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LaHaye and Schaeffer are worlds apart theologically and intellectually, but LaHaye borrows from Schaeffer his understanding of providential history and his peculiar notion of "secular humanism" as some kind of monolithic philosophy. These are some of Schaeffer's more ill–informed arguments, but even so, LaHaye manages to dumb them down. His diminishment of Schaeffer's work evidently distresses Professor Jacobs, and thus he declares the idea of LaHaye as an intellectual and even spiritual descendant—a disciple—of Schaeffer simply impossible. Would that Faulkner were alive to say as much about Cormac McCarthy's late–career clichés.
Jacobs takes issue with my characterization of L'Abri as akin to a madrassah but does not elaborate. Apparently, to suggest that a Christian place of religious learning and debate has absolutely anything to do with an Islamic place of religious learning and debate is so patently absurd that it is not even worth discussing.
As for the rest of Professor Jacobs' points, they address none of mine, so I'll return the favor. Jacobs claims to have discovered all this secular idiocy in only two sentences of my article, and thus, he is free to ignore the other 8,000 words, in which I acknowledge the dispute over terms such as "fundamentalism" and explain why and how I use that word (most certainly not interchangeably with "religion," as Professor Jacobs suggests in a passage that borders on bigotry); argue that, contrary to liberal assumptions, adherents of fundamentalism as I define it have been a crucial part of American life since the beginning; chide secular education for ignoring this fact; and charge secular liberalism with indulging in distortions of history as great as those of "fundamentalists" who insist that separation of church and state is a myth or was only meant to protect the church from the state.
To be fair to Professor Jacobs, the bulk of the essay is dedicated to distortions of history I found in textbooks and curricular materials widely used by evangelical academies and Christian homeschoolers. I write that the Christian conservative political movement has manufactured a history of America that serves its contemporary political agenda (as has secular liberalism, though to lesser extent). That's not an attack; it's an argument, presented with 8,000 words of evidence. Professor Jacobs' account of my work, however, is based on a dubious reading of two sentences.
Rather than refute my argument, Professor Jacobs lumps me in with a group of writers I've neither read nor studied. In fact, I've published some sharp criticism by other writers of a few of them (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Dan Brown). So let's sum up: It's fair for Professor Jacobs to connect me with writers I've published criticism of, but it's not fair for me to connect LaHaye with a writer LaHaye claims as an inspiration. In closing, Professor Jacobs suggests that all critics of conservative evangelicalism's more militant strains are "largely or wholly innocent of religious culture, religious language, and religious belief." Apart from the facts that I've been reporting on American religious life for 12 years; and have spent time in countless churches, synagogues, and mosques; and have received praise for my first book from Christian writers (including CT writers! little did they know … ); and have been invited to speak to churches and church groups; and have spent many months researching in the archives of Professor Jacobs' own Wheaton College; and read the Bible nearly every day; and count among my favorite works of history studies by Christian scholars such as Mark Noll, George Marsden, Joel Carpenter, Charles Marsh, and many others; apart from all this, I feel that as a Jew, a member of the "tribe" of skeptics when it comes to Christ's divinity, as Professor Jacobs puts it, I'm entitled to claim some minor "religious culture" of my own. Surely nothing compared to "long evenings before L'Abri's roaring fireplace," as Professor Jacobs rhapsodizes, but five millennia of history isn't bad.
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