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Extended Review

Restoring the Soul of the University — An Extended Review

Those of us working in the world of higher education often hear about the fragmentation of American universities. Many observers, inside and outside the university alike, have lamented that “multiversities” have lost any coherent educational center. Accusations abound of proliferating programs, endless elective options, growing preference for professional and pre-professional programs over the liberal arts…
July 15, 2018
Article

Anti-Intellectualism and the Integration of Faith and Learning

How have evangelical faculties fared in their efforts to move beyond the scandal Mark Noll so sharply exposed nearly a quarter of a century ago? This is the question I take up in this essay, writing as a mid-career faculty member of a Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) institution. What follows are historical…
July 15, 2018
Article

The Parachurch Down Under: A Case Study

A Scottish clergyman once described Australia as the “most godless place under heaven.”James Denney, as cited in Thomas R. Frame, Anglicans in Australia (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2007), 125. Although his comment was ill-informed, as a provocative statement it clues us in to something of a popular sentiment regarding the religiosity of…
July 15, 2018
Article

Addressing the Evangelical Mind-Body Problem: The Local Church as Learning Organization

are those who have become lifelong learners and lovers of others. … We have entered the story of another people, Israel, and we entered as learners.—Willie James Jennings, “The Place of Redemption: Putting the Church on the Ground”Willie James Jennings, “A Place of Redemption: Putting Church on the Ground” (lecture, Slow Church conference, Englewood Christian…
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What is the State of the Evangelical Mind on Christian College Campuses?

Does Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind still have relevance today, more than two decades after its publication in 1994?1Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994). As a historian who has spent 16 years in a Christian college affiliated with the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU)…
July 15, 2018
Introduction

Introduction to the Theme Issue on the State of the Evangelical Mind

Regardless of how one defines it, American evangelicalism is at a crossroads. The last quarter of the twentieth century was replete with signs of prosperity. Many churches, parachurch organizations, universities, and seminaries grew at unprecedented rates. Some analysts argued that the individuals populating those institutions were contributing to an intellectual renaissance. For example, in the…
Article

Psychological Contributions to Understanding Prejudice and the Evangelical Mind

Much has been written about evangelicalism and the scandalous or otherwise state of the evangelical mind from historical and theological perspectives.See, for example, Harriet A. Harris, Fundamentalism and Evangelicals, Oxford Theological Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press,…