Lee Strobel

Lee Strobel (b. 1952) is an American evangelical Christian apologist and journalist, formerly legal editor of the Chicago Tribune. Educated at the University of Missouri (journalism) and Yale Law School (Master of Studies in Law), he describes himself as a one-time atheist who converted to Christianity in 1981 after a journalistic investigation into the historical claims surrounding Jesus, prompted by his wife's conversion. He served as a teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church and Saddleback Church and later founded the Lee Strobel Center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics at Colorado Christian University.

Strobel's apologetic method is interview-based and popularizing rather than original-philosophical: each book presents transcribed conversations with evangelical scholars (e.g., William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, J. P. Moreland) framed as a skeptic's cross-examination. His best-known works—The Case for Christ (1998), The Case for Faith (2000), and The Case for a Creator (2004)—defend the historicity of the resurrection, classical theodicy, and intelligent design respectively.

Academic critics, including New Testament scholars such as Robert M. Price and Bart Ehrman, have argued that Strobel interviews only sympathetic conservative scholars and presents the format of adversarial journalism without substantive opposing voices, making the books rhetorical apologetics rather than balanced investigation. Supporters regard him as an accessible gateway to evangelical apologetics for lay readers.