April 8, 1966: Time Magazine's "Is God Dead?" Cover

April 8, 1966, 60 years ago: Time magazine prints its most famous cover, asking a big question: "Is God Dead?"

Why did the question come up? The question was already steeped in German philosophy in the 19th Century. In 1797, German writer Jean Paul wrote Siebenkäs (Sevencheese), in which a character says, "'The Dead Christ Proclaims That There Is No God." Philipp Mainländer and George Hegel had also written on the subject. In 1862, French writer Victor Hugo had his character Gerard de Nerval say, "God is dead, perhaps" in Les Misérables.

In his 1882 book The Gay Science (sometimes translated as "The Joyful Science," it has nothing to do with homosexuality), Friedrich Nietzsche came right out and said it: "Gott ist tot." He said, "The belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable," adding that everything that was "built upon this faith, propped up by it, grown into it," including "the whole of European morality," is bound to "collapse." He repeated the line "God is dead" in his next and most-known book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

The World Wars of the 20th Century, in which both Germany as aggressor and the nations defending themselves used God as justification, would likely have convinced him that he was right, at least about the collapse part.

What's more, Nietzsche believed it was a good thing: He often wrote of an "overman" who was "beyond good and evil," superseding established concepts of what was moral and what was not. And that was part of the problem: After his death in 1900, this belief in an Übermensch was twisted into the official beliefs of the aggressors of the World Wars, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Chancellor Adolf Hitler.

It was an American of German descent, Otto Fuerbringer, who, as editor of Time, released that cover, the magazine's first without a photograph in its 43 years of publishing to that point. But the issue did not attempt to answer the question. In more recent terms, the cover was "clickbait."

Otto Fuerbringer

The article accompanying the magazine cover, titled "Toward a Hidden God" and written by the magazine's religion editor, John T. Elson, mentioned the so-called "God Is Dead" movement only briefly in its introduction. In a footnote, it identified the leaders of the movement, and explained how those theologians had been trying to construct a theology without God.

The article pointed out that, while this movement had roots in the philosophy of Nietzsche, it also drew on a broader range of thinkers, who had expressed concerns about the role of God in an increasingly secularized world. The immediate reality did not indicate a death of God, or a death of religion, and the article pointed out that the recent Second Vatican Council had done much to revitalize Christianity, and the Roman Catholic Church in particular.

The article cited a poll in which 97 percent of Americans declared a belief in God, but only 27 percent called themselves "deeply religious."

Time received around 3,500 letters to the editor, still the largest number of responses to any one story in the history of the magazine. In its issue of December 26, 1969, Time ran a follow-up cover story asking, "Is God Coming Back to Life"?

A month before the controversial cover, John Lennon of The Beatles gave an interview in which he said, "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I'll be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now." When it was published in the American magazine Datebook on July 29, evangelical Americans lost their minds, and convinced radio stations to ban the Beatles, and even held record burnings, as if it was Nazi Germany. Lennon had to apologize.

On November 29, 1993, Time did a cover story on psychology, discussing how people were moving away from the teachings of Sigmund Freud. Freud had died in 1939, and was famously atheist: He wouldn't have said God was dead, he would have said God never existed in the first place. But the 1993 cover showed a painting of Freud, with his head coming apart like pieces of a puzzle, asking, "Is Freud Dead?"

And on April 3, 2017, with Donald Trump having become President, despite so many of his statements having been proven to be lies, Time printed this cover.

Trump was defeated in 2020, so the answer became, "No, but it sure was sick for a while." Trump was returned to the Presidency in 2024, so truth remains seriously ill.

Otto Fuerbringer died in 2008; John T. Elson, the following year.

April 8, 1966 was a Friday -- indeed, it was Good Friday, the traditional date of the Crucifixion of Jesus, with Easter to follow on Sunday. Actresses Cynthia Nixon and Robin Wright were born on this day.

March 1, 1526: The Tyndale Bible

March 1, 1526, 500 years ago: William Tyndale publishes a complete edition of the New Testament, a translation from the German edition published by Martin Luther into English.

Tyndale, born around 1494 in Gloucestershire in the West Country of England, had previously published an Old Testament in 1522. This meant he now had a complete Bible, the 1st one in the English language.

At this point, the most common Bible was the Vulgate, in Latin, the language of the Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church, published in 1382 by John Wycliffe. Before reaching Rome, most Bibles were published in Greek; before that, in Aramaic, the native language of Jesus; with Old Testaments having been in Hebrew.

A surviving Tyndale New Testament,

in the British Library in London

Given England's expansionism around the world, in the 16th Century, and the Protestant Reformation around Europe, this was a major step forward in the Bible, a.k.a. "The Word of God," becoming accessible to people on their own terms, as was the Gutenberg Bible published in Germany in 1455, at the dawn of the printing press.

This allowed people to read the Bible for themselves, without simply being told what it said by their priests. The priests didn't like that. The Church hierarchy really didn't like that.

In 1528, Tyndale wrote The Obedience of a Christian Man, arguing that a country's monarch should be the head of its church. This gave him an ally in King Henry VIII of England, who used this book was part of his reason to break away from the Catholic Church, and form the Church of England, with himself as its head.

But the main reason he wanted to do that was because he wanted to divorce his 1st wife, Katherine of Aragon, and marry his mistress, Anne Boleyn. The Catholic Church wouldn't let him do that, so he broke away.

And Tyndale sided with the Catholics on this, writing The Practice of the Prelates in 1530. That pissed Henry off, and Tyndale fled to the Duchy of Brabant. Big mistake: While now part of the Kingdom of Belgium, Brabant was then part of the Holy Roman Empire, which was Catholic. In 1535, Emperor Charles V ordered Tyndale's arrest; in 1536, Charles ordered Tyndale's execution. Tyndale was about 42 years old.

In 1539, Henry VIII, by then between his 3rd and 4th marriages, published The Great Bible, the 1st royally-authorized Bible in English. It was mostly the Tyndale Bible. In 1611, King James I published a new version, which has become known, naturally, as the King James Version. It has been estimated that 76 percent of its Old Testament is Tyndale's text, and 83 percent of its New Testament is.

The Tyndale Bible introduced into the English language such words as "Passover," "scapegoat" and "atonement"; the phrases "it came to pass," "the powers that be," "the signs of the times," "mercy seat" and "filthy lucre";

Phrases which had previously appeared in other Bibles, especially the Wycliffe Vulgate, but were made accessible in English due to Tyndale, include: "my brother's keeper," "a moment in time," "in the twinkling of an eye," "the salt of the earth," "judge not that ye be not judged," "knock and it shall be opened unto you," "seek and ye shall find," "ask and it shall be given you," "a law unto themselves," and "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."