Anti-moralist Christianity

Book of the Year author and New York pastor Tim Keller takes skeptics in and outside the church from doubt to reason-filled faith | Marvin Olasky

WORLD has briefly reviewed about 200 books over the past year. Many stand out, but one in particular is likely to change many lives and ways of thinking. WORLD's Book of the Year is Tim Keller's The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (Dutton, 2008).

Keller is the gifted pastor of an ecclesiastical semi-miracle, Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. Few thought that young urban professionals would flock to a biblically orthodox church but Keller's flock now numbers over 5,000, and his church has birthed many others throughout the New York metropolitan area and around the world.

The Reason for God boldly takes aim at smug self-righteousness: "It is possible to avoid Jesus as Savior as much by keeping all the Biblical rules as by breaking them." As Keller explains, "Both religion (in which you build your identity on your moral achievements) and irreligion (in which you build your identity on some other secular pursuit or relationships) are, ultimately, spiritually identical courses to take. Both are 'sin.'"