Despite Revived Left, Religious Magazines Wither

c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) It’s never been easy to make ends meet while putting out a progressive Christian publication. But in an ironic twist, a re-energized religious left may be making a tough task even harder. That’s one key observation from watchers of liberal Christianity who are trying to explain why progressive magazines […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) It’s never been easy to make ends meet while putting out a progressive Christian publication. But in an ironic twist, a re-energized religious left may be making a tough task even harder.

That’s one key observation from watchers of liberal Christianity who are trying to explain why progressive magazines and journals have been dying just as the broader movement seems to be gaining fresh traction.


At least five progressive periodicals _ including four with a 30-plus-year publishing history _ have either disbanded or undergone a radical makeover in the past three years. Though each circumstance has been unique, observers suggest this publishing niche has fallen victim to a perfect storm of rising costs, lackluster fundraising and shifting expectations from readers who want less top-down preaching and more piety.

The tumult has wrought havoc since 2003:

_ The Other Side magazine, launched in 1965 as Freedom Now, put out its last issue in September 2004.

_ Presses have also stopped rolling at Christian Social Action, a 32-year venture of the United Methodist Church, and the independent Christian Network Journal.

_ The Witness, a self-described “feisty, opinionated journal since 1917,” lost a three-year, cost-cutting battle and decided this fall to quit publishing due to “insufficient funds.”

_ Zion’s Herald, published by the Boston Wesleyan Society since 1833, put out its last edition in May. It will resurface, after a risky six-month hiatus, as The Progressive Christian in December.

Though none of these publications ever became a household name, they did serve as recognized channels for disseminating ideas that were at once Christian and left-leaning, in politics or theology or both.

The Witness, for example, critiqued the evils of capitalism. Readers of The Other Side soaked up arguments on issues from feminism to international peace, including some near the end that suggested the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would not have supported the war on terror.


“People used to say, `The Other Side is my community. I can’t find these ideas in my church,”’ said Dee Dee Risher, a former editor and 20-year employee of the publication. Low-paid writers and editors “tried to make lifestyle changes in a consumerist society, a society with a theology of prosperity, and I think that attracted people to the magazine.”

These publications have stumbled even as progressive religious thinkers, such as bestselling author of “God’s Politics” the Rev. Jim Wallis and “The Left Hand of God” author Rabbi Michael Lerner, have in recent years struck a resonant chord.

One theory: People who regard themselves as religious progressives now expect something different from their religious communities than they did a generation ago.

“Overall, the needs of the revived religious left are very much more self-consciously spiritual and social than they were 20 to 30 years ago,” said Hal Taussig, author of “A New Spiritual Home: Progressive Christianity at the Grass Roots.” “Twenty or 30 years ago, (the needs) were sermon-centered. … It assumed a conventional spirituality and what it hid was a deficit and debt of vital spirituality. The left has had to come to terms with its lack of attention to spiritual growth and practice and the cost that that entailed.”

James Adams, who founded the Gig Harbor, Wash.-based Center for Progressive Christianity in 1994, detects a hunger for religious settings where people can work out their own authentic belief systems, rather than merely obey a liberal interpretation of God’s will. Adams suspects many progressive publications never learned to accommodate that desire.

“There was a kind of liberal mushiness, I think, that overtook some of the thinking in some of those publications that have disappeared,” Adams said. “There was this kind of haughtiness on the part of liberals that `we know best. We know what’s good for everybody. Therefore people who don’t agree with us are wrong.’


“I think that attitude lost energy, and people who are more thorough in a way and more thoughtful have come along to replace them.”

As progressive publications have wrestled against these new challenges, perennial hurdles such as fundraising have become extra-burdensome. Taussig noted that “denominations are in disarray” and face too many of their own funding challenges to underwrite outside publications. Major financiers of religious projects, such as the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Lilly Foundation, haven’t supplied sought-after cash. Both traditionally decline to fund ideological enterprises.

Not every progressive magazine, however, has fallen on hard times. Circulation at The Christian Century, the venerable Chicago-based biweekly, bottomed out in 2001 but has since jumped 35 percent to about 35,000, a figure that’s been consistent for most of the past 50 years. Editor David Heim traces success to targeted direct-mail campaigns, improvements in customer service and usage of the Internet to attract new readers.

Circulation has also jumped at Washington-based Sojourners magazine, from 24,300 in December 2002 to 45,500 now. One reason: more evangelical readers. Evangelicals now comprise 17 percent of the readership, up from less than 5 percent in 2002, according to Editor Jim Rice.

Still, the trend has been mostly discouraging.

Zion’s Herald saw troubles ahead and began a yearlong analysis late in 2005. The magazine relied on subscriptions, advertising and donations to cover the approximate $65,000 cost of putting out each issue. A marketing consultant said the name wasn’t helping attract readers. Now, as The Progressive Christian, the magazine has grown its subscriber base by 50 percent. But fundraising still figures prominently in the subscription-growing strategy.

“We’re trying to show donors that we’re an enterprise worth supporting because we have a winning formula,” says Stephen Swecker, editor of The Progressive Christian.


That formula breaks from what Adams terms the “old liberal” model of giving top-down directives for how to live out the gospel. The Progressive Christian will serve up a forum where no voice purports to speak God’s last word, even on such core progressive topics as social justice. Instead, the magazine stresses the importance of questioning and debating as faithful Christian exercises.

“There’s a lot hanging on what we do,” Swecker says. “What’s hanging on it is whether publications of our kind have really run their course in American history.”

KRE/PH END MACDONALD

Editors: Resending to include circulation figures for Sojourners magazine (20th graf) and updated info on The Witness (7th graf). Story originally moved Nov. 29.

To obtain photos of Zion’s Herald and The Progressive Christian, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

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