Eric Metaxas

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy sold in the hundreds of thousands and introduced Dietrich Bonhoeffer to American evangelical readers who had never met him. Eric Metaxas published it with Thomas Nelson in 2010, and it took the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association's book of the year the following spring. The life it tells is real enough: a German Lutheran theologian born in 1906 who broke with the official church, ran an illegal seminary at Finkenwalde, joined the military intelligence service as cover, took part in the conspiracy against the country's leader, was arrested in April 1943 and was put to death at Flossenburg on 9 April 1945, weeks before the surrender. Bonhoeffer scholars have been hard on the book. Clifford Green accused Metaxas of hijacking the subject for a movement Bonhoeffer had no part in, and Victoria Barnett and Richard Weikart argued that his doubts about biblical inerrancy, his rejection of apologetics and his pacifism are played down or denied outright. Metaxas is a conservative radio host, and reviewers keep finding his own politics in the portrait.