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The Evangelical Brand Image Crisis

The Evangelical Brand Image Crisis

Last updated on: July 29, 2026 at 10:47 pm by Joey Cochran

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The Evangelical Brand Image Crisis 2026-07-29T22:47:28-04:00 Joey Cochran

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Take your pick from examples of the evangelical brand image crisis. Just go over to the Roys Report and select one. This first-rate investigative journalism site has become the landing page for every fraught crisis and scandal in the evangelical church. And there is enough scandal to warrant ongoing day-to-day coverage.

Julie Roys took her journalistic experience and honed it for a reckoning. But why? Her personal experience at Moody Bible Institute fueled her resolve. She has become a shibboleth for evangelicals. I’ve had a handful of conversations in the past year where someone has asked me what I make of her. They’re not as concerned about forming a judgment about her but about me. Is she really a Christian? Is her mud raking good for the Church? And what about other journalists whose work is republished at the Roys Report—like Kathryn Post’s or Bob Smietana’s—or Daniel Silliman’s, a reporter of the Roys Report?* Are they doing good work by bringing darkness to light? This has been the candor that emerges from these conversations. Yet, these people were using her as a lodestone to detect whether I was true to my evangelical commitment.

Us v. Them

Why? Because we like easy binaries. We need villains. We must foment “us” to attack “them.” And our digital revolution and algorithms reward this tone and attitude. Aggressive. Vindictive. Cold. Dead face. It is much easier to separate goats and sheep, chaff and wheat when we have those that so perfectly typify our expectations of a villain.

That is why it is refreshing when people attempt to break the social media prism. Recently, Kristin Du Mez dropped a rigorously researched piece on recent changes at Christianity Today (CT). Bonnie Kristian, who is personally invested in CT and covered in Du Mez’s piece regarding her forthcoming publication and work with CT, noted a point of correction in Du Mez’s piece. Now Kristian could have exploited this error in reporting in poor faith, but she did not. Instead, she graciously put the record straight while also providing counterarguments for the public court of opinion to consider, which consequently drives more engagement with her and CT’s content. In turn, Du Mez graciously did her part to correct the record.[1]

Across the last decade, evangelicals on both the left and right have gotten conditioned into assuming that the other side is the enemy, if not going so far as making claims that their opponents are in danger of being unconverted. This attitude is dangerous and has contributed to ruptures and fragmentation for evangelicals. It is vital to remind ourselves that, while we may differ on perspective and may interpret events remarkably differently, that does not mean that we are enemies, nor does it mean that the opposition are in danger of apostasy.

Women in Leadership

Nonetheless, there is something else to observe here. Not only do people size up Julie Roys and her reporting, but they are also positioning Kristin Du Mez and Bonnie Kristian into spaces and characterizations that seem consonant with their affiliations, networks, and commitments. They are assessing them as spokespersons. They are forming a consensus concerning what they believe, where they belong, and how they behave.[2]

There is something really encouraging to celebrate here. You see, if it were the 1930s or 1940s, and we were talking about spokespersons interrorgating or representing the evangelical brand image, we would just be talking about men. I’m not saying that women were not present, active, and participating in the brand’s development. They were. They were taking dictation for male institution builders and making sure their correspondence was sent out by end of business. They were helping put together copy and printing of periodicals and tracts. They were managing gifts and records in offices. Many hoped to marry into the emerging evangelical brahmin caste. On occasion, they published in those spaces, as long as their work was about women and for women.

Times and attitudes were remarkably different. But today we have the privilege to see an unfolding story that centers on women reflecting on and engaging issues for which evangelicals care. And we have the example of a woman institutional builder, Julie Roys, who saw a felt need, may I even say a structural demand to see checks of justice in place for the vulnerable, and she has met that need. This is a continuation of what Kate Bowler documented in The Preacher’s Wife.

Shepherding the Evangelical Brand Image

While people with a strong affinity for CT have expressed their chagrin at Du Mez’s coverage and voiced their dissent, many of us have seen what has happened at CT, listened to those implicated, and recognize the notable shift in direction and mood of the flagship evangelical news press.

What is the trajectory that some of us have sensed about CT? One of my sources indicated a turn from investigative journalism and perhaps to telling stories that build (puff) up the evangelical church. In other words, CT is taking responsibility for “shepherding the evangelical brand [image]”, as Du Mez put it in her follow-up piece in response to Kristian.[3]

Kristin Du Mez on the Evangelical Brand

That’s a fair assessment of the situation, and it aligns with CT’s historical role as a key organ in building the evangelical brand. In my forthcoming book, I have a whole chapter dedicated to Carl F. H. Henry as evangelical publicist. CT’s first editor and the so-called evangelical architect, Carl Henry, was not merely a theologian. A skilled journalist and publicist, Henry leveraged his expertise to build the evangelical brand’s public image. One of his early publications, Successful Church Publicity (Zondervan, 1943), offered his program for doing so. This book presented a history of how Christians in America leveraged the press to publicize their work, which Henry then followed with tactics for skillfully doing so during the era of its publication, at the sunrise of the 1940s evangelical resurgence. While studying and cutting his teeth on teaching theology, his other chief role involved enhancing public opinion about evangelicals and their revivalist agenda.[4]

Marvin Olasky, CT’s new editorial director, is merely a torchbearer of this tradition. He contributed his own manifesto for Christian journalism over 35 years ago, as a chapter in American Evangelicals and the Mass Media (Zondervan, 1990). While going deeper into the history of Protestant publicity, his chapter contains stunning parallels and corresponding data to Carl Henry’s Successful Church Publicity. Even if Olasky’s philosophy emerged independently of Henry, the congruence that the press contributes to worldview and consensus-building is uncanny.[5]

Every news press organ builds or tears down something. Both apparatuses of the free press are essential in America and for the Church, so we need both CT and the Roys Report. While some might see the Roys Report as problematic, I argue that not only are they doing excellent work, but they provide an essential service to evangelicals. The Roys Report illuminates the moral failings of evangelical systems, structures, and individuals and informs people about how to protect themselves and demand accountability and justice for those failings. You should support their work if you have the means.

Substack and Independent Op-Eds

My research on evangelicals has me paying closer attention to both the evangelical left and right on Substack. From there I have discovered able folks publishing outstanding op-eds on the events that have laid havoc to the evangelical movement, and I have learned how people inside and outside the movement perceive those events. There, too, I’m finding material that reinforces the arguments I’ve made in Our God Is an Awesome Brand.

Christy Hemphill recently published a detailed intervention and response to events unfolding at Wheaton College related to sexual abuse that the administration had been covering up for decades. Her piece incorporated recent news reported from the Roys Report on an ecclesial investigation into Tenth Presbyterian’s handling of its music minister Paul Jones.[6] Hemphill argued:

Anyone who has been paying attention to these constant cover-up scandals in the PCA, SBC, and ACNA is able to read between the lines and understand that what they probably wanted him to repent from (and what they were trying to rehabilitate) was that Paul Jones was a gay man. And it is also not lost on me that Paul Jones was an extremely talented musician who made the church’s music program famous, and that put butts in pews and money in the plate. His investment in the church’s success should never have meant more to the leaders than the congregation’s safety. This same messed-up set of priorities seems to be driving Wheaton College’s current institutional (non)responses to reports of grooming and gender-based bullying and abuse on campus. Leaders who prioritize brand-building, brand-management, and donor relations over young people’s safety do not deserve positions of leadership.[7]

This is a feature, not a bug, in evangelical history. It’s a product of the idol tendency to privilege…privilege, and prioritize being a prop for perpetuating capitalist structures, when they are being dismantled by disruptive workers disillusioned and done with being exploited.

The Context for the Evangelical Brand Image Crisis

A premise of my work is that the evangelical resurgence was birthed in the crucible of the Great Depression and the wartime era of the Second World War. Many evangelicals flocked to centers like Wheaton College in the last half of the 1930s, during the recovery years of the Great Depression. The class of 1938 alone was a who’s who of up-and-coming evangelicals, including the likes of Carl Henry, Harold Lindsell, and Ken Taylor.[8]

These men studied and networked together. Some went to seminary together. Ultimately, many institutions were built together during the wartime years. For some, this is how they delayed or avoided active duty. For others, it is how they contributed to the war effort, given conditions that prevented active duty. As these figures transitioned from the WWII wartime mindset to the Cold War mindset, which set the tone for generations of evangelical culture war, the scarcity mindset residues from the Great Depression shaped their sensibilities toward middle-class prosperity and suburban living. They appreciated the accouterments that came with their newfound notoriety and the power conferred on them as the answer to Cold War communism.

These evangelicals were the vanguard for preserving capitalistic, Protestant, Western Civilization from the onslaught of modernism, communism, and Catholicism. Since their organizations depended on thriving in the free marketplace of religion, evangelical institutions were loosely affiliated with one another. They were both non-denominational and anti-denominational, and many organizations were parachurch institutions that met spiritual and sometimes social needs outside the oversight of denominational structures.

A loose coalition weary of hierarchical structures and denominations will naturally lend itself to vulnerabilities related to abuses of power, financial corruption, and sexual misconduct. Infrastructures were not built into these structures to offer oversight and accountability for these unexpected departures of Christian piety. It’s not just a product of the Keswick spirit that had become embedded within many of these institutions. Structures built around, or for, those who later adopted traditional Reformed Monergism and Sanctification also appear to have been just as vulnerable to these self-destructive tendencies. It seems that sin finds a way and the devil still prowls relentlessly, regardless of what techniques we use to build failsafe systems.

[*] This post has been corrected to accurately reflect Post’s and Smietana’s work as reporters with RNS.

[1] Chris Bail, Breaking the Social Media Prism (Princeton University Press, 2021).

[2] See Bonnie Kristian, “There Will Never Be Another Billy Graham”, Comment Magazine, July 23, 2026, on the helpful alliteration of believing, belonging, and behaving.

[3] Kristin Du Mez, “Correcting the Record”, Du Mez Connections, Substack, July 23, 2026.

[4] Carl F. H. Henry, Successful Church Publicity (Zondervan, 1943).

[5] American Evangelicals and the Mass Media, edited by Quentin J. Schultze (Zondervan, 1990).

[6] Daniel Silliman, “EXCLUSIVE: PCA censured Wheaton President Phil Ryken for ‘aiding the strong in preying on the weak ‘”, Roys Report, July 15, 2026.

[7] Christy Hemphill, “How not to apologize for covering up sexual abuse”, Substack, July 22, 2026.

[8] Kenneth N. Taylor, My Life: A Guided Tour (Tyndale, 1991), 69.

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