Behind The Banner

I was hesitant to write this blog because I was afraid it might come across as bragging.

“An independent, nonprofit, and award-winning source of global news on religion, spirituality, culture, and ethics,” Religion News Service is a helpful way to keep Banner readers informed.

Here are the past eight movie reviews we’ve run in The Banner, plus a note from me about my rationale for assigning, writing, or accepting a pitch for the review.

Some think we have double standards or even some sort of reverse discrimination. The real reason, however, is a lot more innocuous.

The more funds we can raise through advertising and donations, the less we need to rely on ministry shares.

Anyone who wants The Banner can get it for free, regardless of denominational membership. But they have to ask for it.

I frequently field questions about The Banner’s varying ways of writing about death, so here’s the scoop.

So many books, so little time, right? How do we narrow it down?

The Christian Reformed Church offers a breadth of ministry today that is practically unheard of for a denomination of our size.

In the past, The Banner used to have an entire page of reader-submitted jokes.

Telling the church what the church is doing is the job of The Banner news editors and correspondents.

We share the stories that don’t get heard or magnified anywhere else.

By justice, we do not merely mean equal treatment for all but also being intellectually just or fair to different viewpoints.

These 2005 guidelines also note that The Banner needs to “be easily read” yet “be challenging” and be consistently of high quality.

The Banner is the official magazine of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, but it is neither the CRC’s megaphone nor its independent critic.

One reporter’s experience researching and writing an article before and after the COVID-19 pandemic hit North America.

The COVID-19 coronavirus, declared a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, has affected everyone’s everyday lives.

Featuring monthly posts, this blog seeks to give our readers a behind-the-curtains peek into how things operate at The Banner. In this inaugural post, get to know our team!

What does it take to get published in The Banner? Why do we accept some articles and reject others?