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My ministry and personal weblog, picture journal, biography, and list of my personal websites. :)
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Entry for April 03, 2007  You Can’t Judge A Book By It’s Cover
by
R. Alan Woods
c2007 Rhema Rising
It is quite often true that you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, however, when comparing the covers of a popular magazine with that of a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal you can fairly well discern what the literary content, form, approach, intended audience, and purpose will most likely be. When comparing “Christianity Today”- a popular Christian oriented magazine- with the journal “Christianity and Literature”, a peer-reviewed and scholastically oriented journal, it becomes readily apparent that their respective covers speak volumes about their individual contents. The cover of “Christianity Today” is graphically flashy, busy, colorful, and like a newspaper it has a “lead-line” that is designed to entice the reader to enter it’s door and peek inside. Upon entering that doorway you realize immediately that there is a veritable cornucopia, a smörgåsbord, of articles, book reviews, ads, and web sites from which to select and upon which to feast- All You Can Eat For $4.95!!!!
The articles are written almost exclusively by Christians on topics from a purely Christian perspective or “world-view”. Some of the articles are twenty-five hundred words or ten pages in length.However, juxtaposed against the depth and rigor of articles contained in a scholastic journal, the typical article contained in a popular magazine such as “Christianity Today” seems to be shallow in depth and rather hollow in content, and does not attempt to thoroughly exhaust it’s topic in the context of a focused thesis. It is quite apparent that a “popular” audience is the target of such an effort- Does it hurt your head when you have to think?” seems to have this consideration primarily in mind as a determination for the approach. A sampling of titles include: “Angry Atheists”, “What Iraq’s Christian Need?”, “Money Talks”, “Go Figure: Who Voted Democrat”, and “Bookmark: Paradigms In Conflict” just to name a few out of twenty-three articles contained in the issue I have cited. Because these articles are not rigorously peer-reviewed,they are not exhaustively investigated for accuracy and credibility as it relates to source and citation. Therefore, the quality of an article in a popular magazine is but a step above citing a source found on the Internet: they are moderately credible. The cover of the journal “Christianity and Literature” is stark and no-nonsense in appearance. The monochrome color of the cover is a medium shade of “forest green” and the font of the letters in the title are in “Medieval Reformed” type. That is all that adorns it’s cover.The first page contains a table of contents that lists the titles of the articles and their respective authors. There are four categories listed: articles, poetry, dialogs, and book reviews. The articles are permitted to be four thousand to nine thousand words in length, or approximately 16-36 pages in length, double spaced and conforming strictly to the “MLA Style Manual”, 2nd ed. (New York: Modern Language Association, c1998). Located in the table of contents- index of articles page- is the following statement of purpose and approach: “ ’Christianity and Literature’ is devoted to the scholarly exploration of how literature engages Christian thought, experience, and practice. Although the journal presupposes no particular theological orientation, it yet respects an orthodox understanding of Christianity as an historically defined faith and contributions appropriate for submission should demonstrate a keen awareness of their own critical assumptions in addressing significant issues of literary history, interpretation, and theory ”. The journal also states that it is sponsored by “The Conference on Christianity and Literature” and is a member of “The Council of Editors of Learn Journals”.
It is extremely apparent that all of the articles contained in this journal are highly specialized, extremely focused, and scholastically weighty (i.e. in form, content, “academic voice”, tone, format, length, purpose, audience, and language). The topics of each article and their respective theses are tight, focused, and specialized. The subject matter is fairly exhausted within the context and limitations of the maximum word length requirements for each article. The articles are not, however, practically comparable- utilizing the previous stated parameters- to the depth and weightiness of the typical masters thesis or doctoral dissertation. In comparing and contrasting these two periodicals, as genre’s, their similarities are basic and scant. They both have a cover with a title and a table of contents that is further divided into various categories that list the titles of the respective. That is where the similarity ends. Both the magazine “Christianity Today” and the journal “Christianity and Literature” contain articles written by Christian author’s on topics that are from a uniquely Christian “mind-set” or perspective and narrowed in scope to fit the subsequent theses.Yet their purpose,content, and audience are appreciably different and very likely would be “intuitively” discerned by most anyone who would compare their covers. In this case, you may not be able to judge a book by it’s cover, but you most certainly can judge these periodicals by theirs.
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