Since I left the faith of my childhood and early adulthood, I've struggled with breaking out of the cycles that keep me angry: church, religious television, CCM, etc. One of my greatest joys has always been magazines. I subscribe to about 14. I started subscribing to Christianity Today in 1992. I read it for years before then. I followed that subscription over the next several years with Books & Culture, Christian Century, Leadership, The Other Side, The Progressive Christian, First Things, and several others. Last year I realized that a cursory read of Christianity Today drove me into despair or rage. I asked at that time about what I was supposed to read. Blog world had little to say.
I revisited my list recently and have made changes that I think will keep me sane and informed. I renewed my subscription to Esquire. I also kept alive my subs to The New Yorker and Books & Culture. I've added subs to Columbia Journalism Review, Philosophy Now, Skeptic, Reason, Free Inquiry, and Skeptical Inquirer. I renewed Paste and added Rolling Stone. I also renewed Harper's and added Atlantic Monthly. I'll continue to buy Utne, Realms of Fantasy, Sojourners, Christian Century, and a few others when I find issues I like at the newsstand. Christianity Today is down to the last issue. I see no reason to renew. The magazine has become so much a product of the evangelical center and political right that I'm weary of it. All the news they publish I can find elsewhere, and the stories, rather than being journalistic, are PR for Jesus.
It feels odd to alter my reading habits this much, but I can't stay sane if I keep reading all the religious stuff. I still need to find a good general info religion magazine, but I don't think it exists. I'll just have to read Tikkun, a Buddhist magazine, and an Islam journal at the school library until something comes along. If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.
As for books, they were never a problem. I've always read enough novels to stay this side of normal. I will eliminate almost all books specifically about Christian spirituality and church. Publicists are still sending me books to review, including Doug Pagitt's new one. I will review some of those as a matter of professional development and in the hopes that an outsider might actually have something worthwhile to say.
you should check out The Week, it compiles the best of national and international news and it comes, wait for it...weekly! It has business, religion, food, art, editorials, and much more.
theweekdaily.com
Posted by: emergentninja | June 25, 2008 at 06:03 PM
Seventeen is always a winner. And Tiger Beat. Oh wait, you're not a boy-band-loving teenage girl.
Posted by: Amanda Fortney | June 25, 2008 at 08:50 PM
I second The Week.
Also, the British Third Way is good, I think. I dont read it enough.
Posted by: goz | June 26, 2008 at 04:53 AM
If you're getting rid of books on Christian spirituality and church - would you mind sending them my way?
Posted by: nate | June 26, 2008 at 01:01 PM
Nate,
Greg will send you everything EXCEPT his Joel Olsteen books. He just can't seem to part with those.
Posted by: Adam | June 26, 2008 at 03:04 PM
And I wouldn't expect him to...certainly they are the key to his prosperity...thank you, Jesus!
Posted by: nate | June 27, 2008 at 02:29 PM
Have you checked out tricycle? It has some pretty interesting stuff in it. It offers a buddhist take on just about everything.
Posted by: Alice Clay | June 27, 2008 at 06:26 PM
Alice,
I've seen it but not read it. I'll pick one up today. Thanks.
Posted by: greg | June 28, 2008 at 07:47 AM
You'd think a journal that covers the religious bases would be natural to the world of print, but alas. After reading this post I wondered about it. At the moment I have a seminary friend who's driven south to engage in one of those inter-faith exercises which occur with regularity and receive little to no public attention. The participants usually express respect for the "traditions" of the Others present. Reservations about the Other are expressed with quiet caution, and so it should be. The fact is, if you're looking closely at someone else's religion, sooner or later you're going to square up against something that's just plain batshit crazy ... erm, profoundly counter-intuitive. And they are encountering the same in you. The printed word, alas, has a black-on-white clarity that is difficult to infuse with tonal nuance. So I suspect that any attempt, no matter how humbly intentioned, to survey the world's religions is an invitation to personal disaster, if not Holy War.
Elsewhere on the magazine rack, however, is another matter. Right now I'm digging Bomb and Stop Smiling -- very cool, both of 'em.
Posted by: Whisky Prajer | June 30, 2008 at 07:24 AM