‘Truth from the Evangelical Viewpoint’ – Christianity Today Magazine

The linked article was written by Mark Noll and rehearses the beginning of Christianity Today, which is celebrating fifty years in existence.

While in seminary I had the opportunity to glance through some of the first issues of Christianity Today. When it began, CT produced a number of thought provoking theological articles and Bible-centered cultural pieces under the editorship of Carl F. H. Henry. While writing a research paper on Harold Linsdell, I also perused a few issues of CT while he was editor and noticed a similar trend of more Bible-centered articles. George Marsden’s book, Reforming Fundamentalism, provided me a tremendous backdrop to view the beginnings of institutions like Fuller seminary and Evangelicalism’s flagship periodical, Christianity Today. I still say that the class I had in seminary on “Contemporary Evangelicalism,” was one of the most helpful for me in putting the current status of the American church into an understandable perspective.

Based on what I read in the old CT issues, Marsden and others, I am convinced that the majority of Evangelicals would not tolerate such a magazine today. Yes, that is to say, in my opinion, CT is not today what it once was. I still have a subscription to CT and read it monthly as well as follow its RSS feeds. More often than not, it merely makes me reach for a tums tablet. Today, it seems that CT no longer wants to speak to issues from “the Evangelical Viewpoint,” as it was defined from its inception, but rather, it simply wants to report on the theological and cultural meanderings of a movement that has lost its biblical bearings. The CT of old would not sell in the market of today’s so-called Evangelicalism.

CT did recently produce a decent article on the rise of Calvinism among a growing group of young evangelicals. With men like Albert Mohler, Mark Dever, C. J. Mahaney and Ligon Duncan at the helm, I wonder if a new periodical could not be put together and launched (perhaps based on the internet – their blog is already quite popular) that would recapture some of what evangelicalism used to be and CT used to achieve? I’m not suggesting it would have a wide readership outside the youngsters spoken of in relation to the T4G conference, but for some of us it would be wildly refreshing. I might even then drop my subscription to CT.