First Christianity Today editor Carl F.H. Henry dies

First Christianity Today editor Carl F.H. Henry dies

WATERTOWN, Wis. — Carl F.H. Henry, the first editor of Christianity Today magazine and one of conservative Christianity’s most influential authors and theologians, died Dec. 7 in Watertown, Wis. He was 90.

Often called the “thinking man’s Billy Graham,” Henry was the author of more than 25 books. Over the past few decades he had taught at several colleges and seminaries. First and foremost, he was a proponent of biblical scholarship.

“Critical investigation should not be banned,” the Associated Press quoted the Southern Baptist theologian as saying in 1986. “But the critics would do well by first criticizing their own presuppositions.”

David Neff, editor of Christianity Today, said Henry’s contributions to evangelism were far-reaching.

“At mid-century, Carl Henry gave enormous gifts of time and talent to America’s neoevangelical movement,” Neff told Religion News Service. “Whereas Billy Graham was the movement’s goodwill ambassador and welcoming spirit, Carl Henry was one of its most brilliant minds. Without his rigorous thought and his determined will, evangelicalism’s premiere institutions would have been clearly second rate.”

Today, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has a Carl F.H. Henry Institute for Evangelical Engagement and Union University has the Carl F.H. Henry Center for Christian Leadership.

To the end, Henry was best known as Christianity Today’s first editor and ultimately, it was in the newsroom where he fused his two great passions: journalism and Christianity.