“The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind” [Mark Noll, Oct. 25] was excellent! For those who stress belief in a “magical” God, the process of nature and the mind have little value. For those of us who believe God created nature with integrity, and that God loves “the world,” scientific inquiry and other intellectual activity are very important. Mark Noll presented the history and the current issues extremely well.
Pastor David Smith
Burlingame Congregational UCC
Wyoming, Mich.
A vital ingredient is left out when Noll asserts that “modern American evangelicals are the product of revivalism … a Christian-American cultural synthesis … and fundamentalism.” What is missing is the continuous influx of immigrant Christianity.
Both of my grandparents immigrated to the U.S. as children. One, born in Ireland, became a Presbyterian minister. The other, born in Germany, became a Baptist elder in a church that spoke German up to World War II. My faith was formed by German Anabaptism and Scotch-Irish Presbyterianism as much as by American revivalism, cultural synthesis, and fundamentalism. My colleagues have similar stories.
Today, at least on the West coast, Asian and Hispanic immigrants, including mature Christians and new converts, bring contributions for the future American Christian mind not given their due in Noll’s otherwise fascinating article.
Miriam Adeney
Seattle Pacific University
Seattle, Wash.
Noll’s article was excellent in all respects except for his citing biblical creationism as anti-intellectual. Contrary to Noll’s assertion, virtually every “responsible Christian teacher in the history of the church” endorsed the creationist view, at least until Darwin. Since then, creationist research, spearheaded by the Institute for Creation Research and others, has played an important role in restoring the intellectual life of the church, both by recovering a sound and coherent hermeneutic, and by challenging the secular world’s intellectual orthodoxy (evolutionary materialism).
Jonathan Menn
Appleton, Wis.
Mark Noll responds: If by creationism, the writer means the belief that God created the heavens and the earth, he is accurate. But such historical definers and defenders of orthodoxy as Augustine of Hippo, Charles Hodge, and B. B. War-field read Genesis 1 very differently from and much more flexibly than today’s scientific creationists.
One aspect Noll did not address is the loneliness experienced by evangelical Christians who attempt to take an intellectual calling seriously.
I have a Ph.D. with good scholarly credentials, and a tenured teaching position in a distinguished graduate/undergraduate program at an overwhelmingly secular institution. My colleagues are excellent as colleagues—but are either “let’s not take this religion stuff too seriously” churchgoers, or actively hostile to Christianity. They find my conviction that Jesus is the most important person and faith the most important thing incomprehensible.
The other side of the dilemma is revealed when the Christian scholar tries to participate in Christian fellowship outside the university. In this area, the churches in my nominal denomination are either liberal or confused; trying to participate in such a congregation is usually intellectually as well as spiritually impossible.
With whom is a Christian scholar supposed to be friends? Intellectuals can’t understand why anyone would put God first in his life. Those who put God first in their lives can’t understand why anyone would remain interested in intellectual matters. This is the sorry state to which the evangelical abandonment of the mind has brought us.
Charles J. Smith
Buffalo, N.Y.
I am puzzled that Noll positioned John Williamson Nevin with devout leaders of faith, such as Edwards, Whitefield, and Hodge. I am convinced Nevin could be positioned closer to Schleiermacher rather than to his contemporary, Hodge, the stalwart defender of orthodoxy at Princeton Theological Seminary.
Pastor Rod Lawall
First Congregational Church of Griswold
Jewett City, Conn.
At least one organization does serious research and is evangelical—the Summer Institute of Linguistics. It is required of SIL members to publish their research for the benefit of the larger academic community. The president emeritus of SIL, Dr. Kenneth L. Pike, was nominated for the Nobel Prize because of his theoretical work and his extensive linguistic research. His work was recognized and honored worldwide by governments and universities alike, as well as UNESCO.
Wolf A. Seiler
Kotzebue, Alaska
“Evangelical” naysayers
The negative reaction by “a Christian leader” and “a few Christian radio programs” to Chuck Colson’s involvement with the Templeton Prize proves once again that more than a few evangelicals just don’t get it [“How Did I Become a Bad Guy?” Oct. 25]. How these naysayers can call themselves “evangelical” is beyond any thinking evangelical’s comprehension.
Pastor Chuck Stober
Coal Creek Community Church
Louisville, Colo.
You really don’t get it, do you? Mars Hill? Come on, Chuck! To be sure, your Templeton address contained nothing offensive to your pagan audience, but it did nothing to underscore the absolute exclusivity of the Christian faith. Tell it like it is, Chuck. These are your brothers and sisters in Christ chiding you for what is at best an “uncertain sound.”
Murl Ming
Mabelvale, Ariz.
Government is not the church
In response to your editorial [“Healing the Health-care System,” Oct. 25]: Even with the briefest glance, one can discern that the United States government is not the church of our Lord Jesus Christ—so why is it trying to assume the role, and why should you expect it to do so? The “least of these” is not what the government should be about.
Surely the church is asleep if it relies on its feelings and perceives it can only be happy and secure when it is taken care of by the government, or that its job is to take care of the people of the United States with health care and all other security that can be developed.
Marie Prudhomme
Waterford, Mich.
For a Christian, loving the neighbor as ourselves is not optional. It is hard to imagine anyone who takes Matthew 25:40 seriously who would support a system that does not cover the Mr. Swansons of our country.
The single-payer solution covers everyone, saves large amounts of the money now wasted, and does not “do violence” to the way we practice medicine. It deserves a better look. Mr. Swanson may not be any better off under the plan espoused by the editorial.
Karl W. Hess, M.D.
Cleveland, Ohio
Correction
In “How to Teach Right and Wrong” by Christina Hoff Sommers (Dec. 13, 1993), the sentence beginning, “By the mid-1960s, enrollment …” (p. 34, col. 3), should have read, “reached an all-time low.”CT regrets the error.
Don’t judge CLS by its budget
Thanks to Tim Stafford for a generally accurate and informative article on Christian legal advocacy groups [“Move Over, ACLU,” Oct. 25]. However, I would like to clear up two misleading impressions.
Stafford describes Christian Legal Society as “much smaller in size and budget” than the Rutherford Institute and the American Center for Law and Justice. The comment about budget is true, but CLS members include thousands of Christian lawyers and law students—a network far greater in size than that of any other advocacy group. This volunteer work force gives cls an influence far out of proportion to its tiny paid staff.
Also, CLS, founded in 1961, has been around three times as long as any other Christian legal group. This organizational history of stability and top-quality legal scholarship has given CLS an influence that cannot be explained by looking at its budget.
Bradley P. Jacob, Executive Director
Christian Legal Society
Annandale, Va.
Making cultural “marriage” work
“The Myth of Racial Progress” [CT Institute, Oct. 4] strongly implies that in the cultural marriage that is America there is a completely innocent party (African-American culture) and a party guilty as sin (Anglo-American culture). This is patently unscriptural, logically untenable, and counterproductive.
For “the marriage” to work, both parties must repent and change. As long as either pretends they are completely blameless, no progress is possible. Rather than racist Whites railing at Blacks and racist Blacks screaming at Whites, we need to speak where we will most readily be heard. We need to speak to our own cultures both condemning the sin of racism as well as the sins that give racists ammunition.
There’s enough sin to go around for all of us. Until both parties are willing to admit it, and then do something about it no progress is possible.
Ken Lewis
Bethel Baptist Church
Green Bay, Wis.
Like Jay Kesler, I thought we were doing better. As Andrés Tapia suggested, I listened. I also cried when I read Kay Coles James’s article. I don’t know how to make things better, but I am so sorry for the pain she felt when she was betrayed and rejected. What can I do to make things better?
Linda Davis
Carmel, Ind.
The contributors make a convincing call for action to the White church. The White church is surely guilty of failing in the ministry of reconciliation, an integral part of the gospel. However, I was struck by an equal failure or blind spot in the Black church: that of grace.
When are we Whites to be forgiven? I can see the unredeemed Black being shocked at such a request, since so much has been suffered. The Black Christian, however, has no grounds on which to hold anything against his White brother. Grace has to do with unearned favor or acceptance. Black church, where is your grace? How can there ever be reconciliation without grace?
Richard E. Walton
Belvidere, Ill.
Confusion and lost opportunity
John Zipperer did a fine job of reporting on the Parliament of the World’s Religions [Oct. 4]. But the main issue was unresolved. There are various types of inter-religious dialogue, but as the Parliament program chairman made crystal clear, this particular dialogue was of the kind that begins with the premise that all religions are true and “have their own special access to God.” On that basis, Christians along with Hindus, Muslims, Neo-Pagans et al. were invited to come together to worship, celebrate, pray, meditate, and help solve the problems of mankind, but not to “proselytize.”
But evangelicals had the option of considering early on the mixed messages inherent in participation; objecting to the very basis of this dialogue; and raising up a separate, concurrent and clear witness to Jesus Christ.
What Zipperer did not report—and probably did not know—was that a aumber of evangelical leaders turned down the latter option in favor of a wait-and-see attitude. What they saw was exactly what Zipperer did report, and that can be summarized in a very few words: confusion and lost opportunity. D. L. Moody chose the right course one hundred years ago. Why is it that we missed it one hundred years later?
David J. Hesselgrave, Executive Director
Evangelical Missiology Society
Deerfield, Ill.
