Major magazine cover stories and features, thought-provoking Voices columns and reporter Journals, daily news reports from The Sift, and weekly Roundups covering important issues drew readers to WORLD’s website in 2019. The hot-button topics that grabbed your attention and made you click the share button included abortion, sexuality, immigration, and apostasy and scandal in the church.

Click the headline links in our Top 25 countdown and take a trip back through the past 12 months of WORLD’s Christian worldview reporting and commentary.

If I’ve heard the question once, I’ve heard it a hundred times: “Joel, of all the projects you’ve got going at WORLD, which one most deserves my financial help?” It’s almost like hearing, “Of your five daughters, which has given you your favorite grandchildren?”

The truth is that—just as I delight in all my grandchildren—all three of our divisions are undertaking major projects that will need member support. If it weren’t for your support along the way, we couldn’t even consider these projects, let alone start them. 

Every now and then, during the 33 years since we launched WORLD Magazine, I’ve thought it might be helpful to our readers to make an editorial confession. You may remember my telling you of the discomfort I have felt when we found it necessary to report on the negative behavior of some Christian leaders or organizations. 

Apart from bedtime reading for kids, I’ve read only one novel three times: José Gironella’s The Cypresses Believe in God, published in Spanish and English 65 years ago.

The first two times—1983, 2001—I mourned for Spain, because Cypresses shows a country during the 1930s polarizing to the point where a half-million died. But this time I mourned for America. The past as covered by George Orwell and Gironella could also be our future.

A New York moment: 

On Monday, the day I wrote this column, I turned 32. When I graduated from college years ago, the dean of my journalism school gave a speech that I’ve mostly forgotten. But I still remember one statement: “People think they’re paying journalists for their objectivity. That’s not true. They’re paying them for their judgment.”

“Thanks very much,” said the impassioned radio announcer as I tuned in right at the end of her plea, “for your calls, for your concern, and for your prayers.”

For your prayers?