The Christian Century

What The Christian Century is

The Christian Century is a biweekly magazine and a daily-publishing website covering theology, ministry, ethics, books, culture, and the church’s engagement with public life. It runs essays, opinion pieces, sermons, book reviews, poetry, lectionary commentary, and a small slate of podcasts. The editorial perspective is rooted in mainline Protestantism — the historic Protestant denominations that descended from the Reformation through American religious history but that did not take the evangelical or fundamentalist fork in the twentieth century.

The Century is the oldest continuously published Christian magazine in the United States. It traces its lineage to 1884, took its current name in 1900 under editor Charles Clayton Morrison, and has been published in Chicago for most of its life. Its archive includes some of the most-cited religious journalism of the twentieth century — Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther King Jr.’s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" was responded to here, and writers like Marilynne Robinson, Stanley Hauerwas, and Fleming Rutledge have appeared on its pages.

Why mainline Protestants read The Christian Century

Mainline Protestantism is sometimes described as a tradition without a magazine — most of the highest-traffic American Christian publishing is either evangelical (Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, Desiring God), Catholic (America, Commonweal, First Things in a different register), or non-aligned. The Christian Century is the explicit, longstanding editorial home for the UMC, ELCA, PCUSA, UCC, Episcopal, Disciples, and adjacent traditions. If you are a pastor in those traditions, you are reading writers who share your seminary formation, your liturgical calendar, your social commitments, and your hermeneutic.

That clarity is the differentiator. The Century does not pretend to be a magazine for "all Christians" in a way that washes out its tradition. It is mainline Protestant the way America is Catholic and World is evangelical, and most of its loyal readership prefers it that way. Readers from outside the mainline still benefit from the writing — but they are guests in a particular tradition’s house, and the magazine does not flatten its voice to make that more comfortable.

Mainline editorial home: the differentiator from evangelical publishing

The Christian Century’s most important feature is not a product — it is a vantage. It is the only large, well-funded American Christian magazine whose editorial center of gravity sits in mainline Protestantism. That shapes the entire publication: which seminaries the writers come from (Yale Divinity, Princeton Theological, Vanderbilt, Union, Duke, Candler), which denominational news gets covered closely (UMC General Conference, ELCA churchwide assemblies, PCUSA actions), which books get reviewed (a steady mainline-press diet from Eerdmans, Westminster John Knox, Fortress, Baker Academic, and university presses), and which authors recur (Walter Brueggemann, Sarah Coakley, Esau McCaulley, William Willimon, Diana Butler Bass, Marilynne Robinson).

This sounds like a small thing. In practice it is transformative for readers in those traditions. A UMC pastor preparing a sermon on the Revised Common Lectionary, a Presbyterian elder writing a session report on denominational politics, a Lutheran seminarian reading toward ordination exams — these readers can pick up the Century and not feel like they have to translate from a different tradition’s assumptions. For evangelical readers used to Christianity Today, the experience is the inverse: most of the assumed referents are shifted, and that shift is the point.

140 years of continuous publication: an American religious archive

The Christian Century is the oldest continuously published Christian magazine in the United States. It started life as The Christian Oracle in 1884, took the name "The Christian Century" in 1900 to mark editors’ hope for the new century’s religious possibilities, and has been published without interruption since. That is roughly six and a half million words a year for 140 years — and most of it is preserved and searchable in the magazine’s archive.

For working historians of American religion, this archive is a primary source. The Century covered the Scopes trial in real time. It hosted the Reinhold Niebuhr–Charles Clayton Morrison debate over pacifism in the late 1930s. It ran responses to Martin Luther King Jr.’s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (which itself was addressed in part to mainline clergy who read the magazine). It tracked the rise and the fragmentation of the ecumenical movement, the mainline’s involvement in civil rights, the gender debates of the 1970s and 1980s, and the sexuality debates of the 1990s through today. Subscribers get full access to that back catalog, and it is one of the strongest reasons to subscribe rather than rely on the free article tier.

Theological and political progressive lens: stated plainly

The Christian Century is, on most contested questions, theologically and politically progressive. It generally affirms the ordination of women, has been broadly affirming on LGBTQ inclusion since well before its parent traditions formally moved that direction, treats higher-critical biblical scholarship as the default scholarly posture, and runs political commentary that more often lands on the left than the right. This is not hidden in the masthead — it is the editorial water the magazine has swum in for decades and the reason much of its readership stays.

For readers from traditions that read these questions differently — many evangelicals, most Catholics on certain teachings, Orthodox readers, and Latter-day Saints — that lens is worth knowing about going in. It is not that the Century is unfair to other traditions, and it does run writers who hold non-progressive positions on individual issues. But the assumed reader is mainline, and the assumed direction of theological and social ethics is the direction those denominations have largely moved over the last fifty years. If that is your tradition, this is your magazine. If it is not, you can still read it profitably — but read it the way you would read any thoughtful publication from a tradition not your own.

Pricing

Where The Christian Century falls behind

No major video investment. The Christian Century is overwhelmingly a text-and-audio publication. There are some video clips and conference recordings, but if you compare its YouTube and short-form footprint to evangelical media outlets or to the Catholic Word on Fire ecosystem, it is much smaller. Readers who prefer watching to reading should pair the Century with another resource.

Coverage outside the historic mainline is thin. Pentecostal, nondenominational, global South, immigrant, and Latter-day Saint Christianity get less editorial attention than their actual share of global Christianity warrants. The Century knows this and has worked to broaden, but the gravitational center remains the seven mainline traditions.

Political content has grown harder to separate from the theological writing. Some readers welcome that integration; others find that the political register of the magazine has flattened over the last decade in ways that crowd out other registers. This is a fair critique even from sympathetic readers.

Archive access is paywalled. The historical depth that is one of the magazine’s strongest assets is not all free. That is reasonable for a nonprofit publisher — but it means a casual reader sampling current articles is not seeing the full strength of the institution.

Comments, forums, and community features are essentially absent. The Century is a magazine, not a platform. Conversation happens in seminary classrooms and clergy text threads, not in the magazine’s own comment section. That is a deliberate editorial choice, but it does mean the reading experience is one-directional in a way some readers want to push past.

The Christian Century vs. Christianity Today vs. Sojourners

These are the three magazines an informed American Protestant reader most often compares. Different strengths. Christianity Today is the evangelical magazine of record — founded in 1956 explicitly as an evangelical alternative to the Century, broadly evangelical theologically, broadly center-right politically though with a complicated relationship to the post-2016 evangelical landscape. The Christian Century is the mainline Protestant magazine of record — older (1884), broader theologically in the liberal-Protestant direction, more often left-of-center politically. Sojourners is the explicitly progressive Christian magazine, founded by Jim Wallis in 1971 out of the evangelical left, with social justice and political activism as the defining lane.

The clean way to think about it: Christianity Today is for evangelicals who want a serious magazine; The Christian Century is for mainline Protestants who want a serious magazine; Sojourners is for Christians of any tradition whose primary frame is progressive political and social engagement. Many readers subscribe to more than one. Seminary libraries usually carry all three. None of the three is trying to be the other two, and the differences are the point — readers who tell themselves they want a single "objective" Christian magazine usually mean they want one whose tradition matches their own.

If you are coming from outside the Protestant world entirely — Catholic, Orthodox, or Latter-day Saint — none of these three is your home base, but the Century is the most likely of the three to publish writers from those traditions thoughtfully and to engage their books on their own terms. America Magazine (Jesuit), Commonweal (lay Catholic), First Things (interfaith conservative), and the Church News (LDS) play closer to those readers’ actual editorial homes.

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