The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark Noll

I highly recommend this excellent indictment of a book to those who are struggling with--and may have become bitter towards--American evangelicanism. It is a sharp, albeit sad, historical analysis of modern evangelicals' malaise--a failure to exercise a distinctly Christian mind.

If you are a Christian, you will benefit from reading this book as well--if you don't think you are a part of this malaise to some extent, you are kidding yourself. The first few chapters can come off as a bit disheartening and almost elitist, but Noll's historical analyses in the later chapters helped me to understand how we--more specifically I--ended up here. It was beneficial and enlightening for me to learn our own history.

A few notable quotes from the book:

"The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." (p.3)

"Attempts to think--both profoundly and as Christians--about history, nature, the arts, and society have been frustrated by the very success of an institutional arrangement that maintains several mutually distinct forms of academic endeavor." (p.21)

"The confluence of these dispensational influences with the rising tides of Holiness and pentecostal belief marked a momentous stage in the development of American evangelicanism. The three movements were never entirely aligned, and in fact dispensationalists frequently attacked the pentecostal emphasis on tongues speaking, even as Holiness advocates decried the complicated biblical arguments of the dispensationalists, and some pentecostals, as a distraction from godliness. Yet together these movements shared a stress on the dangers of the world, the comforts of separated piety, the centrality of evangelism, and an expectation of the End. These emphases, in turn, exerted a powerful effect on evangelical thought." (p.120)

"Blaising observes that 'the problem is the failure to recognize that all theological thought, including one's own theological thought, is historically conditioned by the tradition to which that theologian belongs as well as personal and cultural factors such as education or experience...Awareness of them can be a step towards recognizing and rectifying misunderstanding.'" (p.129)

"When faced with a crisis situation, we evangelicals usually do one of two things. We either mount a public crusade, or we retreat into an inner pious sanctum. That is, we are filled with righteous anger and attempt to recoup our public losses through political confrontation, or we eschew the world of mere material appearances and seek the timeless consolations of the Spirit." (p.141)