The reviews archive of Christian Critic, organized by weekly issue going back to the founding number in autumn 2014. Eleven volumes, forty-seven issues, and counting — every issue a small, dated journal of record for the American church and the culture surrounding it. What follows is the back catalog.
After two decades of uncritical expansion, the largest American congregations are quietly retrenching — closing satellites, dissolving staff, and asking whether the multisite model was ever a faithful expression of ekklesia or a triumph of real estate. A 4,200-word review of the trend, the theology beneath it, and the pastors now publicly admitting it failed.
The archive is not a flat chronological feed. Reviews are filed into the seven categories our editors actually use when assigning and grouping work — each with its own rubric, its own bench of contributors, and its own editorial board member curating submissions.
Long-form criticism of trade nonfiction, biblical studies, fiction, memoir, and academic theology. The largest single archive, averaging 2,800 words per review.
Albums, song cycles, congregational liturgy, and the long argument over contemporary worship production. Includes interviews with songwriters and worship pastors.
Streaming, theatrical, and documentary work — including the Christian sub-industry and the much larger secular catalogue the Church is actually watching.
Individual sermons, sermon series, preaching manuals, and the performance norms of the American pulpit. Edited by a homiletics PhD from Fuller.
On-the-ground reporting from Passion, Q Conference, the E.K. Bailey Preaching Conference, Biola University's Winsome Conviction, and the smaller gatherings that shape the evangelical mind.
Megachurch retrenchment, multisite dissolution, the rise of house churches, denominational schisms, youth group burnout, and the sociology of contemporary American Christianity.
Doctrinal essays, creedal commentary, and reviews of academic theological monographs. Edited by two systematic theologians and one church historian.
Total filed across all sections: 1,454 reviews since Vol. I, № 1 (September 2014).
A journal index that runs back to the founding number in 2014. Every line is a calendar year, the count of reviews we published in it, and a short editorial summary of the year's preoccupations. Click through to any year to read the year's reviews in chronological order.
Eleven volumes, 1,454 reviews, zero advertising. Browse by section above, by year here, or read the current issue at the top of the page.
Before you trust a review, you should be able to see who wrote it, what their training was, who pays the publication, and whether anyone else with standing has vouched for the work. All four are open here.
A 38-member editorial board including 12 contributors with terminal theology degrees — PhD, ThM, STM — from institutions including Cambridge, Duke Divinity School, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Fuller Theological Seminary.
Two-time winner of the Evangelical Press Association Award for Best Critical Commentary (2021, 2024) and finalist for the Online Journalism Award for Religion Reporting in 2023. Featured in Christianity Today, Religion News Service, The Christian Post, and on NPR's On Point.
4,200+ paying reader members fund the work in full. No display advertising, no affiliate links, no sponsored reviews, no denomination ownership, no church sponsorship, no parachurch underwriting. Reviews are paywall-free for everyone.
180,000 monthly unique visitors across 92 countries (Q3 2025, Similarweb-verified). The Critic's Cut newsletter reaches 62,000 inboxes every Thursday morning. Two book-length anthologies published in 2018 (Lake Press) and 2022 (InterVarsity Press).
Eleven volumes into the archive and the most useful thing to read is still the current issue. The Thursday newsletter carries it to 62,000 inboxes every week. The archive is where you come when you want to follow an argument back to its source.
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