Note: From the newly expanded edition of The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Eerdmans, 2022). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Citations have been omitted.
If the “evangelical” designation implies little about intellectual standing, so too might contemporary American intellectual life seem to be utterly opposed to anything even remotely Christian. The hostility to traditional Christian thought, traditional Christian morality, and even traditional morality of any kind is now widespread in American colleges, universities, and the media associated with them. To be sure, the hostility does not prevail everywhere and not to the same degree where it does exist. Yet, as attested by enough well-publicized examples, standing up for what were once Christian or Christian-friendly commonplaces has led to the skewing of hiring decisions, the denial of tenure, the disinvitation of outside speakers, and the ridicule of Christian perspectives in classrooms. Effective exploitation of advocacy strategies taken from the civil rights movement has enabled previously marginal groups to mobilize for promoting their rights. In some places, the ideologies of those groups have become unforgiving arbiters of what can and cannot be said on campus and in publications. Put differently, principles of unrestrained personal freedom and aggressive efforts to redress perceived injustice now rule in some regions of academia.
The Scandal of the Academic Mind
The reality of academic specialization has also complicated the picture. In the late 1990s and early in the first decade of the new century, I was privileged to lead several yearlong seminars for groups of Wheaton College faculty aimed specifically at promoting Christian reflection on the subjects of the participants’ disciplines. Some of the seminars succeeded, others did not. When they failed, a fact of contemporary Christian life was at least partially responsible, but also a fact of modern academic life. Among faculty who shared strong Christian commitments there could be a gross disparity between the level of academic preparation in a particular discipline and the level of theological sophistication and hermeneutical awareness. As a consequence, some scholars who were expert in the particulars of their disciplines found it difficult even to begin to think about how patterns of Christian truth or assumptions about scriptural interpretation might relate to the taken-for-granted conventions of those disciplines.
In addition, because the learning required to function responsibly in many disciplines had become so deep, it was often difficult to find a common language or a shared intellectual framework for conversation across the disciplines – among, say, physicists, music theorists, foreign language pedagogues, psychologists, historians of modern America, historians of India or sub-Saharan Africa, specialists in Shakespearean literature, specialists in non-Western literature, organic chemists, physical chemists, New Testament scholars, and theological ethicists, all of whom knew their own subjects very well but sometimes not too much more. Specialization has produced wonders in all the sciences and, to at least some degree, in the social sciences and humanities. Yet as specialization increases, communication among specialists on universal considerations, like the bearing of Christian faith on intellectual effort, has become increasingly difficult.
The “Wild West” of Modern Scholarship
An observer aware of the intellectual vacuity of “evangelical” taken by itself or confronted by the difficulties facing Christian believers in the modern academy might reasonably conclude that it was the worst of times for meaningful scholarship by evangelicals or evangelical-connected individuals. Nothing, however, could be more mistaken. Christian learning is now actually advancing on many fronts. It flourishes in some domains. And evangelicals are contributing their fair share. It does, however, require a particular angle of vision to reach this conclusion.
Christian intellectual life, first, no longer has much to do with the way that churchmen promoting an Aristotelian-Thomistic framework regulated medieval intellectual life – or how college life at Oxford and Cambridge could inspire John Henry Newman’s Idea of a University – or with the time prior to the university era when the presidents of American colleges, who were invariably clergymen, could deploy a comfortable blend of Common Sense philosophy and generic Protestantism to prepare responsible Christian gentlemen for public service. The current situation is also quite different from the American university world that existed into the 1960s, which featured a mostly secular consensus with its almost entirely male participants policing a narrow range of intellectual perspectives – but which was only occasionally overtly anti-Christian.
From that world before 1960 there has been one survival, though not without challenge in some of the humanities. It is the respect for standards of evidence, arguments, and demonstrations that rely on carefully researched and critically ascertained facts (in other words, a respect for empirical realities in the sciences and for a broader Wissenschaft in most nonscientific disciplines).
Otherwise, except for the hard sciences, it is now an intellectual Wild West.
Powerful challenges by advocates of civil rights for African Americans, other ethnic minorities, women, gays and lesbians, along with disillusionment about “the American dream,” have ended the deference to consensus. Partisan politics has added further fractures. For the most part, scholarship that now gains a hearing is not restricted by subject matter or interpretive conclusions, but by depth and breadth of research, persuasive organization of evidence, and articulate argumentation. For Christian scholars, the present resembles what the Jesuit Matteo Ricci experienced at the imperial court of late sixteenth-century China, where he could win respect for his learning but enjoyed neither preference nor hegemony.
To be sure, limits still apply. As obvious examples, scholarship denying the Holocaust or defending the antebellum slaveholding South has no future. In addition, although scholarship grounded in a specific Christian tradition may be important for members of that tradition, it will usually not register in the general intellectual marketplace. From my admittedly limited perspective, I would conclude that much high-quality theology is now being written – and also being read in at least some parts of the broader evangelical world. Some of that theology may indeed be helpful for indicating how charismatic, Mennonite, Kuyperian, covenantal, Wesleyan, Anglican, or Lutheran theological grounding might propel more general intellectual efforts for adherents in these communities. Yet it is hard to imagine that the current intellectual environment could ever be convinced by charismatic interpretations of American foreign policy, Mennonite cancer research, Kuyperian sociology, covenantal musicology, Methodist string theory, Anglican economics, or Lutheran literary criticism.
Evangelicals Are Part of a Christian Scholarly Revival
It is different for scholarship with general Christian foundations. As perhaps the prime example, several university presses, especially Cornell University Press and Oxford University Press, have published many books in recent years with sophisticated philosophical arguments defending traditional Christian beliefs – including the Trinity, the two- natures/one-person Christology of the classical confessions, and the necessity for atonement between God and humanity (though sometimes explained in new ways). Such works were rare to the point of nonexistence two generations ago. Now, though sometimes generating strong criticism, they are commonplace. Similar advocacy can be found in other disciplines, though more often as empathetic treatment of Christian believers where that belief is given as much credibility as economic, gender, political, or social forces. As a feature of modern intellectual life, such studies appear alongside empathetic treatments of Mormons, Muslims, Eastern religions, and the reform causes that have proliferated so widely in recent decades. The current advances of Christian-inflected learning do not herald a new day of Christian preeminence but do testify to an intellectual pluralism that did not exist when various Christian frameworks or, later, a secular consensus prevailed.
A second matter of perspective concerns the evangelicals who are participating in the revival of Christian-friendly learning. Even as instances of scholarship abound from growing numbers of (as the neologism has it) “self-identifying” evangelicals, who teach in evangelical colleges and universities, or who may be considered evangelical fellow travelers, that scholarship is much more generally Christian than distinctly evangelical. If it does concern evangelical subjects, traditions, individuals, or movements, it more likely features empathetic explanation than overt apologetical intent.
When evangelicals make distinctively Christian arguments or examine Christian phenomena with respect to their Christian character, those contributions rarely feature the Bebbington evangelical characteristics. Such scholarship, while almost always respectful of Scripture and biblical values, is almost never grounded in a particular view of inspiration or a detailed explanation of how the Bible functions as a supreme authority. Specific attention to the atonement and conversion is also rare. Scholarship concerned about evangelical activism is more common, but it is usually focused on social or cultural matters rather than evangelism. When evangelism is the subject, as in David Kling’s recent A History of Christian Conversion from Oxford University Press, the treatment is descriptive rather than itself evangelistic.
One other feature of contemporary intellectual life is also significant in light of the evangelical history that stretched from the early sixteenth century to the mid-twentieth. During those years, “evangelical” came close to meaning simply “anti-Catholic.” Now evangelical scholars frequently share perspectives with Catholics, cooperate on joint projects, or build deliberately on their work.
A good example of the kind of Christian assertion now gaining a wider hearing is provided by the distinguished Gifford Lectures sponsored by Scottish universities and funded with a bequest “to promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term—in other words, the knowledge of God.” During the first two decades of this century, Gifford Lecturers have promoted a smorgasbord of possibilities for construing “the knowledge of God,” but prominent in that number have been a number of figures whom most observers would call evangelical or recognize as having meaningful evangelical convictions. The subjects they have treated, however, have not been specifically evangelical in the Bebbington terms.
Alister McGrath, the biographer of C. S. Lewis and J. I. Packer, explained how theories drawn from biochemistry and evolutionary biology point to a universe fine-tuned by the Trinitarian God of classical Christianity. N. T. Wright’s conclusions about the Jewish character of the New Testament and the nature of justifying faith have not been accepted by all evangelicals, but he is well known for his many books from InterVarsity Press and similar evangelical publishers as well as for his academic defense of the resurrection of Christ as a historical reality. Wright lectured on how the depiction of Jesus in the Gospels could ground a distinctive form of natural theology. At the time when they delivered their lectures, two philosophers were active members of the same congregation of the Christian Reformed Church in South Bend, Indiana. Alvin Plantinga argued that clashes between science and theology were due to ideological perspective rather than anything empirical. Michael Rae meditated on the hiddenness or darkness of God.
Besides these evangelicals and evangelical fellow travelers, the lecturers included several others with evident evangelical connections or who were known as sympathetic supervisors of advanced evangelical students. Their subjects examined the religious beliefs of scientists from different parts of the world, the ways that physical location had influenced the reception of Darwinism, traditional Christian responses to the problem of evil, concepts of sovereignty derived from classical theology and modern government, ways for traditional Christian theology to appropriate modern evolutionary theory, and what it means to love the neighbor as oneself. This varied collection of Gifford Lectures, all connected meaningfully to evangelicalism, were resolutely theistic, often specifically Christian, but not evangelical in a specific sense.
An Impressive Reading List
Publication from well-established university presses is not the only gauge of a culture’s intellectual life, but it can serve as a shorthand indication. Even the most superficial survey of noticed books from these publishing leaders reveals a remarkable flourishing of Christian, Christian-friendly, or Christian-alert scholarship by evangelicals or evangelical-connected authors. Again, however, this is “evangelical” scholarship as contributing to more general Christian assertion or as drawing on insider familiarity with evangelical communities. A skewed, impartial list results from the books I happen to know about, but those results are still impressive, especially compared to the relative absence of such works by such authors less than a half-century ago:
- a critically balanced but mostly positive life of Billy Graham from Harvard University Press (by Grant Wacker)
- a detailed and again critically balanced but warmly sympathetic study from Oxford University Press of the missionary work begun by the five American missionaries killed in outreach to the Woarani of Ecuador (by Kathryn Long)
- a bulging handful of detailed historical studies from Yale University Press by Baylor University historian Thomas Kidd (on the colonial Great Awakening, the religious lives of Benjamin Franklin and Patrick Henry, religion in the American Religion, and more)
- an equally impressive publishing record from Baylor philosopher C. Stephen Evans, who, besides numerous titles from InterVarsity Press, Eerdmans, and other Christian publishers, has brought out a number of studies from Oxford and Cambridge University Presses on Søren Kierkegaard, theistic arguments, divinely ordained ethical obligations, and related subjects
- a book in 2019 from Oxford University Press by Baylor education professors Perry Glazer and Nathan Alleman, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Teaching, that riffed on an earlier book by George Marsden, also from Oxford (1997), The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship
- important studies from Oxford by professors from Asbury University on the worldview of C. S. Lewis (Michael Peterson, editor of the journal Faith and Philosophy) and on analytic Christianity and a theological approach to the New Testament (Thomas McCall)
- at least fifteen titles from Oxford and Cambridge on different questions involving Christianity and the law by Emory University professor John Witte, and an equal number edited by Witte for a Cambridge series on other aspects of the same relationship
- a series of creative historical studies from Oxford University Press by Wheaton College professor Timothy Larsen (the religious life of John Stuart Mill, the surprisingly deep Christian commitments of leading twentieth-century anthropologists, the remarkable number of skeptics in the Victorian era who returned to Christian faith)
- forthright challenges to the unthinking secularism of contemporary American sociology, as well as a long list of books detailing his own empirical research published by major university presses, from Christian Smith, the first of which appeared when he was still identified as an evangelical, the latter after he became a Catholic (but with no real change in his evisceration of the skeptical inability to credit the reality of religion)
- a series of edited and authored books from major university presses by Timothy Samuel Shah that employ the standard tools of political research and political theory to document conditions of religious freedom and religious persecution around the world.
These individual examples could be multiplied many times over and for many disciplines. The lists include many women authors, authors representing a broadening range of ethnicities, and an increasing number whose scholarship looks far beyond the United States and agendas set by American national life. Many of these authors also write for the religious presses (including Baker, Eerdmans, IVP, Westminster John Knox) that have long served evangelical and related constituencies and whose support for the renewal of Christian learning by evangelicals has been too little appreciated.
That renewal, to repeat, has not created a flourishing “evangelical mind.” Large numbers of evangelicals defined by demography, politics, or denomination pay no attention to such work or regard it with suspicion. But the number who do take part is significant. Where non- or anti-Christian learning abounds in American intellectual life, so now does evangelical-sponsored learning that is in some sense meaningfully Christian also abound.
Mark Noll, professor emeritus, University of Notre Dame
