The Intellectual Exemplar:
The scandal of the evangelical mind," Mark Noll wrote a decade ago in
a book bearing precisely that title, "... is that there is not much
of an evangelical mind." Noll wasn't subscribing to the old
caricature of conservative Protestants as Scripture-handcuffed rubes.
True, he was merciless in describing the anti-intellectual streak
that led many mainstream arbiters to put quotes around the term
evangelical scholarship. But his book went on to argue that the
problem was not intrinsic—that a "high" view of the Bible and
high-level participation in American intellectual life could coexist.
Noll is proof. His powerful yet evenhanded work on the evangelical
role in American history earned him a guest professorship at Harvard.
The Atlantic Monthly, another blue-chip validator, called his book
America's God "almost certainly the most significant work of American
historical scholarship" in 2002. He has also been an institution
builder, co-founding the Institute for the Study of American
Evangelicals at Wheaton College, a leading Christian school, and
helping corral millions in grant money for other intellectual
outposts. The community as a whole, he says, has not overcome its
general torpor. But he is encouraged that ever more scholars are
surmounting this to do what he calls "first-rate work" by anyone's
standards. "And hundreds of younger people," he adds, "are coming
along."
