The Antigay Agenda: Orthodox Vision and the Christian Right

In this chapter I examine the emergence historically of the CR's antigay politics, in order to understand current developments more comprehensively. I conduct this study through a reading of Christianity Today (CT), the leading American conservative Protestant publication, over a forty-year period. CT was established in 1956 by several prominent conservative evangelicals, most notably Billy Graham, unhappy with the liberal tenor of the preeminent Protestant journal Christian Century. CT quickly became, and has remained to this day, the unofficial, mainstream voice of the conservative evangelical movement. ¹ I have chosen to center my analysis upon CT for three primary reasons.

First, the journal represents the mainstream of conservative Protestantism. From its initial appearance in 1956, CT has both catalogued developments within its own movement and played the role of spokesperson for conservative Protestantism in the United States. It is by no

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