The Wittenburg Door

I’m a former contributing editor for The
Wittenburg Door, a bi-monthly of religious satire and commentary.

This page has a list of my articles for the magazine, along with links to the few that are online.

The Door, published by the non-profit Trinity Foundation, features cutting edge (sometimes, over-the-edge) satire which pokes at anyone, left or right, who abuses religion or uses it for self-serving ends. The magazine also includes thoughtful interviews with unexpected people from inside and outside the church.

My title simply meant that I was on the short list of freelancers who do assigned interviews. I didn’t know about what else was going into the magazine until I get my copies in the mail! In 2006, due to a variety of factors, I didn’t get a chance to do much about the magazine, and we didn’t really keep in touch from either direction, and so I’m not on the masthead at present. But I still love the magazine and hope I’ll write more for them in the future.

The Door has a long and storied history. It was originally founded by Youth Specialties, a California-based publisher of youth group materials. The misspelling of Wittenberg (the town where Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door) wasn’t intentional, but once they had gone to press they decided to keep it, typical of the magazine’s bent to self-deprecation. Later, the name was shortened to “The Door,” later “The Door Magazine.”

Youth Specialties eventually donated the magazine to Trinity, which has sharpened the satire — sometimes causing controversy. A cover story on Beavis and Butthead, naming them "theologians of the decade," got the magazine kicked out of most Christian bookstores.

In January 2005, the magazine reverted to its original name, marking the event with a tribute to its late founder, Mike Yaconelli, who had been killed in an October 2003 automobile accident.