Christian Magazines, Conservative Magazines And The Students Who Start Them

Author: Gen Wright

Author: Gen Wright

In the 1980s, The Dartmouth Review began a revolution among the nation's college-aged conservatives. In an America that was torn politically, the Review gave Dartmouth's Conservative students a sort of bullhorn. The Review's pioneering staff gave hope to a generations of young Conservative thinkers.Due to the incredible efforts of organizations like Intercollegiate Studies Institute, there are more than 100 Conservative papers on campuses today. While Dartmouth's magazine inspired a generation of Conservative magazines, not all are created equal. Since the hey-days of the Review, no campus magazine has seen such student involvement or commitment as that of Brown University's Conservative publication. The Brown Spectator, founded in 2002, has become an iconic example of how Campus Conservative Magazines should be constructed.Founded in the days after a reparations article by David Horowitz sparked enormous, nationwide controversy, the articles were long-form essays put together by on-campus students. At the time of its founding, the Spectator was an outlet for students who had been chastised during the tumultuous Horowitz controversy.Since then, the Spectator has completely turned its model around. The magazines current iteration was put together by two student editors, Joshua Unseth and Andrew Kurtzman. Students have been incredibly receptive to the changes. With every new issue, the Spectator's editors have increased the number of issues printed.After working with the Spectator, Joshua Unseth turned his eyes on a new goal. He went out and obtained the funding for Closing Remarks, Brown University's first Christian literary and arts publication. Unseth put together a staff of amazing artists and writers who turned the magazine into a well written, artistically rich publication. "I purchased ten different magazines that I liked from the Brown University book store and brought them to a staff meeting," Unseth said. "We crawled through each publication and pulled out elements that we liked. In the end, Closing Remarks is an amalgamation of elements from Harper's, the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Good Magazine, about five other publications, and the imaginations of the founding staff." If you look at the publication you can tell. Closing Remarks looks like a magazine you'd see on a shelf at Barnes & Noble.The articles range from humorous articles about virginity, all the way to articles discussing proof of God's existence using scientific and mathematical principles. Needless to say, Closing Remarks was not created as a publication that would shy away from controversy.Just like with Conservative magazines, recently Christian magazines have been popping up like prairie dogs all over American campuses. They now exist on over a dozen college campuses. Unseth says that Closing Remarks was by no means the first. It might have been the third or fourth magazine of its kind. Regardless of where the idea came from, Unseth's work has been instrumental in driving Closing Remarks and other magazines of its ilk to a new level. Unseth left Brown a much better place than he left it. His magazine and the Spectator are like his permanent footprint in the nations' 7th oldest college. His work gave underrepresented students a voice. "I would have started a liberal magazine if I were on a Conservative campus," Unseth joked. "I'm a natural born pariah, but I'm likable." Provacative and intelligent, Joshua Unseth and students like him are the future of what some are calling a dying industry.About the Author:

The Foundation for Intellectual Diversity provides financial support to Closing Remarks for their Christian Magazines and The Brown Spectator for their Conservative Magazines

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