Comments on: Evangelicals as Intellectual Golden Retrievers

By: Jeremy Pierce

Jeremy Pierce — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 11:13:08 +0000

There are evangelical scholars who engage with the academy and end up changing their minds on certain issues, because they are convinced by the arguments (or at least they feel convinced). But I couldn’t imagine such a person seeing evangelical convictions as chains. They would either think the Bible doesn’t really require them to hold the more conservative view they’ve abandoned (in which case they wouldn’t consider themselves chained), or they would reject evangelical convictions and thus also not feel chained by them. Such an intellectually honest person strikes me as unable to say the kind of statement that appears in the post above.

So I’m trying to imagine who would. Is it someone who feels peer pressure among academics to give lip service to a view they know is false? Then why would they call it a chain, if they know it is true? They would call it right, and they might see the academically-respectable view as the chain.

I’m just trying to understand the psychology of someone who would say such a thing, and I’m drawing a blank. It’s nearly impossible for me to imagine someone thinking such a thing.

By: Truth Unites... and Divides

Truth Unites... and Divides — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 16:39:19 +0000

“As a whole, evangelical scholars have problems with self-esteem as well”

Actually, this phenomenon has been noted and observed for quite some time. In fact, there’s a wry and funny and insightful joke about it. I’ll probably botch it up in my recall of it, but it goes something like this:

Widely acclaimed Liberal Scholar to the Evangelical Scholar: “I’ll call you an intellectual if you’ll call me a Christian.”

By: Ken

Ken — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 01:27:42 +0000

Fascinating. I just read your post and then went to the next unread article in my reader and came across this:

“D. Michael Lindsay—named in 2006 the most promising sociologist in the world under the age of 35 by the World Congress of Sociology and the author in 2007 of the Pultizer Prize nominated Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite—has been named the new president of Gordon College.” (Justin Taylor)

Hooray. Evangelicals have someone recognized by world class sociologists and the Pulitzer committee.