John R. "Jack" Miles (born July 30, 1942) is an American author. He is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the

MacArthur Fellowship The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...

. His writings on religion, politics, and culture have appeared in numerous national publications, including ''

The Atlantic Monthly ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...

'', ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', ''

The Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

'', ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'', ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...

'', and '' Commonweal Magazine''. Miles treats his biblical subjects neither as transcendent deities nor historical figures, but as literary protagonists. His first book, '' God: A Biography'', won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography in 1996, and has been translated into sixteen languages. His second book ''Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God'', was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2002. Miles is general editor of the ''Norton Anthology of World Religions'' (November 2014). Miles' book ''God in the Qur'an'' was published in 2018, the third in his ''God in Three Classic Scriptures'' series. Miles' next related book is ''Religion as We Know It: An Origin Story,'' (Nov. 12, 2019) which examines when religion became a distinct area of thought. Miles' most recent book is co-written with Mark C. Taylor, and is titled ''A Friendship in Twilight: Lockdown Conversations on Death and Life,'' (July 5, 2022) a series of emails exchanged during the course of the pandemic in 2020.

Career

Born in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, the eldest child in a Roman Catholic family, Miles was a Jesuit seminarian from 1960 to 1970, studying at

Xavier University Xavier University ( ) is a private Jesuit university in Cincinnati and Evanston (Cincinnati), Ohio. It is the sixth-oldest Catholic and fourth-oldest Jesuit university in the United States. Xavier has an undergraduate enrollment of 4,860 stud ...

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

Pontifical Gregorian University The Pontifical Gregorian University ( it, Pontificia Università Gregoriana; also known as the Gregorian or Gregoriana,) is a higher education ecclesiastical school ( pontifical university) located in Rome, Italy. The Gregorian originated as ...

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

, and

Hebrew University The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Dr. Chaim Weiz ...

Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...

before completing a doctorate in the Department of Near Eastern Languages at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

. He is fluent in several languages, including French, Italian, German, Hebrew, and

Aramaic The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...

. Over a period of more than 35 years (1975–2010), Miles has been an editor at Doubleday, the executive editor at the

University of California Press The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by facult ...

, the literary (book review) editor at the ''Los Angeles Times'', a member of the ''Times'' editorial board, and the Senior Adviser to the Getty Trust at the

J. Paul Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. The Getty Center is located in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles and fea ...

. Miles most recently served on the faculty of the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and p ...

, Department of English, teaching Religion. Miles was the 2018-2019 Corcoran Visiting Chair in Christian-Jewish Relations at Boston College."Jack Miles Corcoran Chair Announcement"
bc.edu

Works

*Forward for
Islamic Political Ethics
'' Princeton Paperbacks. July 2002. ISBN 0691113106. * * * * * *

References

External links

Jack Miles Online
of columns written for

Beliefnet Beliefnet is a lifestyle website featuring editorial content related to the topics of inspiration, spirituality, health, wellness, love and family, news, and entertainment. History Launched in 1999 by Steven Waldman and Robert Nylen, Beliefnet ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Miles, Jack 1942 births Living people American Episcopalians 20th-century American Jesuits American book editors The Atlantic (magazine) people Critics of atheism Former Jesuits Former Roman Catholics Harvard University alumni Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni Journalists from California MacArthur Fellows Pontifical Gregorian University alumni Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners University of California, Irvine faculty Writers from Chicago Xavier University alumni American religion academics American scholars of Islam Presidents of the National Book Critics Circle