Plus: Why Protestants win at the Olympics, more Chinese arrests, and other links to articles in other publications around the Internet.
Evangelicals corner the market on magazines, says columnist"Why is it often so hard to find good magazines for the mainline Protestants and Catholics who constitute America's religious majority?" asks Winifred Gallagher, religion magazine "expert" for Contentville.com. "Many large newsstands carry journals for just one group of Christians: Evangelicals, in other words fervent, proselytizing, born-again believers, most of whom are political and theological conservatives." In case you haven't picked it up, she thinks that's a bad thing. ChristianityToday.com Weblog won't take the time to pick apart all of her assertion that "most churchgoers are actually moderate Catholics and so-called mainline Protestants … who feel increasingly underrepresented in the national discourse on 'religious issues'" but readers should know that Gallagher herself has
pegged evangelicals at a whopping 40 percent of the U.S. population. Back to her magazine assertion: "There's no shortage of journals that reflect the kinder, gentler Christian perspective, including Weavings, Sojourners, Commonweal, Reimagining, The Christian Century, CrossCurrents, Context, and America. So why do these magazines have such a low profile? Perhaps it's time for America's spiritual 'silent majority' to confront its odd mix of complacency and diffidence—and support thoughtful religious journalism as do the readers of influential and accessible publications such as the Jewish Tikkun, the Buddhist Tricycle—and the Evangelical Christianity Today." Thanks for the compliment, but the editors of Christianity Today can rarely find our magazine on racks (though, to be honest, we don't really pursue rack sales). In fact, we find it's much more common to find the magazines Gallagher ...