Review Symposium

When George Marsden published The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship in 1997, I was a couple years away from completing my PhD in English. I was a young Christian studying at a state university in exactly the kind of academic environment hostile to religious faith that Marsden addresses in his book. Having been educated entirely…

The first edition of George Marsden’s book The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship appeared the same year I completed my doctorate. I eagerly read it and it immediately became a touchstone book for my early career. And so, it was with great enthusiasm that I began reading the second edition. How have the ideas aged?…

The primary claims of the first edition of George Marsden’s book, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, remain as salient and persuasive as they were thirty years ago: First, Christian academics may—I will argue should—be doing their scholarship from a Christian point of view (more shortly on what that might mean in practice), and second,…

I wish to begin by thanking Christian Scholar’s Review for the opportunity and privilege to comment on the second edition of George Marsden’s Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship. I first read this book as a student at Grove City College in the mid-­2000s, where it was assigned in an upper-­level history seminar. I have been…

I am very grateful to Christian Scholar’s Review for sponsoring this forum and to the contributors for their kind and constructive remarks. I am especially gratified that the consensus among the commentators seems to be that, while both mainstream academia and American Christianity have changed dramatically in the past three decades, the principles of Christian…