Originally published in 1994, Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind was a strong critique of evangelicalism’s lack of commitment to the life of the mind. Noll, a renowned historian, attempted to trace the historical roots of what we might call evangelical anti-intellectualism in order explain its continued presence today. In sum, Noll argued that there was no evangelical mind to speak of.
The book was Christianity Today’s “Book of the Year” (1995) and received a great deal of attention in the following decades as many evangelicals tried to grapple with Noll’s assessment. One critical response to Noll’s work came from Carl Trueman in a work entitled The Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (2014). Trueman contended that the real problem was not the lack of an evangelical mind but the lack of an evangelical. By this, Trueman meant that historic Christian beliefs were increasingly marginalized in society and evangelicals who held them (an increasingly shrinking group) should expect to be marginalized as well.
In 2022, Eerdmans republished The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind with a new preface and forward. In the new preface and introduction, Noll sounds more hopeful about the intellectual state of evangelicalism in the academy, but he seems ultimately dissatisfied with what he sees outside of the academy, particularly in the pew. A critique of this sort, from a well-respected historian and self-identified evangelical, is worth our consideration.
In this episode of “HSF Conversations,” Jesse Owens and former HSF contributor Jackson Watts discuss this important work. As will be apparent from the conversation, Owens and Watts agree with parts of Noll’s critique but disagree with him on several key points, particularly his solutions to the problem of evangelical anti-intellectualism.
We hope you enjoy this episode.
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