###Thank you for an excellent and fair reflection. I appreciate the gap that you leave between evangelicalism (as a whole) and anti-intellectualism.###

Thanks for the very nice feedback. I admit to having harbored personally pretty negative views of Evangelicals in the past, but after some reflection realized my *real* beef is with the Pat Robertson types (broadly speaking). Hopefully, people won’t assume that the likes of Ward Churchill speak for the academy as a whole any more than Robertson speaks for Christians, however much he would like us to believe he does. Robertson and Churchill have the property of being LOUD.

As I said in my piece, I think there’s always going to be a tension between the goals of the academy and a faith community such as most Evangelicals belong to. A shining permanent love-fest just isn’t in the offing. I’m of the mindset that that’s not a bad thing. The trick is to figure out how to manage the conflict.

Many of us inhabiting the fringes of evangelicalism (or its true center, I hope) who recoil at mindless indoctrination at least as much as the typical academic. There are as many reasons to call it bad faith as there are to call it bad teaching.

As you point out, “Evangelical schools” fit into a very wide spectrum (however narrow it appears from a distance). There are many institutions designed to teach people exactly what to think (and what not to). But, to be fair, there are an equal number designed to teach people how to think well about the world.

The irrational fear among many evangelicals that thinking hard about the foundations of faith is inevitably bound to undermine it–is simply not true.

I substantially agree with your posts and am grateful for your balanced voice. My final point is a simple request. If the real problem is anti-intellectualism, and not evangelicalism per se, then let’s fight the monster under its real name. Doing so will allow people (myself included) who both think and pray to shift the identity of evangelicalism for the better. The popular stigma that equates evangelical faith with stupidity only perpetuates the problem that it criticizes.

Go well,
Eric

I’ve found Michael Gerson—Wheaton College grad, former Bush speechwriter, and Evangelical, now Wash Post op-ed writer—worth reading. I see Gerson in roughly the same way I view George Will. I frequently don’t agree with them (though I agree with paleo-con Will more) but always find their writing clear and provoking. Gerson’s not an academic, but he is an example of “how to do it right.”

I welcome any criticism and would like to hear from people “on the other side,” so to speak, but if you’re just going to bust with the loosely applicable Biblical epithets, don’t bother.

Or perhaps I have misunderstood?