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My Reading: Six Conservative Publications for the Thoughtful Christian Conservative

My Reading: Six Conservative Publications for the Thoughtful Christian Conservative

Last updated on: October 9, 2017 at 7:01 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

My Reading: Six Conservative Publications for the Thoughtful Christian Conservative 2017-10-08T21:21:27-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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photo-1462219157779-8a35f2687626_opt Data is just a Google away, but understanding data is tougher. Often we need help in putting the facts in perspective or just finding out if what is being reported as a “fact” is in fact factual! Books are best, but books take time to write and so the long form magazine or newspaper article has a place.

Here are the center-right resources I use, in some cases daily.

The Telegraph

Newspapers are no good in the States. The best (NY Times) share the same left-of-center assumptions that govern the cool kids who write Saturday Night Live while working for Weinstein. In the United Kingdom, they have good leftist papers (Guardian) and brilliant right-of-center papers. The Telegraph is secular, though not hostile to religion. It is a bit defensive, but if it is tired, a rear guard action against the death of a nation, it is brilliant. You get the news, commentary, and cultural insight. Remind yourself that even in her senility the Tory has something to teach the American conservative.

When I was a boy, the old rule was that Britain was fifty years ahead of us. If so, then God help us.

The Spectator

This is the magazine that nobody should miss: literate, curmudgeonly, world weary.

The UK focus can be bothersome to Americans not infected with Anglophilia, but this is a center right publication that will publish many perspectives. There are religious people in Britain, even Christians, and The Spectator will publish them! The Spectator will publish eccentric monarchists, secularist dissidents from the establishment, and mainstream Tory thought.

The Spectator tells you what conservatism is possible in a decaying Western Europe intellectual community and that has value for us. If it is there, it is defensible at Oxford, even if only barely. American conservatives have more cultural power, but that can lead to tolerating poseurs like David Barton and Dinesh D’souza. They can print and publish insanity that the more embattled British conservatives could not tolerate. The Spectator shows the limits of reason in a dying West.

National Review

They were Never Trump, but published Trump supporters. They have sane limits, no alt-Right for them, and will publish traditional Christians and Ayn Rand acolytes. The writing is not up to The Spectator standards, but is often more culturally puckish. National Review requires less thought than The Spectator, but it has more blood.

If it is sensible and conservative in America, it will show up here.

World*

When I was a boy, we wished for a Christian Time Magazine. We have it, sadly after Time has ceased to be Time. World is a news magazine from a Christian, conservative perspective. It was mostly Never Trump and reviews all sorts of films and books. With time there is hope that this magazine could become The Spectator in America (not the degenerate American Spectator).

If you want the news straight, in a consistent Reagan-era conservative Christian perspective, then read. Theism without theocracy is an important perspective for our time!

First Things

The genius died with Father Richard, but still this is a journal of ideas. You cannot be sure what they will say and whatever they say will be smart, well written, and interesting. They are right-of-this-Pope Catholic, but a good place to get the voice of that important wing of conservative, American, Christian thought.

The American Conservative

I love this magazine, even when it offends me. Rod Dreher is there and that makes it a must read, but it also publishes all kinds of conservative dissent. If you hated the Iraq War, they were there for you. If you were for it, they have people who were for it too. This is the one magazine where a Tolkien defense of conservation or an attack on pure capitalism might get a cover article. They attack Putin, but sometimes suggest war with Putin might be stupid. If they are less regularly smart than The Spectator, they are more lively intellectually.

Bonus! We must honor a formerly tedious publication that has now become a must read: from Christianity Astray to Christianity Today.

There is a magazine that in my youth was predictable, left-of-center when intellectual, superficial when spiritual. Now it reports news, takes bold opinions, and is a voice for integrity in ministry and politics. What magazine?

Christianity Today

This is like discovering that the Ford Fusion is relevant in the sports car category. Christianity Today has adopted a genuinely mere Christian perspective and is the “go to” for a mainstream American Evangelical point of view. If you are to the left of CT, then nobody in the Evangelical pews cares what you say. If you are to the right of CT, then you might have followers in Evangelical circles, but you might also be nuts.

There was a better age when I would have started by advising us not just to read conservatives and beginning with a list of left-of-center magazines and papers I read. Just now . . . we need more conservative thought in our conservative thinking so this list is a place to start.

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*On occasion, I review films for World.

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