The Christian Century

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The Christian Century
Christian Century Dec 2010.jpg
Cover of the December 14, 2010, issue
Editor/Publisher Peter W. Marty
Managing editorSteve Thorngate
Categories Christianity
FrequencyMonthly
Circulation 36,000
First issue1884
CompanyChristian Century Foundation
CountryUnited States
Based in Chicago, Illinois
LanguageEnglish
Website christiancentury.org OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
ISSN 0009-5281

The Christian Century is a Christian magazine based in Chicago, Illinois. Considered the flagship magazine of US mainline Protestantism, [1] the monthly reports on religious news; comments on theological, moral, and cultural issues; and reviews books, movies, and music.

Contents

The Century's current editor and publisher is Peter W. Marty, while Steve Thorngate is its managing editor. Regular columns include:

The Century website hosts podcasts by Grace Ji-Sun Kim, Amy Frykholm, Cassidy Hall, Matt Fitzgerald, Matt Gaventa, and Adam Hearlson.

The magazine's editorial stance has been described as "liberal." [2] It describes its own mission as follows:

For decades, the Christian Century has informed and shaped progressive, mainline Christianity. Committed to thinking critically and living faithfully, the magazine explores what it means to believe and live out the Christian faith in our time. As a voice of generous orthodoxy, the Century is both loyal to the church and open to the world. [3]

History

The Christian Century was founded in 1884 as The Christian Oracle in Des Moines, Iowa, as a Disciples of Christ denominational magazine.

In 1900, its editor proposed to rename it Christian Century in response to the great optimism of many Christians at the turn of the 20th century that "genuine Christian faith could live in mutual harmony with the modern developments in science, technology, immigration, communication and culture that were already under way." Around this same time, the Century's offices moved to Chicago.

The magazine did not receive widespread support in its denomination and was sold in a mortgage foreclosure in 1908. It was purchased by Charles Clayton Morrison, who soon labeled the magazine nondenominational. Morrison became a highly influential spokesperson for liberal Christianity, advocating higher criticism of the Bible, as well as the Social Gospel, which included concerns about child labor, women's suffrage, racism, war and pacifism, alcoholism and prohibition, environmentalism, and many other political and social issues. The magazine was a common target for criticism by fundamentalists during the fundamentalist–modernist debate of the early 20th century.

During the Second World War, the magazine helped provide a venue for promotion of ideas by Christian activists who opposed the internment of Japanese Americans. Critiques of the internment policy, by writers such as Galen Fisher, appeared regularly in the Century and helped bring awareness to the situation.

In 1956 the magazine was challenged by the establishment of Christianity Today by Carl F. H. Henry, which sought to present a theologically conservative evangelical viewpoint, while restoring many social concerns abandoned by fundamentalists. Both magazines continue to flourish, with the Century remaining the major independent publication within ecumenical, mainline Protestantism.

The magazine was heavily involved in covering and advocating for the civil rights movement. It sent editors to a march in Selma, Alabama in 1965 and was one of the first national magazines to publish Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" along with six of his other essays. King was also an editor-at-large to the magazine. [4]

In 2008 both Martin E. Marty and former editor James M. Wall concluded long runs as Century columnists.

Other writers published by the Century over its long history include Jane Addams, Albert Schweitzer, W. E. B. DuBois, Reuben Markham, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, Reinhold Niebuhr, Richard John Neuhaus, Paul Tillich, John F. Kennedy, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Thomas Merton, James Cone, Rosemary Rutherford, Mary Daly, Billy Graham, Wendell Berry, Henri Nouwen, N. T. Wright, Delores S. Williams, Sarah Coakley, Rowan Williams, and Marilynne Robinson.

Accusations of antisemitism

The magazine has been accused of being antisemitic during the editorial reign of Morrison in the 1930s and 1940s. [5] [6] [7] It published articles: opposing American intervention in World War II for the benefit of the Jews persecuted under the Nazis; arguing moral equivalence between an alleged Jewish-nationalist crucifixion of Jesus and the Nazi persecution of Jews; condemning American Jews for maintaining their distinct identity; and a rebuttal to Rabbi Stephen Wise, president of the World Jewish Congress, claiming he was exaggerating the Holocaust. [8] As late as 1944 the magazine published articles such as "A Reply to Screamers" by Fred Eastman [9] which admonished the suggestion that there was a moral obligation for the United States to aid in the plight of European Jews being murdered during the Holocaust. Marty, writing about the 1940s, described the Christian Century at that time as being an "anti-Zionist" publication. [10]

Beginning in 2012, James M. Wall (editor from 1972-1999) served on the editorial board of VNN, [11] an online news and opinion site that the Southern Poverty Law Centre identified as a neo-Nazi hate site. [12] Wall's name was retained on the Christian Century masthead from 2012 to 2017, despite his association with VNN, drawing criticism. [13] [14]

In 2017 Wall's name was removed from the masthead. In Christian Century's 2021 obituary of Wall, Marty conceded "Wall's extensive pro-Palestinian writing at times devolved into anti-Semitism." [15] In recent years, the magazine has published both pro-Palestine and pro-Israel authors and argued for a two-state solution to the conflict.[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

Antisemitism is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against, Jews. This sentiment is a form of racism, and a person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Primarily, antisemitic tendencies may be motivated by negative sentiment towards Jews as a people or by negative sentiment towards Jews with regard to Judaism. In the former case, usually presented as racial antisemitism, a person's hostility is driven by the belief that Jews constitute a distinct race with inherent traits or characteristics that are repulsive or inferior to the preferred traits or characteristics within that person's society. In the latter case, known as religious antisemitism, a person's hostility is driven by their religion's perception of Jews and Judaism, typically encompassing doctrines of supersession that expect or demand Jews to turn away from Judaism and submit to the religion presenting itself as Judaism's successor faith—this is a common theme within the other Abrahamic religions. The development of racial and religious antisemitism has historically been encouraged by the concept of anti-Judaism, which is distinct from antisemitism itself.

Some Christian Churches, Christian groups, and ordinary Christians express religious antisemitism toward the Jewish people and the associated religion of Judaism. These can be thought of examples of anti-Semitism expressed by Christians or by Christian communities. However, the term "Christian Anti-Semitism" has also been used to refer to anti-Jewish sentiments that arise out of Christian doctrinal or theological stances. The term "Christian Anti-Semitism" is also used to suggest that to some degree, contempt for Jews and for Judaism inhere to Christianity as a religion, itself, and that centralized institutions of Christian power, as well as governments with strong Christian influence have generated societal structures that survive to this day which perpetuate anti-Semitism. This usage appears particularly in discussions of Christian structures of power within society, which are referred to as Christian Hegemony or Christian Privilege; these are part of larger discussions of Structural inequality and power dynamics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reinhold Niebuhr</span> American Reformed theologian (1892–1971)

Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was an American Reformed theologian, ethicist, commentator on politics and public affairs, and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years. Niebuhr was one of America's leading public intellectuals for several decades of the 20th century and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. A public theologian, he wrote and spoke frequently about the intersection of religion, politics, and public policy, with his most influential books including Moral Man and Immoral Society and The Nature and Destiny of Man.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christian Zionism</span> Belief among some Protestant Christians that Jews should return to the Holy Land

Christian Zionism is a political and religious ideology that, in a Christian context, espouses the return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land. Likewise, it holds that the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 was in accordance with biblical prophecies transmitted through the Old Testament: that the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Levant—the eschatological "Gathering of Israel"—is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The term began to be used in the mid-20th century, in place of Christian restorationism, as proponents of the ideology rallied behind Zionists in support of a Jewish national homeland.

The history of antisemitism, defined as hostile actions or discrimination against Jews as a religious or ethnic group, goes back many centuries, with antisemitism being called "the longest hatred". Jerome Chanes identifies six stages in the historical development of antisemitism:

  1. Pre-Christian anti-Judaism in Ancient Greece and Rome that was primarily ethnic in nature
  2. Christian antisemitism in antiquity and the Middle Ages that was religious in nature and has extended into modern times
  3. Muslim antisemitism that was—at least in its classical form—nuanced, in that Jews were a protected class
  4. Political, social, and economic antisemitism during the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment Europe that laid the groundwork for racial antisemitism
  5. Racial antisemitism that arose in the 19th century and culminated in Nazism
  6. Contemporary antisemitism, which has been labeled by some as the new antisemitism
<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mainline Protestant</span> Older, more establishment Protestant denominations

The mainline Protestant churches are a group of Protestant denominations in the United States and Canada largely of the theologically liberal or theologically progressive persuasion that contrast in history and practice with the largely theologically conservative Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Charismatic, Confessional, Confessing Movement, historically Black church, and Global South Protestant denominations and congregations. Some make a distinction between "mainline" and "oldline", with the former referring only to denominational ties and the latter referring to church lineage, prestige and influence. However, this distinction has largely been lost to history and the terms are now nearly synonymous.

Charles Clayton Morrison (1874–1966) was an American Disciples of Christ minister and Christian socialist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Americans United for Separation of Church and State</span> American nonprofit organization

Americans United for Separation of Church and State is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that advocates for the disassociation of religion and religious organizations from government. The separation of church and state in the United States is commonly interpreted to be provided in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..."

<i>On the Jews and Their Lies</i> Book by Martin Luther

On the Jews and Their Lies is a 65,000-word anti-Judaic and antisemitic treatise written in 1543 by the German Reformation leader Martin Luther (1483–1546).

The Council of Christians and Jews (CCJ) is a voluntary organisation in the United Kingdom. It is composed of Christians and Jews working together to counter anti-semitism and other forms of intolerance in Britain. Their patron was Queen Elizabeth II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Racial antisemitism</span> Prejudice and discrimination against Jews based on race or ethnicity

Racial antisemitism is prejudice against Jews based on a belief or assertion that Jews constitute a distinct race that has inherent traits or characteristics that appear in some way abhorrent or inherently inferior or otherwise different from the traits or characteristics of the rest of a society. The abhorrence may find expression in the form of discrimination, stereotypes or caricatures. Racial antisemitism may present Jews, as a group, as a threat in some way to the values or safety of a society. Racial antisemitism can seem deeper-rooted than religious antisemitism, because for religious antisemites conversion of Jews remains an option and once converted the "Jew" is gone. In the context of racial antisemitism Jews cannot get rid of their Jewishness.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christianity in the United States</span>

Christianity is the most prevalent religion in the United States. Estimates from 2021 suggest that of the entire U.S. population about 63% is Christian. The majority of Christian Americans are Protestant Christians, though there are also significant numbers of American Roman Catholics and other Christian denominations such as Latter Day Saints, Eastern Orthodox Christians and Oriental Orthodox Christians, and Jehovah's Witnesses. The United States has the largest Christian population in the world and, more specifically, the largest Protestant population in the world, with nearly 210 million Christians and, as of 2021, over 140 million people affiliated with Protestant churches, although other countries have higher percentages of Christians among their populations. The Public Religion Research Institute's "2020 Census of American Religion", carried out between 2014 and 2020, showed that 70% of Americans identified as Christian during this seven-year interval. In a 2020 survey by the Pew Research Center, 65% of adults in the United States identified themselves as Christians. They were 75% in 2015, 70.6% in 2014, 78% in 2012, 81.6% in 2001, and 85% in 1990. About 62% of those polled claim to be members of a church congregation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Wyman</span> American historian (1929–2018)

David Sword Wyman was the Josiah DuBois professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Martin Luther (1483–1546) was a German professor of theology, priest and seminal leader of the Reformation. His positions on Judaism continue to be controversial. These changed dramatically from his early career, where he showed concern for the plight of European Jews, to his later years, when embittered by his failure to convert them to Christianity, he became outspokenly antisemitic in his statements and writings.

Antisemitism—prejudice, hatred of, or discrimination against Jews—has experienced a long history of expression since the days of ancient civilizations, with most of it having originated in the Christian and pre-Christian civilizations of Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antisemitism in the United States</span>

Antisemitism has long existed in the United States. Most Jewish community relations agencies in the United States draw distinctions between antisemitism, which is measured in terms of attitudes and behaviors, and the security and status of American Jews, which are both measured by the occurrence of specific incidents.

Relations between Protestantism and Judaism have existed since the time of the Reformation, although there has been more emphasis on dialogue since the 20th century, with Protestant and Jewish scholars in the United States being at the forefront of the emerging interfaith movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Criticism of Israel</span> Disapproval towards the Israeli government

Criticism of Israel is a subject of journalistic and scholarly commentary and research within the scope of international relations theory, expressed in terms of political science. Israel has faced international criticism since its establishment in 1948 relating to a variety of issues, many of which are centered around human rights violations in its occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James M. Wall</span> American Methodist minister and journalist (1928–2021)

James McKendree Wall was an American Methodist minister and journalist who wrote extensively on religion in the United States.

The international Jewish conspiracy or the world Jewish conspiracy has been described as "the most widespread and durable conspiracy theory of the twentieth century" and "one of the most widespread and long-running conspiracy theories". Although it typically claims that a malevolent, usually global Jewish circle, referred to as International Jewry, conspires for world domination, the conspiracy theory's content is extremely variable, which helps explain its wide distribution and long duration. It was popularized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century especially by the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Among the beliefs that posit an international Jewish conspiracy are Jewish Bolshevism, Cultural Marxism, Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory, White genocide conspiracy theory and Holocaust denial. The Nazi leadership's belief in an international Jewish conspiracy that it blamed for starting World War II and controlling the Allied powers was key to their decision to launch the Final Solution.

References

  1. ↑ Gary B. Bullert, "Reinhold Niebuhr and the Christian century: World War II and the eclipse of the social gospel," Journal of Church and State 44 [2002] 271-290.
  2. ↑ Left-wing scholars attack the best-selling 'Da Vinci Code', Richard N. Ostling, Associated Press, July 10, 2004.
  3. ↑ "Mission". The Christian Century. Retrieved 23 February 2022.
  4. ↑ The Christian Century 1959-08-19: Volume 76, Issue 33.
  5. ↑ Hertzel., Fishman (1973). American protestantism and a Jewish state. Wayne State University Press. OCLC   463014711.
  6. ↑ W., Ross, Robert (1998). So it was true : the American Protestant press and the Nazi persecution of the Jews. Wipf and Stock. ISBN   1-57910-122-4. OCLC   45870561.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  7. ↑ "Has Christian Century Turned a Corner? Maybe . . ". CAMERA. Retrieved 2021-07-01.
  8. ↑ "The Stubborn Antisemitism of Yahoo and The Christian Century". CAMERA. Retrieved 2021-07-01.
  9. ↑ Eastman, Fred (February 16, 1944). "A Reply to Screamers". The Christian Century. Vol. 61, no. 7. pp. 204–206. ISSN   0009-5281.
  10. ↑ Modern American Religion: Under God, Indivisible, 1941-1960, Martin E. Marty, University of Chicago Press, 1999, p. 189.
  11. ↑ "Christian Century Does Right Thing, Removes James M. Wall From Masthead". CAMERA. Retrieved 2021-07-01.
  12. ↑ "VNN Forum, Font of Vile Anti-Semitism, Goes Dark Amid Financial Troubles". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 2021-07-01.
  13. ↑ "Christian Century Does Right Thing, Removes James M. Wall From Masthead". CAMERA. Retrieved 2021-07-01.
  14. ↑ JNS. "United Methodist Church under fire for Anti-Semitism". Cleveland Jewish News. Retrieved 2021-07-01.
  15. ↑ "Former Century editor James McKendree Wall dies at 92". The Christian Century. Retrieved 2021-07-01.

Sources

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