Canter Bridge

In some circles, to arrive at the office without having read the Wall Street Journal is like turning up in your boxer shorts and a sneaker. In other circles, the same can be said of CT, as it is known to regular readers, who include virtually everyone of influence in the evangelical movement in America.

As a CT reader for more than thirty years, I have lived with this monthly’s evolution from the thought journal that the late theologian Carl Henry wished it to be, empowered to drag American evangelicalism—kicking and screaming if need be—out of the cultural backwaters. Gradually, and by means of the separation of Henry from the project, it became a more general-access piece of the kind that fellow founder Billy Graham is said to have desired.

General access is no kidding. Circulation has mushroomed over the decades and given rise to something of a Christianity Today Empire around evangelicalism’s Mecca, Wheaton, Illinois.

With CT, you get news, analysis, some extremely well-written columns, and a dose of measured opinion, all of which purports to represent evangelicalism’s ‘middle’, even if this is a constantly moving and morphing target.

More belligerent alternatives (think WORLD magazine) have sprung up to lead the culture wars, Southern Baptists have been largely coopted into the evangelical movement, and frequent contributions from evangelicalism’s Christian college faculties have made CT a confident product of the evangelical establishment. Now firmly distinguished from fundamentalism—a distinction that, astonishingly, is still routinely missed by cultural elites from outside the movement—CT allows itself to cringe at antics on both the left and the right of American Christianity. The magazine has also developed a fine instinct for recognizing the leading edge of Christian activity before it becomes a recognizable trend.

Hugely influential, occasionally claustrophobic, rarely maddening, always worthwhile. CT is the WSJ of the neo-evangelical movement.