The Closing of the Evangelical Mind?

“The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” So begins Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, published nearly 30 years ago in 1994. What Noll calls “an epistle from a wounded lover” landed as a bombshell in the 1990s that has continued to reverberate in the last few decades.

There has been heated debate as to whether the level of scholarship and intellectual rigor found among evangelicals as a whole is adequate or deficient. I myself have noticed a lack of intellectual curiosity and a tendency to think emotionally and be swept along by experience rather than having a critical, and well formed mind that can deal with all the challenges we face as Christians in a post-Christian postmodern world. I think this problem was evidenced by how many evangelicals have dealt with the COVID pandemic. Rather than thinking critically and listening to medical doctors and scientists, they have formed their opinions on COVID based on what politicians and their pastors say which is often factually incorrect.

“Because evangelicalism comes out of fundamentalism, which is anti-intellectual, American evangelicalism continues to operate in the long tail of this,” Dan Crane, professor of law at University of Michigan, said. “It’s not inherent in Protestantism, but it’s a manifestation of American evangelicalism.” This fundamentalism evolved from British evangelicalism. It is a poisonous mindset which eschews using the Logos fully engaged in serving God. Scripture exhorts us to love God with all our mind.

Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

Matthew 22:37

Anecdotally I have found a stronger respect for scholarship and desire to engage our faith with our minds in the Roman Catholic church than I have among most evangelicals I know. There is more history with the Roman church and they had a strong tradition of scholasticism, Thomas Aquinas and other outstanding theologians. The evangelical faith also has outstanding theologians, but the typical evangelical in the pews seems to instinctively shun the life of the mind and opts for a more emotional and experience driven way of living. There are numerous problems with such a approach.

Christianity is a thinking faith. It’s important to be led by the Spirit, and yet we must not neglect our minds. We are called upon to serve God and others using our minds. For a typical evangelical that doesn’t mean they need a seminary degree. But whether it is engaging in apologetic to unbelievers, pursuing Bible studies, or wresting with theology.

The state of the intellect in America is in very bad shape. 25% of American adults have not read a single book in the last year. Americans gorge on mindless social media, sports, entertainment such as TV and movies churned out by godless Hollywood, and there is a very shallow life of the mind for the average American. Those who have an undergraduate college degree are no better. Once they graduate and get a job they basically turn off their minds. So the bad state of the intellect in America trickles down to the Church.

We need parents to instill a lifelong love of reading and learning early in a child’s development. We need rigorous education, not the mediocre lowest common denominator of public education in this country. We need pastors to exhort their churches to engage their minds in their faith and in general. It will take a very long time (many generations) to turn around the sorry state of the evangelical mind, but it is possible I believe. I’m however not very optimistic.