(RNS) — Growing up, Nicole Martin recalls hearing stories from her great-grandmother, Estelle Cartledge, about helping her husband build a church in Pittsburgh during a time of segregation when women leaders were viewed with suspicion.
Her great-grandmother’s response was simple.
Do the work in front of you. Let God take care of the rest.
“Do what God has called you to do,” Martin recalled her great-grandmother saying.
Martin hopes to follow that advice in her new role as president and CEO of Christianity Today, the venerable evangelical magazine founded by Billy Graham 70 years ago, where she has been tasked with helping define CT for the future.
It’s no small task. Once seen as the flagship publication for evangelicals, especially during the rise of that movement as a political force, CT has struggled in recent years to find its place in Trump’s America, where the old rules no longer apply.
The past decade has marked a tumultuous time for CT. The magazine has experienced runaway successes like the “Rise and Fall of Mars Hill,” a podcast about the fall of megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll, and has produced groundbreaking reporting about scandals involving evangelical leaders like disgraced evangelist Ravi Zacharias.
But there has also been controversy, especially in the wake of a 2019 op-ed from former editor Mark Galli, who declared that Donald Trump was unfit to be president of the United States. That op-ed, published weeks before Galli’s retirement, made national headlines and reignited an evangelical feud between Trump supporters, like Franklin Graham, son of CT’s founder, and so-called Never Trumpers.
The magazine had also had leadership turnover, with …