On the Sunday I was returning to the United States from an international trip, the New York Times ran a surprising story on a religion-beat insider that, frankly, I never thought they’d touch.
All sorts of folks were sending me links to a business story on Stephen Strang, a media magnate who is widely known in the charismatic universe, but not so well known in wider Christian circles and certainly not in secular publishing.
Yet, Times freelancer Sam Kestenbaum swooped down and delivered an informative, timely piece, which started as follows:
This spring, the media mogul Stephen E. Strang made an unusual apology to readers in the pages of his glossy magazine.
Mr. Strang presides over a multimillion-dollar Pentecostal publishing empire, Charisma Media, which includes a daily news site, podcasts, a mobile app and blockbuster books. At 70, he is a C.E.O., publisher and seasoned author in his own right. Despite all that, Mr. Strang worried something had gone awry.
“I’ve never been a prophet,” he wrote in a pleading March editor’s note. “But there were a number of prophets who were very certain that Trump would be elected.”
This had not come to pass. Mr. Strang continued, “I hope that you’ll give me the grace — and Charisma Media the grace — of missing this, in a manner of speaking.”
This was a back entrance into a story on the “Trump prophets,” which were dozens of well-known Pentecostal personalities who falsely prophesied that President Donald Trump would win a second term. Although a few apologized when it was clear Joe Biden would be taking the oath of office on Jan. 20, many refused, succumbing to fantasy theories that the election had been stolen.
(I’ve been covering the prophets story since late last year and earlier this year for GetReligion here, here and here, plus begging other religion writers to get up to speed with modern-day Pentecostalism. The bottom line: Pentecostalism and its sister movement, the charismatics, was the spirituality of choice for many major players in the Trump White House.)
Kestenbaum specializes in religion-news-of-the-weird pieces for the Times , and maybe, to him, Strang is weird. Oddly, the story (whose news hook is Strang’s newest book) ended up in the business section. Here’s my fav quote in the whole piece:
Mr. Strang seems to have discovered that one way to handle being publicly wrong is to change the subject and to pray readers stick around.
Yes, that’s what the whole prophecy movement has been doing since January. The next chunk of copy is the why-you-should-read-this part:
Beyond the spiritual test of unrealized prophecies, there are very earthly stakes here: Under Mr. Strang’s stewardship, Charisma had grown from a church magazine to a multipronged institution with a slew of New York Times best sellers, millions of podcast downloads and a remaining foothold in print media, with a circulation of 75,000 for its top magazine.
It is widely regarded as the flagship publication of the fast-growing Pentecostal world, which numbers over 10 million in the United States. With its mash-up of political and prophetic themes, Charisma had tapped a sizable market and electoral force. In 2019, one poll found that more than half of white Pentecostals believed Mr. Trump to be divinely anointed, with additional research pointing to the importance of so-called prophecy voters in the 2016 election.
That’s lively writing, but his numbers are way too low.
Researchers at the Pew Forum say charismatics and Pentecostals comprise about 23% (you heard that right) of the American population, so we’re talking about 65 million people. If that sounds like a lot of people, remember, this number includes charismatic Catholics.
As I read through the piece, I thought Kestenbaum hit it square on the nose many times.
The editorial voice had the sunny boosterism of a hometown newspaper, covering the personalities of the Pentecostal world, an audience that Mr. Strang believed was woefully underserved. While competitors such as Christianity Today courted the buttoned-up elite of American evangelicalism, Charisma cornered a niche market of what are called charismatic Christians, set apart by their interest in gifts of the spirit, including things like healings, speaking in tongues and modern-day prophecy.
Dear Times editors: “Spirit” is uppercase. That’s a reference to the Holy Spirit and the Christian Trinity. Check your style manuals.
Strang definitely got on board the burgeoning charismatic movement way back when in 1975 founded Charisma, the flagship magazine of what would be a magazine empire of publications focused on Christian positivity, Scriptures and Pentecostal personalities that the more staid evangelical publications used to ignore. (By the way, I freelanced for Charisma from time to time in the 1990s during its heyday in the 1990s, when the magazine was helmed by two very decent editors — Lee Grady and Steve Lawson.)
There were other charismatic publications out there such as New Wine and New Covenant, but those eventually folded while Charisma plugged on.
Kestenbaum surmises that Charisma is in some decline at present, with a skeleton staff; a conclusion I agree with in that I’ve seen almost no serious journalism emanate from there in ages. If Strang is really reaping beaucoup amounts of money from various income streams as the story suggests, here’s hoping he’ll plow that back into content at Charisma . However, if the emphasis is always to be positive, even in the face of serious negative news, that’s going to mar your reporting.
One tantalizing thing about this Times piece is that Strang is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of fascinating personalities in the Pentecostal-charismatic world who’ve never been featured in a secular journalistic milieu. Examples are Malaysian-American Pentecostal theologian Amos Yong at Fuller Theological Seminary; Heidi Baker, the CEO of Iris Global and a long-time missionary to Mozambique who’s been claiming miraculous healings for years and Misty Edwards, the amazing musician and singer at the International House of Prayer/Kansas City who helped create the concept of 24/7 worship.
But none of those people are involved in politics while Strang, as least tangentially, was. I’d say 100 percent of all stories out there about Pentecostals and charismatics only get a hearing if the writer can connect them with Trump or another political figure. Which is a shame; these folks can stand on their own.
PRIMARY IMAGE: Photo drawn from Sam Kestenbaum’s Twitter feed.