The Reason for God - Timothy Keller - Comprehensive Notes

Timothy Keller - The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

Billy Graham: Keller's ministry leads seekers and skeptics toward belief in God.
Christianity Today magazine: Keller is a pioneer for urban Christians, known for love of cities, commitment to mercy and justice, and love of neighbors; his work will be remembered fifty years from now.
The New York Times: Keller speaks the language of his urbane audience with remarkable skill.
New York magazine: Keller is an evangelist in New York City, drawing thousands with intellectual sermons, and a model for evangelizing urban centers, helping to plant churches.
Newsweek: Keller is a Manhattan institution, growing a following without advertising.
Publishers Weekly: Keller makes an intellectually compelling case for God, drawing on literary classics, philosophy, anthropology, and his experiences as a pastor; the book deconstructs figures like Richard Dawkins and Dan Brown and serves as an overview of the current debate on faith.
Library Journal: The book presents a valid, well-written, and well-researched argument, making it an excellent conversation starter.
The Boston Globe: Keller takes on nonbelievers from evolutionary biologists to atheist authors, appealing to cosmopolitan urbanites.

Timothy Keller: Born and raised in Pennsylvania.
Education: Bucknell University, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and Westminster Theological Seminary.
Pastorate: Started Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City in 1989 with his wife, Kathy, and their three sons.
Redeemer Presbyterian Church: Has nearly six thousand regular Sunday attendees and has helped start more than three hundred new churches around the world.
Author of multiple books: God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life, Hidden Christmas, and Making Sense of God, among others.
Website: www.timothykeller.com

The book was published in a very different cultural moment ten years ago presenting an opportunity for assessment.
Original prediction: American society would become polarized between the devotedly religious and the thoroughly secular; this has occurred.
Many people identify as having "no religious preference,” but religion, particularly Christianity, has been growing rapidly across the globe among non-Western, nonwhite people.
This Christianity is marked by a strong belief in the Bible and the need for conversion through faith in Christ.
Conservative Christianity has been growing almost as fast as the population in the United States, as more mainline, established churches are shrinking.
The American church is becoming more multiethnic and therefore is not collapsing; the overall percentage of nonbelievers and secular people in the world is declining.
This parallel growth in the number of both devout believers and devout secularists is why both groups in our society feel besieged; this siege mentality has increased in the last decade.
There are less opportunities for people to make their beliefs cogent to the other side. Instead there is a conviction that “we have reason on our side” and “they just have closed their eyes to the truth.