Opening of the Evangelical Mind?

Paul Harvey

My co-blogmeister and most excellent historian Randall Stephens and his co-author Karl Giberson have recently been called (among other things), wolves in sheep's clothing, dangerous menaces to evangelicalism, and, best of all, unethical attack-dog researchers and writers -- the later from famed ethicist Charles Colson, in a matchless self-parody of old-time fundamentalist fury. As John Turner noted here recently, after Randall and Karl's book The Anointed, some have felt there is no hope left for America. (It bears mentioning that most of the above noted did not actually read the book but scanned, and that inaccurately, Randall and Karl's New York Times editorial). As a writer for the always thoughtful and temperate National Review opined, "once left-wing values enter the evangelical bloodstream, there is almost no hope for America."

You might have noticed that some of these initial reactions are an eensy-weensy bit overwrought. Fortunately, we have a good antidote today in Scott McLemee's Inside Higher Ed column. As McLemee points out, "Neither an expose nor a screed, The Anointed is the work of educated evangelical Christians who reject the kitsch and anti-intellectualism that outsiders tend to equate with faith itself." Read the rest here.