The Emerging Evangelical Intelligentsia

It is no secret that American intellectuals tend to look down upon evangelicals, even their would-be counterparts. [For example, movies like Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, explore the closed-mindedness of many in academia toward any who would question Darwinian evolution.] In response to this perception of widespread evangelical disparagement, Boston University's Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs has launched a two-year research project called The Emerging Evangelical Intelligentsia. They kicked things off last fall with a major conference entitled Opening of the Evangelical Mind. The participants included George Marsden, Mark Noll, and Alvin Plantinga. While conference leaders hailed mainly from the ranks of Boston University's faculty, others such as Os Guinness, Michael Cromartie (Ethics and Public Policy Center and U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom) and John Wilson (editor of Books & Culture for Christianity Today) were included.

For a helpful overview of the research initiative, see this interview which John Steel conducted with Dr. Timothy Shah, Director of the The Emerging Evangelical Intelligentsia project. Here's the first question:

John Seel: What is the overarching purpose of your research project?

Timothy Shah: The project was actually an idea that emerged from the fertile mind of the eminent sociologist Peter Berger. It seemed to him that the prevailing understanding of the evangelical community among intellectuals in America was cartoonish at best. He felt that there were developments in the evangelical community that were being overlooked. Berger felt there was an emergence of what he called an "evangelical intelligentsia"—a self-assured, sophisticated class of intellectuals working in various fields. So he gathered a group of people, including Mike Cromartie (Ethics & Public Policy Center), Os Guinness (author), Mark Noll (Wheaton College), John Wilson (Books & Culture), Dana Robert (Boston University), and myself and asked if there has been a sociological or historical study on the emergence of this phenomenon.

We agree that there really wasn't one. There have been critiques of its intellectual sophistication and assessments of its scholarship. Mark Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind and Robert Wuthnow's The Restructuring of American Religion tackled this aspect. But most of this work was done in the early 1990s, and it seemed to us that there were recent developments that bode well for the emergence and impact of an evangelical intelligentsia. By intelligentsia we mean professional producers of ideas, not simply academics, but also public intellectuals—including sophisticated journalists and public commentators.

The project will do two things. Historically, we want to explore how this evangelical intelligentsia has emerged particularly in the years after World War II. And then, sociologically, we want to look at the institutions and resources that have enabled these evangelicals to have the influence that they are now having.

Read the whole thing.