The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
- History & Biography
- Publisher: Eerdmans
- Published: 2022
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Publisher's Description
Winner of the Christianity Today Book of the Year Award (1995) “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” So begins this award-winning intellectual history and critique of the evangelical movement by one of evangelicalism’s most respected historians. 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.
Endorsements (6)
“An evangelical intellectual finds a kind of heresy in evangelicalism’s neglect of the mind.”
“Those who would like to become acquainted with their evangelical neighbors will find no better book to serve as a guide than The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark Noll, who is also the best personal guide to the subject that I know.”
“This is a book that every American historian ought to read precisely because it makes onethink hard about a subject and a discipline in a way that few books do.”
“Mark Noll has written a major indictment of American evangelicalism. Reading this book, one wonders if the evangelical movement has pandered so much to American culture, tried so hard to be popular, and perpetuated such a do-it-yourself, feel-good faith that it has lost not only its mind but its soul as well. Clergy, seminary faculty, and laypeople need to take the message of this book to heart.”
“Noll’s cri de coeur is powerful and superb. Those of us who are evangelicals should finish it on our knees. The character of evangelicalism is at stake in our response.”
“In this landmark evangelical ‘tract for the times’ Noll combines passion and his own impressive scholarship, arguing that if Christians are to serve God with their minds, they must do their homework.”
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