Publishing The Door

A 'HANDS-ON' HISTORY:
More than 25 years ago, an eclectic Christian community in a
transitional neighborhood in East Dallas shared a SINGLE VISION:
empty ourselves

Now Trinity Foundation is a network of individuals
and small groups acting on that vision.

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A word of explanation from the Doorkeepers....

[The Wittenburg Door magazine has temporarily suspended publication during a financial reorganization. The plan is to return even better equipped to fulfill its mission, described below.]

Be forewarned. The Wittenburg Door is an irreverent humor magazine, but it is not published in a vacuum. And we're not simply sophomoric jerks who have nothing better to do than lob grenades at religion, like you're probably thinking. We have a history, a context and a community that we sometimes don't explain as carefully as we should.

We satirize something we love – the Church, and more generally people of faith – with the hope that our prodding might generate some course corrections while inducing a laugh or two... or three.

(And yes, we're aware that we need a wake-up call ourselves occasionally. We deflate ourselves regularly, but you, too, can fire when ready).

History

The magazine was founded as The Wittenburg Door in June 1971 as a resource for professional Christian youth workers. Mike Yaconelli and the other California "Jesus people" who put out those first issues wanted the magazine to be a forum for questioning and redressing problems in the Church, just as Martin Luther had sparked the Reformation by posting his Theses on the church door in Wittenberg. When the group noticed they had misspelled Wittenberg in the magazine title, it seemed God's way of telling them that humor and satire would be their medium.

The magazine is in hiatus, but you can still purchase back issues and other cool Door stuff from The Door Store!

The misspelling stayed in, and the magazine became a burr under the church's collective saddle. The Door was a conduit for imaginative writers, humorists and cartoonists to keep evangelical church organizations, institutions, traditions, leaders and followers true to their New Testament focus.

Twenty-five years later, Yaconelli passed on the magazine to Trinity Foundation in Dallas and its president, Ole Anthony.

Here's Yaconelli's description of Anthony and his group:

"Ole is the personification of what it means to be unique in the body of Christ. He is a strange, odd, eccentric, godly, bright, passionate, gentle man who lives his faith in the inner city of Dallas. There, through the Trinity Foundation, he guides a community of homeless who have taken a vow of poverty and who try to live out their faith in radical ways. Ole has been electrocuted, shot, held hostage with a gun in his mouth in Beirut, has worked in military intelligence and become the pit-bull of watchdogs when it comes to TV evangelists and their ilk. Ole and the Trinity Foundation worked together on PrimeTime Live's expose of Robert Tilton and others."

Mission

Trinity has published The Door since 1996. Working with Senior Editor Robert Darden, Trinity has broadened the magazine's mission to deflate pompous individuals, movements and institutions from ANY religious persuasion that take themselves too seriously.

It does this through:

• Interviews with significant, creative or controversial individuals who are making an impact on the Church or religion in general. Sometimes these are people influencing popular culture whose views on religion and faith have a bearing on their impact.

• Articles sent in by a group of talented humorists and satire writers.

• Cartoons, essays, weird true news items.

• Editorial comment in departments like The Loser of The Bi-month and The Last Word from our publisher.

The Door has recently expanded into a vibrant and controversial web site with a lively community that comments on the daily updates of blogs, interviews, reviews and other funny postings.

The basis for The Door's mission is a scriptural injunction to mock idolatry. The prophet Elijah did it best, during his contest with the priests of Baal. But an expanded discussion is found in the Talmud, that compendium of Jewish oral traditions that we find a continuing source of light on New Testament understanding. The rabbinic teachers said Israel was forbidden to mock or jeer anyone or anything except idolatry. The prescribed epithet was, "Take your idol and put it under your buttocks!"

Hmmm. Selah