American Christian Publishing: 20th-Century Contributions

Christian literature has played a vital role in spreading the gospel and shaping evangelical thought. Today, Stephen Nichols continues to trace the history of Christian publishing in America, highlighting key figures in the 20th century.

Well, let's pick up our story of part two of Christian publishing, and our tour begins in 1930. In that year, Samuel Craig and J. Gresham Machen founded Presbyterian and Reformed. They first published a 24-page paper or magazine called Christianity Today, the subtitle ran A Presbyterian Journal Devoted to Stating, Defending, and Furthering the Gospel in the Modern World. It ran until 1949. The first book they published was by Oswald T. Alice, The Five Books of Moses in 1943. His initials are OT, and he was an OT professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. Then he went with Machen in 1929 in the founding of Westminster.

Well, R.C. Sproul’s first book on the Apostles Creed titled The Symbol was published in 1973 by P&R. Across the pond, in 1957, Jack Callum and Ian Murray founded the Banner of Truth Trust. Ian Murray was an assistant minister to Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones at Westminster Chapel. In 1955, Murray was the first editor of the Banner Magazine, and then in ‘57, they started the trust to promote God-centered Christianity, to offer affordable reprints of classic texts, books by the Protestant Reformers and the English Puritans. And they also published books by contemporary authors. The very first book they published was Thomas Watson's, The Body of Divinity.

Well, let's give the Dutch some attention. As a student at Calvin Theological Seminary, William B. Eerdmans Sr. began selling books to pay his tuition bills in 1902. By 1911, he founded a company to sell books, and in 1922, the business became The William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. The initial volumes were printed in Dutch, but eventually he relented and started publishing titles in English. Early, Eerdmans was known for high academic standards and they would publish academic commentaries and theological reference books.

Herman Baker came to the United States in 1925. As a teenager, he worked in his uncle's bookstore. His uncle was Louis Kregel who would go on to have his own publishing house. But in 1939, Herman Baker opened up his own bookstore, and in 1940 he published his first book, More than Conquerors by William Hendrickson. Hendrickson was a Calvin Seminary prof, and the book was a commentary on the book of Revelation.

And then there is Zondervan. In 1931, brothers Pat and Bernie Zondervan started a bookstore and started publishing public domain books. In 1978, they published the NIV, and a decade later, 1988, they were bought by Harper Collins, a division of News Corp. In 1938, Clyde and Muriel Dennis started publishing tracks and called their enterprise Good News Publishing. It was based in a spare room in their home in Minneapolis. He would write and design and print the first tracks. It grew rapidly from 40,000 tracks printed in that first year to more than 50 million printed per year five years into Good News Publishing. In 1979, the company launched a book division and called it Crossway Books, Clyde's son, Lane Dennis helmed this new venture. The first books included Knowing Man by J.I. Packer and titles by Francis Schaeffer. In 2001, they published the English Standard Version.

Well, let me read this from William B. Eerdmans. It was written in 1945. He wrote, “We should not limit ourselves to a certain field or type of book. There are good books in all the various phases of life and human experience. We should feed our minds with a variety of thoughts as we do our stomachs with a variety of foods. Great books are like the mountaintops, they take us toward the skies, a new realm, a new vision of the world and creation, and the greatest of all books are those that bring us near divine truth with a message of righteousness to all mankind.” Well, that's Christian publishing in the twentieth century, and I'm Steve Nichols, and thanks for listening to 5 Minutes in Church History.