EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK: Canon Press Offer for Christianity Today Nothing More Than Publicity Stunt

OPINION–The conflict entrepreneurs are at it again.

This time the skirmish is between dissident right activist Megan Basham and one of her favorite targets: Christianity Today magazine.

If, for the past few days, you have been going to work, raising a family, attending church, or doing other things that sane people do, and you’ve therefore missed this tempest in a teapot, here are some basic facts:

Canon Press, the publishing arm of Pastor Douglas Wilson’s ministry, made an unsolicited and unsuccessful offer to buy Christianity Today (CT) for $10 million. CT responded by saying the magazine “is not for sale and has never been for sale.”

That should have been the end of the story. Canon Press’s offer was fundamentally unserious, little more than a publicity stunt. For one thing, CT has more than $10 million in net assets on its balance sheet, has revenue approaching $20 million, and had more than $2.5 million in profit in the most recent fiscal year. It is difficult to value non-profit organizations, but—citing multiples used to value secular publications—one could make a case for CT’s enterprise value exceeding $25 million.

Secondly, Canon Press published its offer on social media the same day it was delivered to CT’s interim president Tom Addington. Again, not the behavior of someone serious about actually acquiring the magazine.

But this non-news offer immediately became kindling for fire starters like Megan Basham. She poured gasoline on this barely viable spark, using it as an excuse to criticize CT, rehashing some of the arguments she made in her 2024 book “Shepherds for Sale.” (Arguments I debunked here.)

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She added a new criticism, posting on X: “The mag is now taking money from the Hewlett Foundation (a MAJOR supporter of Planned Parenthood) to cover US elections.”

She failed to note, however, that the Hewlett Foundation has distributed more than 3,000 grants over the past 10 years to a wide variety of organizations on both the left and the right. Other conservative and Christian organizations receiving money from Hewlett include: Heritage Foundation, American Compass, Ethics and Public Policy Center, the Federalist Society, and Intercollegiate Studies Institute. These last two, in particular, have been core institutions of the conservative movement.

I have scoured the Internet looking for Basham’s criticism of these organizations for taking Hewlett money. That search has so far been fruitless.

This kind of selective, one-sided criticism has become typical of Basham’s work. It is not only misleading, it is—in her case—hypocritical. Her own book, “Shepherds for Sale,” was published by Harper Collins, which has published some of the most strident anti-Christian and pro-abortion books of the past 10 years. That fact adds a new perspective to this X post: “Seems like it would be much better to have Billy Graham’s publication housed with a company like @canonpress that doesn’t take $$$ from abortion promoters.”

One might say the same thing about Basham’s own book. Why did she not publish with Canon Press instead of HarperCollins?

This point was not lost on some commentators. Australian theologian and researcher Dr. Danielle Treweek told ChurchLeaders, in an obvious reference to Basham:

I’ll readily admit that I don’t really understand the US landscape, in which funding is given to Christian organisations by secular entities who also give funding to organisations which are the very opposite to Christian in many senses.

But I’ll also readily admit that I don’t understand the US landscape in which journalists who are outraged about that apparently don’t see any inconsistency in their publishing books and earning royalties from secular for-profit publishing houses who have company values that are, at points, the very opposite of Christian in many senses.

Another critique Basham leveled against CT was that more than half of the magazine’s revenues now come from donations, up from about 20% five years ago. The implication is that CT is no longer as relevant to its readers as it once was, and it now must depend on big money donors. But even a superficial look at CT’s finances refutes that implication. In the last five years, CT has doubled in size, growing in every revenue category, not just donation revenue, though—it’s true—donation revenue has grown the most.

She also failed to mention that her former employer, WORLD Magazine, went through a similar shift, a shift that happened during the years she worked there. This shift is not nefarious. It has simply been reality for non-profit news gathering organizations. But Basham chose not to let this important context get in the way of her false narrative.

In short, her implication that CT is a troubled organization in need of a financial or spiritual savior is simply false.

I have long been a critic of what I call the “Evangelical Industrial Complex.” I think we evangelicals need to have an honest conversation about money, power, and a misplaced need for cultural relevance. But the key word here is “honest.”

I would add that in the case of CT’s money, there was complete transparency. They made no attempt to hide the source of their funds. In fact, when I asked, CT sent me an email detailing the Hewlett grants. That’s far more than we can say for the for-profit, dissident right news sources that have popped up in the past few years, including Basham’s employer The Daily Wire—the source of whose funds, especially more recent equity rounds, is almost completely opaque.

We live in an age in which the vocation of journalism is needed now more than ever. But conflict entrepreneurs such as Megan Basham are deeply dishonest in their critiques. They are not taking us closer to the truth in these matters, but farther away from it.