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The latest hit piece in the “elite evangelical” genre

John Fea   |  April 6, 2022 Leave a Comment

Miles Smith, via The Collegian

Over at the Albert Mohler and Andrew T. Walker’s WORLD magazine culture war newsletter, Miles Smith, a history professor at Hillsdale College, seems to think that evangelical historians who criticize Donald Trump must be trying to cozy-up to the secular academic establishment. This is becoming a go-to argument for Christian academics on the right. We have covered it here and here and here. It is easy for Smith to cast judgment on such folks without naming any names. Who are these people, Miles? And how do you know their motives for opposing Trump? Miles Smith sounds more like a mind reader than a Christian intellectual or historian.

Here is a taste of Smith’s piece:

Christian and non-Christian institutions alike have bred a raft of academics intent on cataloging the sins of evangelicalism. Most of those “sins” appear to be based on evangelicals’ deviation from supposed neoliberal policies, particularly on issues of gender and sexuality. But evangelicals, defined broadly as socially conservative Protestants, have not changed all that much in the last half-century. Since 1980, they have generally voted for Republicans and have been conservative regarding sexuality, and they have made strides toward racial equity commensurate with the rest of the country.

Why, then, are so many scholars, especially academics from evangelical schools, so likely to censure American evangelicals for upholding beliefs they’ve always held? Because modern colleges and universities in the United States have become the primary institutional vehicles for an ideology of inclusion that is openly at war with historic Western and Christian understandings of natural law, gender roles, and definitions of marriage.

Religious institutions have not been spared from this ideology. Mickey Mattox, a prominent religious scholar at Marquette University, an officially Roman Catholic institution, rightly noted that the “problem with the new inclusion, of course, is that it’s not inclusive, nor can it be. It is simply a new way of defining sexual morality that masquerades as a bureaucratic, therapeutic project of ‘inclusion.’” More importantly, Mattox argued, it is clear “that this project seeks to displace traditional Catholic accounts of sexual morality.”

I’ll let biblical scholar Greg Carey take things from here:

The author claims prominent evangelical-adjacent scholars are writing to curry favor in a Christianity-hostile academic environment.

It’s an ad hominem argument. No scholars are named, but more importantly, neither are their arguments. /2

— Greg Carey (@Greg_Carey) April 6, 2022

Here’s the thing: all these people were highly accomplished before they ticked off Christianity’s right wing. Some got degrees from very ordinary institutions; others from the top research schools in the country. /4

— Greg Carey (@Greg_Carey) April 6, 2022

The author never entertains the possibility that these scholars are all alarmed by what White evangelicalism has become. Because that’s what their popular books are about: profound rot at the core of White evangelicalism. /6

— Greg Carey (@Greg_Carey) April 6, 2022

But right-wingers will not acknowledge that anyone could critique the movement in good faith. This is a sign of authoritarian rhetoric. We see it in Putin, Xi, Orbán, and American Trumpists.

BTW the author of this piece was just defending Orbán here on Twitter. /8

— Greg Carey (@Greg_Carey) April 6, 2022

But you know who *is* a needy academic? The author holds a contingent position at Hillsdale and has taught at Regent. In other words, he complains about the lack of intellectual freedom in academia, but he’s gotten jobs only in schools that require conservative opinions. /10

— Greg Carey (@Greg_Carey) April 6, 2022

But you know who *is* a needy academic? The author holds a contingent position at Hillsdale and has taught at Regent. In other words, he complains about the lack of intellectual freedom in academia, but he’s gotten jobs only in schools that require conservative opinions. /10

— Greg Carey (@Greg_Carey) April 6, 2022

I can’t judge his scholarship, but I can judge this piece. Not once does he name a name or engage an argument. He defends traditional Christian positions and seems to ignore when those have been dead wrong. He panders to what his audience wants to believe. /12

— Greg Carey (@Greg_Carey) April 6, 2022

If you’re willing to smash the left, and you learn the right rhetorical moves, you might just make a living in right-wing evangelicalism. That applies regardless of whether your arguments have merit. /13-end

— Greg Carey (@Greg_Carey) April 6, 2022

RECOMMENDED READING

REVIEW: What Would Adam Smith Do? How Hillsdale College, the “champion of American exceptionalism,” is shaping civics education in Tennessee

Filed Under: Way of Improvement Tagged With: Christian colleges, conservatism, Elite Evangelicalism, evangelical historians, evangelicalism, Hillsdale College, Miles Smith

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