Mark I. Pinsky is the author of the bestselling "The Gospel According to The Simpsons: The Spiritual Life of America’s Most Animated Family" and "The Gospel According to Disney: Faith, Trust and Pixie Dust." He is co-author of "The Gospel According to The Simpsons Leader’s Guide for Group Study." He is currently working on an updated version of The Simpsons book that will discuss religious themes in other animated television shows such as South Park, Futurama, King of the Hill and Family Guy.

Since 1995, Pinsky has covered religion for the Orlando Sentinel, specializing in coverage of evangelical Christianity in the Sunbelt. The immersion of this self-described “nice Jewish boy from Jersey” and “unreconstructed sixties lefty” into evangelical Christian culture is the subject of his latest book, "A Jew Among the Evangelicals." It’s a cause for concern among his family and friends, he notes, tongue firmly in cheek: “Both my son Asher and my friend T.D. Allman have suggested that I have been in the thrall of evangelicals for so long that I have become their sympathetic hostage. Each points to the fact that I seem to be wearing my hair in a poufy way, like a TV preacher.”

The subtitle is from a book by the 12th century Jewish sage, Maimonides, “A Guide for the Perplexed.” Writing for Jews, mainline Christians and others who are baffled by the rise of evangelicals, Pinsky intends the book to be an introduction for the uninitiated.

Pinsky’s journalism career began in the 1960s at Duke University, where he wrote a column called “The Readable Radical” for the campus daily. After graduation, he worked for several underground papers before heading to Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism where he earned his M.S.J. He spent most of the 1970s in the Southeast as a freelance writer, covering racial and criminal justice trials and the death penalty for outlets such as the New York Times. After stints in China and Northern Ireland, he joined the Los Angeles Times in 1985, writing about religion, the performing arts, philanthropy, courts and criminal justice.

His writing on faith, media and popular culture appears in such magazines as Christianity Today, Moment, The Columbia Journalism Review, Quill and Harvard Divinity Bulletin. His reporting has also appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

Pinsky, 59, lives in Maitland, Fla., with his wife, photographer Sarah M. Brown, and their children, Asher and Liza. The family worships at the Congregation of Reform Judaism in Orlando.

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