160 Years of The Christadelphian Magazine

The Christadelphian Tidings magazine began as a Sunday School newsletter in Pomona, CA, in 1939. We are now pleased to be serving the Christadelphian community for eighty-five years. However, in Birmingham, England, The Christadelphian magazine has been publishing in the worldwide community for nearly twice as long. It represents a wonderful heritage of over a century and a half of Biblical scholarship and fraternal intelligence. We are thankful that the work continues today under the editorship of Bro. Mark Vincent. We had the opportunity to meet with Bro. Mark last April and felt that it would be good to reintroduce the work of The Christadelphian to our North American community. 

Editor: Bro. Mark, could you please tell us a bit about the beginning of The Christadelphian and who some of the editors have been over the years? 

Absolutely, my pleasure! The magazine was started about 160 years ago by Bro. Robert Roberts (whose chair I still have in my office, along with that of Brother C. C. Walker, who was evidently slightly taller!). It was initially called The Ambassador of the Coming Age, with the very first issue dating from July 1864. The name “Christadelphian” initially appeared in small letters on the cover, but the font size of this gradually grew, and the magazine was officially renamed The Christadelphian in July 1869. 

The magazine has remained in print constantly since then. Other editors included brethren C .C. Walker, John Carter, Louis Sargent, Alfred Nicholls, Michael Ashton, and Andrew Bramhill. I took over about a year ago, and it’s been quite a steep learning curve—challenging but enjoyable and quite different from what I was doing before in a large corporation focused on investments! 

The Christadelphian magazine has had an important role in the community’s history as its main global magazine. It’s a place where news and activities can be shared across the worldwide community and has acted as a “place of record” for ecclesial formation and membership. It has featured some truly excellent exposition, practical guidance, and exhortation over the years, and it has generally been seen as a trusted voice for the community on doctrinal, expositional, and practical matters.

Editor: What should we know about the CMPA? What is the relationship between the CMPA and The Christadelphian magazine? 

CMPA stands for The Christadelphian Magazine and Publishing Association, the board of trustees behind the Christadelphian Office and the magazine and to whom we are accountable. The CMPA is a Limited Company and a charitable body. As such the board of trustees has formal legal responsibilities as well as spiritual ones. 

Neither the Office nor the CMPA has any formal responsibility or authority in the community. We are not a head office in that sense, and we do not make fellowship decisions (these are ecclesially based). However, through our publications, we do seek to be a trusted source of quality material, both about the Bible itself and about Christadelphian doctrine and practice. Over the years, the CMPA has been the main global publisher for the community. We currently have about 200 books in print, a whole range of booklets (some for preaching, some internally focused regarding community beliefs and practices), and other key Christadelphian materials, like the hymn book, the Statement of Faith, the Ecclesial Guide and the Bible Companion.

Editor: What else does the Office do?

There are three main aspects to it. The first is publishing, which I just talked about. Besides books and The Christadelphian magazine, we also publish a youth (and beyond!) magazine called Faith Alive! We are also a digital publisher. All our material is available digitally, and we have a subscription service called the Digital Library, which allows you to access all the back copies of The Christadelphian magazine (that’s about 43,000 articles!) along with all our books—for a monthly fee. We plan to add to this resource considerably over time and hopefully improve the search functionality very soon, which, I’d be the first to admit, is not where it needs to be just at the moment.

So that’s the publishing. But we also distribute our books, along with other Christadelphian books not published by us, plus Bibles and children’s books, all around the world. Finally, the Office serves as a central hub for the community. We answer queries (from within and outside the community), and provide advice on difficult individual and ecclesial matters, such as fellowship questions. We have been involved in helping with various reunions that have taken place between different Christadelphian fellowships in the past. We also provide the news-sharing service I spoke of earlier and house the main archival documents of the community as well as two research libraries. It’s a lot! Most people who visit here (which everyone is very welcome to do if they are in Birmingham, UK!) are surprised that there is so much here and so much work that gets done. 

And there’s lots more still to do, as we shift the business and our output to be as relevant and accessible as possible in the modern age and as we seek to share and expound the unchanging and powerful teachings of Scripture. We recently did an online presentation about our work and some of the strategic decisions that lie ahead of us (a 30-minute presentation, plus Q&A). You can watch a replay here: tinyurl.com/2024OfficeUpdateRecording.

Editor: What is the relationship between The Christadelphian/CMPA and the ALS Diary? 

It’s not a formal one, but we are close. The Auxiliary Lecturing Society (ALS) is the main UK preaching organization with its own committees. We do work very closely together and provide publishing and other services to ALS. The ALS Diary is the primary global directory of the Central Fellowship, and we sometimes give guidance to it because of our role in announcing global ecclesial news and receiving fellowship-related communications from the brotherhood.

Editor: Why is North America of interest to The Christadelphian Magazine? 

That’s easy: it’s because North America is a key part of the global worldwide fellowship! One of our great strengths as a community is that sense of unity of faith and practice across geographic and national boundaries. The Christadelphian magazine has an important role in sharing our global activities and bringing us all together. We live in an increasingly fragmented, individualistic, and atomized society where everyone “does what is right in their own eyes.” It’s important to unite around what we have in common and strengthen one another in our faith. The magazine has a role to play in this: publishing edifying Biblical content, sharing news of our worldwide activities, and reminding us of each other. 

We have always received and published news from North American ecclesias and had strong connections with brothers and sisters there. It has felt as though some of this has waned a bit in recent years, and we’re quite keen to rekindle that sense of being globally united. So please do send us your ecclesial news and activities, please do send us articles to consider for publication, and please do take a look at our publications (www.thechristadelphian.com) and the magazine to see whether you think it might be a helpful contributor to your discipleship and your ecclesia’s wellbeing and sense of belonging. It’s powerful to have mechanisms by which we stay connected, and the magazine and the Office help provide this.

Editor: What is the charter of The Christadelphian magazine?

We want to publish great Biblical content that enthuses, educates, and supports discipleship. We want to have helpful Biblical exposition but also to share community pieces so that we can learn from one another about our activities and experiences. We want to provide practical and exhortational content to inspire us all in our walk to the Kingdom. We want material that helps defend our faith in a culture so alien to the gospel (“apologetics”). We want to deal with practical issues from modern life that challenge us. All of these and more. 

One of the subheadings for The Christadelphian magazine over the years, which is still on our inside cover, is “Dedicated wholly to the hope of Israel.” This statement is a powerful focus and makes an important connection with the Promises and the distinctive Biblical understanding we share, which separates us from so much of mainstream Christianity. We recently merged with The Testimony Magazine, a magazine known for its excellent Bible study and for strongly defending the faith. Its subheading was “For the study and defense of Holy Scripture.” That’s important for us too. One of the mission statements of the CMPA is “Helping to develop the mind of Christ in the body of Christ.” With God’s blessing, that’s what we would like to try to do.

Editor: What excites you about the global Christadelphian community? What about any concerns? 

I don’t know of any other community with such love and close attention to the Word of God. I don’t know of any other community whose doctrinal understanding is as Biblically aligned as ours and where there is the same commitment to the Promises and the apostles’ teaching. But there’s more than those points about doctrine and beliefs or even our approach to the Scriptures (all of which are really special). It’s also the warmth of the community, the precious unity that we share wherever we go in the world and meet other brothers and sisters. We are united around the things concerning the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, and we seek to follow the commandments of Christ in our practical behavior and discipleship. We take it seriously; it’s our life. 

Of course, there are challenges. In some respects, the community feels quite polarized. The way modern society worships the individual and their personal feelings or wants to the exclusion of everything else is a challenge for us all, both individually and ecclesially. It makes it harder for us to appreciate the importance of unity if we see it this way, (‘so that’s how it is, and if others don’t like it, that’s their problem!’). Social media and the Internet have also not been good for us in some significant ways (of course, I realize there are other ways in which they’ve been very positive). I don’t think we necessarily know or read our Bibles as well as we used to. The more we can get back to the Scriptures and enthuse one another about the wonderful things God has done for us through Christ and which He promises in the Kingdom as revealed in the Scriptures, the more readily we will overcome these challenges. 

Editor: Tell us about your relationship with the Tidings. How important is this to you? 

We have had a very positive working relationship with Tidings for many years, and we hope this will continue until our Lord returns (the same would be true for our collaboration with organizations like the Christadelphian Bible Mission, Auxiliary Lecturing Society (ALS), military service committees, Christadelphian Scripture Study Service, and Lampstand in Australia). You (Bro. Dave) and I are often in contact by email, and we also have periodic video catchups between the editors and chairs of the two organizations. This is helpful for discussing plans, concerns, and matters that may impact the brotherhood. From our separate perspectives, it’s a great opportunity to have the two organizations work together and share thoughts. Having lived in America for about five years myself, I know several of the Tidings Committee members personally and have great respect for them, as I do for the magazine’s efforts.

Editor: Why are you partnering with Tidings and Glad Tidings on the new multi-language magazine, The High Calling? Why is this important to you and the CMPA? 

The typical audience for The Christadelphian over the years has been the developed Western world. We have a business model that rests primarily on subscriptions and book sales, and those areas are where there is disposable income enabling people to purchase our books and magazines (and for us to cover our staff costs and other overheads).

But our community is increasingly much wider than the developed world. There are thousands of brothers and sisters in new regions of the world, and our charitable purpose is to serve the whole community, not just those in North America, the UK or Australia and New Zealand. We want to be able to serve all our brothers and sisters worldwide and share quality content with them. The High Calling is an excellent way of providing some of our content and helping our non-English speaking brothers and sisters in those other areas, who increasingly form the main part of our community.

Editor: This might be a good opportunity to communicate any special offers the magazine has for our readers in North America. 

As I mentioned earlier, we don’t have as much North American input into the magazine (or as many North American readers) as we used to, and we’d love to change that. If you haven’t seen the magazine recently, please do take a look. We’re happy to send anyone a past issue or two as a free PDF sample. It’s a constant work in progress, but we are making a lot of effort to get a good variety of content and for there to be at least something that would be of interest to everyone in each issue. We’re always open to suggestions which you can send to me at editor@thechristadelphian.com. 

As I mentioned at the start, The Christadelphian has been the main global magazine of the community since 1864. If you think that’s a significant legacy and that our work has value and should continue, we’d encourage you to subscribe. We need your support as a subscriber to be able to do so. We’re launching a new digital or digital-and-print subscription for 2025. You can sign up for this beginning December 1st at www.thechristadelphian.com/mag. The cost for digital is about $4.00 USD per issue, and once you sign up, payment is made automatically monthly by card. The printed magazine is an extra $2.00 USD. International postage is expensive ($5.25 USD per issue).

Another option, if you desire a hard copy, could be to consider an ecclesial print subscription for five copies or more, and postage costs fall significantly then (we can also do digital ecclesial subscriptions—contact us if that is of interest). Subscriber feedback does suggest that people tend to be more likely to read the magazine when they have a print copy rather than just a digital one. Contact us by email if you want to discuss ecclesial subscription options. These have to be renewed every year (enquiries@thechristadelphian.com). We recently wrote to all North American Recording Brothers offering to send a sample copy of the magazine for each family in the ecclesia and enquiring how many to send. We haven’t had a huge response to that offer, so if you’re keen to see a sample, nudge your recorder or let us know yourself how many to send! We would love to welcome you as subscribers in the new year! 

Editor: My thanks to Mark for answering these questions. We value your subscription to the Tidings. You may want to consider adding The Christadelphian magazine in the new year.

Dave Jennings 

The Bible and Same-Sex Relationships
ARTICLE SERIES

With permission, The Christadelphian magazine has allowed us to make one of their recent series of articles available for free to readers of the Tidings. The series is called, The Bible and Same-Sex Relationships, and provides an important Scriptural review of what the Bible teaches about same-sex relationships. You can access this booklet at https://mytidings.org/ssr

The Christadelphian
FREE ISSUE

The Christadelphian magazine is pleased to offer readers of the Tidings a free PDF copy of the November 2024 Christadelphian. You can download your free copy at https://mytidings.org/ctest