Donald Miller, Christian Iconoclast

Donald Miller is one of the last great Christian iconoclasts. After growing up in a fundamentalist household in Pearland, Texas, Miller broke free from empty orthodoxy and discovered his true faith while a student at ultra-liberal Reed College in Portland. This journey was recorded in Miller’s 2003 bestseller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality, a memoir that sent shock waves through the Christian world. “Blue Like Jazz” developed such a fan base that its readers crowd-funded more than $300,000 to turn the book into an independent film. “Jazz” and Miller’s followup works, including “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years,” have helped a new generation of evangelicals define themselves, with hundreds of thousands of fans joining Miller to embrace the title “follower of Jesus,” rather than simply “Christian.”