This isn't really news to me, but it may be to others: Eerdmans, the large Christian publishing house, has decided to join the culture in affirming LGBT+ "voices" in their publishing house. When orthodox Christians got the news, there was an outburst of (entirely predictable) outrage. Eerdmans then doubled down and insisted "[w]e reject the tendency to promote division and discord by categorizing Christians into two camps, considering 'us' to be right about everything and 'them' to be wrong". I won't bother rehashing the sinfulness of homosexual behavior because it's hardly necessary for any reader of this forum, but I offer this story simply as another signpost on the way to America's slide into paganism and outright hostility towards orthodox Christianity. As to Eerdmans itself....eh. They've been liberal for years and years, and no one who's perused their book catalog is at all surprised by this. They've been circumspect in the past to avoid offending orthodox Christians, but apparently they've decided that this is a market they can do without. The market Eerdmans services has been shrinking apace anyway; I doubt they'll survive another ten years regardless of whether orthodox Christians boycott their stuff or not. Will orthodox Christians boycott them? Some will, and even if that's a relatively small number, it's still customers they can ill-afford to lose. We're seeing the "Get woke" part of the meme; time will tell if the "go broke" punchline follows.
Eerdman’s is an important publisher of long standing, and I personally have appreciated the wide variety of perspectives they have been willing to publish over the years. It made an important difference to laypersons like myself who like to explore all sides of an issue with an open mind and in good faith. Their job is to make works of interest for the broader Church available to the broader Church. The results of exegetical reconsiderations can’t be known in advance. Publishers aren’t the arbiters of who is “the” Church and who is not. Their statement is exactly what I would expect a responsible publisher to say.
They publish a lot of academic stuff for seminarians and pastors, as well as more popular devotional/self-help stuff. N. T. Wright has published a lot of stuff through them. They're also the publisher of the hugely influential evangelical NICOT/NICNT* commentary series. Most of their really good stuff is old. But then this is true of most Christian book publishers, not just Eerdmans. There is a mind-boggling amount of utter trash being cranked out these days, because that's what sells. Even academic imprints aren't immune -- the amount of trend-chasing and ****-posting-masquerading-as-academic-writing (these useless bits of tripe are usually called "autoethnography") is insane. Modern theological writing is just embarrassing for the most part. There is still some good stuff to be found, but it's getting harder and harder to find. The problem isn't just "wokeness". In fact, on the academic side, a bigger problem is a simple lack of competency and scholarly rigor. A lot of academic publishing coming out of seminaries these days is just pointless minutiae, uninteresting even to other specialists in the field. A "best selling" seminary text might sell in the low thousands (a bit higher if you count digital as well as paper). *New International Commentary on the Old Testament/New Testament
I am not the biggest NT Wright fan although he has a good modern day version of Mere Christianity. I forgot who I loaned that out to.
An ACNA priest Rev. Steven Wedgeworth wrote an incisive article about this, and the mental gymnastics that led to the Eerdmans capitulation; https://wng.org/opinions/when-neutrality-is-a-myth-1654776757 it’s a powerful defense of orthodoxy and analysis of how to navigate the media smears and cultural shifts for a faithful Christian moving forward
I run hot and cold on N. T. Wright. Like Tim Keller, his older books are better than his newer ones. (Which lends weight to my theory that the biggest weaknesses in older theologians are sentimentality and an undue concern for their "legacy".)