Christian History Almanac · 1517 Podcasts

The CHA Weekend Edition Presents: Christianity Today Time Capsule 2001

·40 min·2 clips

The openness-of-God debate burned fast online, then ETS voted against it and the wider evangelical tent shrank.

1. Christian History Almanac revisits Christianity Today’s February 19, 2001 technology issue and treats it as a snapshot of evangelical life at the turn of the century. 2. Dan Van Voorhis hosts the episode, identifies himself as a scholar in residence at 1517, and uses a printed PDF of Christianity Today to walk through the issue. 3. The episode asks what Christians in 2001 thought the internet, e-books, message boards, and church websites would do to theology and ministry. 4. Dan opens with ads for stackable church chairs at $28.50, Zondervan Bibles, and a Maximum Impact leadership conference scheduled for September 15, 2001. 5. He places the issue in its historical moment by naming Bush v. Gore, the Ravens’ Super Bowl win, Napster, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Left Behind, and The Prayer of Jabez. 6. He says the cover story is a special technology issue with the line “is god.com dead,” then notes that god.com now redirects to an AI service. 7. The magazine’s web pages include old URLs, dead links, and products like ministry list sites, sermon search tools, and church window services that were still trying to define online church life. 8. Dan says only one site froze his computer, which he uses as a joke about the early web’s unstable edges. 9. A digital report in the issue discusses church websites, online charity giving, and the idea that pastors were among the most active searchers for worship-service information online. 10. He highlights the claim that 60% of churches already had dedicated websites in 2001. 11. One of the issue’s most memorable ads comes from gospel.com.net, which calls itself “the largest, most visited Christian website on the net.” 12. Dan contrasts that claim with Bible Gateway’s survival and says its free side-by-side translations helped it outlast the dot-com bubble. 13. The episode spends serious time on Alicia Kaufman’s article about the openness-of-God debate and its link to online theological discourse. 14. Dan names Clark Pinnock, Greg Boyd, John Sanders, and Roger Nicole while explaining the debate’s claims about what God can know if events are not yet settled. 15. He argues that anonymous message boards and the rise of “young, restless, and reformed” voices made the controversy louder and more polarized. 16. He says the Evangelical Theological Society’s vote against openness theology and the movement of some Christians to other denominations helped the debate fade. 17. Dan’s style is conversational, humorous, and archival, with repeated detours into ads, old websites, and personal memories from 2001. 18. The format is a guided magazine walkthrough with historical commentary, not a straight interview or sermon. 19. People interested in evangelical history, internet culture, and early-2000s theology will get the most from this episode. 20. People wanting a tight devotional or a current-news episode may skip it.

As heard by us

A playful tour of church websites, dead domains, and 2001 web weirdness.

Dan Van Voorhis follows a 2001 web snapshot into the early Christian internet, when pay phones, internet cafes, and ministry sites still marked the edge of the map.

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Why you'd press play

You want a time capsule of Christian internet life in 2001, before smartphones.

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