Review of Apostles of Reason by Molly Worthen: Part 3 (Final)

Last updated on: December 20, 2013 at 1:12 pm by Roger E. Olson

Review of Apostles of Reason by Molly Worthen: Part 3 (Final) 2013-12-20T13:12:01-05:00 Roger E. Olson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Review of Apostles of Reason by Molly Worthen: Part 3 (Final)

This review is primarily of Part III of Apostles of Reason—a recently published book by historian Molly Worthen published by Oxford University Press. (No thanks to OUP which declined to respond to my request for a review copy.) Part III is entitled “Let Them Have Dominion.”

This is, without doubt, one of the most challenging books about evangelicalism that I have read. It’s challenging for several reasons but two stand out at this moment: It is prophetic (to evangelicals) and confusing. Let me start with the second reason.

After bashing neo-evangelicalism (a label Worthen sometimes uses for the specific movement begun by evangelical intellectuals dissatisfied with the anti-intellectualism and isolation of fundamentalism and sometimes uses for the whole post-fundamentalist evangelical movement of the second half of the 20th century into the 21st century) for being endemically anti-intellectual at its core (noting some exceptions among its scholars) she concludes the book this way: “If the evangelical imagination harbors a potent anti-intellectual strain, it has proven, over time, to be a kind of genius.” (265) One could say exactly the same thing, of course, about American culture in general and the evangelicalism Worthen is examining here is distinctly American.

Here is just one example of Worthen’s seemingly devastating pronouncements on American evangelicalism that would seem to conflict with any talk of a “genius.” She writes (253) “Is anti-intellectualism, then, chiefly the sin of the Christian right? The answer is no: “The confusion of authority that best accounts for the culture described in these pages is not an exclusively conservative or liberal trait. For good or for ill, it has been the defining characteristic of evangelicalism as a whole since its origins in the aftermath of the Reformation.”

“The defining characteristic?” And yet “a kind of genius?” Nothing about her diatribe against American evangelicals’ anti-intellectualism would lead one to expect the final pronouncement at the very end of the book.

Sidebar: At the very end of the book Worthen comes close to recognizing my distinction between evangelicalism as a movement and evangelicalism as an ethos only she calls it the “evangelical imagination.” And I don’t think we are identifying it similarly. There may be some overlap, but hers is more focused on behavior (e.g., activism) and less spiritual and theological than mine. I still think scholars such as Worthen who attempt to examine evangelical culture need to distinguish strongly between the movement (which now is fading away if not already gone) and the ethos which will, hopefully, always be around (stripped of its anti-intellectualism).

Throughout the book Worthen is gradually, step-by-step building up an argument, mainly anecdotal but nevertheless strong, that since its beginning in the 1940s the neo-evangelical movement has been beset by a problem or set of problems having to do with authority. The founders and their would-be faithful followers wanted to break away from fundamentalism without becoming liberal. They did that by rejecting what was a veneer of fundamentalism while retaining its essence. Predictably (but largely unacknowledged) the neo-evangelical movement and its larger aftermath, “American evangelicalism,” has been torn between two competing impulses—what Worthen labels as “worldview presuppositionalism” (which she identifies as primarily Reformed) and a claimed desire to be worldly and modern in the best senses—open to free inquiry, scholarly, reasonable, intellectual, culturally alert and sensitive, ecumenical, etc. The central problematic pathos of evangelicalism in the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st century, Worthen makes clear in this third part, is an inability to reconcile these competing impulses that has led evangelicalism into a crisis of authority.

So what does that have to do with “anti-intellectualism?” I think her case study of Francis Schaeffer best illustrates her point. It appears in Part III but sheds light backwards on her main argument about the problematic of neo-evangelicalism from its beginning.

According to Worthen, Schaeffer styled himself as an intellectual and as culture-savvy and sensitive while all the time hiding a basically fundamentalist attitude toward inquiry and knowledge. Worthen’s portrayal of Schaeffer is so harsh as to border on being uncharitable. But charity isn’t her concern; she’s a historian. She honestly believes, apparently, that Schaeffer was a charlatan who convinced even himself, to say nothing of millions of readers and followers, that he was the epitome of a Christian intellectual. In fact, if Worthen is right (and others have said the same), Schaeffer was a fake. He was to evangelicalism what many gurus (and she uses that word for Schaeffer and many evangelical leaders) are to Hinduism—tricksters who cast a spell over their followers and have even come to believe their own press when, in fact, they are the proverbial Wizard of Oz—all bluster and show but no real depth.

You doubt me? Read her treatment of Schaeffer in the sections subtitled “A Thinking Christian” and “The Uses of History” (209-216). Here’s a sample: “[John Howard] Yoder was not the only one appalled by Schaeffer’s hamfisted caricature of history. For all of his emphasis on careful argument, Schaeffer was notoriously irresponsible as a scholar. ‘Schaeffer didn’t read books,’ said his son-in-law, John Sandri. ‘He got his material from magazines, Newsweek, Time—he’d take them to the beach. He did go to seminary, so he had that, but when he was here [at L’Abri], he went through the summarized version. He was out to give broad strokes. It was not necessary to give you the details of Kierkegaard.’ Schaeffer wowed audiences by explaining 500 years of intellectual history in paragraphs and a casual chalkboard diagram—but he did so with exaggerations, oversimplifications, and misinformation that would make a specialist cry.”

Why was Schaeffer so popular? Here’s Worthen’s harsh explanation of his and other “evangelical gurus'” popularity among evangelicals in spite of their obvious lack of expertise and scholarship: “Truth is no obstacle to a story that people want to believe.” (253) Ouch.

In Part III Worthen trots out a parade of such evangelical gurus evangelicals have followed en masse—gurus who appeared to have some semblance of intellectual depth and cultural savvy (per the neo-evangelical founders’ intentions) but were actually authoritarian anti-intellectuals who treated their own versions of “the Christian worldview” as a totalizing ideology impermeable to critique and incorrigible in comprehensive, coherent truth. Other case studies she offers include Bill Gothard of Basic Youth Conflicts fame and David Barton, founder of Wallbuilders and (according to her and many critics) reviser of American history.

Worthen’s point seems to be that neo-evangelicalism set up a religious culture that pretended to be intellectually respectable while constantly shutting doors to any real critical thinking and inquiring into truth. In spite of claims that the Bible is our supreme authority, evangelicals have by-and-large set up other authorities, claiming to be “the true interpretation of the Bible” (often labeled “the Christian worldview”), and shut the door to any challenges to it however faithful and reasonable they may be.

I have been making the same diagnosis of evangelical theology (its main movers and shakers) for a long time. They took Charles Hodge’s Systematic Theology, baptized it as the once and for all evangelical theology (“The Stout and Persistent Theology of Charles Hodge” as David Wells called it in an article in Christianity Today) and permitted only translations of it into contemporary language. That’s what most evangelical systematic theologies have been.

Then, according to Worthen, and I find this largely true, evangelicalism spawned large numbers of pseudo-intellectual gurus who claimed authority for their own versions of “the biblical worldview” or “the Christian worldview” and presented them as if they had the authority of the Bible itself. This is basically a move back to fundamentalism—often under the guise of modern, up-to-date language, technology and rhetorical devices. She labels these men (all so far have been men) “demagogues.” They have been Pied Pipers who have played on evangelicals’ cravings for authority, certainty, respectability and power.

As I look back over my lifetime in American evangelicalism this narrative rings true. There seems always to be one or two or three major seemingly infallible evangelical leaders, usually independent and self-appointed but often given credibility by other evangelical leaders, who pronounce “the truth” as yet unknown or forgotten that, when accepted uncritically, will dispel doubt, despair, confusion and deliver enlightenment, success (spiritual, material or whatever), closure, certainty.

I will never forget one pastor’s advice to our congregation that met in the downtown area of a major European city. It was a Southern Baptist Church (which wouldn’t let me become a member without being re-baptized because I wasn’t baptized in a Baptist church). The pastor was a Southern Baptist missionary. His sermon was about the Christian’s relationship with “secular culture.” His closing line was “The Christian’s attitude toward the world should be ‘Don’t confuse me with the facts; my mind is already made up’.” Immediately came to my mind a hymn from my childhood by evangelist Gypsy Smith written as a response to a skeptic who said he was dreaming that Christianity is true:”If I Am Dreaming, Let Me Dream On.”

So what does that have to do with evangelicalism? Well, there are more sophisticated versions of that anti-intellectualism and even obscurantism and they abound among evangelicals—even in places where they are adamantly denied. I served ten years on the editorial board of Christian Scholar’s Review including five years as its senior editor. The Review was truly open to critical inquiry and we published many articles that challenged evangelical assumptions while remaining basically evangelical. (I edited an entire theme volume on process theology including articles by leading process thinkers.) But we could not seem to draw submissions from evangelical scholars teaching in our constituent liberal arts colleges and universities (about 50 of them). One year we asked all our institutional representatives to ask their colleagues why they didn’t submit manuscripts to CSR. We knew many of them were submitting manuscripts to other, mostly non-evangelical publications. The answer came. “We know our administrators read CSR and we’re afraid of publishing our findings and thoughts because our institution does not have real tenure.” Digging a little deeper by asking many of these evangelical scholars why this is a problem came up with the following answer: “Our administrators have good intentions but they are beholden to constituents who will pressure them to fire us if they disagree with what we write.”

Returning to my two reasons Worthen’s book is challenging: I hope I have already made them clear. First, it is confusing because she never adequately explains why evangelicalism’s anti-intellectualism (or pseudo-intellectualism in some cases) is its “genius.” Second, it is prophetic because she dares to point out something few evangelical leaders are willing to admit—that a deep strain of anti-intellectualism runs through their movement and needs to be named and corrected. Of course, Mark Noll already pointed this out some years ago in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, but he laid the blame at the doorsteps of pietism, the holiness movement and experience-centered spirituality. Worthen turns the finger of accusation around and points it at Noll’s own Reformed neo-evangelicalism (which is not to say he is guilty).

So what are some solutions? That’s where Worthen is weakest—offering practical advice to evangelicals. But, then, she’s a historian; advice isn’t her job. So I’ll go out on a limb and offer some. First, evangelical institutions of higher education (at least) need to establish real tenure for trusted professors based on scholarly achievement and not primarily “institutional fit.” Second, evangelical organizations need to let it be known that conservative donors are not going to call all the shots. Third, evangelical publications need to establish a pattern of exposing pseudo-intellectualism and demagoguery among evangelicals. (Eternity magazine did some of this in the 1970s and 1980s. We need to return to that.) Fourth, evangelicals need to overcome their obsessive, reactionary fear of “modernism” and “liberal theology” and become sufficiently self-confident of the truth of evangelical faith to expose it to critical inquiry without running and hiding behind some new set of “fundamentals” under the guise of “worldview.”

Uncategorized

Previous Post

December 18, 2013

Why I Don't Respond to Every Critic or Debate Every Calvinist

Next Post

December 23, 2013 The Parable of the Carnival and the "Freak Show"

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Against Liberal Theology Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

In Revelation, what is the correct sequence of events in the End Times?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Dragon cast to earth, beast rises from sea, false prophet rises from earth, mark of the beast given False prophet rises, dragon cast to earth, beast rises from sea, mark of the beast given Mark of the beast given, dragon cast to earth, beast rises, false prophet rises Beast rises from sea, dragon cast to earth, mark of the beast given, false prophet rises