Christianity Today Appeals to Non-Profit Status While Bringing in over $10,000,000
Several weeks ago, TGC wrote Patrick Miller kicked up a bit of drama by criticizing Christianity Today for their top twenty most-read stores, as tracked by clicks and view count. He notes that the majority of them “center on celebrity-Christian-Drama” and wonders aloud about their strategy of generating revenue by feeding the outrage machine.
“Meanwhile in 2022 ad revenue appears to rely mostly on disrupting institutional trust in the church…CT seems fixated *not* on giving us a positive vision for Christianity tomorrow, but instead liquidating institutional trust, and building a platform off the sins of Christianity yesterday….When 15 of Christianity Today’s top 20 stories are scandals in the church, and NONE give us hopeful stories of the church… Well, you’ve made your brand and ad strategy clear.”
In response, Christianity Today CEO Timothy Dalrymple declined the asserted strategy, pointing out that they are accountable to their subscribers, not advertising dollars, which wouldn’t go to boost wages for their reporters anyway. He laments, “I wish our reporters were highly paid, but they’re not,” careful to note that they are “non-profit.”
While it is true that Christianity Today is a non-profit organization, their seeming appeal to poverty, exemplified by this status, is somewhat disingenuous, given information by their 990 tax records.
Christianity Today generated $10,073,165 in revenue in 2019 and paid $6,182,183 in salaries and compensation. While there is no indication of how much the reporters make, if they make anything at all, Dalrymple himself was paid $242,526 in total compensation, with other senior roles also being paid handsomely as well, ranging from $188,264 to $128,276. Not bad for a non-profit that apparently doesn’t pay their reporters.
Dalrymple says they are accountable to their subscribers and followers, but it is undeniable that advertising plays a huge role in their revenue, bringing in $2,685,549, which is their primary source of income and is more than their circulation fees or resource products.
We don’t begrudge anyone a wage or payment for their labor- far from it. Nor are we critical of any site that uses advertisement for revenue, as ours is frequently rife with them. But appealing to their non-profit status as a reflection of their poverty, or a defense of not “making a killing” through certain editorial tactics, does not follow. Neither does suggesting that if a third of their revenue were lost, it would have no impact on their executive compensation.
Editor’s note. We’ve rarely been friendly to Christianity Today, and with good reason. Led by Russell Moore, they’re the progressive rag known for virtue-twerking and giving a platform to every weird and liberally insidious bent. Never forget that even before they egregiously came swinging against the violence at Capitol Hill on January 6th, laying the responsibility for the mayhem at the feet of the “white American church” and any leaders who voted for and supported the President, they proclaimed that anyone who voted for the GOP was an inherent racist who was committing “politically motivated spiritual violence” against black folk.
They released editorials calling Trump voters “jobless” and “uneducated,” with former Editor-in-Chief Mark Galli explaining that he didn’t even know any Trump Supporters. This was the same guy who was a dedicated Roman Catholic for the last two years of his tenure there, and no one there even cared.
Christianity Today recently brought us wonderful articles like the newer Editor-in-Chief likening any churches being open during COV to engaging in “snake handling” or running an op-ed saying that polyamory provided an “attractive alternative” and that churches should be affirming.
That’s who we’re dealing with here. Add in the fact that just months ago, they were rocked by a major scandal, revealing that ‘sexual harassment went unchecked’ a company for a decade, all the while preening as our moral betters, and it gets nauseating quickly.
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This woke publication has little to do with Biblical Christianity.