In November of 2025, Christianity Today magazine hired Nicole Massie Martin to be its next president and CEO. Martin is a black woman who is also an ordained pastor in the AME (American Methodist Episcopal) denomination.
She is actually highly credentialed. She has degrees from Vanderbilt University (B.S.), Princeton Theological Seminary (MDiv), and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (DMin). Before entering ministry leadership, she worked as a business analyst for Deloitte Consulting. After entering Christian ministry, she served in local churches in various staff positions.
She joined Christianity Today in 2023 as Chief Impact Officer. With that, she had the responsibility of ensuring that the organization’s work was effective, meaningful, and had a measurable positive influence on its target audience.
Additionally, she founded and serves as Executive Director of Soulfire International Ministries, which supports pastors, churches, and emerging leaders. She has also served on the executive council of the National Association of Evangelicals, the board of trustees at Fuller Theological Seminary, and the National Advisory Council for the Salvation Army. Beyond that, she is an author and speaker.
With all those credentials and connections to evangelical work over the years, what could be the problem? Well, in spite of that, she has still bought into much of the theological liberalism that plagues modern American society.
Christianity Today was actually begun by Billy Graham, and for years was the go-to magazine for evangelical Christians. These days, however, many conservative evangelicals have abandoned it as a resource because of its more liberal leaning.
Christianity Today’s leadership, though, doesn’t like the way it is being characterized by these conservative Christians. They argue that their focus on equity and systemic issues is an outworking of core Christian principles and biblical justice that is distinct from the tenets of the critical theory or liberation theology that characterizes much liberal theology. They assert that all people are made in God’s image and deserve equal dignity, which is the theological “why” behind their pursuit of holistic justice. They believe the Bible mandates addressing systemic evil such as the historical impacts of racism, poverty, and inequality, because sin is both individual and structural.
While Christianity Today tries to justify its views based on evangelical principles, many conservative Christians believe its focus on “equity” and “systemic cultural change” too closely mirrors the agenda of secular progressive movements, which are inherently anti-Christian. They argue that using the terminology associated with the secular social justice movement, even when attempting to redefine it based on biblical definitions, opens the door to fundamentally different, and theologically flawed, beliefs that divide people into classes of “oppressor” and “oppressed.”
While it is important for Christians to engage society by helping meet people’s various material needs, conservative evangelicals see that as one outward expression of the Christian faith, not its primary focus (which is individual salvation and spiritual transformation through the gospel). In recent times, Christianity Today has made its social justice message more of a priority.
And that is where too many Christians get off track – priorities.
Honestly, Christians ought to be helping those in need. That is a very important Christian focus. But it is not the most important one. The most important one is pointing people to a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Helping those in need is simply one means of accomplishing that goal.
Throughout Christian history, Christians have helped widows and orphans, taken in the needy, provided food for the poor, given medical help to those who didn’t have access, and many, many other services. But those were not ends in themselves, but were used to gain a hearing for the gospel.
Sadly, liberal Christianity has stripped out the gospel part and made the “good works” an end in themselves. They have made the goal of the faith to be helping the “oppressed” overcome the oppression of their oppressors. And they don’t define the oppressed in a biblical manner, but rather in a Marxist one. Depending on the particular group of people, they define the oppressed as people of color, the poor, homosexuals, transgenders, Palestinians, and just whoever else might be the constituency of the day. That is simply not Christianity. Any non-Christian can take up those causes.
Christianity Today claims they are trying to take a middle ground. They say they are remaining faithful to evangelical principles while also putting a focus on social justice. It just doesn’t work that way. Social justice, by its very nature, focuses on promoting justice in society over helping individuals come to a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. The only problem is, society won’t change until individual hearts and minds are changed. The change has to be from the inside out, not outside in. They have started down a very slippery slope.