A Yale-educated former VeggieTales writer became a leading evangelical masculinity voice

Evidence

Raised in the Greek Orthodox Church, Metaxas got his start writing children’s books. In 1997 he began working as a writer and editor for Charles Colson’s BreakPoint radio show, and he then worked as a writer for VeggieTales, a children’s video series where anthropomorphic vegetables taught lessons in biblical values and Christian morality. (Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber became household names in 1990s evangelicalism.) Belying his VeggieTales pedigree, Metaxas brought a new sophistication to the literature on evangelical masculinity. As a witty, Yale-educated Manhattanite, Metaxas cut a different profile than many spokesmen of the Christian Right. If Metaxas’s writing wasn’t exactly highbrow, his was higher-brow than most books churned out by Christian presses. More suave in his presentation than the average evangelical firebrand, Metaxas was a rising star in the conservative Christian world of the 2000s. After Colson’s death in 2012 he took over BreakPoint, a program broadcast on 1400 outlets to an audience of eight million. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 543

Categorization

• XREF: Illustrates Du Mez’s core method: tracing ideas through commercial media product (VeggieTales to BreakPoint radio) rather than pulpit theology; relevant to the reader’s planned critique of the method. — connects to: A fringe figure entered evangelical mainstream as militant masculinity rose. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 460; Militant masculinity fused family life, politics, and foreign policy into evangelical identity — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 665; Militant masculinity blurred the line between fringe and mainstream evangelicalism — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 427
• QUESTION: How did a Greek Orthodox-raised Manhattanite become the voice of white evangelical masculinity? Raises questions about the porous boundaries of ‘evangelical’ identity itself.
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: A fringe figure entered evangelical mainstream as militant masculinity rose. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 460; Militant masculinity fused family life, politics, and foreign policy into evangelical identity — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 665; Militant masculinity blurred the line between fringe and mainstream evangelicalism — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 427