Jimmy Akin

Birth Year 1965

Birthplace Corpus Christi, Texas, United States

Age 59 years old

Nationality United States

#58728 Most Popular

1965

Jimmy Akin (born in 1965, Corpus Christi, Texas) is an American Catholic apologist, author, speaker, and podcast host.

Born in 1965 in Corpus Christi, Texas, Jimmy Akin grew up nominally Protestant in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

As a child, he attended services at the local Church of Christ with his parents but became interested in the New Age movement as a teenager.

During his time in college, Akin encountered the preaching of the televangelist Eugene "Gene" Scott and became a Christian, finding a denominational home in the conservative Presbyterian Church in America, and wanted to be a pastor or seminary professor.

Soon after becoming a Christian, Akin met his future wife, Renee Humphrey, who had been baptized a Catholic but held many New Age beliefs.

Over the course of their relationship, Renee reverted to Catholicism and resumed practicing the faith.

1988

They were married in 1988 and Akin soon after converted to Catholicism in 1992.

Later that year, Humphrey died of colon cancer.

He is the senior apologist for Catholic Answers.

While his academic training is in philosophy, he is also an autodidact, who has managed to acquire an extensive background in apologetics, biblical studies, theology, liturgy, canon law, and related disciplines.

Akin is a weekly guest on the national radio program Catholic Answers Live, a regular contributor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a popular blogger and podcaster.

His personal web site is JimmyAkin.com.

He defended charges that Pope John Paul II engaged in self-flagellation, writing, "Self-mortification teaches humility by making us recognize that there are things more important than our own pleasure."

Akin said that while Chick tracts were inaccurate, he thought they brought some people to God.

1993

He has been working for Catholic Answers since 1993, their longest-serving staff member.

2018

Since 2018, Akin has been the co-host (alongside Dom Bettinelli) of Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World, a podcast examining mysteries in the areas of the paranormal and true crime.

Akin debated New Testament scholar Dr. Bart D. Ehrman on the historical reliability of the Gospels in March 2022.