District 4 candidate Goudy claims motivation from Christian nationalist author 

 Kyle Goudy, 33, of Dr. Phillips, often talks about his educator parents and his young daughter starting school in the fall as the prime motivations for his campaign for the Orange County School Board District 4 election taking place Aug. 20. 

But a Facebook reel on Goudy’s campaign page, which has racked up more than 6,500 views, suggests his decision to run was also motivated by the writings of Christian nationalist author and radio host Eric Metaxas. 

Goudy, in the audience on May 30 when Pastor Chuck Carter interviewed Metaxas onstage at Family Church-Lakeside for an episode of the Family Church Podcast, came to the mic and said, “I’m actually running for school board largely because of your book,” referring to Letter to the American Church (Salem Books, 2022). Metaxas responded, “Awesome. Awesome.” Goudy added that he belongs to Family Church-Windermere, and then said, “Thank you guys, sincerely.” 

In the caption accompanying the reel, Goudy wrote, “Awesome event at Family Church Lakeside Campus. Letter to the American church (sic) was very impactful on me as a book, but the visuals from the movie were profound. it (sic) is great to see so many people engaged and fighting the good fight…” 

A one-time writer for the children’s Christian cartoon show VeggieTales and host of The Eric Metaxas Show on the conservative Salem Radio Network, Metaxas is the author of many books, most recently Letter To An American Church and Religionless Christianity: God’s Answer to Evil. A common theme is the American Church’s complacency and silence in the face of what Metaxas views as the stripping of religion from the public sphere since the 1960s and the subsequent erosion of societal norms.

According to Baptist News Global, Metaxas “is best known for promoting a false Christian nation origin story for the United States.” Metaxas has said “Christian nationalism is just the devil’s term for actual Christians.” 

In 2021, 400 authors signed an open letter in The Tennessean calling for Sewanee University (aka the University of the South) to rescind the honorary degree it had awarded Metaxas. 

“Since the conferral of his honorary degree,” the letter says, “Eric Metaxas has used his substantial public profile to attack the LGBTQ community and to attack American democracy itself by his role in events related to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Metaxas emceed the Jericho March, one of the Washington, DC rallies that pushed the Big Lie about 2020 election fraud ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection. He is also a named defendant in a defamation lawsuit, brought by a Dominion Voting Systems executive,  separate from the lawsuit Fox News settled last year.

VoxPopuli reached Goudy for comment late Friday while he was out door-knocking.

“The thesis of a lot of what I’ve heard from him is the church needs to get engaged in the community,” Goudy said by phone. “That was what I liked about what he was saying — the church should be out there trying to make the community a better place.”

Metaxas does preach a gospel of engagement. In his books, on his radio show and on X (formerly known as Twitter), Metaxas maintains that Christians and pastors need to become more engaged in fighting the political culture wars to end what he’s described as the “non-stop campaign to normalize the LGBT lifestyle.” 

He draws a line from the abolitionists who spoke out against slavery — “because they knew from the word of God this is wrong”— to today’s church leaders who he demands speak out now against the “transgender madness." "God holds you responsible as the church, and you need to speak up against that,” he said during an interview for Letter to an American Church with Real Life with Jack Hibbs.  

Metaxas compares today’s American Church, which he claims is indifferent to politics, to the German church of the 1930s. And he likens Christians and Christian leaders who do not actively fight back against “socially and culturally Marxist ideas, such as critical race theory,” atheism and the “gay agenda” to allies of the Nazis abetting the Holocaust.

Over the past year on his radio show, Metaxas has called “LGBTQ stuff” “evil” and said “the fact that Christians will not speak plainly and clearly against this stuff, do you really believe what you claim to believe folks? Or do you just kind of, want people to leave you alone, you don’t want to get into trouble?” 

He's called the L.A. Dodgers “demonic” and "evil" for supporting the gay advocacy group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and called for a boycott of the Major League Baseball team along with boycotts of Target, Anheuser Busch and Disney for their Pride Month support.  

Metaxas railed against President Joe Biden’s marking Trans Visibility Day, which this year fell on Easter: “The deeply evil thing Joe Biden has done in declaring today "Trans Visibility Day" is a deliberate and satanic mockery of God Himself on the holiest day of the year. We have NEVER seen brazen evil like this from any US leader. A line has been crossed. God is a judge. Stay tuned.”

In response to a New York Post headline, “Trans grandma breastfeeding,” Metaxas wrote on X, “There is no such thing as a "trans grandma" or a trans anything. These are insane and ivented (sic) terms we must mock and reject. And what is described is utterly repulsive. What could be more disgusting?

Goudy told VoxPopuli that he cares deeply about all people and that he has close friends who are gay who he was going to have to phone to give them a heads up about this article.

"I feel horrible," he said in a followup Saturday phone call, explaining that he hadn't taken a hate-filled message away from Metaxas' book. "Ninety-nine point nine percent of Christians are trying to do good in their communities," he said. "I don't stand for hate toward the LGBTQ community under any circumstances. If Eric Metaxas does, then we are on completely different wavelengths there."