LILY RESLINK
Staff Writer
Christianity Today President and CEO Nicole Martin believes faith communities should be arbiters of truth, a feat she recognizes as complex yet necessary.
Religion, journalism and organizational branding intersect at Martin’s role, where she oversees editorial content for a major evangelical publication.
“I learned not to bifurcate myself into personal and professional, but to weave them together in a sense of collective impact,” she said in a 2025 article for Princeton Theological Seminary, from which Martin holds one of her several degrees.
With reflection on the spiritual dimensions of storytelling and the impact of an evolving media landscape, Martin’s lecture at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy will conclude Week Two: “Truth, Trust and the Sacred.”
According to CT’s Executive Assistant to the President and CEO Haley Betsill, Martin’s lecture will “explore what it means to bear witness to truth in an age of misinformation and fractured narratives.”
Martin assumed her current role after the CT Board of Directors unanimously voted for Martin as the organization’s next leader in 2025, promoting her from chief impact officer.
“I take seriously the responsibility to lead in ways that honor God and uplift the people I lead and serve,” she said in the 2025 article. “The role has also given way to increased layers of visibility, which have been daunting at times, but encouraging as I recognize my capacity to impact lives through a larger platform. It also means new opportunities to lead in new ways, to learn new skill sets and to expand the legacy of a brand that I believe is necessary for our times.”
Martin is the first Black woman to lead CT. “None of us gets to select our gender, none of us gets to select our race. We’re born as we’re born,” she said to RNS. “I embrace and understand my ethnicity and my gender, and I see them as assets, not just for CT, but also for the Kingdom.”
In a 2026 Religion News Service interview, she named her intentions to build a healthy work culture, help build the staff and focus on journalism that tells the “stories of the kingdom of God.”
Director of Religion Robert Wilson-Black, former CEO of Soujourners, spoke to the benefit of inviting Martin to share her insight during this week of media. He said her leadership of “the most important evangelical Christian magazine” fits into the conversations about media responsibility, and Chautauquans will have the chance to learn what considerations are shaping her next steps.
“Christianity Today is really the standard-bearer of evangelical Christianity, and of course evangelical Christianity is changing underneath people’s feet, so she is there to … bring new leadership, fresh leadership,” Wilson-Black said.
In an interview with Religion News Service, Martin shared considerations that guided her approach to leading the nonprofit global media organization at a time of some disrepaired trust. “We own that we have not always been a healthy culture. We own that we have sometimes had to release people for reasons that I wish we didn’t have to. We own that people have left because of contention. We don’t ignore that, but we learn from that.”
