A second paradox: Keller was a popular pastor who was allergic to the celebrity he attracted. His books, such as \u201cThe Prodigal God\u201d and \u201cThe Meaning of Marriage,\u201d among many others, have sold millions of copies. But he was enigmatic and avoided the spotlight. An editor of the Christian magazine World once quipped that he could organize an interview with Keller \u201cas easily as I can set one up with Vladimir Putin.\u201d<\/p>\n
Keller \u201cwas not that great showman preacher,\u201d says Collin Hansen, editor of the Gospel Coalition, a network of Presbyterian and Reformed churches. He was introverted and cerebral in a way that Billy Graham, for all his strengths, never was. But Keller\u2019s \u201csense of irony,\u201d his \u201cprofessorial approach,\u201d appealed to New Yorkers.<\/p>\n
Keller insisted that Christian evangelism be winsome, which made him polarizing\u2014perhaps the third paradox. \u201cI fear that anxious evangelicals hope that if they can just be grace-centered enough\u201d and \u201cserve the community, and make clear that they are not Republicans, then unbelievers will turn to Christ,\u201d Kevin DeYoung, a fellow Reformed pastor, recently wrote of Keller\u2019s bent.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a fair point. Keller warned that Christians shouldn\u2019t be politically monolithic. He worried about American evangelicalism\u2019s association with the political right. But there is also the risk, which Keller realized, that Christian believers become entangled with the obsessions of the political left: sexual identity, racial grievance, Marxian redistributionism and so on. Progressive Christianity is the mirror image of the moral majoritarianism of the 1980s, and it will end no better for the church\u2019s public witness.<\/p>\n
Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n Timothy J. Keller, pastor, theologian, student of beauty. A valedictory for the single most formative influence of my early adult life. https:\/\/t.co\/oeYnzIYT9S<\/a><\/p>\n — Kate Bachelder Odell (@katebachwsj) May 24, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n