Charles Clayton Morrison edited the Christian Century for most of the first half of the twentieth century, as the American nation grew from progressivism through the chaos of the Depression and two world wars into the atomic era. Morrison likewise moved through the era of the Social Gospel, grappled with John Dewey's pragmatism and Reinhold Niebuhr's realism, and emerged with a principled call to social democracy and ecclesiastical union. Morrison developed the Christian Century into the nation's most influential religious journal of opinion, believing, despite all the momentous personal and cultural changes that had occurred, that his magazine accurately reflected the nation's chief strength and source of hope.

Morrison was born the second of four children to Hugh Tucker Morrison, a carpenter turned itinerant preacher, and Anna MacDonald Morrison, a musically gifted woman. (Morrison was also inclined toward music, and he compiled a hymnbook of modern songs for...