Lee Strobel, the author of The Case for Christ, also serves as one of the book’s central characters. Strobel graduated from the University of Missouri with a Bachelor of Journalism degree before going on to attend Yale Law School, where he would eventually earn his master’s degree in Studies in Law. After graduation, Lee returned to journalism, and he joined the staff at The Chicago Tribune. During his 14 years at the paper, Lee covered the legal beat, and his reporting would eventually earn multiple prestigious awards, including United Press International’s highest award for investigative journalism in Illinois.

As he explains in the introduction, his investigation into whether there is evidence to support Christianity and its core tenets is as much about getting to the truth as it is an expansion “upon the spiritual journey [he] took for nearly two years” (17). His journey begins in 1979 when his wife, Leslie, announces that she has become a Christian. The announcement shocks Strobel, a self-proclaimed “skeptic” and “atheist” who believed God to be “merely a product of wishful thinking, of ancient mythology, [and] of primitive superstition” (15). While Jesus might have been a real person—emphasis on might—he certainly was not a deity.