I remember, as a graduate student at a major Christian university, the wide-ranging impact that Mark Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind had when it was published in 1995. His point and influence endure, as demonstrated, among other things, by the publication of The State of the Evangelical Mind: Reflections on the Past, Prospects for the Future. This collection of essays, including one by Noll itself, is occasion to assess the state of evangelical academic and intellectual life.
The heart of the book features essays on three sources for promoting Christian intellectual rigor and thought parachurch organizations, Christian colleges, and seminaries. For a while in college I was involved in Campus Crusade for Christ (now called Cru). I always viewed it and other campus organizations as a means for personal conversion and discipleship. Of course that's a big part of it, but as David Mahan and C. Donald Smedley argue, these organizations can be a training ground for scholars to apply their faith to their academic fields. This should have been obvious to me, but it was revelatory and gives me a greater respect for the importance of these groups on secular campuses.
One would hope that Christian colleges would be fertile ground for Christian intellectualism. Unfortunately this is not always the case. Timothy Larsen recalls John Henry Newman's influential book The Idea of a University and challenges Christians campuses to live up to his ideal. Lauren F. Winner similarly discusses the role of seminaries in promoting intellectual life.
James K.A. Smith looks to the future, pointing to the importance of Christian scholarship that reaches more broadly than an institution's own historical and theological roots, toward a catholicism (with a little c). He wins points for me because of his positive note about my alma mater, Baylor University, with its "vibrancy and growth of Christian scholarly endeavors." However, his essay is fatally marred by a little political rant. Amid a book with an admirable scholarly tone which thus far had managed to call out, in a pastoral way, evangelicals to deepen intellectual engagement and commitments, Smith writes this: "Nobody can be excited about the 'state of the evangelical mind' when 81 percent of white evangelicals voted in the 2016 US presidential election for Donald Trump, a lecherous, vicious, small-minded manchild who not only spurned evangelical distinctives like forgiveness but consistently emboldens racists and gives comfort to white nationalism." Agree with him or not, I have to wonder how the editors of this book allowed this vitriol to stay in this book. Besides, it ignores the fact that many, if not most, of those voters recognized Trump's shortcomings but considered the many moral, political, ethical, and personal failings of his 2016 opponent to be much greater. My point is, this is not a crucial part of Smith's argument, but it soured the entire essay for me. (Besides, Smith is Canadian. Leave US politics alone, eh?)
Noll's work is not replaced with this book, but the challenge he laid out certainly continues. While I appreciate and agree with the authors' mission, there is a sense of intellectual snobbery here. The things they say about evangelicals' shortcomings in the intellectual realm certainly can be applied to everyone. I would imagine plenty of professors at their secular universities would bemoan students' lack of intellectual engagement and their obsession with pop culture. And the editors of the publications like The Atlantic or The New York Review of Books wish for a higher level of intellectual culture. And, of course, PBS will never have as many viewers as The Bachelor.
Intellectual snobbery aside, evangelical pastors and professors must take up the mantle to promote critical thinking and intellectual engagement among their charges. And Christian scholars and professionals in every field must live and teach in such a way that demonstrates the relevance and importance of the gospel in every part of life.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!
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