Mr. Belz is no longer editor, but he still writes a column for World. He said that he got the idea for a Christian newsmagazine from readers of a children’s publication that he had founded. After moving to Asheville to edit a small, failing magazine called Presbyterian Journal, he conceived the idea for a new venture, a Christian version of the old Weekly Reader that he had loved as a child in Iowa.

In October, Mark Driscoll, the evangelical pastor and best-selling author,resigned from Mars Hill, his Seattle megachurch. This month, Mars Hillannounced that it was dissolving its network of 13 satellite churches.

In the aftermath of his fall, Mr. Driscoll, who was known for his autocratic management style, his quashing of dissent and his unusually frank talkabout how Christian wives can please their husbands in bed, had himself to blame. In resigning, Mr. Driscoll admitted his failings, citing his “past pride, anger and a domineering spirit.”

But Mr. Driscoll cannot take all the credit for his own downfall. For one thing, any faithful Christian would give Satan his due, for leading Mr. Driscoll astray. Then there is the role played by World, an evangelical Christian newsmagazine that broke one of the most damaging stories about Mr. Driscoll. In March, World reported that $210,000 in Mars Hill church funds had gone to a marketing firm that promised to get “Real Marriage,” a book written by Mr. Driscoll and his wife, on best-seller lists.

World was not the only outlet to take on Mr. Driscoll. The blogger Warren Throckmorton, in particular, persistently chronicled concerns about Mars Hill for the website Patheos. But the story about best-seller lists was also not the first scoop for World, and Mr. Driscoll was not the first conservative Christian leader that the magazine had taken on.

In October 2012, a World reporter, Warren Cole Smith, revealed that Dinesh D’Souza, the conservative author, filmmaker and activist, had attended a Christian conference with a woman not his wife — a woman he was introducing as his fiancée. Soon after, Mr. D’Souza resigned as president of King’s College in New York City.

Founded in 1986 and based in Asheville, N.C., the biweekly World is edited by Marvin Olasky, the Bush adviser who helped popularize the term “compassionate conservatism.” Under Mr. Olasky, who became editor in 1994, the religious magazine has become one of the few that do investigative reporting.

The Jewish newspaper The Forward gleefully reports on the foibles of communal leaders, and Commonweal, run by lay Catholics, publishes work critical of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. But evangelical Protestant journalism is generally more public relations than reporting; World stands out as an exception.

“We’re a Christian publication but not a movement organ,” Mr. Olasky said. “So we can publicly criticize Christian leaders from other organizations. Other publications tend to be more within the camp” — published by a particular denomination, for example — “and they don’t want to engage in criticism.”

Read More