New York Times: Christianity Today, a Voice of Centrist Evangelicalism, Is in Turmoil, by Ruth Graham:
Last year, leaders of the evangelical publication Christianity Today summoned the entire staff to a hotel ballroom in the Chicago suburbs for a meeting about their future.
The publication’s chief operating officer, Nicole Massie Martin, opened her presentation with a Bible verse from the Old Testament about rejoicing even in dark times, “though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food.” Then Thomas Addington, the interim president, delivered a blunt message: Christianity Today’s reputation as a staid voice of intellectual centrist evangelicalism — embodied by its proximity to Wheaton College in Illinois — had to change.
Christianity Today needed to be less like Wheaton and more like TikTok, Mr. Addington told his staff, according to several people who attended the meeting. Warning that layoffs were coming, he ended his presentation with a prayer. A senior editor left the room in tears.
Fourteen months later, more than half of the 79 employees at that time have either been laid off or resigned, including an editor in chief and four of the company’s longest-tenured journalists.
In interviews, a number of employees who have departed since the meeting in 2025 said that the changes at Christianity Today seemed to be about more than stabilizing its finances. Its new leaders, they believe, are abandoning the publication’s longtime commitment to independent journalism, a record that includes investigating accounts of misconduct by high-profile evangelicals.
Bonnie Kristian, Christianity Today’s deputy editor until last week, described its new leaders as being driven “by fear, by the kind of anxiety about reputational and financial loss that makes bold, interesting, principled journalism very difficult.” …
The Trump years upended the landscape of Christian journalism, and revealed gaps between publishers and the pews.
Bonnie Kristian, Why I left Christianity Today:
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