Books & Culture: A Christian Review (B&C) was a bimonthly book review journal published by Christianity Today International from 1995 to 2016.[1] The journal was launched a year after the publication of The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark A. Noll, and it sought to address that scandal by providing a vehicle for Christian intellectual engagement with ideas and culture, modeled on the New York Review of Books.[2] It was launched and subsidized through its early years with the help of grants from the Pew Charitable Trusts.[3] John Wilson edited the publication and Noll and Philip Yancey served as cochairs of the editorial board.[4]
| Editor | John Wilson |
|---|---|
| Categories | Literary magazines, Christianity |
| Frequency | Bimonthly |
| Format | Tabloid |
| Circulation | 11,000 |
| First issue | September 1995 |
| Final issue Number | November 2016 Vol 22 No 6 |
| Company | Christianity Today International |
| Country | United States |
| Based in | Carol Stream, Illinois |
| Language | English |
| Website | www |
| ISSN | 1082-8931 |
| OCLC | 32609725 |
While the publisher and the majority of Books & Culture's writers were evangelical, the magazine was not limited to evangelical perspectives. "Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Jews, and a few nonbelievers" could be found among the publication's contributors, according to the New York Times.[2] In 2000, Alan Wolfe observed in The Atlantic that "In addition to evangelicals, figures as diverse as the economist Glenn C. Loury; the historian Eugene Genovese; Richard Bernstein, of New School University; and the novelist Larry Woiwode have written for the magazine, which has featured interviews with Stanley Crouch, Adam Michnik, and Francis Fukuyama."[5]
Journalist Richard N. Ostling called Books & Culture "American religion's classiest highbrow magazine".[6] It was considered "the leading journal of evangelical Protestant engagement with the scholarly disciplines and the arts"[7] and enjoyed a loyal following among both self-styled evangelical intellectuals and the wider publishing industry,[8][9] but it was never financially self-sustaining.[10][3] In 2013 it narrowly avoided closure through a Twitter-driven fundraising push that secured sufficient donations and pledges to keep the magazine afloat into the following year and beyond.[11] Wilson speculated in an interview after the closure was announced that it might have been easier to attract donors if the magazine had functioned as "sort of a culture war vehicle," but that had never been the vision of the publication.[3]
In the Books & Culture podcast, Wilson regularly highlighted other periodicals that he believed would appeal to readers of Books & Culture, including The Other Journal, The Englewood Review of Books, and Image.[12] Commentators discussing the demise of Books & Culture identified these and other publications that might be considered successors to the journal, such as Mars Hill Audio Journal, Touchstone, and Sojourners.[10][13] In December 2016, it was announced that Wilson would be editing a new publication starting in spring 2017 called Education & Culture;[14] that online-only review ceased publication in October 2017.[15]
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