The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

Rating:
Summary: "The scandal of the evangelical mind is..."
Review: "that there is not much of an evangelical mind." That is the first sentence of this book by Mark Noll who is an evangelical himself, professor at Wheaton College, alma mater of Billy and Ruth Bell Graham.

So what's the problem, Mark Noll asks? Doesn't Christ command us to love Him with all our mind, and how have evangelicals in this country failed in this respect? That's the aim of Noll in this book to show the historical reasons for that failure but also to show that there is hope and signs that some evangelicals are back on the right track. I think his main point is that research is key to developing the mind, that Christians should venture to explore all "topics under the sun" as Solomon says, and that we can do so in a way that glorifies God without compromising basic Christian beliefs.

This author was recommended to me and others from the evangelical church I attend. I loved this book; it's one of the more substantive Jesus books that are out there. It's well-researched and thought provoking. Evangelicalism is new to me, although maybe I was one before I knew what the word meant! In the first chapter, evangelicalism is described as having "the key ingredients of: conversionism/new birth, biblicism/the bible as ultimate religious authority, activism/sharing your faith, crucicentrism/significance of Christ's saving work on the cross." Fundamentalism is not necessarily evangelicalism.

Here are some excerpts I loved:

"In each of these instances (pro-life/abortion, creationism/creation science/evolution debates), the point at issue for a historian of the intellectual life is not whether the new ideas were right or wrong. The point is that a combination of self-confident biblicism and populist political mobilization greatly restricted, if it did not altogether shut down, promising lines of scientific debate. In such controversies, heat almost entirely replaced the light that might otherwise have been generated to correct, expand, refine, redirect, or otherwise build upon the commendable intelligence of the proposals."

I totally love his last chapter, here are his last two sentences: "The effort to think like a Christian is rather an effort to take seriously the sovereignty of God over the world He created, the lordship of Christ over the world he died to redeem, and the power of the Holy Spirit over the world He sustains each and every moment. From this perspective the search for a mind that truly thinks like a Christian takes on ultimate significance, because the search for a Christian mind is not, in the end, a search for a mind but a search for God."

Rating:
Summary: "The scandal of the evangelical mind is..."
Review: "that there is not much of an evangelical mind." That is the first sentence of this book by Mark Noll who is an evangelical himself, professor at Wheaton College, alma mater of Billy and Ruth Bell Graham.

So what's the problem, Mark Noll asks? Doesn't Christ command us to love Him with all our mind, and how have evangelicals in this country failed in this respect? That's the aim of Noll in this book to show the historical reasons for that failure but also to show that there is hope and signs that some evangelicals are back on the right track. I think his main point is that research is key to developing the mind, that Christians should venture to explore all "topics under the sun" as Solomon says, and that we can do so in a way that glorifies God without compromising basic Christian beliefs.

This author was recommended to me and others from the evangelical church I attend. I loved this book; it's one of the more substantive Jesus books that are out there. It's well-researched and thought provoking. Evangelicalism is new to me, although maybe I was one before I knew what the word meant! In the first chapter, evangelicalism is described as having "the key ingredients of: conversionism/new birth, biblicism/the bible as ultimate religious authority, activism/sharing your faith, crucicentrism/significance of Christ's saving work on the cross." Fundamentalism is not necessarily evangelicalism.

Here are some excerpts I loved:

"In each of these instances (pro-life/abortion, creationism/creation science/evolution debates), the point at issue for a historian of the intellectual life is not whether the new ideas were right or wrong. The point is that a combination of self-confident biblicism and populist political mobilization greatly restricted, if it did not altogether shut down, promising lines of scientific debate. In such controversies, heat almost entirely replaced the light that might otherwise have been generated to correct, expand, refine, redirect, or otherwise build upon the commendable intelligence of the proposals."

I totally love his last chapter, here are his last two sentences: "The effort to think like a Christian is rather an effort to take seriously the sovereignty of God over the world He created, the lordship of Christ over the world he died to redeem, and the power of the Holy Spirit over the world He sustains each and every moment. From this perspective the search for a mind that truly thinks like a Christian takes on ultimate significance, because the search for a Christian mind is not, in the end, a search for a mind but a search for God."

Rating:
Summary: Sad, sad, sad
Review: A good analysis of the intellectual situation of the evangelical movement.
Here in germany the situation is no different. On the one hand german evangelicalism is heavily influenced by subjective, anti-intellectual pietism, on the other hand many new and modern evangelical churches are an "Import of the USA". So the problems came across the ocean after the war.
If you have a look at the bookmarket: A lot of psychology, shallow stories, feel-well books and colored bibles. Hmm...
I especially liked the section about science. Worth reading!

Rating:
Summary: Permission to Think Again
Review: As a committed Christian of many years and a former Jesus Freak from the seventies, I saw myself on too many pages of Noll's excellent book. He methodically explains how the evangelical thought processes were sidetracked by populism and emotional appeals. By the end of the book, Noll had given me permission to think again. I am now in the middle of Hawking's Short History of time and exulting in the intricacy and intimacy of God's design. To paraphrase my pastor, Genesis is a celebration of the Creator, not an explanation of creation.

Rating:
Summary: Essential reading for Evangelicals
Review: As an auto-anathemised Roman Catholic (courtesy of the Counicl of Trent!), I tended towards the Evangelical of the type Noll expertly analyses. Just when I was beginning to wonder what I was at, along came Noll's book, a true "Godsend"! A milestone for me in my walk along the Way. I strongly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: A Disheartening Expose
Review: I am in essential agreement with these other reader reviews of Noll's book. The book presents a sobering and disheartening critique of American evangelical / fundamentalist culture (or the lack thereof). Noll quite accurately castigates the tendencies of evangelicals and fundamentalists to embrace spurious, Enlightenment-like reasonings in so-called "scientific" creationism and dispensational theology, reasonings neither scientific, rational, nor necessarily Biblical. Noll is swift to note that many evangelicals and fundamentalists have a meager or even non-existent understanding of the poetic, the artistic, the intellectual. Those Christian intellectuals bound in an evangelical / fundamentalist Christian tradition must wander (in a manner reminiscent of Noll's image of the wounded lover) across a lunar landscape of indifference or even antipathy to the life of the mind.

Rating:
Summary: The emporers new mind
Review: I had high hopes for this book after reading David Wells No Place for Truth, but I'm afraid it falls woefully short of fulfilling any promise of accurately defining or offering remedy for the problem. Noll seems infatuated with scholarship and higher education for its own sake - whether it yields good science or not.
He lays most of the blame for the sorry state of evangelicalism with fundamentalism and dispensationalism, but doesn't seem to understand some of the more salient points of the latter.
He derides those who would read the Bible in the plain meaning of words as "biblicists" - insisting that the Bible must be read in its cultural context. Yet when dispensationalism insists that the cultural context of Matthew, for example, is primarily Jewish, he cannot see this as valid.
Noll has simply re-defined what it means to be evangelical, and is lobbying for a more liberal definition. One of his sources whom he notes believes in biblical inspiration, goes on to say that the idea of the flood, and Noah collecting all the animals is ridiculous. Thus his source quite obviously does not believe in biblical inerrancy - but biblical inspiration. This is a game that has been played for centuries. The Bible contains God's word - God's message, but it is not necessary to see it as without error. Noll is squarely outside the evangelical camp in his view that where science and the Bible differ, the Bible must defer to the former.

He says for example that those who insist on a 'conversionist' experience (who was it who said you must be born again?...) have a lot to learn from those who hold to a doctrine that one gradually grows into becoming a Christian. This latter group may have insights into godliness that provide more room for the intellect, according to Noll. Seems that Paul would be quite stunted intellectually, then, as his conversion was very definitely a crisis conversion.

Noll is irresponsible in his appellation of Manichean to those who see evil at work in this present world. Creation is good, yes, but it is tainted by sin. His failure to adequately deal with this fact negates much of his reasoning and logic. To label those who see sin at work in the world as Manichean betrays a misunderstanding both of what Manicheanism is, and what motivates contemporary evangelicals into making the decisions they have.

Rating:
Summary: Opened My Eyes
Review: I highly recommend this book for any Christian struggling with what it means to be intellectual and a Christian at the same time. I read this book through a scholars program at Baylor University, and it really opened my eyes to the extent of which my epistemology has been shaped by movements in American religion such as Fundamentalism and Dispensationalism.

I grew up in a conservative Southern Baptist household, and only started critically examining my religious views before coming to college. After reading this book, I was amazed at the ways in which I am still effected by my old Fundamentalist and Dispensationalist ways of thinking.

Noll calls all Christians to examine the reasons for their beliefs and to develop a Christian worldview to think critically about issues that many consider "secular." We desperately need open-minded and rational Christian scholars in all fields of study. A Christian worldview will change the way we view economics, sociology, psychology, biology, philosophy, the arts, etc.

Rating:
Summary: A Scandal Indeed
Review: Mark Noll, professor of Christian history and author of other books such as "Turning Points", has written an accurate and careful analysis of the American evangelical movement. This critquie is even more respected because Dr. Noll is himself an evangelical.

The book traces the begining of the American evangelical movement and the influnces of the Scottish Enlightment and the cultural synergistic infusing of the American way into Christian life. He demonstrates that the Scottish Enlightenment helped evangelicals develop a "scientific and inductive" approach to scripture regardless of the genre of the text: This and the American way being identified as the Christian way further led many American Christians inbracing a scewed interpretation of the Bible which help lead to Premillinial Dispensationalism.

The above mentioned theological perspective, which is probably the most widely held view among American evangelicals, has tended to focues on preaching to "move, rather than instruct" and views contempary issues as earth shattering eschatlogical events.

Therefore, many fields of study like science have all but been neglected and the serious study of issues often neglected. He concludes the book that the tide does seem to be changing and Chrsitians are beggining to enter the intellectual aerna and felx their intellectual muscle. The book is very well written. If we truly care about our country, we should see this book as a wake up call to respond to God by loving him with not just our hearts and sould, but our minds as well.

Rating:
Summary: For all who don't want to be part of the Christian Ghetto...
Review: No other book establishes beyond a doubt that there is a serious problem within evangelical Christianity called the Christian Ghetto. Another book called Roaring Lambs makes the same argument, but it relies more on anecdotal evidence. Noll, an editor of Christianity Today, painstakingly documents the retreat of protestant Christian intellectuals over the past centuries from the world of ideas, into the insular world of theological infighting over minutae.

Noll makes the excellent point that he is not saying that Christian academics do not comment on topics in public affairs, arts and philosophy. Rather, the contribution of Christian academics to these topics is to wholesale endorse or reject the prevailing public opinion. Thus, America became a 'Christian nation' to evangelical intellectuals, rather than a nation with which Christian academics thoughtfully engaged, accepting parts of the American ethos while rejecting other parts. Slavery was an excellent example, Noll writes, of Christian academics swaying with the winds. With obvious exceptions, Christians were proslavery until well after the Civil War, when Christians became antislavery.

Noll goes further in his analysis, tracing the evolution of presidents and boards of colleges and universities in America, and also identifying the key role that end-times theologies played in causing a retreat from engagement in the world.

While his history is impeccable, his assessment of current positive developments in Christian acadamia is not very broad, and misses alot of exciting developments.

I once heard a speaker say that "Christians delude themselves into a false sense of effectiveness by marketing themselves to themselves." Noll's critique provides the essential historical support for this argument that the Christian Ghetto is alive and well.