Are They Woke?

What Hap­pened to Tim Keller?

Per­haps no one has done more to nar­row the gap between pro­gres­sive evan­gel­i­cal­ism and main­stream evan­gel­i­cal­ism than Tim Keller. Keller grew up in a main­line Luther­an church. As a teenag­er, dur­ing con­fir­ma­tion class, a young Luther­an cler­ic and social activist intro­duced him to a Chris­t­ian ver­sion of social lib­er­a­tion ground­ed in a “spir­it of love.” How­ev­er, the Kellers soon start­ed attend­ing a con­ser­v­a­tive Methodist church which helped rein­force their son’s more tra­di­tion­al con­cep­tion of God and the real­i­ty of hell.1 What he could not har­mo­nize as a teenager—the ethics of the New Left and ortho­dox Christianity—he start­ed learn­ing to rec­on­cile in col­lege.

While attend­ing Buck­nell Uni­ver­si­ty, in his home state of Penn­syl­va­nia, Keller learned the “reign­ing ide­olo­gies of the time” from rad­i­cal pro­fes­sors, includ­ing the “neo-Marx­ist crit­i­cal the­o­ry of the Frank­furt School.”2 He was attract­ed to this “cri­tique of Amer­i­can bour­geoisie soci­ety,” as well as social activism. Keller described him­self and fel­low stu­dents as want­i­ng to “change the world” by reject­ing things like “the mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex” and “a soci­ety of inequities and mate­ri­al­ism.” Instead, they pro­mot­ed “peace and under­stand­ing,” attend­ed peace and civ­il rights march­es, and shut down the col­lege to debate the moral­i­ty of the Cam­bo­di­an inva­sion in 1970.3 Though things like seg­re­ga­tion and “sys­temic vio­lence … against blacks” both­ered Keller before col­lege, they became an occa­sion for him to doubt Chris­tian­i­ty itself after his arrival.4

It was hard enough for the young stu­dent to main­tain his faith while reg­u­lar­ly hear­ing philo­soph­i­cal objec­tions to it, liv­ing a “dou­ble life,” and strug­gling with deep depres­sion.5 There were times he won­dered if he was “just a cog in a machine” deter­mined by his envi­ron­ment.6 How­ev­er, the “spir­i­tu­al cri­sis” he expe­ri­enced as a stu­dent was also the result of a ten­sion between his more activist “sec­u­lar friends” and Chris­tians who con­sid­ered Mar­tin Luther King Jr. to be a social threat.7 Keller had a dilem­ma.

While he was emo­tion­al­ly drawn to “social jus­tice,” its prac­ti­tion­ers were “moral rel­a­tivists” who could not ground their con­vic­tions in an objec­tive stan­dard. When Chris­t­ian evan­ge­list John Guest came to cam­pus and bold­ly chal­lenged pro­tes­tors for their inabil­i­ty to moral­ly rea­son, Keller was there.8 At the same time, he was dis­en­chant­ed with “ortho­dox Chris­tian­i­ty” which he believed sup­port­ed things like seg­re­ga­tion and apartheid.9 For­tu­nate­ly, for Keller, the evan­gel­i­cal left offered a ver­sion of the faith which mar­ried the ethics of the New Left with the meta­phys­i­cal foun­da­tion Chris­tian­i­ty pro­vid­ed. He began to real­ize he could have both.

Keller wrote that things began to change for him after find­ing a “band of broth­ers” who ground­ed their con­cern for jus­tice in the char­ac­ter of God.10 He became part of a “cam­pus fel­low­ship” spon­sored by Inter­Var­si­ty which reflect­ed the coun­ter­cul­ture mind­set of Buck­nell by keep­ing their min­istry non-tra­di­tion­al, “spon­ta­neous,” and anti-insti­tu­tion­al. It was there Keller first tru­ly “came to Christ.”11 He also learned to nav­i­gate the cul­tur­al bat­tle between peo­ple against “com­mie pinkos” “rab­ble-rous­ing in the street” and the rad­i­cals who protest­ed on those streets.

In 1970, Keller heard a mes­sage which rev­o­lu­tion­ized his approach to polit­i­cal issues. Some of his friends attend­ed InterVarsity’s Mis­sions Con­fer­ence called “Urbana 70″ where the Harlem evan­ge­list, Tom Skin­ner, spoke about a “rev­o­lu­tion­ary” Jesus who was incom­pat­i­ble with “Amer­i­can­ism.”12 Skin­ner taught that the evan­gel­i­cal church had upheld slav­ery in the nation’s polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, and reli­gious sys­tems. While greedy land­lords paid off cor­rupt build­ing inspec­tors, police forces main­tained the “inter­ests of white soci­ety,” and the top one per­cent con­trolled the entire econ­o­my, evan­gel­i­cals were silent and even sup­port­ed the “indus­tri­al com­plex.”13 The 20-year-old Keller already res­onat­ed with the New Left cri­tique, but Skinner’s way of incor­po­rat­ing it into Chris­tian­i­ty was new for him.

His friends gave him a tape record­ing of Skinner’s talk and Keller “could not lis­ten to this ser­mon enough.”14 Skin­ner claimed that a “gospel” that did not “speak to the issue of enslave­ment,” “injus­tice,” or “inequal­i­ty” was “not the gospel.” Instead, he fused the incom­plete gospels of both “fun­da­men­tal­ists” and “lib­er­als” into a sal­va­tion which deliv­ered from both per­son­al and sys­temic evil. Jesus had come “to change the sys­tem” and Chris­tians were to preach “lib­er­a­tion to oppressed peo­ple.”15 The ser­mon astound­ed Keller. It was just the kind of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion he was wait­ing for and it left him unable to “think about pol­i­tics the same way again” after hear­ing it.16 Tom Skin­ner, how­ev­er, was not the only voice which helped Keller cul­ti­vate New Left ideas in Chris­t­ian soil.

After grad­u­at­ing from Buck­nell, Keller worked for Inter­Var­si­ty Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship in Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts, and attend­ed Gor­don-Con­well The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary where he met fel­low sem­i­nar­i­an Elward Ellis. Ellis was a stu­dent leader for Inter­Var­si­ty and had pre­vi­ous­ly been a “key leader in recruit­ing black stu­dents to attend Urbana 70 through a film that he wrote and pro­duced” enti­tled, “What Went Down at Urbana 67.”17 The film chal­lenged the notion that mis­sions was “Chris­t­ian racism” and pro­mot­ed the idea that those of non-Euro­pean descent could “preach the gospel the way it should be,” instead of the “honki­fied way of preach­ing the gospel.”18 Carl Ellis, an Inter­Var­si­ty leader who had “enlist­ed Tom Skin­ner as a speak­er” for the event, nar­rat­ed the video.19 Like Skin­ner, Elward Ellis also import­ed New Left think­ing into Chris­tian­i­ty.

Ellis intro­duced Keller to con­cepts now referred to as “sys­temic racism” and “white priv­i­lege” by show­ing him that “white folks did not have to be per­son­al­ly big­ot­ed … in order to sup­port social, edu­ca­tion­al, judi­cial, and eco­nom­ic sys­tems and cus­toms that auto­mat­i­cal­ly priv­i­leged whites over oth­ers.”20 On one occa­sion Ellis called Keller a “racist” even though he admit­ted that Keller didn’t “mean to be” or “want to be.” Ellis told Keller that he sim­ply could not “real­ly help it” since Keller was blind to his own “cul­tur­al bias­es” which he used to judge “peo­ple of oth­er races.”21 White Chris­tians, Ellis main­tained, prac­ticed dis­crim­i­na­tion by mak­ing their “cul­tur­al pref­er­ences,” such as singing and preach­ing styles, “nor­ma­tive for every­one.” White peo­ple, in gen­er­al, were also igno­rant of the hard­ships racial minori­ties under­went in nav­i­gat­ing “Euro-white cul­ture.”22 Keller glad­ly accept­ed Ellis’s “bare-knuck­led men­tor­ing about the real­i­ties of injus­tice in Amer­i­can cul­ture.”23 He now under­stood, in greater detail, cer­tain aspects of the New Left cri­tique, but still need­ed to fur­ther devel­op a Chris­t­ian response to the unjust sta­tus quo. But first, he need­ed a job.

In 1975, Tim Keller mar­ried his wife Kathy at the begin­ning of his final semes­ter at Gor­don-Con­well. After grad­u­a­tion, he was ordained in the Pres­by­ter­ian Church of Amer­i­ca (PCA) and moved to Vir­ginia where he pas­tored a church in a “blue-col­lar, South­ern town.” He also served as a region­al direc­tor of church plant­i­ng for the PCA. Some­how, in the midst of his busy sched­ule, Keller also man­aged to take cours­es from West­min­ster The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary where he earned a Doc­tor of Min­istry degree in 1981. Three years lat­er, he moved to Philadel­phia to take a job teach­ing at West­min­ster.24 It was there he met Harvie Conn, a pro­fes­sor of mis­sions who helped Keller take the next step in mar­ry­ing his social jus­tice con­cerns with his Chris­t­ian faith.

Some con­sid­ered Conn a “bit of a rad­i­cal” for chal­leng­ing the inter­pre­ta­tions of  “white Pres­by­ter­ian males” based on their alleged­ly biased cul­tur­al pre­sup­po­si­tions.25 Instead, he believed in a “con­tex­tu­al approach” he referred to as a “hermeneu­ti­cal spi­ral” for inter­pret­ing the Bible. This approach com­bined inter­pre­ta­tion and appli­ca­tion by empha­siz­ing “the cul­tur­al con­texts of the bib­li­cal text and the con­tem­po­rary read­ers” which called for a  “dia­logue between the two” in a “dynam­ic inter­play between text and inter­preters.”26 Of course, this method of inter­pre­ta­tion denied “objec­tivism” and the “clas­sic pat­tern of his­toric-gram­mat­i­cal exe­ge­sis.” Because “soci­o­log­i­cal and eco­nom­ic pre­con­cep­tions” influ­enced ones inter­pre­ta­tion of the Bible and the world, Conn affirmed, along with “lib­er­a­tion the­olo­gians,” a “need for new input from soci­ol­o­gy, eco­nom­ics, and pol­i­tics in the doing of the­ol­o­gy and mis­sions.”27 In short, Conn believed that the expe­ri­ence of social groups helped deter­mine the mean­ing and appli­ca­tion of a text. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, this approach opened the door for new ways of under­stand­ing the Bible.

Lib­er­a­tion the­ol­o­gy, which used Marx­ism as an “instru­ment of social analy­sis,” awak­ened Conn’s own con­science to the real­i­ties of oppres­sion. He believed that “a bias toward the poor, the doing of jus­tice, [and] the bat­tle against racism,” were nec­es­sary start­ing points for prop­er­ly inter­pret­ing Scrip­ture.28 After all, Jesus, who Conn described as a “refugee” and “immi­grant,” “iden­ti­fied with the poor.” There­fore, mem­bers of His king­dom must also show “sol­i­dar­i­ty with the poor” in their per­son­al life and social per­spec­tive.29 Instead, White Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cals iden­ti­fied with “saints” and required the “world” to come on the church’s terms. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, Conn thought “the church must recap­ture its iden­ti­ty as the only orga­ni­za­tion in the world that exists for the sake of its non­mem­bers” and “repent” for things like neglect of the “urban poor,” “dull, rep­e­ti­tious, [and] unex­cit­ing” ser­vices, and hypocrisy.30

In order to fol­low Conn’s advice, church­es need­ed to engage in “holis­tic evan­ge­lism,” which includ­ed work­ing to elim­i­nate “war and pover­ty and injus­tice” with a “full gospel” which addressed social ques­tions.31 Char­i­ty alone was not enough.32 In fact, the gospel pos­sessed its own “polit­i­cal pro­gram based on its own analy­sis of the glob­al real­i­ty of man.” Conn even believed that “cer­tain socioe­co­nom­ic com­mit­ments [came] clos­er to cer­tain fea­tures of the gospel than oth­ers.”33 This broad­en­ing of the gospel mes­sage and evan­ge­lis­tic task includ­ed a fusion of lib­er­a­tion the­ol­o­gy, and per­haps Kuyper­ian think­ing, with evan­gel­i­cal­ism.34

Conn, who dis­par­aged “wealth and white­ness” and com­pared Wall Street work­ers with pros­ti­tutes, cer­tain­ly had lit­tle affin­i­ty for “cap­i­tal­ism,” which he believed pro­vid­ed “myths” for under­stand­ing “social needs.” At the same time, the “Marx­ist tool” was only use­ful inso­far as it remained sub­servient to the “Lord­ship of Christ.”35 Lib­er­a­tion the­olo­gians “dis­tort­ed” the role of the church by “mak­ing it into rev­o­lu­tion.” But, they also chal­lenged the “hid­den ide­olo­gies” of “con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cals,” such as pietism and pri­va­ti­za­tion, and could help “refine [their] com­mit­ment to the gospel.” Conn believed the prob­lem with most evan­gel­i­cals was they gave “the sal­va­tion of souls top pri­or­i­ty and the con­cern for social jus­tice only sec­ondary and derived impor­tance.”36 Instead, he point­ed to mem­bers of the evan­gel­i­cal left such as Orlan­do Costas, Jim Wal­lis, John Perkins, Richard Mouw, and Ron Sider as pos­i­tive exam­ples of evan­gel­i­cals who under­stood what the title of his 1982 book, Evan­ge­lism: Doing Jus­tice and Preach­ing Grace, pro­mot­ed.37

Tim Keller per­son­al­ly admired Harvie Conn and found his writ­ings to be both “mind-blow­ing” and deeply impact­ing.38 Conn’s most famous con­tri­bu­tions to mis­sions were his writ­ings on urban min­istry. By using insights from “urban soci­ol­o­gy, urban anthro­pol­o­gy, and bib­li­cal the­ol­o­gy,” Conn showed that cities were not the imper­son­al sec­u­lar places evan­gel­i­cals thought them to be.39 Actu­al­ly, “the city” car­ried with it a spe­cial escha­to­log­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance. Since the final chap­ter in human his­to­ry cul­mi­nat­ed with the New Jerusalem, it rep­re­sent­ed a return to Eden. Tem­po­ral cities reflect­ed aspects of both Eden and the restora­tion of Christ as places to “cul­ti­vate the earth,” “live in safe­ty and secu­ri­ty,” and “meet God.”40 Scrip­ture taught that Jesus came to “redeem the city,” and it was the church’s job to join this spe­cial “king­dom sto­ry.”41 Conn’s strat­e­gy for evan­ge­liz­ing urban cen­ters involved focus­ing on social groups, as opposed to indi­vid­u­als, and pro­mot­ing cross-cul­tur­al inter­ac­tions which served to help elim­i­nate “racism, injus­tice, and dis­crim­i­na­tion.”42 Keller res­onat­ed with Conn’s ideas.

While teach­ing at West­min­ster, Keller devel­oped his dis­tinc­tive­ly Dutch Reformed approach to mis­sions and apolo­get­ics under the influ­ence of Conn.43 The “life-chang­ing impact” Conn had on him man­i­fest­ed itself in 1989 when Keller moved from Philadel­phia with his wife and three sons to start Redeemer Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Man­hat­tan. Keller wrote he would “nev­er, ever, have been open to the idea of church plant­i­ng in New York City if it were not for the books and exam­ple of Harvie Conn.”44 In fac­ing the chal­lenges of urban min­istry, Keller appealed to many of Conn’s teach­ings includ­ing the pri­or­i­ty of cul­tur­al con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion, the hermeneu­ti­cal spi­ral, and the escha­to­log­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of “the city.”45 Like Conn, Keller viewed influ­enc­ing the city as a way of influ­enc­ing the broad­er cul­ture. He accept­ed Conn’s recon­fig­u­ra­tion of the “cul­tur­al man­date” to fill, sub­due, and rule the earth, as an “urban man­date.”46 Per­haps, most impor­tant for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es, Keller also deeply imbibed Conn’s aware­ness of “sys­temic injus­tice” and the themes sur­round­ing his pro­posed Chris­t­ian solu­tion.47

Like most lead­ers of the ear­ly evan­gel­i­cal left, Keller’s main cri­tique of Marx­ism was its mate­ri­al­ism, not its moral claims. Karl Marx’s solu­tions were incor­rect because he ground­ed them in athe­ism and ignored the real­i­ty of human sin.48 How­ev­er, despite these major flaws, Keller believed Marx­ist hearts were in the right place. He stat­ed in a ser­mon at Redeemer:

The peo­ple I read who were the dis­ci­ples of Marx were not vil­lains. They were not fools. They cared about peo­ple… there are vast pop­u­la­tions, mil­lions of peo­ple, who have been in absolute serf­dom and peas­antry and pover­ty for years and years, and there’s no way they’re going to get out. There’s no upward mobil­i­ty. See, the peo­ple who read Marx said, ‘We have to do some­thing about this.’ They weren’t fools.49

Keller also sin­gled Karl Marx out as the only “major thinker,” oth­er than God him­self, who “held up the com­mon work­er” with a high view of labor.50 Unfor­tu­nate­ly, for Marx and New Left thinkers down­stream, like Ronald Dworkin, R. D. Laing, and Jean-Paul Sartre, their moral claims could not be jus­ti­fied apart from the moral foun­da­tion Chris­tian­i­ty pro­vid­ed which had a “basis” for racial, social, and inter­na­tion­al jus­tice.51 Like pro­gres­sive evan­gel­i­cals before him, Keller addressed this prob­lem by com­bin­ing aspects of New Left think­ing with Chris­tian­i­ty.

From Keller’s per­spec­tive, eco­nom­ics was a zero-sum game. Impov­er­ished chil­dren suf­fered because of an “inequitable dis­tri­b­u­tion” of “goods and oppor­tu­ni­ties,” not just a lack of them. There­fore, Chris­tians who failed to share with the needy, were not only dis­play­ing “stingi­ness,” but “injus­tice” itself. For believ­ers, this kind of work, unlike “char­i­ty,” was not option­al. In fact, fail­ing to share with the poor was tan­ta­mount to rob­bery because jus­tice involved giv­ing peo­ple their “rights” which includ­ed things like  “access to oppor­tu­ni­ties,” “finan­cial resources,” “access to edu­ca­tion, legal assis­tance, [and] invest­ment in job oppor­tu­ni­ties.” The prin­ci­ple of “pri­vate prop­er­ty,” how­ev­er, was not an “absolute” right.52

In 2010, Keller told Chris­tian­i­ty Today, “It’s bib­li­cal that we owe the poor as much of our mon­ey as we can pos­si­bly give away.” Using the lan­guage of moral oblig­a­tion, he implied that the “have-nots,” on the basis of their need, pos­sessed a legit­i­mate claim to resources not dis­trib­uted to them which belonged to the “haves.” The church’s job was to address these inequities by not only meet­ing needs, but also address­ing “the con­di­tions and social struc­tures” that led to such needs in the first place. Keller point­ed to lib­er­a­tion the­olo­gian Gus­ta­vo Gutiérrez’s teach­ing on God’s pref­er­ence for the poor, and pro­gres­sive evan­gel­i­cal John Perkin’s teach­ing on “redis­tri­b­u­tion” as pos­i­tive exam­ples. He encour­aged church­es to get involved in “direct relief, indi­vid­ual devel­op­ment, com­mu­ni­ty devel­op­ment, racial rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, and social reform” which chal­lenged and changed “social sys­tems.”53

In Keller’s mod­el, the gospel itself became the basis for Chris­tians to do this “restora­tive and redis­trib­u­tive jus­tice.”54 It was both a response to the gospel, and a means by which believ­ers attract­ed unbe­liev­ers to Chris­tian­i­ty. Accord­ing to Keller, this was not a new devel­op­ment either. He trans­lat­ed some Old Tes­ta­ment pas­sages using the term “social jus­tice” in the place of words that, in oth­er trans­la­tions, sim­ply con­veyed “right­eous­ness” or “jus­tice.” God, in Keller’s mind, charged Old Tes­ta­ment Israel to “cre­ate a cul­ture of social jus­tice.” The appli­ca­tion of this com­mand, in the Mosa­ic law, was designed to reduce “unjust” eco­nom­ic dis­par­i­ties between social groups. Accord­ing to “the prophets,” “great dis­par­i­ties” result­ed, at least in part, from a “self­ish indi­vid­u­al­ism” over­com­ing “con­cern for the com­mon good.”55

In con­trast, Jesus almost sound­ed like a “social jus­tice rad­i­cal activist” when he instruct­ed sell­ing pos­ses­sions and giv­ing to the poor in the Ser­mon on the Mount.56 Chris­tians who under­stood God’s grace the best, were the “most sen­si­tive to the social inequities,” and church­es who were true to the gospel were “just as involved in social jus­tice issues as in bring­ing peo­ple to rad­i­cal con­ver­sion.” 57

Keller’s analy­sis for help­ing Chris­tians bat­tle dis­par­i­ties went deep­er than just eco­nom­ic fac­tors. Pow­er rela­tion­ships were also unequal. In his suf­fer­ing, Jesus iden­ti­fied not only with the “poor,” but also the “mar­gin­al­ized” and “oppressed.”58 The “sub­sti­tu­tion­ary atone­ment” involved Jesus los­ing His “pow­er” which, in turn, inspired Chris­tians to be “rad­i­cal agent[s] for social change” by giv­ing up theirs.59 The peo­ple of God were com­mand­ed to “admin­is­ter true jus­tice” to “groups [which] had no social pow­er,” which in mod­ern times Keller expand­ed to include refugees, migrant work­ers, home­less, many sin­gle par­ents, and the elder­ly.60 Much of his ser­mons on pow­er rela­tion­ships incor­po­rat­ed the teach­ings of Michel Fou­cault, who, accord­ing to Keller, was a “post­mod­ern the­o­rist,” “social­ist,” and “French decon­struc­tion­ist.”61

Keller stat­ed that “the prob­lem with the world” was “the way we use the truth” for the pur­pose of get­ting “pow­er over oth­er peo­ple.” He thought Fou­cault was not only “right,” but put it bet­ter than any­one else when he said, “Truth is a thing of this world: it is pro­duced only by virtue of mul­ti­ple forms of con­straint. And it induces reg­u­lar effects of pow­er. Each soci­ety has its regime of truth, its ‘gen­er­al pol­i­tics’ of truth: that is, the types of dis­course which it accepts … the means by which each is sanc­tioned … the sta­tus of those who are charged with say­ing what counts as true.” Keller sum­ma­rized Foucault’s the­o­ry by stat­ing, “truth is a thing of this world, and every per­son who claims to have the truth is real­ly basi­cal­ly doing a pow­er play.”62 He even quot­ed Jesus as stat­ing, “Truth claims, in gen­er­al, … are pow­er plays”63 in reac­tion to the Phar­isees who were guilty of using “the Bible to get the right places in soci­ety, the high sta­tus, and to keep peo­ple down.”64 Keller, along with “post­mod­ern thinkers,” saw the “con­nec­tion between truth and pow­er” every­where from dis­crim­i­na­to­ry hir­ing prac­tices to media nar­ra­tives.65

In fact, from the Beat­i­tudes, Keller believed Jesus taught that the quest for “pow­er, suc­cess, com­fort, and recog­ni­tion” dom­i­nat­ed the “king­dom of this world.”66 It even inescapably defined indi­vid­u­als them­selves. New Left thinkers, like Fou­cault, saw in Hegel’s con­cept of the “Oth­er,” a sub­sti­tute for the alien­ation which took place at the Fall. Iden­ti­ty was not organ­i­cal­ly inher­it­ed or part of the fab­ric of duty and design, but rather, cre­at­ed through strug­gle against the “Oth­er,” which rep­re­sent­ed a neg­a­tive, usu­al­ly social stan­dard. 67 Keller stat­ed, in reliance on Fou­cault, that when “we form an iden­ti­ty … we get a sense of self-worth by despis­ing the peo­ple who don’t have it” which is the same as bol­ster­ing “a self through exclu­sion of the ‘Oth­er.’” Sim­ply put, peo­ple use their cho­sen iden­ti­ties, based on things like their work, reli­gion, and polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion, to exert pow­er by vil­i­fy­ing oth­ers who are “not like them.” Only in Chris­tian­i­ty did Keller see “a basis” for “accept­ing” dif­fer­ent peo­ple.

No rev­o­lu­tion could escape the real­i­ty of pow­er except “the King­dom of God,” ruled by a “king with­out a quar­ter,” “pow­er,” or “recog­ni­tion,” and requir­ing his fol­low­ers to give up their pow­er as well.68 Keller saw Chris­tian­i­ty as “a kind of truth” which empow­ered and lib­er­at­ed its believ­ers to “serve and love oth­ers, not con­trol them.”69 He agreed with lib­er­a­tion the­olo­gian James Cone that slaves, because of their “expe­ri­ence of oppres­sion,” were able “to see things in the Bible” like a “God who comes down from heav­en and becomes a poor human being,” which “many of their mas­ters were blind to.” This dif­fer­ence in expe­ri­ence was so great it nur­tured a “real Chris­tian­i­ty” as opposed to the oppres­sive “Master’s reli­gion.”70 Real Chris­tian­i­ty was the escape hatch from the view that truth “inevitably leads to pow­er,” as it not only addressed eco­nom­ic dis­par­i­ties, but also unequal pow­er rela­tion­ships.71 There­fore, the “church” could not ally or align itself with the “sec­u­lar left or right” for the sake of “polit­i­cal pow­er,” with­out giv­ing up its “spir­i­tu­al pow­er and cred­i­bil­i­ty with non­be­liev­ers.”72 Chris­tians need­ed a dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal approach.

Because Chris­tian­i­ty, in Keller’s view, ground­ed both per­son­al ethics and social jus­tice in a tran­scen­dent stan­dard, it rep­re­sent­ed an uncon­ven­tion­al polit­i­cal per­spec­tive out­side of earth­ly polit­i­cal par­ties. Keller con­ceived of “lib­er­al pol­i­tics” as a phi­los­o­phy ded­i­cat­ed to doing “what­ev­er you want with your body but not what­ev­er you want with your mon­ey.” Their con­cern was “eco­nom­ic jus­tice” in “tak­ing care of the poor.”73 Through­out his min­istry Keller iden­ti­fied “social jus­tice” con­cern with more polit­i­cal­ly pro­gres­sive groups.74 On the oth­er hand, “con­ser­v­a­tives,” he told his con­gre­ga­tion, want­ed “leg­is­la­tion that sup­ports the fam­i­ly” and “tra­di­tion­al val­ues, but when it comes to giv­ing mon­ey to the poor, that should be vol­un­tary.” Lib­er­als want­ed to leg­is­late “social moral­i­ty” but not “per­son­al moral­i­ty” and con­ser­v­a­tives want­ed to leg­is­late “per­son­al moral­i­ty” but not “social moral­i­ty.”75 Nei­ther rep­re­sent­ed an accept­able Chris­t­ian posi­tion.

The prob­lem with close­ly align­ing with either polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy, accord­ing to Keller, was that they could eas­i­ly cul­tur­al­ly “col­o­nize” Chris­tians into ver­sions of “extreme indi­vid­u­al­ism.” The sex­u­al rights of  “blue state” indi­vid­u­al­ism and the prop­er­ty rights of “red state” indi­vid­u­al­ism were com­pa­ra­ble to false reli­gions coopt­ing Chris­tians into their mold.76 Blue evan­gel­i­cals were “qui­et about the bib­li­cal teach­ing” on “abor­tion, sex­u­al­i­ty, and gen­der.” Red evan­gel­i­cals were “silent” when “polit­i­cal allies fan[ned] the flames of racial resent­ment toward immi­grants.” Keller wrote that “ The­o­log­i­cal­ly, both polit­i­cal pols are sus­pect, because one makes an idol out of indi­vid­ual free­dom, and the oth­er makes an idol out of race and nation, blood and soil. In both some­thing cre­at­ed and earth­ly is dei­fied.”77Alter­na­tive­ly, Keller pro­posed a third option in the “bib­li­cal world­view.”78

While Chris­tians could “vote across a spec­trum” for prac­ti­cal rea­sons, they should also “feel some­what uncom­fort­able in either polit­i­cal par­ty.”79 The Bible decon­struct­ed “all sec­u­lar under­stand­ings of eco­nom­ics” includ­ing “cap­i­tal­ism [which] uses the engine of indi­vid­u­als envy­ing indi­vid­u­als, and com­mu­nism or social­ism [which] just uses the engine of class­es envy­ing class­es.”80 In order to be bib­li­cal, Keller thought con­sis­tent Chris­tians would, in apply­ing an under­stand­ing of jus­tice and equal­i­ty, “some­times … side with one school of thought, [and] oth­er times they will side with anoth­er” because sec­u­lar the­o­ries of jus­tice addressed cer­tain “facets of bib­li­cal jus­tice” with­out address­ing them all.81 This of course meant Chris­tians could “care for the poor” through “high tax­es and gov­ern­ment ser­vices” or “low tax­es and pri­vate char­i­ty.”82 The bib­li­cal idea, that “the com­mu­ni­ty has some claim on” pri­vate “prof­its and assets,” but that those items should not be “con­fis­cat­ed,” did “not fit well with either a cap­i­tal­ist or a social­ist econ­o­my.”83 Instead, Chris­tians need­ed to, on some lev­el, polit­i­cal­ly oper­ate out­side the avail­able polit­i­cal par­ties. This, of course, meant spend­ing more effort dis­tanc­ing them­selves from Repub­li­cans, whom evan­gel­i­cals had tra­di­tion­al­ly sup­port­ed, than it did Democ­rats, the par­ty Keller him­self was a mem­ber of.84

In 2017, Keller signed a state­ment, along with oth­er more pro­gres­sive-lean­ing evan­gel­i­cals like Richard Mouw and Ed Stet­zer, urg­ing “Pres­i­dent Trump to Recon­sid­er Reduc­tion in Refugee Reset­tle­ment.”85 The next year Keller, along with “50 evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian lead­ers,” includ­ing Jim Wal­lis, gath­ered at Wheaton Col­lege to dis­cuss their con­cern that evan­gel­i­cal­ism had “become too close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Pres­i­dent Trump’s polar­iz­ing pol­i­tics.”86 In 2020, Keller briefly joined the elder board of the AND Cam­paign, led by “Michael Wear, one of Pres­i­dent Obama’s for­mer faith advi­sors, and Justin Giboney, a Demo­c­rat polit­i­cal strate­gist. The cam­paign pro­duced a “2020 Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion State­ment” to “pro­mote social jus­tice and moral order” which includ­ed con­cern for “racial dis­par­i­ties,” sup­port for the “Fair­ness for All Act,” “com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform,” and “afford­able health care,” while dis­cour­ag­ing abor­tion.87

Keller’s polit­i­cal vision was per­haps most clear­ly artic­u­lat­ed in his 2008 book, Rea­son for God, in which he sig­naled his hope that “younger Chris­tians … could make the old­er form of cul­ture wars obso­lete” through their ver­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty which is “much more con­cerned about the poor and social jus­tice than Repub­li­cans have been, and at the same time much more con­cerned about uphold­ing clas­sic Chris­t­ian moral and sex­u­al ethics than Democ­rats have been.”88 Chris­tian­i­ty offered an “iden­ti­ty” which pri­or­i­tized ser­vice “instead of pow­er.”89 A “new human soci­ety, a new human order, [and] a new set of social arrange­ments not based on pow­er and pride” was on the hori­zon in what the Bible called “the lofty city.”90 The vision of Redeemer Pres­by­ter­ian was “to help build a great city for all peo­ple through a move­ment of the gospel that brings per­son­al con­ver­sion, com­mu­ni­ty for­ma­tion, social jus­tice, and cul­tur­al renew­al to New York City and, through it, the world.”91 From Keller’s per­spec­tive, the church occu­pied the same role that “vol­un­tary asso­ci­a­tions” did in Saul Alinsky’s vision of “broad based com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­ing.”92 He stat­ed, “The whole pur­pose of sal­va­tion is to cleanse and puri­fy this mate­r­i­al world.”93

Some have tried to ana­lyze Tim Keller’s social jus­tice posi­tion as a sub­set of con­cerns stem­ming from his craft­ing “new lines of thought” for com­mu­ni­cat­ing with “post­mod­erns.”94 Michael Fou­cault was not the only post­mod­ern New Left thinker Keller gleaned from in his min­istry. For exam­ple, in craft­ing his New City Cat­e­chism, cre­at­ed to meet the chal­lenges of a post­mod­ern world, Keller par­tial­ly relied on under­stand­ings gleaned from Charles Taylor’s “buffered self-nar­ra­tive.”95 Keller also taught his con­gre­ga­tion that Mar­tin Heidegger’s the­o­ry of “alien­ation” par­al­leled Jesus’ teach­ing in the sto­ry of the Prodi­gal Son.96 In 2018, he helped launch the “Liv­ing Out Church Audit,” designed to help church­es be inclu­sive toward “LGBTQ+/ same-sex attract­ed” indi­vid­u­als.97 Because of Keller’s non-tra­di­tion­al con­cep­tions of sin, hell, the Trin­i­ty, the church’s mis­sion, bib­li­cal inter­pre­ta­tion, cre­ation, and eccle­si­ol­o­gy, a group of tra­di­tion­al Pres­by­te­ri­ans wrote Engag­ing Keller, in 2013. How­ev­er, there is anoth­er way to under­stand Keller’s left-lean­ing ten­den­cy.

From his ear­li­est and most for­ma­tive years as a Chris­t­ian and the­olo­gian, Keller, who already stood polit­i­cal­ly with pro­gres­sives, was influ­enced by the evan­gel­i­cal left. Tom Skin­ner, Elward Ellis, Harvie Conn, Richard Mouw, and John Perkins all con­tributed to help­ing Keller inte­grate his faith with his pol­i­tics. Keller often inter­pret­ed scrip­tures con­cern­ing pol­i­tics and eco­nom­ics in ways con­sis­tent with neo-Kuyper­ian and lib­er­a­tion the­olo­gies. Keller then suc­cess­ful­ly mar­ket­ed his ideas to the evan­gel­i­cal world. Despite pass­ing away in ear­ly 2024, the impact of Keller’s teach­ings have not dimin­ished. The sys­tems he estab­lished con­tin­ue his work, and the impact of his teach­ings will be felt for years to come.

1 Tim Keller, The Rea­son for God: Belief in an Age of Skep­ti­cism, (New York: Dut­ton, 2008), xi.

2 Tim Keller, Feb­ru­ary 14, 1993, “Let Your Yes Be Yes,” The Tim­o­thy Keller Ser­mon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Pres­by­ter­ian Church, 2013); Keller, May 2, 1993, “House of God—Part 3,” The Tim­o­thy Keller Ser­mon Archive; Keller, The Rea­son for God, xi.

3 Keller, August, 26, 1990, “The Secret Siege of Nin­eveh,” The Tim­o­thy Keller Ser­mon Archive; Keller, March 15, 1992, “Mis­sions,” The Tim­o­thy Keller Ser­mon Archive; Keller, May 1, 1994, “Who is This Jesus?,” The Tim­o­thy Keller Ser­mon Archive.

4 Tim Keller, Gen­er­ous Jus­tice How God’s Grace Makes Us Just, (East Ruther­ford: Pen­guin Pub­lish­ing Group, 2010), loc 151–160, Kin­dle.

5 Keller, May 27, 1990, “Chris­t­ian Expe­ri­ence & Coun­ter­feit,” The Tim­o­thy Keller Ser­mon Archive; Keller, Feb­ru­ary 5, 1995, “Lov­ing and Growing—Part 2,” The Tim­o­thy Keller Ser­mon Archive. Keller, Sep­tem­ber 3, 1989, “Pol­i­tics of the King,” The Tim­o­thy Keller Ser­mon Archive.

6 Keller, Octo­ber 7, 1990, “Spir­i­tu­al Gifts—Part3,” The Tim­o­thy Keller Ser­mon Archive.

7 Tim Keller, Encoun­ters with Jesus Unex­pect­ed Answers to Life’s Biggest Ques­tions (East Ruther­ford: Pen­guin Pub­lish­ing Group, 2013), xv; Keller, Gen­er­ous Jus­tice, loc 160–167.

8 Keller, March 25, 1990, “Good­ness and Faith­ful­ness,” The Tim­o­thy Keller Ser­mon Archive.

9 Keller, The Rea­son for God, xii.

10 Ibid., xii.

11 Keller, August 5, 1990, “Blue­print for Revival: Introduction—Part 2,”  The Tim­o­thy Keller Ser­mon Archive.

12 Keller, Feb­ru­ary 23, 1997, “With a Politi­cian,” The Tim­o­thy Keller Ser­mon Archive.

13 Tom Skin­ner, “The U.S. Racial Cri­sis and World Evan­ge­lism,” (Speech deliv­ered at Urbana Stu­dent Mis­sions Con­fer­ence, Urbana, Illi­nois, 1970). https://urbana.org/message/us-racial-crisis-and-world-evangelism.

14 Keller, “With a Politi­cian.”

15 Skinner,“The U.S. Racial Cri­sis and World Evan­ge­lism.”

16 Keller, March 11, 2007, “Jesus and Pol­i­tics,” The Tim­o­thy Keller Ser­mon Archive.

17 Gor­don Govi­er, “In Remem­brance – Elward Ellis,” Inter­Var­si­ty, May 14, 2012, https://intervarsity.org/news/remembrance-%E2%80%93-elward-ellis.

18 “What Went Down at Urbana 67 — Urbana 70 Black Stu­dent Pro­mo­tion­al,” (Ken Ander­son Films), accessed August 15, 2020, 2:30, 13:05, https://vimeo.com/42230364.

19 David Swartz, Moral Minor­i­ty: The Evan­gel­i­cal Left in an Age of Con­ser­vatism (Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia Press, 2012), loc 573–581, Kin­dle.

20 Irwyn Ince Jr, The Beau­ti­ful Com­mu­ni­ty: Uni­ty, Diver­si­ty, and the Church at Its Best (Inter­Var­si­ty Press, 2020), 2.

21 Keller, Gen­er­ous Jus­tice, loc 168–180.

22 Tim Keller, for­ward to The Beau­ti­ful Com­mu­ni­ty: Uni­ty, Diver­si­ty, and the Church at Its Best, 3.

23 Keller, Gen­er­ous Jus­tice, loc 168–180.

24 Keller, Octo­ber 31, 1993, “The Bat­tle for the Heart,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive; “Tim Keller,” Cru­ci­for­mi­ty Shaped By The Cross: Chris­t­ian Life Con­fer­ence 2007, Feb­ru­ary 18, 2007, https://web.archive.org/web/20070218113355/http://clc.2pc.org/index.php/tim-keller/.

25 Peter Enns, “The (Or at Least ‘A’) Prob­lem with Evan­gel­i­cal White Church­es,” Patheos (blog), July 2, 2015, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2015/07/the-or-at-least-a-problem-with-evangelical-white-churches/; Mark Gornik, “The Lega­cy of Harvie M. Conn,” Inter­na­tion­al Bul­letin of Mis­sion­ary Research 35, no. 4 (Octo­ber 2011), 214.

26 Harvie Conn, “The­olo­gies of Lib­er­a­tion: Toward a Com­mon View,” Ten­sions in Con­tem­po­rary The­ol­o­gy, Third (Moody Press, 1979), 420, 428.

27 Ibid., 413, 421–422.

28 Ibid., 334, 404–405.

29 Ibid., 419–420, 423.

30  Harvie Conn, Evan­ge­lism: Doing Jus­tice and Preach­ing Grace (Grand Rapids, Mich: Zon­der­van Pub. House, 1982), 23–24.

31 Ibid., 56, 73–74.

32 Harvie Conn, A Clar­i­fied Vision for Urban Mis­sion: Dis­pelling the Urban Stereo­types (Min­istry Resources Library, 1987), 147.

33 Conn, “The­olo­gies of Lib­er­a­tion,” 416.

34 Conn, A Clar­i­fied Vision for Urban Mis­sion, 142, 147.

35 Conn, “The­olo­gies of Lib­er­a­tion,” 413–414, 425.

36 Ibid., 413, 409–410, 418

37 Ibid., 34, 50, 52, 73, 79.

38 Tim Keller, “West­min­ster — In Mem­o­ry of Dr. Harvie Conn,” West­min­ster Fac­ul­ty, August 15, 2000, https://web.archive.org/web/20000815221157/http://www.wts.edu/news/conn.html.

39 Conn, A Clar­i­fied Vision for Urban Mis­sion, 9–10.

40 Tim Keller, Lov­ing the City: Doing Bal­anced, Gospel-Cen­tered Min­istry in Your City (Zon­der­van, 2016), 310.

41 Gornik, “The Lega­cy of Harvie M. Conn,” 214.

42 Conn, A Clar­i­fied Vision for Urban Mis­sion, 217–218.

43 Keller, Lov­ing the City, 104–105.

44 Keller, “West­min­ster — In Mem­o­ry of Dr. Harvie Conn.”

45 Keller, Lov­ing the City, 106, 46; Tim Keller, Cen­ter Church: Doing Bal­anced, Gospel-Cen­tered Min­istry in Your City (Zon­der­van, 2012), 10; Tim Keller, Gospel in Life Study Guide: Grace Changes Every­thing (Zon­der­van, 2013), 127; Tim Keller, Jan 7, 2001, “Lord of the City,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive.

46 Keller, Lov­ing the City, 148, 134.

47 Keller, Gen­er­ous Jus­tice, 189.

48 Keller, Feb­ru­ary 16, 1997, “With a Reli­gious Crowd,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive; Keller, Octo­ber 22, 2000, “Made For Stew­ard­ship,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive; Keller, July, 15, 2001, “Argu­ing About Pol­i­tics,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive.

49 Keller, “With a Reli­gious Crowd.”

50 Keller, “Made for Stew­ard­ship.”

51  Keller, The Rea­son for God, 151–152; Keller, May 31, 1992, “Prob­lem of Mean­ing; Is There Any Rea­son for Exis­tence?,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive; Keller, “Cen­ter Church,” 129; Keller, Decem­ber 10, 2000, “Genesis—The Gospel Accord­ing to God,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive.

52 Tim Keller [@timkellernyc], 2018, “The Bible’s vision for inter­de­pen­dent com­mu­ni­ty, in which pri­vate prop­er­ty is impor­tant but not an absolute, does not give a full sup­port to any con­ven­tion­al polit­i­cal-eco­nom­ic agen­da. It sits in crit­i­cal judg­ment on them all.,” Twit­ter, Novem­ber 8, 2018, 11:26 a.m.

53 Keller, Gen­er­ous Jus­tice, 15, 92, 3, 115, 16–17, 125–126, 7, 117, 130–133; Tim Keller, “Tim Keller’s Gen­er­ous Jus­tice,” inter­view by Kris­ten Scharold, Decem­ber 6, 2010, https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/december/10.69.html.

54 Keller, The Rea­son for God, 225.

55 Keller, Gen­er­ous Jus­tice, 356–366, 139, 9, 33–34.

56 Keller, May 9, 1999, “The Mount, Life in the King­dom,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive.

57 Keller, Gen­er­ous Jus­tice, xxiv; Keller, Novem­ber 9, 2003, “A Woman, A Slave, and a Gen­tile,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive.

58 Keller, Rea­son for God, 195–196.

59 Keller, March 11 2007, “Jesus and Pol­i­tics,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive.

60 Keller, Gen­er­ous Jus­tice, 4.

61 Keller, Octo­ber 5, 2003, “The Mean­ing of the City,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive; Keller, “Argu­ing About Pol­i­tics;” Octo­ber 10, 1993, “The Search for Iden­ti­ty,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive.

62 Keller, “The Mean­ing of the City.”

63 Keller, Octo­ber 8, 2006; “Abso­lutism: Don’t We All Have to Find Truth for Our­selves?,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive.

64 Keller, May 16, 2010, “Integri­ty,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive.

65 Keller, March 3, 2002, “Pas­sion­ate Grace,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive.

66 Keller, “Argu­ing About Pol­i­tics.”

67 Roger Scru­ton, Fools, Frauds and Fire­brands: Thinkers of the New Left (Blooms­bury Pub­lish­ing, 2015), 74–76.

68 Keller, “Argu­ing About Pol­i­tics.”

69 Keller, “Pas­sion­ate Grace.”

70 Keller, May 31, 2000, “What is Free­dom” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive; Keller, May, 3, 1998, “My God is a Rock; Lis­ten­ing to the African-Amer­i­can Spir­i­tu­als,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive.

71 Keller, “Pas­sion­ate Grace.”

72 Tim Keller, For­ward to In Search of the Com­mon Good: Chris­t­ian Fideli­ty in a Frac­tured World (Inter­Var­si­ty Press, 2019), 3.

73 Keller, March 25, 1990, “Good­ness, Faith­ful­ness,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive.

74 Keller, April 24, 2005, “The Com­mu­ni­ty of Grace,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive; Keller, March 19, 2006, “The Open­ness of the King­dom.” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive.

75 Keller, “Good­ness, Faith­ful­ness.”

76 “Tim Keller on Chang­ing the Cul­ture With­out Being Col­o­nized by It,” (The Gospel Coali­tion, 2019), https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=eDqJkfhTuRY&feature=emb_title.

77 Tim Keller, For­ward to In Search of the Com­mon Good: Chris­t­ian Fideli­ty in a Frac­tured World.

78 “Tim Keller on Chang­ing the Cul­ture With­out Being Col­o­nized by It.”

79 Keller, “Argu­ing About Pol­i­tics;” “You Need to Hear Tim Keller’s Take­down of Rad­i­cal Nation­al­ism,” Rel­e­vant Mag­a­zine (blog), Decem­ber 10, 2018, https://relevantmagazine.com/current/you-need-to-hear-tim-kellers-takedown-of-radical-nationalism/.

80  Keller, “Argu­ing About Pol­i­tics;”  Keller, Sep­tem­ber 27, 1998, “When All You’ve Ever Want­ed Isn’t Enough,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive.

81 Keller, Gen­er­ous Jus­tice, 159; Tim Keller, “A Bib­li­cal Cri­tique of Sec­u­lar Jus­tice and Crit­i­cal The­o­ry,” Life in the Gospel, July 31, 2020, https://quarterly.gospelinlife.com/a‑biblical-critique-of-secular-justice-and-critical-theory/.

82 Tim Keller [@timkellernyc], 2020, “Chris­tians and the free­dom of con­science in pol­i­tics. The Bible binds my con­science to care for the poor, but it does not tell me the best prac­ti­cal way to do it. Any par­tic­u­lar strat­e­gy (high tax­es and gov­ern­ment ser­vices vs low tax­es and pri­vate char­i­ty) may be good and wise…,” Sept 16, 2020, 9:15 p.m., https://twitter.com/timkellernyc/status/1306401474222620672

83 Keller, A Bib­li­cal Cri­tique of Sec­u­lar Jus­tice and Crit­i­cal The­o­ry.”

84 Michael Foust, “Tim Keller Explains Why He’s a Reg­is­tered Demo­c­rat: It’s ‘Smart Vot­ing’ and Strate­gic,” Chris­t­ian Head­lines, Novem­ber 4, 2020, https://www.christianheadlines.com/contributors/michael-foust/tim-keller-explains-why-hes-a-registered-democrat-its-smart-voting-and-strategic.html.

85 “Evan­gel­i­cal Lead­ers from All 50 States Urge Pres­i­dent Trump to Recon­sid­er Reduc­tion in Refugee Reset­tle­ment,” The Wash­ing­ton Post, Feb­ru­ary 3, 2017, sec. A18.

86 Emi­ly McFar­lan Miller, “Evan­gel­i­cal Lead­ers Gath­er at Wheaton to Dis­cuss Future of the Move­ment in Trump Era,” Sojourn­ers, April 17, 2018, https://sojo.net/articles/evangelical-leaders-gather-wheaton-discuss-future-movement-trump-era.

87 “AND Cam­paign,” AND Cam­paign, accessed May 1, 2020, https://andcampaign.org

88 Keller, Rea­son for God, xix-xx.

89 Keller, Feb­ru­ary 25, 2001, “Born into Com­mu­ni­ty,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive.

90 Keller, May 1, 2005, “The City of God,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive.

91 Keller, Sep­tem­ber 18, 2005, “Christ, Our Life,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive.

92 Grace, Jus­tice, & Mer­cy: An Evening with Bryan Steven­son & Rev. Tim Keller Q &A (Redeemer Pres­by­ter­ian Church, 2016), 31:30.

93 Tim Keller, “Cul­tur­al Renew­al: The Role of the Intrapre­neur and the Entre­pre­neur” (Entre­pre­neur­ship Forum, Lamb’s Ball­room, Times Square, March 25, 2006), 4:30, 9. https://web.archive.org/web/20060622051746/http://www.faithandwork.org/uploads/photos/461–1%20Cultural%20Renewal_%20The%20Role%20of%20th.mp3.

94 Ian Camp­bell and William Schweitzer, Engag­ing with Keller: Think­ing Through the The­ol­o­gy of an Influ­en­tial Evan­gel­i­cal (EP Books, 2013), 9, 21.

95 Tim Keller, “Cat­e­ch­esis for a Sec­u­lar Age,” inter­view by James K.A. Smith, Sep­tem­ber 1, 2017, https://www.cardus.ca/comment/article/catechesis-for-a-secular-age/.

96 Keller, Novem­ber 2, 2008, “We Had to Cel­e­brate,” The Tim Keller Ser­mon Archive.

97 “The Liv­ing Out Church Audit,” Liv­ing Out, accessed August 21, 2020, https://www.livingout.org/resources/the-living-out-church-audit.

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