Eric Metaxas is an American author, speaker, and radio host. He is known for two biographies, Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery about William Wilberforce and Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy aboutDietrich Bonhoeffer. He has also written humor, children’s books, and scripts for VeggieTales.
Metaxas is the founder and host of the NYC-based event series, “Socrates in the City: Conversations on the Examined Life” and the host of the nationally syndicated radio program, The Eric Metaxas Show.
Born 1963, in New York City neighborhood of Astoria, Queens, Metaxas grew up in Danbury, Connecticut and graduated from Yale University, where he edited the Yale Record, the nation’s oldest college humor magazine. Metaxas lives in Manhattan with his wife and daughter.. He is Greek on his father’s side and German on his mother’s, while he was raised in a Greek Orthodox environment..
Metaxas was raised in the Greek Orthodox Church and while he has not formally left it (saying he has “great respect” for it) he attends an Evangelical Episcopal church in New York.[4] Metaxas describes himself as a “Mere Christian” after the works of C.S. Lewis, saying his books “don’t touch upon anything at all where Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians differ. They express just the basics of the faith, from a basic, ecumenical Christian viewpoint. They only talk about the Christian faith that they have agreement on.”.
Writing
Metaxas’s works If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty and Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life are bothNew York Times best selling books.. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy won the 2010 Evangelical Christian Publishers Association Christian Book of the Year. Bonhoeffer is a New York Times best seller, climbing to #1 in the e-book category. It also won the 2011 John C. Pollock Award for Christian Biography awarded by Beeson Divinity School and a 2011 Christopher Award.
Although the book is popular in the United States among evangelical Christians, Bonhoeffer scholars have criticized Metaxas’s book as unhistorical, theologically weak, and philosophically naive. Professor of German History and Bonhoeffer scholar Richard Weikart, for example, credits his “engaging writing style,” but claims Metaxas has a lack of intellectual background to interpret Bonhoeffer properly. The biography has also been criticized by Bonhoeffer scholars Victoria Barnett and Clifford Green. However, several literary critics have praised Metaxas’ work as a “weighty, riveting analysis of the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer” and a “complete biography of a great theologian” with “liberal use of primary sources.”
Metaxas’s biography of Wilberforce, Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery, was the companion book to the 2006 film.
He has also written over thirty children’s books, including It’s Time to Sleep, My Love and Squanto and the Miracle of Thanksgiving. He has written scripts for VeggieTales (even the Hamlet parody “Omelet” from “Lyle the Kindly Viking”) and provided the voice of the narrator in “Esther… The Girl Who Became Queen”, based on the Book of Esther.[citation needed]
Other writing has been published in the Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
Radio show
In April 2015, Metaxas began hosting the two-hour, daily The Eric Metaxas Show. He broadcasts from the Empire State Building in New York. The show is syndicated by the Salem Radio Network. Recent notable guests include Dick Cavett, David Brooks, Kirsten Powers, Kathie Lee Gifford, and Jimmie “J.J.” Walker.
Metaxas is the founder and host of a New York City event series called “Socrates in the City: Conversations on the Examined Life,” where he interviews thinkers and writers, and is labeled as a forum on “life, God, and other small topics” in Metaxas’ book about the series. Dr. Francis Collins, Malcolm Gladwell, Sir John Polkinghorne, Kathleen Norris, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Dick Cavett, N.T. Wright, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Dame Alice von Hildebrand, Peter Hitchens and Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks have all been guests.
Metaxas has been featured as a cultural commentator on CNN, MSNBC, and the Fox News Channel, most frequently on the show “Red Eye”; and has discussed his own books on The History Channel, C-Span’s Book TV, the Glenn Beck Program, and Huckabee. He has been featured on many radio programs, including NPR’s Morning Edition, Talk of the Nation, The Laura Ingraham Show, and On Beingwith Krista Tippett, as well as Hugh Hewitt, Bill Bennett, Kerby Anderson’s Point of View, and The Alan Colmes Show.
In the late 1990s Metaxas wrote BreakPoint radio commentaries for former Nixon aide and Prison Fellowship founder Charles “Chuck” Colson. Upon Colson’s death in 2012, Metaxas, along with John Stonestreet, became the voice of “BreakPoint,” which now airs weekdays on 1350 outlets across the country.
On February 2, 2012, Metaxas was the keynote speaker for the 2012 National Prayer Breakfast.
Metaxas has testified before Congress about the rise of anti-Semitism in the U.S. and abroad, and he spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2013 and 2014 on the issue of Religious Freedom.
On March 25, 2014 Metaxas was announced as “Senior Fellow and Lecturer at Large” of The King’s College in New York City.
Awards
Metaxas is the winner of several awards for his work, including the Becket Fund’s Canterbury Medal in 2011 and the Human Life Review’s Defender of Life Award in 2013. Metaxas is the recipient of three honorary doctorate degrees, one from Hillsdale College, another from Liberty University, and the most recent from Sewanee: The University of the South
