Consider the past plight of slaves, women and political dissidents. But sensible restrictions are also essential and beneficial. Life-affirming freedom comes first from awareness of being children of the loving God.
Morality is not absolute but “socially constructed,” though we should seek justice. It’s healthy to want a fair and just world. But where do these moral standards come from? “Self-authorizing” beliefs are inadequate and often incoherent. Our most wholesome ideals reflect the character of God.
Only science and reason tell us what is true and fix problems. True, science and technology have “improved billions of lives.” And yet we must rely upon other sources of truth to deal with the reality of morals, human rights, beauty and love. Actually, it was the biblical belief in an “orderly” world that historically energized the modern pursuit of scientific truth.
“Figure out what makes you happy” and pursue this regardless. Of course happiness is desirable, but the last self-regarding phrase “fails to deliver” on its promises. Nor does this attitude show how we confront inevitable failure, suffering and death. Christianity says we don’t need to love good material things any less, but to “love God more than anything else.”
History always progresses “toward more liberty and prosperity and away from religion and oppression.” We should celebrate that humanity has never enjoyed such wealth and opportunities. But psychological well-being is often lacking, and modern education cannot supplant the hatred, greed, pride and injustice caused by sin. Lasting human hope is possible “because God has promised to heal and redeem all of creation.”
Richard N. Ostling was a longtime religion writer with The Associated Press and with Time magazine, where he produced 23 cover stories, as well as a Time senior correspondent providing field reportage for dozens of major articles. He is a recipient of the Religion News Association's Lifetime Achievement Award. He has interviewed such personalities as Billy Graham, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI); ranking rabbis and Muslim leaders; and authorities on other faiths; as well as numerous ordinary believers. He writes a bi-weekly column for Religion Unplugged.