Eternity

About Eternity

A socially-oriented intellectual magazine, Eternity begins running regular music reviews as early as 1960. Due to its socially-conscious perspective, there is some useful coverage of the Jesus movement and it's emerging music, as well as the conflicts that this has caused within churches.

About 1972 Dr. Richard J Stainslaw, a college professor whose dissertation was on American folk hymns, begins a regular section of reviews. This section covers folk-style Jesus music and southern gospel artists but shows a clear preference for "sacred music."

Much of modern Christian music, Stainslaw laments in September 1979, is "disposable and imitative" and contains "bromidic Christian phrases as texts..." meanwhile classical and choral music has become "the property of secular musicians and liberal churches." Ultimately, this point of view enhances his reviews, as he seems less apt to give props for simply producing an album, as some reviewers seem to do.

The magazine modernized in 1987 and changed formats slightly. Taking more of a newsmagzine look and feel ultimately didn't slow it's decline, and the magazine was sold the next year to the publisher of Guideposts. Eternity folded in early 1989, merging into World magazine.