Perhaps, in the decades to come, some enterprising religious historian will study how the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 affected Christian magazine journalism. Fair warning: You won’t find anything terribly eye-opening in CT’s books coverage.

As the editor chiefly responsible for that coverage, I remember feeling a tad sheepish at our morning check-in meetings during those first few locked-down weeks in March and April. Updates from colleagues throbbed with urgency. They were commissioning ...