A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how Christianity Today, the increasingly left-leaning evangelical magazine, lamented the exposure of USAID even though the magazine had taken federal government grants, according to information from Data Republican. It turns out that those grants were COVID-era employee retention tax credits, and I corrected my reporting of that part of the story.
I still don’t understand why corporations were still taking those tax credits in 2023, but that’s above my pay grade. However, David Morrill, publisher of Protestia, asks, “Is it ethical/moral for a Christian organization with increasing income to claim federal tax dollars explicitly intended to help companies with falling income, particularly to the tune of $1.1M more than the taxes they actually paid, and were more than capable of paying?”
Christianity Today’s CEO Timothy Dalrymple reacted to the allegation that his magazine took money from the government with the highest of dudgeon, penning an editorial on Valentine’s Day. He wrote:
Last week, rumor spread on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that Christianity Today had received government funding in 2023. News influencers who have long been critical of us amplified these claims. In its extreme form, they claimed we had received $9 million in grants from USAID and were therefore “on the Biden payroll.”
The hysteria around USAID is having catastrophic consequences not only for Christian ministries doing lifesaving work around the world but more importantly for the poor and vulnerable people they serve. A careful conversation around whether and when ministries should partner with government agencies, and where corruption might be weeded out, is wise. Throwing those ministries and people into the flames and dancing around the bonfire is not.
Here Christianity Today goes again with its panties in a wad because of the USAID cuts. The Bible doesn’t call for governments to fund ministries, and Dalrymple ought to know that. Then again, if he acknowledges that truth, it takes away his opportunities to virtue signal.
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Speaking of virtue-signaling, Dalrymple also tackled the notion of Christianity Today’s leftward bias from atop his high horse. His thesis is that because leftists occasionally don’t like the magazine’s content, we should dismiss the leftward drift that the magazine has been on for years. He also wants us to believe that because the magazine rebuffed some Biden administration propaganda, we should just ignore the rest of the magazine’s leftism.
“Some of our critics might be surprised to learn (though they should not be) that we declined to publish a piece by then-president Joe Biden in 2021 because we found it too political,” he wrote. “We also declined to conduct an interview with President Biden amid the 2024 campaign because it would have felt imbalanced to do so for one candidate and not another. These are not the actions of an organization beholden to the Biden administration.”
Forgive me if I sound jaded here, but I can’t help but think that Christianity Today’s editors just didn’t want to have to interview Donald Trump, too.
Okay, so Christianity Today didn’t directly receive USAID funding, but editor-in-chief Russell Moore has benefited from the largesse of USAID and left-wing foundations, and he has been clear about his never-Trumpism as well as his disdain for conservatism that doesn’t fit within his ideological bubble.
Moore is one of the creators of the anti-Trump After Party small group curriculum, which I wrote about last year. Moore hawked the After Party in Christianity Today newsletters and podcasts.
Last year, I wrote about how Moore and his After Party collaborators David French and Curtis Chang “have attacked Trump-supporting Christians repeatedly, and for all the talk of evangelicals making an idol out of Trump (which is a legitimate problem), these three have bowed to the idol of ‘Never Trump’ for years. Chang even blamed the ‘American church’ for the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.”
The After Party folks couldn’t acquire funding from traditional Christian publishers or organizations, so they reached left to shake the money tree. The Rockefeller Foundation ponied up from the same fund that it uses to donate to “climate justice” and gay rights causes, and foundations with ties to BLM and abortion helped fund the After Party as well.
But one of the biggest names funding the After Party is Trump Derangement Syndrome Patient Zero himself: Bill Kristol. Megan Basham notes that Kristol’s Defending Democracy Together, a “highly partisan, anti-Trump political group,” helped finance the After Party. Defending Democracy Together indirectly received USAID funds.
Basham also writes that “Dalrymple also does not clearly address the nature of the $7 million in grants that Christianity Today has received from the Lilly endowment (of Eli Lilly pharmaceutical fame), $5 mil of which has stated purpose of more global and diversity minded coverage.” Does that strike you as nonpartisan or balanced?
Dalrymple can shout from his high horse all he wants, but the truth proves him wrong. Even if his magazine didn’t get USAID money, it’s still receiving dirty left-wing money, and his editor is promoting his leftist-funded pet project through the magazine. He can also crow about nonpartisanship until he’s blue in the face, but I’ve proven time and time again that Christianity Today is abandoning conservative Christianity to tackle faith issues from an increasingly left-leaning perspective. And that’s a shame because a once-essential periodical for Christians is leaving so many of them in the cold.
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