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Patrick Henry's book The Ironic Christian's Companion records a scene of wonderful irony. His mother-in-law, saying grace before a meal in which she meant to ask God to "make us ever mindful of the needs of others," asked God instead to "make us ever needful of the minds of others." The more I thought about it, the more I liked her prayer.

Evangelicals in particular have not always acknowledged their needfulness of others' minds. I remember church deacons in 1963 distributing If America Elects a Catholic President, a scary booklet by a prominent evangelical author. Well, America did elect John F. Kennedy, who, contrary to prophecy, did not follow orders issued directly from the Vatican.

America's best-selling nonfiction book of the 1970s was Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth. Reading that now brings me more chuckles than fear; the world has changed, but not necessarily in the way Lindsey foretold.

In the 1980s evangelicals on national radio programs fed the AIDS hysteria by warning that HIV could be passed by mosquito bites or contact with toilet seats. In 1999 some evangelical publishers made a fortune on scary predictions about Y2K. Others kept forecasting an economic meltdown during the greatest boom ever. I wonder, is there no place for public apology or at least sheepishness? What would happen if every evangelical institution that profited from scaremongering agreed to place all those profits in a fund to relieve Third World debt?

Such notable evangelical "bloopers" demonstrate the point Mark Noll made in his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Few question evangelicalism's passionate heart, and even critics envy its methodology and results, but the evangelical mind may be the movement's weakest link.

Visiting the Marion Wade collection on the campus of Wheaton College, I was struck by a further irony: the British luminaries (C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, George MacDonald, Owen Barfield, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams) honored there could not serve on the faculty of Wheaton, being disqualified by behavior, unorthodox doctrine, or Roman Catholic affiliation. I consider it a healthy sign, though, that Wheaton, a bastion of evangelicalism, recognizes it is "ever needful of the minds of others."

In my own pilgrimage, I have often looked outside the boundaries of evangelicalism for spiritual nourishment. Jews and liberal scholars best help me understand the social milieu in which Jesus lived. Catholics like Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen enrich my faith; modern seekers such as Anne Lamott and Patricia Hampl enliven it. Vaclav Havel and Alexander Solzhenitsyn teach me more about politics and morality than most representatives of the Religious Right. And I gain a sense of worship reading Loren Eiseley and Chet Raymo that I have not found among evangelical scientists.

The same week I read Patrick Henry's ironic book, I also read Richard Mouw's irenic The Smell of Sawdust. As might be expected from the president of Fuller Seminary, Mouw makes a strong case for education. He counters objections ("But the fields are white unto harvest! The task is urgent!") with a fine analogy. The emergency room of a hospital is also an environment of great urgency, with lives at stake. Yet you want the doctors and technicians there to have the best training and preparation available. Knowledge matters as much as speed.

Rather unexpectedly, Mouw looks back with nostalgic appreciation on his own fundamentalist background. Certainly, he gained a solid grounding in the Bible. Long before hearing of Mother Teresa, he saw Christians lovingly embrace the homeless in inner-city rescue missions. And even intellectually, the fundamentalists of his childhood stimulated a lifelong interest in theology.

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July 8 2001, Vol. 45, No. 9