Rev. Timothy Keller, pioneering Manhattan evangelist, dies at age 72

Rev. Timothy J. Keller, a best-selling author and theorist of Christianity who himself performed a modern miracle by establishing a Manhattan theologically orthodox church that attracted thousands of young professional followers, died Friday at his home in Manhattan. He turned 72.

His death was announced by Redeemer City to City, an organization affiliated with Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Mr Keller announced on Twitter in December 2021 that he had stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

Mr. Keller, whose only previous experience had been in the pulpit in a working-class parish in a rural parish in Virginia, moved to New York in 1987 with his wife and three sons and, without fire or brimstone, began what New York magazine hyperbolized it as “close to a theological suicide mission – to create a strictly conservative Christian church in the heart of Sodom.”

Colleagues, Mr. Keller recalled in his bestseller “The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism” (2008), “were incredulous when I explained that the beliefs of the New Church would be the orthodox, historical teachings of Christianity – the inerrancy of the Bible, the deity of Christ, the need for spiritual regeneration (the New Birth) – all doctrines considered hopelessly dated by the majority of New Yorkers. always hanging in the air.

“Nevertheless,” he continued, “we launched the Redeemer Presbyterian Church, and by the end of 2007 it had grown to over 5,000 in attendance and spawned more than a dozen subsidiary churches in the immediate metropolitan area.”

Today the church has several locations in Manhattan, although the main one is on West 83rd Street near Amsterdam Avenue; the others are on the Lower West Side, on the West Side at Lincoln Square, on the Upper East Side, and in East Harlem.

In addition to those who personally heard him preach at one of those churches, thousands downloaded Mr. Keller’s weekly sermons from the Savior’s website. His dozens of books have been translated into 25 languages ​​and have sold an estimated 25 million copies.

“Fifty Years From Now,” the magazine Christianity today wrote in 2006, “If evangelical Christians are widely known for their love of cities, their commitment to mercy and justice, and their love for their neighbors, Tim Keller will be remembered as a pioneer of the new urban Christians.”

Evangelicals belong to a number of denominations, but share a theology of salvation through faith in Christ alone. Mr. Keller’s ministry was unlike that of much better-known figures in evangelicalism: he lacked a mainstream television platform and avoided being identified with a single political vision.

Instead, he delivered focused, professorial messages — in person, on podcasts, on blogs, and in print — in conversational tones that evoked CS Lewis, the philosophers Michael Foucault and Thomas Kuhn, the 18th-century Japanese poet Issa, and even Woody Allen.

He viewed homosexuality as incompatible with scripture and premarital sex and abortion as sins. “I’m not going to pressure you to stop having sex outside of marriage,” he told The New York Times in 1998. “The logic of your relationship with Christ should move you to do it.”

In a interview with The Atlantic in 2019, he said, “What we need is a non-oppressive moral absolute. We need moral absolutes that do not turn the bearers of those moral absolutes into oppressors themselves.”

In 2017, Mr. Keller relinquished his role as senior pastor of the Redeemer Presbyterian Church and transitioned to mentoring pastors to preside in churches established around the world by the offshoot organization Savior city to citythat influences city ministries worldwide.

Redeemer Presbyterian Church also founded Hope for New Yorkan organization that deploys volunteers and distributes grants to ministries that provide social services, and the Center for Faith and Workthat integrates Christian theology with professional experience.

Mr. Keller disagreed with the widespread support largely white evangelical Americans have shown for former President Donald J. Trump and his Republican allies. “For Christians, it is just idolatry to completely align with any party,” he told The Atlantic.

And he often drew a distinction—and tried to bridge that gap—between that politically conservative American evangelicalism and the global evangelical movement.

“There exists a much greater evangelicalism, both here and around the world, that is not politically aligned,” Mr. Keller wrote in The New Yorkers in 2017, describing it as a growing multi-ethnic movement rooted in theological beliefs that are conservative on issues such as sex outside marriage and liberal on issues such as racial justice and concern for the poor.

His death elicited a statement from former President George W. Bush, a fellow evangelical Christian, who said, “I am fortunate to have known him. And I am one of many blessed to have learned from Mr. Keller’s teachings and benefited from his compassion.”

Timothy James Keller was born on September 23, 1950 in Allentown, Pa. His father, William, was a TV advertising executive. His mother, Louise (Clemente) Keller, was a nurse. They met during World War II, when William Keller was a conscientious objector assigned to care for patients in a psychiatric ward.

Tim was raised Lutheran and embraced the church through the InterVarsity Christian Communitya ministry that operated on college campuses while he attended Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, where he majored in religion.

He defined one fully formed Christian as “one who finds Christianity both rationally and intellectually credible, as well as emotionally and existentially true and satisfying.”

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1972, he went to university Westminster Theological Seminary in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, where he earned a master’s degree in divinity in 1975 and a doctorate in 1981. There he met Kathy Louise Kristy, who decided not to become a minister because female ministers were not biblical. They married in 1975.

She survives him, along with three sons, David, Michael and Jonathan; a sister, Sharon Johnson; and seven grandchildren. Michael Keller is a pastor at Redeemer Lincoln Square.

Mr. Keller served with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in Boston and was ordained there before serving as a pastor for nine years in Hopewell, Virginia, overseeing the development of new congregations in the Mid-Atlantic region for the Presbyterian Church.

When New York seemed so daunting that Mr. Keller’s first two choices for pastor rejected him, he felt compelled to take on the challenge himself.

“I just thought it was cowardly of me not to do it,” he told New York magazine. “But we had a kind of ‘sick in our stomach’ feeling every day.”

“The big bad whore of Babylon is where we went,” Ms. Keller told the magazine.

The family moved into an apartment on Roosevelt Island.

His success as a founding pastor of Redeemer in 1989 and his experience with a bout of thyroid cancer in 2002 helped dispel any doubts he had about God, he told the website First things in 2008.

He reaffirmed that belief in his 2021 Twitter post announcing his cancer diagnosis, writing, “It is endlessly comforting to have a God who is both infinitely wiser and more loving than I am. He has many good reasons for everything he does and allows me not to know, and therein lies my hope and strength.

Mr. Keller summed up the Savior’s mission in one biblical passage, Proverbs, Chapter II, verse 10: “When the righteous prosper, the city rejoiceth.”

He told The Times, “I wanted to prove that the gospel could change people even in New York.”

Shivani Gonzalez contributed reporting.