| | Lee Strobel, a former legal editor for the Chicago Tribune, is a Christian apologist and former teaching pastor of Willow Creek Community Church. He is best known for writing the semi-autobiographical bestsellers The Case for Christ, The Case for Faith, and The Case for a Creator. Strobel also hosted a television program called Faith Under Fire on PAX TV. His daughter, Alison, is also a Christian writer. (See also: The emerging church)It was during his years as a journalist that Strobel was an avowed atheist. BiographyStrobel earned a journalism degree from the University of Missouri and a Master of Studies in Law degree from Yale Law School. |  Former atheist and Christian Apologist Lee Strobel | A journalist for fourteen years, he was awarded Illinois' highest honors from United Press International for both investigative reporting (shared with a team he led at the Chicago Tribune) and for public service journalism.That period of his life ended in 1981 with his conversion to Christianity, which was influenced by his wife's conversion two years earlier and Strobel's subsequent personal investigation into the historical, scientific, and philosophical evidence for Christianity, which is the subject of many of his books.CriticismStrobel's books are often marketed with the suggestion that his journalistic and legal background enables him to evaluate claims by contemporary theological authorities and biblical scholars. Because of this, some critics have accused Strobel of having sacrificed journalistic objectivity, by considering the opinions of academic Christian theists while paying insufficient attention to the rebuttals of academic atheists. In fact, many of his books do not contain interviews with non-believers or fairly show their arguments in a non-biased light.However, some apologists for Strobel have defended his methodology by pointing out that Strobel's books are clearly written in an op-ed style, are intended as introductory works in Christian apologetics, and are not marketed or portrayed as "hard journalism". The names of Strobel's books imply that the reader will get "The Case for Christ" for example, and not the case for and against Christ. However, Strobel does in fact cite the most popular objections raised by prominent atheist and skeptical scholarship (albeit taking care not to quote skeptics directly) and generally, the scholars whom Strobel interviews are authorities in their respective fields who themselves often appeal to the consensus of mainstream scholarship in the related disciplines discussed.Strobel's apologetic style fits in with a school of thought known as legal apologetics or juridical apologetics. His work has been classified and discussed in the history of legal apologetics. |
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