Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias (Madras, 1946 - Atlanta, 2020) was an evangelical apologist born in India who later became a Canadian and American citizen. For more than forty years he defended the Christian faith before university, religious and media audiences. He is associated with contemporary apologetics, the effort to present Christianity as a reasonable answer to life's largest questions. His name belongs mainly to popular teaching and public speaking rather than to academic philosophy.

Raised in Delhi in an Anglican family, he described himself as a skeptic until the age of seventeen, when he attempted suicide. He later recounted that a passage from the Gospel of John, read to him during his hospital stay, led him to become a Christian. He emigrated to Canada in 1966, studied at Ontario Bible College and later earned a master's degree in divinity. He was ordained by the Christian and Missionary Alliance and in 1984 founded Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Toronto, an organization later headquartered in Atlanta.

His writings include more than thirty books, among them Can Man Live Without God? and Light in the Shadow of Jihad. He also hosted radio programs and spoke often at university forums such as the Veritas Forum. His thinking focused less on defending God through science than on existential questions. He argued that a coherent worldview must answer four questions of origin, meaning, morality and destiny, and that Christianity answers them better than other religions. He held that the apologist should reason with logic, illustrate with the arts and conclude in everyday language.

His influence spread across the evangelical world through conferences and international events. In 2004 he preached at the Salt Lake Tabernacle, a move some evangelicals criticized and which he defended as an opening for dialogue. From 2017 his public image was shadowed by controversy: he faced allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct, and after his death further accusations emerged that an independent investigation commissioned by his own ministry found credible. His academic credentials were also questioned. These controversies mean his legacy remains a subject of debate.