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The Rev. Timothy Keller, an evangelical pastor and best-selling Christian apologist noted for bringing the Gospel message to urbanites — died Friday morning in New York City, the Redeemer Churches and Ministries network said in an announcement circulated online.
Mr. Keller, 72, disclosed his pancreatic cancer diagnosis in June 2020.
Mr. Keller founded Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan in 1989 and, over the next 20 years, built it into a congregation where 5,000 attended weekly. The congregation is atypical, some observers said, for an urban megachurch. During Mr. Keller’s years there — he retired from that pulpit in 2017 — many attendees were single adults, with a number working in the arts or New York’s financial service industry.
In a fractious national climate where churches were split by party politics, particularly during the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Keller was nonpartisan. He rejected critical theory and criticized those who denied the biblical view of gender and sexuality, but also told congregants they had an obligation to help people in need and commit themselves to racial equality.
Reaction from the Christian community was prompt — and personal.
Russell Moore, editor in chief of Christianity Today magazine, said Friday via Twitter that Mr. Keller’s death “is an incalculable loss to the church, the world, to those of us who loved him [and] those of us he helped in our darkest hours.
