Christianity Today is sixty years old this month. I remember clearly the day the first issue arrived in our mailbox. My dad was a pastor, and in its earliest years the magazine was sent to clergy for free. That inaugural issued, dated October 1956, showed up on a day that I—sixteen years old—was home alone. As I sorted the mail, I glanced over the new magazine’s cover. Seeing Billy Graham’s name, I sat down to read his article on biblical authority.
I also read the editorial, “Why Christianity Today?,” by Carl F. H. Henry. I knew nothing about Henry, nor was I clued in to the complexities of contemporary discussions about evangelical identity. When Henry referred to the need for evangelical scholarship, however, as well as to the importance of supporting a network of evangelical scholars working in various academic settings around the world, I had a clear sense that this was a different kind of voice than those I was accustomed to hearing in my present spiritual environs.
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