This week, the Critic's Cut opens with a verdict on the new Bethke memoir, a heresy trial in Nashville, and a hymnal revival nobody saw coming.
Forty-eight thousand words a year of honest Christian culture criticism — written by working theologians and journalists, delivered to your inbox every Thursday morning since 2014.
by Rev. Dr. Marcus DelaneyEditor-in-Chief & Founding Editor·The Critic's Cut, weekly edition
Every Thursday morning, the week's sharpest Christian culture criticism lands in your inbox — free.
Each issue is a 2,400-word review, three shortlist verdicts, a counterpoint dissent, and the week's calendar of conferences, releases, and hearings worth watching — written and edited by our 38-member board of theologians, journalists, and working pastors.
01
The Lead Review. One 2,400-word long-form verdict — book, film, sermon series, conference, or cultural moment — chosen by the editorial board that week.
02
The Shortlist. Three short verdicts on albums, podcasts, sermons, and chapel songs you may have missed.
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The Counterpoint. A credentialed contributor disagrees with the lead reviewer. Published side-by-side.
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The Calendar. What's coming, what's worth your time, and what we're watching on your behalf.
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From last Thursday's issue · November 6, 2025
Read the opening of last Thursday's issue.
The new Bethke memoir arrives with a foreword by a megachurch pastor and a hundred-thousand-unit first printing, and it asks to be read as a story of restoration. It is, instead, a story of retreat — a careful, charismatic, occasionally beautiful retreat from every position the author once publicly held, dressed in the language of maturity. We have been here before. The genre has rules: the apology arrives on a three-year delay, the older books are quietly disappeared from the author's website, and the new tone is described, by the author, as "settled." This book follows the rules exactly, and that is, in the end, the most interesting thing about it.
What follows in this issue is a 2,400-word verdict, a counterpoint from a contributor who disagrees with me about whether the genre itself deserves our patience, three shortlist verdicts on albums that did not need a memoir to find their audience, and a calendar that includes, somewhat improbably, a hymnal revival in a Presbyterian church in Waco.
— from the lead review, The Critic's Cut, Vol. XI · Issue № 46
The Critic's Cut is structured, not skimmed. Four recurring sections, set in a fixed order, so subscribers know exactly what they're opening each week.
01
The Lead Review
One 2,400-word long-form verdict on a book, film, sermon series, conference, or cultural moment — selected by the editorial board on Monday, drafted through Wednesday, sent Thursday morning. Average length is 4× the industry standard for online criticism.
≈ 2,400 words · Long-form
02
The Shortlist
Three short verdicts — 250 to 400 words each — on albums, podcasts, chapel songs, sermon clips, or Substacks you may have missed. Sentimental attachment is not a category of merit here.
≈ 1,000 words total · Three items
03
The Counterpoint
A credentialed contributor — usually one of the 12 board members with a terminal theology degree — publishes a formal disagreement with the lead reviewer's verdict. Published side-by-side, in full, with no editorial softening.
≈ 900 words · Dissent
04
The Calendar
A curated forward look: conferences worth attending, album and book release dates, heresy hearings, court filings, and dates our editors are personally watching on the reader's behalf. Ends with one item under the heading Skip It.
≈ 400 words · Forward look
The rack · Past issues
Recent issues — pick one up off the rack.
Eleven years, 1,400+ archived reviews, and fifty-two Thursday issues a year. The Critic's Cut has been published without interruption since 2014 — one of the longest-running independent faith-criticism outlets on the open web.
Vol. XI · Issue № 46 · Nov. 6, 2025
On the Bethke memoir, and the genre of the well-timed apology.
A 2,400-word verdict on a book that follows the rules of the celebrity-apology genre to the letter. Counterpoint by Dr. Helen Wu (Cambridge).
Lead review · BooksRead this issueVol. XI · Issue № 45 · Oct. 30, 2025
The Nashville heresy trial, week three: what the transcript actually shows.
A close reading of the public record, a counterpoint from a credentialed Wesleyan on whether the charges cohere, and three shortlist verdicts on Reformation Day albums.
Lead review · Church cultureRead this issueVol. XI · Issue № 44 · Oct. 23, 2025
A hymnal revival in Waco, and what it tells us about the next decade of worship.
A Presbyterian church, a printed hymnal, a forty-person chapel on Sunday night. Plus a counterpoint on whether "revival" is even the right word for what we're watching.
Lead review · Music & liturgyRead this issueVol. XI · Issue № 43 · Oct. 16, 2025
The Passion Translation, ten years on: a verdict, and the data behind it.
A 2,400-word re-review of the translation that defined a decade of charismatic Bible reading. Counterpoint from a Princeton Theological Seminary OT scholar.
Forty-eight thousand words a year of honest Christian culture criticism, in your inbox every Thursday morning at 6:00 a.m. Central — written and edited by working theologians, journalists, and practitioners. No paywall. No advertising. No denomination ownership. Funded by 4,200 reader-members.
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Rev. Dr. Marcus DelaneyEditor-in-Chief & Founding Editor · Christian Critic Media, LLC
