[Dialogue] Interesting trend

[KroegerD at aol.com]

It seems that progressive spiritual people are now looking for ways into  
"feet on the ground" action rather than intellectual stimulation and  
affirmation.  This, I think, is a good thing.
 

Dick Kroeger
 
 
 
 
     (http://www.chicagotribune.com/)  
_http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/chi-0701050328jan05,1,744458
0.story?coll=chi-newslocalchicago-hed_ 
(http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/chi-0701050328jan05,1,7444580.story?coll=chi-newslocalchicago-hed) 
   
RELIGION
Liberal Christian magazines are stumbling
By G. Jeffrey  MacDonald
Religion News Service

January 5, 2007

It's never been  easy to make ends meet while putting out a progressive 
Christian publication.  But in an ironic twist, a re-energized religious left may 
be making a tough task  even harder.

That's one key observation from watchers of liberal  Christianity who are 
trying to explain why progressive magazines and journals  have been dying just as 
the broader movement seems to be gaining fresh  traction.

At least five progressive periodicals--including four with a  30-plus-year 
publishing history--have either disbanded or undergone a radical  makeover in 
the last three years. Though each circumstance has been unique,  observers 
suggest this publishing niche has fallen victim to a perfect storm of  rising 
costs, lackluster fundraising and shifting expectations from readers who  want less 
top-down preaching and more piety.

The tumult has wrought havoc  since 2003:

The Other Side magazine, launched in 1965 as Freedom Now, put  out its last 
issue in September 2004.

- Presses have also stopped rolling  at Christian Social Action, a 32-year 
venture of the United Methodist Church and  the independent Christian Network 
Journal.

- The Witness, a  self-described "feisty, opinionated journal since 1917," 
phased out its print  edition and began publishing exclusively online in 2003.

Zion's Herald,  published by the Boston Wesleyan Society since 1833, put out 
its last edition in  May. It resurfaced in December, after a six-month hiatus, 
as The Progressive  Christian.

Though none of these publications ever became a household  name, they did 
serve as recognized channels for disseminating ideas that were at  once Christian 
and left-leaning, in politics or theology or both.

The  Witness, for example, critiqued the evils of capitalism. Readers of The 
Other  Side soaked up arguments on issues from feminism to international 
peace,  including some near the end that suggested Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. 
would not  have supported the war on terror.

"People used to say, `The Other Side is  my community. I can't find these 
ideas in my church,'" said Dee Dee Risher, a  former editor and 20-year employee. 
Low-paid writers and editors "tried to make  lifestyle changes in a 
consumerist society, a society with a theology of  prosperity, and I think that 
attracted people to the magazine."

These  publications have stumbled even as progressive religious thinkers, 
such as  bestselling author of "God's Politics" Rev. Jim Wallis and "The Left 
Hand of  God" author Rabbi Michael Lerner, have in recent years struck a resonant 
 chord.

One theory: People who regard themselves as religious progressives  now 
expect something different from their religious communities than they did a  
generation ago.

"Overall, the needs of the revived religious left are  very much more 
self-consciously spiritual and social than they were 20 to 30  years ago," said Hal 
Taussig, author of "A New Spiritual Home: Progressive  Christianity at the 
Grass Roots." "Twenty or 30 years ago, the needs were  sermon-centered. ... It 
assumed a conventional spirituality and what it hid was  a deficit and debt of 
vital spirituality. The left has had to come to terms with  its lack of 
attention to spiritual growth and practice and the cost that that  entailed."

James Adams, who founded the Center for Progressive  Christianity in Gig 
Harbor, Wash., in 1994, detects a hunger for religious  settings where people can 
work out their own authentic belief systems, rather  than merely obey a 
liberal interpretation of God's will. Adams suspects many  progressive publications 
never learned to accommodate that desire.

"There  was a kind of liberal mushiness, I think, that overtook some of the 
thinking in  some of those publications that have disappeared," Adams said. 
"There was this  kind of haughtiness on the part of liberals that we know best. 
We know what's  good for everybody. Therefore people who don't agree with us 
are  wrong."

"I think that attitude lost energy, and people who are more  thorough in a 
way and more thoughtful have come along to replace  them."

As progressive publications have wrestled against these new  challenges, 
perennial hurdles such as fundraising have become extra-burdensome.  Taussig noted 
that "denominations are in disarray" and face too many of their  own funding 
challenges to underwrite outside publications. Major financiers of  religious 
projects, such as the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Lilly Foundation,  haven't 
supplied sought-after cash. Both traditionally decline to fund  ideological 
enterprises.

Not every progressive magazine, however, has  fallen on hard times. 
Circulation at The Christian Century, the venerable  Chicago-based biweekly, bottomed 
out in 2001 but has since jumped 35 percent to  about 35,000, a figure that's 
been consistent for most of the last 50 years.  Editor David Heim traces 
success to targeted direct-mail campaigns, improvements  in customer service and 
usage of the Internet to attract new  readers.

Still, the trend has been mostly discouraging.

Zion's  Herald saw troubles ahead and began a yearlong analysis late in 2005. 
The  magazine relied on subscriptions, advertising and donations to cover the 
 approximate $65,000 cost of putting out each issue. A marketing consultant 
said  the name wasn't helping attract readers. Now, as The Progressive 
Christian, the  magazine has grown its subscriber base by 50 percent. But fundraising 
still  figures prominently in the subscription-growing strategy.

"We're trying  to show donors that we're an enterprise worth supporting 
because we have a  winning formula," says Stephen Swecker, the magazine's editor.

That  formula breaks from what Adams terms the "old liberal" model of giving 
top-down  directives for how to live out the gospel. The Progressive Christian 
will serve  up a forum where no voice purports to speak God's last word, even 
on such core  progressive topics as social justice. Instead, the magazine 
stresses the  importance of questioning and debating as faithful Christian  
exercises.

"There's a lot hanging on what we do," Swecker says. "What's  hanging on it 
is whether publications of our kind have really run their course  in American 
history."  
Copyright © 2007, _Chicago  Tribune_ (http://www.chicagotribune.com/)   
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