Mark Noll, a professor of history at University of Notre Dame, wrote a book back when he was the professor of my college, Wheaton College. The book was "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" and this book addresses the issue that “The scandal of the Evangelical mind is that there is not much of an Evangelical mind†It is talking about the anti-intellectualism within the evangelical community, how it has very little institutional influence nowadays in science, art, philosophy, politics and the rest of the spectrum of modern learning.
Now, even though I would disagree with his generalized attack on fundamentalism and creationist by claiming that they are ALL anti-intellectuals (some of them are), I do believe that this is true to some extent for many evangelicals who have a lack of an intellect or an "evangelical mind" with a focus of confronting all aspects of learning.
When comparing to the reformers and the puritans of the past, like John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards, who emphasized the incorporation of all learning into Christianity, the evangelical community may seem to lack it. For my personal experience, it bothers me when I have friends who are Christians who don't care about knowledge and learning and they don't want to learn. Where as I think Christians cannot just plainly say that they believe in their faith, but must also know what they really believe, and integrate faith and learning together.
What do you think? Are we still plagued in a community of anti-intellectual Christians, or is the seeking of knowledge coming on the rise? Or do you think that having a intellectual mind has nothing to do with the Christian faith?
Mark Noll, a professor of history at University of Notre Dame, wrote a book back when he was the professor of my college, Wheaton College. The book was "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" and this book addresses the issue that “The scandal of the Evangelical mind is that there is not much of an Evangelical mind†It is talking about the anti-intellectualism within the evangelical community, how it has very little institutional influence nowadays in science, art, philosophy, politics and the rest of the spectrum of modern learning.
Now, even though I would disagree with his generalized attack on fundamentalism and creationist by claiming that they are ALL anti-intellectuals (some of them are), I do believe that this is true to some extent for many evangelicals who have a lack of an intellect or an "evangelical mind" with a focus of confronting all aspects of learning.
When comparing to the reformers and the puritans of the past, like John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards, who emphasized the incorporation of all learning into Christianity, the evangelical community may seem to lack it. For my personal experience, it bothers me when I have friends who are Christians who don't care about knowledge and learning and they don't want to learn. Where as I think Christians cannot just plainly say that they believe in their faith, but must also know what they really believe, and integrate faith and learning together.
What do you think? Are we still plagued in a community of anti-intellectual Christians, or is the seeking of knowledge coming on the rise? Or do you think that having a intellectual mind has nothing to do with the Christian faith?