The demise of Christianity & Crisis
Phillips, Maxine
When it died last April, at age fifty-two, the liberal Christian magazine Christianity & Crisis left a host of mourners. The symbolism of its demise occurring close to Easter was not lost on...
...The National Council of Churches, the ecumenical expression of mainline Protestantism, is struggling for its life...
...Sojourners readers are mainline Protestant, Catholic, Protestant evangelical, and members of historic peace churches, which are pacifist...
...This isn't happening...
...C&C could never be a magazine only for people concerned about specific issues or constituencies...
...Although the topics were of interest to them, that interest did not translate into subscriptions...
...Nevertheless, many social activists acknowledge its legacy...
...Sojourners, which grew from the activities of seminarians in Chicago twenty-two years ago and maintains several ministries in Washington, D.C., has restructured itself to stanch the hemorrhaging of readers...
...It was the first year that less than 50 percent of our income came from subscriptions, and we couldn't see continuing to fund raise at that level," says Howell...
...In 1980, he notes, the median age of a Sojourners subscriber was thirty-three...
...Other magazines have similar problems...
...The answer is not clear...
...government policies...
...The bridge couldn't bear the weight, but the space must still be crossed...
...There have been defections, splits, and serious loss of funds...
...Instead of subscribing, one now joins an organization and receives a publication...
...Just as the party has been weakened by the perception that it caters to "special interest" groups, so have the denominations suffered...
...Over the years it was a steady voice for social justice and a critic of U.S...
...And young people whose sympathies lie in the liberal direction are not drawn to churches, much as "single-issue" activists shun the Democratic party...
...After all, what is the Christian left...
...No one I spoke with for this article was comfortable with that term...
...The problem is broader than Protestantism," says Roos...
...Traditional mainline denominations do not have life-giving energy...
...Did C&C collapse because it was too anchored to dying institutional structures...
...Still, there is no strong institutionally identifiable movement for the "left" as there appears to be for the Christian right...
...The symbolism of its demise occurring close to Easter was not lost on them, and there was speculation about whether it might be resurrected in some form...
...It's not unusual for young people to leave the church, says long-time social activist and C&C contributing editor Howard Moody...
...It sometimes seems like the only way for a young person to be passionate about religion is to be in conservative movements because that's what's there," she says...
...Renewals were not for the two- and three-year periods that magazines depend on...
...In fact, the death of the magazine followed the most successful fundraising campaign ever, when the magazine brought in more than $300,000 in donations and grants, $100,000 more than ever before...
...Founded by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and some associates as a voice of "Christian realism" in contrast to the then-pacifist Christian Century, it promoted the U.S...
...C&C was the first non-pacifist Christian magazine to oppose the Vietnam War...
...Sojourners editor Jim Wallis, in an issue last winter, wrote, "Virtually all the vertical structures of American Christianity are in great distress...
...Twenty-three-year-old AIDS activist Beth Stroud, who arrived at C&C as a Union Theological Seminary intern and stayed to edit the book review section in the magazine's last year, mourns the loss of the only publication on the Christian left that was an advocate for gays WINTER • 1994 • 135 Notebook and lesbians...
...Her experience as a person brought up in a modern mainline church reflects Roos's observation about energy...
...We found that the younger people were just not interested in reading a magazine," says former C&C managing editor Vivian Lindermayer...
...Generations of religious social activists cut their teeth on articles by leading theologians...
...It tried to bridge the space between what was and what is being born...
...But this was an aging core, highlighting a problem faced not only by the magazine but by organized religion generally: the lack of young people...
...There are plenty of people out there staffing soup kitchens, involved in urban ministry and peace and justice activities...
...In recent years it searched out voices "from below" and was a forum for Native 134 • DISSENT Notebook American, African-American, feminist, third world, and gay and lesbian writers...
...None of those groups are attracting young people...
...Costs went up and subscriptions, which had peaked around 20,000 in the late seventies, leveled off at around 13,000...
...At the same time, many people who have fought the battles against conservatives within are weary...
...For much too long," he says," evangelicals have been the Republican Party at prayer, liberals have been easily confused with the left wing of the Democratic Party, and even grassroots religious peace and justice activists have not always distinguished themselves from the politics of other secular and solidarity movements...
...Some denominations were forced to leave urban centers (primarily New York City) for the heartland...
...The diversity among Christians who see themselves as progressive highlights another issue...
...It can include theologically conservative and economically radical people, economically conservative and theologically and socially liberal types...
...The labels blur...
...For those of us still interested in coalition and multi-issue politics, it's hard not to draw some comparisons with the problems C&C faced and those of the Democratic party...
...war effort against Hitler...
...It had to be a magazine of a coalition...
...Although many readers were jolted by the magazine's consistently liberal stands, a core remained faithful and responded well to fund appeals...
...That coalition no longer holds in the Democratic party, nor does it hold in mainline Protestantism...
...Those in their thirties and forties have the demands of family life, and younger people just may not be reading...
...In the past they have returned when they had children...
...Protestantism is in crisis," says Roos...
...Two focus-group meetings in New York were not encouraging...
...Certainly the recession had a major impact...
...Was the journal's death the fate of many small, underfunded magazines, or does its passing say something about the larger picture of the "religious left" and the United States today...
...The future holds more horizontal relationships and networks, he believes, giving as examples Pax Christi, Witness for Peace, Evangelicals for Social Action, and the antihunger lobby Bread for the World...
...Its publisher, Joe Roos, believes that with more time pressure in their lives people get their information from television or computer networks...
...Sojourners, an evangelical ecumenical magazine, has gone from 50,000 subscribers to 25,000...
...By 1987 it had gone to forty-seven and has stayed there...
...This does not mean the end of liberalism among Protestants...
...Every year, more of his time was spent fund raising and less on editorial work, Howell recalls...
...She recalls being drawn to the conservative Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship in college even as she struggled with coming out as a lesbian...
...The economic decline was linked to the political climate, for during the Reagan-Bush years, when mainline Protestant denominations such as the Methodists and Presbyterians were under assault for being "too liberal," congregations that used to send money to national headquarters withdrew their support...
...Almost a year later, "There's no phoenix rising," says Leon Howell, who was editor from 1985 to 1992...
...The National Council of Churches was attacked in the eighties by the Readers' Digest and the Institute for Religion and Democracy as a commie-symp front...
...For example, our AIDS issue sold so well we had to reprint it, but we didn't get any new subscriptions as a result...
Vol. 41 • January 1994 • No. 1
