The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark Noll was published in 1995 when I graduated from seminary. Being exhausted from extensive reading, I missed its publication. Over the years, I have had it on my reading list, but it never rose to the top as new books vied for my attention. Recently, I borrowed the original edition of the book from the library through Hoopla. I wished I had read this in 1995.
A good summary quote of the book is, “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”
Mark Noll examines the history of how Christians went from being the leaders in rigorous intellectual scholarship to disdaining intellectual thinking. Fundamentalism and evangelicalism led the way towards truth being whatever seems correct.
There is a more recent edition that has this in the description.
- Unsparing in his indictment, Mark Noll asks why the largest single group of religious Americans—who enjoy increasing wealth, status, and political influence—have contributed so little to rigorous intellectual scholarship. While nourishing believers in the simple truths of the gospel, why have so many evangelicals failed to sustain a serious intellectual life and abandoned the universities, the arts, and other realms of “high” culture?
- Over twenty-five years since its original publication, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind has turned out to be prescient and perennially relevant. In a new preface, Noll lays out his ongoing personal frustrations with this situation, and in a new afterword he assesses the state of the scandal—showing how white evangelicals’ embrace of Trumpism, their deepening distrust of science, and their frequent forays into conspiratorial thinking have coexisted with surprisingly robust scholarship from many with strong evangelical connections.
This is not an easy read, but it is worth the journey to help explain the current dysfunction in American Evangelicalism.
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