[I wrote this post back in early September of this year. L'il Writer Guy often works in spurts: As I've said before, some time periods have more than their share of interesting material to write about, so I write more than I want to post immediately. I like to squirrel the excess away for occasions when life and/or other priorities leave me, not without many things to say, but without the resources I need to craft them into blog posts.
The negative side is that I often find myself thinking that I've already posted something that's still waiting in the pipeline, as happened with this one. I was working on a thank-you note for some books I received for Christmas, and wanted to reference this post. That was when I realized that I couldn't reference what I hadn't actually posted. So here it is, none the worse for being almost four months old.
And lest you think I've forgotten the current season: I hope you are all having a Merry Christmas—which for us Episcopalians is only on its third day, so I still have a a few days in which to make an actual Christmas post.]
For decades, Christianity Today was one of the few magazines we subscribed to. I appreciated its orthodoxy, its intellectual approach, and its willingness to tackle difficult topics. The magazine's downfall was gradual (as most downfalls are) but undeniable, and we eventually dropped it. Later, I dove back into their online version for a while, but was appalled at how much further its content had fallen.
Megan Basham's book, Shepherds for Sale, ended up on my Amazon wish list at some point, though I no longer remember who recommended it. Maybe I ought to raise its priority, because it was recently brought back to my attention, and piqued my interest further:
Tucker Carlson interviewed Basham, and it's a 25-minute show well worth watching. Now is not the time to bury our heads in the sand (or our busy lives). Among other things, it makes perfect sense of what happened to our once-favorite Christian magazine.
