Hell’s Back
Mark Tooley on a Surprising Mainline Descent into Gehenna
The Christian Century, the long-time flagship magazine for liberal mainline Protestantism in America, recently featured a symposium on hell. Somewhat surprisingly, most of the respondents, coming primarily from Evangelical backgrounds, seem to believe in it. The liberal theological patriarchs who guided the journal through the twentieth century, wherever they are now, might be slightly aflutter.
Founded in the late nineteenth century, The Christian Century early on became a chief voice for the Social Gospel, which displaced orthodox doctrine with strenuous emphases on progressive social reforms. The magazine predictably but thoughtfully articulated the trends of mainline Protestantism, which dominated American religious life until the 1960s. Reinhold Niebuhr began writing for it the 1920s. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” made its debut in The Christian Century in 1963.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Mark Tooley directs the United Methodist committee of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (www.ird-renew.org) in Washington, D.C.
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
33.3—May/June 2020
Maternal Body: A Theology of Incarnation from the Christian East by Carrie Frederick Frost
Fertile Ground: A Pilgrimage Through Pregnancy by Laura S. Jansson by Agnes R. Howard
34.1—January/February 2021
Jesus' Astonishing Other Teaching on Marriage by James Ware
31.2—March/April 2018
How Best to Face the Total War of the Anti-Culture by R. J. Snell
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
