The country’s only religious satire magazine, The Door, has moved from a company that publishes material for church youth groups to a foundation that investigates reports of abuses by televangelists.
Mike Yaconelli, senior editor of The Door, says the time had come for Youth Specialties to relinquish the publication. “You want to make sure that you make fun of the right things and use satire with integrity,” he says. “But after a while, you start to develop blind spots and satirize the same things.” Although there are no radical changes in the Dallas-based Trinity Foundation’s first issue, which was published in January, the foundation’s president, Ole Anthony, has plans to increase the size of both the magazine and its 8,000-subscriber base. Anthony, who may be best known for exposing televangelist Robert Tilton’s fundraising tactics, says he wants to double the number of pages in the 36-page magazine, publish it monthly instead of bimonthly, and market it in bookstores. In its quarter-century of existence, The Door generated a profit for the first time in 1994.
Anthony wants to broaden the target subject to include “all things that allege to be spiritual” rather than only Christianity. “The New Age movement is begging to be satirized,” Anthony says.
The magazine, published in El Cajon, California, before the move, will retain eight-year editor Bob Darden and bring on John Bloom, whose alter ego, Joe Bob Briggs, is known for his satirical drive-in movie columns.
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