The evangelical magazine Christianity Today has fallen far from its founder’s original vision. First published in 1956, it was established by the renowned evangelist Billy Graham with the mission “to express historical Christianity to the present generation.” As the original editorial of CT contended, “Neglected, slighted, misrepresented — evangelical Christianity needs a clear voice, to speak with conviction and love, and to state its true position and its relevance to the world crisis. A generation has grown up unaware of the basic truths of the Christian faith taught in the Scriptures and expressed in the creeds of the historic evangelical churches.”
Indeed, Graham conceived of CT as a counter to the liberal and mainline protestant magazine Christianity Century. Yet now, almost 70 years later, CT itself has become increasingly muddied with a liberal worldview.
This slide to the left has been made apparent by the record of political donations by the publication’s staff. From 2015 through 2022, CT employees made 73 political donations; every single one went to Democrat candidates. This includes donations from CT’s recently departed president and CEO, Timothy Dalrymple. In fact, the last time a CT executive is recorded as giving a political donation to Republicans was back in 1991. And this is supposedly a conservative Christian magazine.
That’s where CT’s money is going, but there is a follow-the-income issue here as well, which seems to also be contributing to CT’s slide to the left.
One of CT’s major patrons is the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, a notoriously leftist NGO, which is the second-biggest donor to Planned Parenthood. The Hewlett Foundation has spent millions advocating for abortion in the U.S. and around the world.
CT officially claims to hold a pro-life position, so why in the world would the magazine take money from a leading pro-abortion advocate? Does that not set up a blatant conflict of interest?
According to dark money watchdog group Influence Watch, the Hewlett Foundation has been supporting Planned Parenthood since its foundation back in 1967. Between 2000 and 2023, the Hewlett Foundation has given over $100 million to Planned Parenthood, and following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Hewlett announced it was doubling its efforts to support and promote abortion.
So, why would Hewlett support CT in light of this reality? The reason appears to have everything to do with Hewlett seeking to get CT to frame abortion in a positive light. And since 2022, CT has begun publishing articles that are arguably muddying the waters around abortion.
According to Seth Gruber, pro-life activist and founder of the White Rose Resistance, the Left has sought to redefine what “pro-life” consists of well beyond the original and narrow focus of aiming to end the murder of preborn babies. “Leftists know that the best way to get naive Christians to jump on their bandwagon is to label their agenda as either a gospel issue or a pro-life issue,” Gruber observes. “But he who fights everywhere fights nowhere.” In other words, Hewlett is engaged in a divide-and-conquer strategy.
In recent years, CT has begun to increasingly rely on donations versus subscriptions, shifting from 20% of its revenue coming from donors in 2020 to over half of its revenue today coming from donors.
Hayden Ludwig, executive director of Research at Restoration America, said that Hewlett’s tactic is to “act like a siren song — they can hook a grantee on Hewlett money and gradually reorient them around a ‘progressive’ agenda to keep the spigot open.” Ludwig further noted, “Unfortunately … bankrolling ‘conservative’ groups is the Hewlett Foundation’s m.o. as part of a larger strategy to infiltrate and undermine the Right. It’s sad to see a giant of Evangelical thought transform into just another pawn for the secular Left.”
Conservative Christian theologian and pastor Doug Wilson’s publishing company, Canon Press, recently made a $10 million offer to purchase CT. Canon Press cofounder Aaron Rench explained, “Christianity Today has lost the path and purpose of its founder, and we are dead serious about acquiring it and pushing it forward in the courageous spirit of Charlie Kirk.” He noted that this would include CT rejecting any donations from Hewlett.
Hopefully, Canon Press is successful in acquiring CT and returning the once-strongly biblically consistent publication to its founding principles.
