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The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

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Mark Noll has written a most scathing review of the evangelical mind. His opening sentenace says it all: "The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is no evangelical mind". True, harsh words, but Noll was able to put into words so much of what bothers me about evangelical Christianity. From creationism to dispensationalism I have been frustrated by the lack of deep thinking within Christian circles and often I find myself branded as a cynic for asking too many questions.

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind does not quite drift into the territory of criticizing BEING an evangelical, only that somewhere along the way, we have let ourselves be co-opted by thinking patterns that stifle good thought processes. Noll deftly traces some of the history and development of the evangelical mind thorough the past few hundred years.

I would say that this book changed my life. It helped me to realize much of what bothers me about evangelicalism. It ALMOST made me want to give it up. And some may say that this is the danger of the book. However, I think that Noll does not want us to go that far; he honestly described the problems and begins to offer a solution to the way that we have forgotten how to love God with our minds.

I commend this to all who want to think honestly about their faith and not be afraid to be shaken.

Mark Noll is a chaired professor of "christian thought," at Wheaton College - one of the great Evangelical liberal arts colleges, as well as being one of the leading church historians of our time. Noll is also one of the leading public intellectuals within the Evangelical movement. (By public intellectual, I mean an academic whose is grounded in rigorous scholarship but who also writes - at a high level - for the general public. Stephen Carter of Yale is another good example of a Christian public intellectual.)

Evangelicals are all too often typecast as hillbillies who neither read nor think. Like most stereotypes, there is a grain of truth to the characterization - where there is smoke there is usually fire. In the "Scandal of the Evangelical Mind," Noll issues a wake-up call for a renewed commitment to the life of the mind on the part of Evangelicals. Noll begins by persuasively demonstrating the existence of an intellectual deficit among Evangelicals. In contrast to the Catholic-leaning journals like First Things or the New Oxford review, there is no real Evangelical journal of public thought. There are few scholarly journals focusing on Evangelical perspectives. Evangelical colleges emphasize teaching at the expense of scholarly research, despite decades of proof that the good teaching and good scholarship goes hand in hand.

Noll then traces the historical roots of this scandal, showing that there was a time when Evangelicals dominated top institutions of learning. What caused the decline? In what must surely be the most controversial portion of the book, Noll lays the blame on an anti-intellectual strain of populist fundamentalism. As someone who grew up with many working class fundamentalist relatives, I am more sympathetic towards that world view than is Noll. Indeed, Noll candidly admits that his thesis rests in part on his theological disputes with fundamentalism. Yet, as an adult convert to Catholicism currently going through RCIA, I have no doubt that the life of the mind is more highly regarded in Catholicism than in the fundamentalist protestantism of my youth. Unfortunately, the fundamentalists' appropriate rejection of modernity and secular humanism simply painted with too broad a brush.

Noll concludes with a slightly self-serving call to action. I say "slightly self-serving" because Noll's call to action includes the idea that Evangelical colleges ought to pay more attention to scholarship. As a top-notch scholar at a leading Evangelical college, Noll probably would benefit from such a shift in emphasis. yet, as Aadam Smith pointed out centuries ago, there is no more powerful engine for the public good than enlightened self-interest. Noll's call to action deserves to be heeded. All Christians, including all evangelicals, are called to serve God not only with our heats but also with our minds.

"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."

The scandal of this book is that it's almost too cerebral to read. But if you can stay with it, and plow through writing that seems intended for PhDs, the book makes some powerful points that will endure for generations.

Here's the real scandal: The people who need to read this book are not likely to buy it. And if they do, they're not likely to understand it.

The first and last chapters (1 and 9) are the easiest to read and understand, so if you get bogged down in the middle, just fast forward to the end. You'll miss some excellent points, but it's almost too much work to find them.

My background is biblical studies. Reading the book from that viewpoint, it was clear that Noll is not at home with a biblical analysis of evangelicalism. Yet, when he reflects on biblical topics (e.g., dispensationalism, Genesis, eschatology, pentecostalism, sanctification), his instincts are remarkably on target.

But these comments are too negative for a book that emancipated my thinking on several levels. I thank Noll for helping me understand why I'm so frustrated with evangelicals. But, as he concludes, "the question must remain whether evangelicalism as it has taken shape in North America contributes anything intrinsic to the life of the mind." (p. 239)

The Christian world needs more Mark Nolls. But it really needs a Mark Noll who can communicate effectively to mainstream evangelicals.

There's a good reason why the media, in general, view and portray evangelical Christians as a bunch of uneducated, reactionary rubes who can't think, but can only force their out-dated opinions on others. This view of evangelicals pervades the mainstream culture. In any discipline or field of inquiry, Christians are marginalized and ridiculed, be it in law, science, politics or education. The reason why this is so is very well explained in Noll's book. The absence of deep thought and deep thinkers in evangelical Christianity has led to the demise of respect for the same. This was not always the case. For much of the last two thousand years many of the greatest thinkers were Christians, names such as Aquinas, Newton, Luther, Dostoyevsky, Lebiniz, Lord Kelvin, Faraday. The list is long. But in the twentieth century, evangelicalism has failed to duplicate the intellectual and thoughtful output previously forwarded by Christians. The book focuses mainly on the failure of American evangelicalism (with a few brief mots about Canada). "Despite dynamic success at a popular level, modern American evangelicals have failed notably in sustaining serious intellectual life. They have nourished millions of believers in the simple verities of the gospel but have largely abandoned the universities, the arts, and other realms of "high" culture." Universities originally started by Christians are anything but today, either in thought or in practice.

Noll outlines the rise and fall of evangelical thought in America by noting the pivot point of the ministry of Jonathan Edwards. Edwards was an intellectual giant, but his work produced an ironic situation. "Edwards was the greatest evangelical mind in America in large measure because his thought was driven by the profoundest truths of evangelical Protestantism; yet Edwards also promoted with all his heart as the essence of evangelical Christianity a program that led to the eclipse of the evangelical mind in America." The revivalism that Edwards supported for spreading the gospel was the very tradition that, coupled with the disestablishment of the churches (ie. the refusal of the national government to support any particular denomination), caused the life of the Christian mind to be compromised. This revivalism resulted in the decline of deep theological contemplation. The decline was so deep that today "evangelicalism's most discriminating thinker is best known for one fairly untypical sermon, 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.'" If Edwards was the pivot, the collapse was achieved with the rise of fundamentalism, especially the adoption of Holiness, pentecostal and dispensational theologies. The emphasis on end-time prophecies has turned the focus away from the realities of the world and towards a fantasy supernatural escapism. The fact that the Left Behind series is so popular among Christians can't bode too well for the church, in my view. In addition, the chapter on creation science is very informative.

Noll's writing is readable and informative. He writes that, ultimately, "the search for a Christian mind is not, in the end, a search for the mind but a search for God."

This book sustains the punchy style of its opening sentence: "The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." That directness makes it consistently engaging to read and forceful in argument. On the whole it is a striking and lucid explanation of issues that have bothered this 56-year-old Christian for most of the thirty years since his conversion: the tendencies in evangelicalism and pentecostalism to be satisfied by lightweight thinking or to be overtly or covertly anti-intellectual. Noll's arguments are focused on North America; and he does acknowledge that the situation in Europe can be somewhat different. However, the tendency for American cultural hegemony to filter into the church worldwide gives his main points a universal relevance.

While a majority of reviewers on Amazon, elsewhere on the Internet, and in published journals and papers have praised this book, it is only fair to point out that there has been a number of negative responses; and that, if you take into account the objector's starting point (something that Noll himself does very effectively in the earlier chapters of the book), some of those responses cannot be shrugged off as obscurantist or anti-intellectual. For example, some critics might have been disarmed if the entirely sound point that modern, young-earth creationism is indeed modern, had been bolstered by showing exactly how it differs from the views of important scholars from earlier centuries, such as Archbishop James Ussher (1581-1656), who developed the Biblical chronology that is still accepted in some fundamentalist quarters.

However, the vast majority of negative responses have come from those who hold a fixed position on matters over which Christians have always disagreed; and that fixity makes the objector latch onto the words under their noses rather than hold onto the broad perspective that is this book's starting point and its purpose. For example, one learns far more about the critic than about the book when the objection rests on an unstated assertion that five-point Calvinism has a monopoly on truth, or on a belief that the theological strength of dispensationalism and "plain reading" of scripture exclude any other position on the relationship between the Bible and human history.

And there's the nub of the matter. This is not a theological treatise. It is written by a distinguished academic historian who is himself an evangelical; and its historical perspective searches for the origins of a problem that, even by some of Noll's sternest critics, has been acknowledged to exist. The problem is that evangelicalism has marginalised what Noll calls "the life of the mind", a life that earlier generations, epitomised by Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) and some other great American thinkers of the eighteenth century, took for granted because of its historical pedigree and, above all, because Jesus said that we are to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." (Matthew 22:37) Noll finds the roots of this decay in multiple places, including the post-Enlightenment corruption of puritan thought, in the irresistible tendency of pentecostalism to privilege personal experience over disciplined thinking, and in the growth of populist movements that were by no means confined to christianity. He seeks to find causes, to trace why, over the last 200 years, the USA has led the way in making evangelicalism and anti-intellectualism walk hand-in-hand. And on the way he offers plenty of food for thought to those who, like this reviewer, have an instinctive sympathy with the very movements that he identifies. He does this efficiently, sympathetically and, on the whole, with a strong sense of what is central and what is peripheral -- something that most of his critics are not so good at.

Those distinctions are especially valuable when the author, in the final chapters, discusses the relationships between culture and belief. He says (p. 243) that ". . . historical study or travel throughout North America and the rest of the world should help evangelicals realize that much of what is distinctive about American evangelicalism is not essential to Christianity." Ah! that little word "should"! Noll shows little optimism that it will bring about a change in evangelical culture at large; but he does find evidence of fresh thinking among that small number of American evangelicals who try and cultivate a true life of the mind, as distinct from the easy assertions of popular evangelicalism. He also sees a welcome move away from those "habits of intuition" that keep evangelicals bogged down in discussions about peripherals, and that can boast of success only in promoting division in the church.

So this is a positive book. It is a study in history, not in theology; though it makes theological points along the way. It is a good read; and it is a striking demonstration of how things have changed since 1753, when Jonathan Edwards was appointed principal of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) precisely because he had the finest evangelical mind around. It will be most appreciated by those who are capable of taking off their "doctrine-spotting" hat -- and this reviewer had to pull hard!

Mark A. Noll begins The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind with a staggering indictment. "The scandal of the evangelical mind", he writes, "is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." With those words begins perhaps the most sobering critique of the place of Evangelical Protestantism within major intellectual currents shaping the culture. This accusation was most striking as it came from within Evangelicalism itself by one of its leading scholars. Since the book's publication, some have applauded and others attacked its major theses, but most will grant that the intellectual landscape of the Evangelical movement was greatly impacted by Noll's criticism and serious new efforts dealing with Evangelicalism and modern culture issue must wrestle with Noll's work.

In the four sections of The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (covering the importance of the scandal, an historical analysis of the scandal, negative repercussions of the scandal, and some hopeful signs of a renaissance in Evangelical thought), Noll meticulously builds a case that the Evangelical disengagement from intellectual pursuits has rendered it impotent to interact within the major intellectual currents of the day. Unable to develop a uniquely Evangelical approach to issues of higher culture, the Evangelical response - if any - is often dependent upon the work of scholars from Roman Catholicism and other Protestant traditions. This sterility of thought fosters a retreat into an Evangelical ghetto where the lack of interaction with competing ideas leaves faulty presuppositions unchallenged and its own fruitful sources untapped.

Noll is particularly to be commended for his excellent insights into the genesis of the current intellectual malaise. Pointing out the strong efforts of Puritans such as Jonathan Edwards to vigorously address the major intellectual themes of their day (following a long tradition of such efforts by Protestants since the Reformation), he traces a number of interacting factors joining together to produce the uniquely American strain of Protestantism. These include the populist revivals of the Great Awakening, the "common sense" Baconian approach to all inquiry promoted by the Scottish Enlightenment, and the spirit of anti-intellectualism spurred on by modernist views of the Bible and debate on the Darwin's evolutionary theories.

Noll sees in current Evangelical uses of Scripture an attempt to recycle ideas discarded elsewhere in the Church as lacking a proper appreciation for historical and cultural contexts. Locked into a system of thought indelibly marked by the nineteenth century, they find themselves unable to respond to intellectual movements far more complex than their narrow categories can handle.

Becoming more optimistic in the last section of the book, Noll focuses on signs of a possible renaissance of Evangelical thinking. Interestingly, much of what Noll views as positive signs are the result of influences from interactions with other Christians. In the process of pointing out many that Evangelical distinctives are not essential to Christianity, Noll seems to inadvertently suggest the way for Evangelicals to become more intellectually rigorous is to become less Evangelical.

It remains to be seen whether it is possible to reform Evangelicalism along the lines Noll poposes without becoming something else entirely. Whether one thinks of them as strengths or weaknesses, a downplaying of those aspects of Evangelicalism that Noll finds most disturbing (anti-intellectual strains of populism, self-righteous separatism, strict interpretations of Biblical inerrancy, methods of hermeneutics based upon outmoded theories of textual objectivity, dispensational approaches to eschatology, attacks on scientific theories) would so alter the landscape of the Evangelical movement as to lose any claim of continuity. Is it possible for a Christian who eschewed the imminent rapture, did not approach the Bible as a source of "proof texts", and reconciled his faith with evolution to be identified as an Evangelical? Without the emotional hold those distinctives generate would they not then descend into the same malaise as mainstream Protestantism?

Noll is not off target in his criticism, but the solution may not lie in Evangelicalism. Many thoughtful Evangelicals, disturbed by the anti-intellectual and ahistorical approaches to the faith common in their doctrine and worship, have resolved the issue by moving to the Anglican, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, and Reformed traditions where a richer theology exists, a more dignified worship of God prevails, and intellectual inquiry is accorded a more vital role. Thus the best solution to the problem of the Evangelical mind may well lie in turning one's back on Evangelicalism.

Regardless of the future resolution of these issues, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind is among the most important books on the state of American Christianity written in the last fifty years. For anyone attempting to understand the place of Christianity in American life, it is a must read. For Evangelicals themselves, it may be shocking to grasp the biases within their approaches to their faith, but it may also lead them to a more faith rooted more in the Gospel than in nineteenth century America.

Noll's "Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" is very useful to help one understand the history of the evangelical movement, and how it has progressed (or in some ways, not progressed) in the current culture. As a scientist and Christian, I have found myself dealing with the, at times, seemingly mindless nature of the evangelical thinking, and wondering how such aggressive and at times proud naivete became so prevalent in the evangelical worldview. Noll's book does not answer all of these questions, (nor does he claim to) but it does provide a serious student of Christianity a valuable insight into the need for better, more open-minded thinking among Christians.


One interesting thing that struck me was the observation that many of the intellectual challenges facing 21st century Christians are the same as those identified by Augustine over 1500 years ago, and Galileo and Francis Bacon over 500 years ago. If anything the trend toward anti-intellectualism seems to have accelerated in the evangelical community in the past 40 years, particularly in areas related to understanding in science in general and biology in particular. His quote of Charles Hodge from 1863 should be illuminating. "Nature is as truly a revelation of God as the Bible; and we only interpret the Word of God by the Word of God when we interpret the Bible by science."
Don't get me wrong, I do not believe science is the final authority on the most important things inlife - things like God's existence, relationships, meaning, and purpose. However, as Noll points out, as long as Christians identify the things of the physical/natural world as something somehow at odds with the nature of God, the credibility of evangelicals will continue to be diminished.

I especially liked the comment near the end of the book where he is careful to acknowledge that a book of this nature is not something to dwell on, but rather serves, in effect, as a signpost alerting Christians to the pitfalls of checking the intellect at the altar of Christian commitment. ("Give up, let go, and let God...") In Noll's view, God is most honored when we use ALL of the resources He has given to humankind to learn about Him, including understanding in the sciences and the actual intellect itself. I could not agree more.

Noll provides considerable background, and insight into the damaging effects of fundamentalism on Christian faith, but also notes some postives that he believes could provide a launching point for future development of Christian thinking.

Is there hope that evangelical Christians can gain a greater respect in the world by more effectively using our minds? Noll thinks so, and so do I. But for this to happen, Noll believes that Christians must be less fearful of learning and more open to new discoveries that are unfolding before us every day. Failure to acknowledge the world as it really is is suicide for any viable system of religious belief. As one who believes that all paths ultimately lead to God, I couldn't agree more.

I heartily recommend this book for a thorough, yet readable evaluation of the history and philosophy that have led to the modern evangelical perspective. It is refreshing to have a Christian scholar think so openly and clearly. May there be many more in the future.

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.

It seems all too easy to state that the individuals who could most benefit from reading this book are not very likely to read it. For the most part, those individuals would need to read a great deal more than this book, in fact, for many of these persons, the thesis here would be quickly oversimplified, misunderstood and dismissed as the 'foolishness' of the world. A large part of the scandal of the evangelical mind is that many evangelicals don't have a robust enough intellectual interest to actually understand Noll's discussions. The problem for American evangelical Christianity is its two century long embrace of anti-intellectualism and, complimentarily, its disinterest in, if not outright disdain for, Jesus' "most important" (Mark) and "greatest" (Matthew) commandment: that his follower must worship God with the full strength of his mind [intellect] (Mark 12:30, Matthew 22:37), as well as with his heart and soul. Noll finally points out indicators that, in at least some sectors of American evangelicalism, a renewed interest in vigorous intellectual life is stirring at long last. Where Christianity has broadly disregarded its potential contributions to the intellectual life of a culture, it has lost dynamism and influence in that culture. By contrast, "Where Christian faith is securely rooted, where it penetrates deeply into a culture to change individual lives and redirect institutions, where it continues for more than a generation as a living testimony to the grace of God -- in these situations, we almost invariably find Christians ardently cultivating the intellect for the glory of God" (p43).

The critique is generally not imbalanced, "To follow either intellectuals who criticize simple piety or advocates of Christian experience who attack the life of the mind leads to difficulty." In the USA, however, the cultural context after the American Revolution was that of "a culture that mounted a frontal assault upon tradition, mediating elites, and institutions, the Bible very easily became . . . 'a book dropped from the skies for all sorts of men to use in their own way'" (Nathan Hatch, p97).
Those areas of American evangelical dogmatism that Noll examines as being anti-intellectual include: 'young-earth creationism' as built on a problematic demand that Genesis 1-2 be interpreted as scientific/historical rather than as a [figurative] theological framework (as many ancient exegetes understood it); several excessively anti-epistemic and fideistic views traced to the American Holiness movement; Darbyist eschatological innovations embraced by American Fundamentalist groups, centered on a 'secret rapture' and the role of literal Israel in end-times events; and the wide ranging role of the political right, over the course of recent generations, in dictating the greater culture's perception of Christianity as being a certain set of political agendas. For the most part, I agreed with Noll's views and arguments, but they are not without some problems. One problem is his attempt to assign the literal interpretation of the creation account to Adventists E.G. White and G.M. Price. Here he follows an argument distilled from R. Numbers, but, this simplified, it's an almost artificially selective line of argument. J. Ussher and J. Lightfoot had famously demanded a literalist interpretation earlier, and it was an understanding that had long been embraced in many, although not all, Christian circles. Ussher's interpretation was published in the margins of the authorized English version of the Bible that was widely used in Britain and North America between 1700 and 1900 (which includes the first century of the period Noll is examining). Questions and disagreements regarding the correct understanding of the Genesis creation account have been argued, more or less, for more than 2000 years (see Philo), since the time of Jesus' ministry and earlier, and have always included both the literalist and non-literalist* views. Trying to establish nineteenth and twentieth century scapegoats in this regard is rather inadequate, particularly for a book of this nature. I don't recall that Noll mentions Ussher or Lighfoot, he simply defers to certain of Numbers' citations.
* (Eastern and Roman Christianity have always been aware that many of the early 'fathers' and 'doctors' of the church in fact dissented from the literalist's interpretation of the creation account, instructing that the text is correctly examined for its emblematic theology and 'literary' structure, and not merely by defaulting to the approach of the Sadducees, i.e., plucking "letters" from surfaces. The reasons that Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Augustine of Hippo all supported a 'literary', instead of literal, exegesis are several, and look to scripture as the interpreter of scripture, rather than relying on common human expectations. Yet many, perhaps most [?] within the Protestant tradition have seemed completely ignorant of, if not disinterested in, some hermeneutics that are not of their own tradition. If your clergyman or Sunday School teacher is unaware of the ancient exegetical perceptions of Philo, Origen, or Augustine, for example, that no longer means that you must be.)

All things considered, however, this book is an important exposition of a significant challenge to the Protestant Christian community as it has functioned in the United States for much of the past 200 years. This was something of a groundbreaking work when it was published in 1994, and the questions of how Christian thought should involve itself in areas of natural science, political and social sciences, education, and the arts, have been further engaged by several excellent volumes in more recent years. I recommend James Sires' Habits of the Mind: Intellectual Life as a Christian Calling.
wes janssen 2005