Christianity Today sees jump in subscriptions amid Trump impeachment row
The editor in chief of Christianity Today says his magazine has seen three-times as many people starting new subscriptions in the wake of a row started by their op-ed calling for the removal of Donald Trump from office.
Mark Galli, the editor, acknowledged that the magazine has also lost subscribers, but that the new interest far outweighs the backlash.
In the op-ed, which was titled “Trump Should Be Removed from Office”, the magazine claimed that the president had a “blackened moral record”, and should therefore be removed. The Thursday article claimed that Mr Trump’s efforts to coerce a foreign leader to investigate a domestic political rival was not only unconstitutional, but “more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.”
"A stereotypical response is ‘thank you, thank you, thank you’ with a string of a hundred exclamation points — ‘you’ve said what I’ve been thinking but haven’t been able to articulate, I’m not crazy,‘” Mr Galli said on Sunday on MSNBC. “We have lost subscribers but we’ve had 3 times as many people start to subscribe.“
The op-ed, which was published just after Mr Trump became the third US president in history to be impeached, sparked a backlash from the White House, with the president himself firing back on his Twitter account.
He labelled the publication as a “far left magazine, or very ‘progressive’”, and said “no president has done more for the evangelical community.”
The magazine was founded by the late evangelical preacher Billy Graham, and had called former Bill Clinton and his administration “morally unable to lead” in the aftermath of that president’s impeachment.
Franklin Graham, the late preacher’s son, also defended the president in a Facebook post, and said his father had voted for Mr Trump and “would not agree” with the opinion against the president.
Mr Galli told MSNBC that Mr Trump is able to maintain strong support in the white evangelical Christian community in part because he supports religious liberty overseas, and the pro-life movement.
“Unfortunately, some of my brothers and sisters considered him appointed by the Lord and what I would consider extreme language in that regard,” Mr Galli told the news channel.
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