The constant tension in any movement is who gets to define it, and how. Enter the debate over evangelicalism, which exists in two forms. Evangelicalism as a doctrinal movement has often been defined according to what is called the “Bebbington quadrilateral”—a strong commitment to the Bible, Christ’s atoning work, evangelism, and activism. Yet another evangelicalism, an Anglo-American phenomenon, peppers the American landscape with its own cultural signifiers. This kitsch evangelicalism, known more for its cultural oddities, consistently edges out the intellectual and doctrinal coherency of evangelicalism in popular culture.
The Anointed picks up on this theme, insisting that evangelicalism has come to be defined more by its reactionary elements—opposition to evolution, aversion to modern psychology, apocalypticism, and support for an unabashedly Christian America. So what drives evangelicals to reject the overwhelming evidence in support of evolution? Why do evangelicals insist that the Founding Fathers were devout Christians when other evangelical scholarship points to the contrary? Plagued by perpetual disputes as to what properly qualifies one as an “evangelical,” and a looming fissure among its youth, evangelicalism is facing an uncertain future in America. Randall Stephens and Karl Giberson insist that holding steady on culturally marginalized positions will not help evangelicalism in its quest for cultural relevance or intellectual coherency.
Profiling such figures as the noted creationist Ken Ham, David Barton of WallBuilders, and James Dobson of Focus on the Family, the authors search for the affinities of what draws evangelicals to the opinions of “the Anointed”—discredited spokesmen and authorities who receive celebrity-like adoration and expert-like status among evangelicals. Such opinions foment the cultural derision and scorn heaped on evangelicalism by its opponents and further intensify the entrenched and embattled mindset of evangelicals. Their quest is to offer a psychological analysis of evangelical authority structures.
Evangelicals opposing evolution, for instance, argue that the loss of a Divine Being results in no authoritative moral norms. Lamenting America’s break from its Christian heritage, evangelicals warn of further moral decay as God is marginalized from the public square. And spurning modern psychology for its “secular bias that menaces spirituality,” evangelicals gin up alternative authorities to conceal their own machinations. With decreased cultural influence, and fearing secularization, many evangelicals retreat into what the authors call a “parallel” culture.
But because evangelicalism encompasses such a large swath of the population and, by default, its own economic subculture remains intact within a larger religion-free market, the authors are right to suggest that evangelicals can reject expert opinion for the “self-sufficiency of their parallel culture.” Leaders are formed through an informal process of constituency building and rallying followers by “playing on common fears, identifying out-groups to demonize, and projecting confidence.” Joined by the direction of a leader with “charismatic trustworthiness,” spokesmen are said to “speak for God” and given preeminent status. A pervasive anti-intellectual spirit congeals these ingredients into an identifiable subculture: The authors attribute these features to an innate and evolutionary penchant for tribalism—the need to belong, identify, and embrace: “People, not surprisingly, more readily follow experts they know or perceive as being like them, even if their expertise is marginal or even suspect.”
The criticism offered here is punctuated by a tone of dismissal and reliance on academic pedigree. Ken Ham is eviscerated as an uncredentialed profligate who peddles fear as he does homeschooling textbooks; David Barton of the “Christian America” thesis is a likable dunce preoccupied with theocracy; and James Dobson is a colloquial, grandfatherly sap offering sage advice on how to prevent homosexuality in youth. All of them have “undermined the academic status quo” and deter intellectuals from embracing the Christian faith.
To be sure, the authors are not wrong in many of their assessments. As they state,
And an anti-intellectual current does drive much of populist evangelicalism, as Mark Noll famously lamented in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. The castigation evangelicals receive is often far from unwarranted. Yet one can hardly say that evangelicals are the only ones to blame for glossy truisms and simplistic maxims in American culture. The authors ground anti-intellectualism in a larger American enthusiasm for commonsense explanations, plus an aversion to overtly cerebral leaders. The authors are also driven by their search for a version of evangelicalism with greater intellectual awareness and capaciousness, an evangelicalism at home with academic elites that rejects the “democratic impulse” of populist evangelicalism.
Not all evangelicals are rebuked here. Giberson and Stephens have little problem with what the sociologist and Gordon College president Michael Lindsay refers to as “cosmopolitan” evangelicals—the culturally literate, for example, who read the New York Times and accommodate evolution to their faith. The authors highlight laudable individuals such as the Anglican scholar N. T. Wright, the geneticist and NIH director Francis Collins, and the aforementioned Notre Dame historian Mark Noll as intellectually minded evangelicals deserving of cultural and academic praise.
The proclivity for holding positions on the social periphery rather than the cultural center plagues younger evangelicals. Profiling one student’s experience toward the end of the book, the authors show that the fault lines dividing younger evangelicals from their parents seem to be as much intellectual as spiritual. As younger evangelicals become aware of secular inroads, a battle of head-versus-heart ensues. And when such dissonance occurs, a crisis of faith for those willing to accept the veracity of secular claims can be resolved, for some, with a “simple liberalizing,” whereby
One can register uncertainty on issues such as origins, and the difficulty of navigating biblical genres, but modifications on other issues (as those quoted above) suggest a betrayal of long-held positions in Christian orthodoxy and sexual ethics. The authors assume that evangelicalism is a cultural and doctrinal monolith, which it is not. Young-Earth creationism is far from a settled issue within evangelicalism. Outside certain cloistered elements of evangelicalism, debate on the origins of the universe remains open. The same can be said for psychology.
What their paradigm cannot compute, however, is an individual like Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who couples intellectual acumen and columns in the Wall Street Journal with views unacceptable to prevailing academic opinion. Many other public intellectuals who are also Christian dissent from secular opinion as well, and on issues political, cultural, theological, and social. Such evangelicals may hold unpopular positions, but one can hardly characterize differing opinion as uninformed opinion. The assumption here is that intellectual veracity will necessarily entail acceptance of the secular consensus on issues of psychology, science, and so on. The authors seem uncertain about how to handle that breed of evangelical academics with reputable degrees who still cling to positions outside
the mainstream.
Secularism, for Stephens and Giberson, is not a devaluing of the sacred but the informed opinion of scholarly consensus, and The Anointed raises questions about the extent to which secularism and evangelicalism can align with one another when competing truth claims conflict.
A. Thomas Walker is a policy analyst for the Family Foundation.
