Product Description

“The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” So begins this award-winning intellectual history and critique of the evangelical movement by one of evangelicalism’s most respected historians.

Unsparing in his judgment, Mark Noll ask why the largest single group of religious Americans—who enjoy increasing wealth, status, and political influence—have contributed so little to rigorous intellectual scholarship in North America. In nourishing believers in the simple truths of the gospel, why have evangelicals failed at sustaining a serious intellectual life and abandoned the universities, the arts, and other realms of “high” culture?

Noll is probing and forthright in his analysis of how this situation came about, but he doesn’t end there. Challenging the evangelical community, he sets out to find, within evangelicalism itself, resources for turning the situation around.

Product Details

Amazon.com Review
The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, by Mark Noll, is "an epistle from a wounded lover." Noll loves God and he loves academics, but he is wounded because many of his colleagues deny the possibility of maintaining the integrity of both loves. Noll's epistle is a memoir, a historical study, and a wide-ranging piece of cultural criticism that argues, "The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." Noll considers the effects of evangelical intellectual atrophy on American politics, science, and the arts, and he ultimately offers wise and practical advice for readers who want to explore the full intellectual implications of the incarnation of Christ. --Michael Joseph Gross

From Publishers Weekly
Claiming that "the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind," historian Noll sets out to trace the reasons for what he sees as the great divorce between intellect and piety in North American Evangelical Christianity. In a breathtaking panorama of evangelical history from the Great Awakenings to the present, Noll shows that early Evangelicals like Jonathan Edwards embraced the use of reason as an expression of faith in the Creator of the natural world. The advent of Fundamentalism and Pentecostalism, Noll contends, with their emphases on dispensationalism and other-worldliness, fostered anti-intellectualism. Since politics and science, in the form of the religious right and creationism, have been the secular arenas in which the Evangelical mind has most publicly expressed itself, Noll focuses on them to explore ways in which the mindlessness "scandal" has created a lack of adequate Christian thinking about the world. Finally, Noll is hopeful that the work of contemporary Evangelical scholars will recover a respect for intellect. Required reading for those seeking to understand the often peculiar relationship between Evangelical religion and secular culture, this is a brilliant study by--yes--a first-rate Evangelical mind.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Noll (history, Wheaton Coll. A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada, LJ 11/1/92) castigates his fellow American conservative evangelicals for losing their intellectual credibility since Darwin. They have followed St. Paul's injunction to be "fools for Christ" to the point of being simply fools, instead of heeding Jesus' call to be "wise as serpents." Their scholarly pursuits include such dead-end propositions as "creation science," end-time apocalyptic prophecies, and biblical inerrancy instead of research and writings contributing positively to American intellectual life. What distresses Noll most is that evangelicals seem not to care. He provides extensive historical background showing how this was not always the case and indicates how Christian scholars might recapture lost ground. Passionately and brilliantly argued, this book is recommended for informed lay readers and specialists.
Richard S. Watts, San Bernardino Cty. Lib., Cal.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

political implications
I know Mark Noll couldn't have had Sarah Palin in mind when he wrote this book, but it sure is an eerie coincidence. Talk about scandal of the evangelical mind!

Needs an update
I think this is an important book for any Christian, not just evangelicals, to read. Noll shows how anti-intellectualism has undercut evangelicalism and allowed evangelicals to be ignored in the world of ideas. But not just ignored, their faith and ability to converse with the broader world is weakened by the lack of rigorous intellectual work done by those in their faith.
My big issue with this book is the need for it to be updated. Many good things have happened in the intellectual development of evangelicalism since the publication of this book. Yet, other things like the resurgence of creationism, now THE bastion of currant anti-intellectualism, Ken Ham anyone? need to be addressed as well.
All in all, this is an interesting and important book that really needs an update.

Hard questions for the Evangelical Church
A good history of the church in North America, and the division between the mainline church and the the fundamental branch of the church. Noll details the criss of the evangelical mind that follows.