Yesterday was our first day of discussion in Created and Called for Community (CCC). The students read Stanley Hauerwas‘s 2010 First Things essay “Go With God: An Open Letter to Young Christians on Their Way to College.” After some conversation about...
anti-intellectualism
Trump Thought Kansas City Was in Kansas. Conservative Politico Matt Schlapp Backed Him Up
If you want to understand the state of Republican politics today, just read this tweet from Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union: Dear East coast establishment: Kansas City, Kansas is in Kansas. — Matt Schlapp (@mschlapp) February...
Is Evangelicalism Populist? Should it Be?
After I wrote my recent post on Chris Gehrz’s treatment of evangelical populism, I pulled Mark Noll’s Scandal of the Evangelical Mind off the shelf. Some critics of Mark Galli’s Christianity Today editoral have suggested that evangelicalism has always been a...
Is *First Things* a Populist Magazine?
I check the First Things website every day and often link to pieces I find interesting. But I stopped reading First Things regularly after Richard John Neahaus passed away. (I used to subscribe and read each issue cover-to-cover). On Friday, ...
Yet Another Piece About Liberty University’s Quest to Become the “Evangelical Notre Dame”
These articles show-up every now and then. I’ve written about them here and here and here. Here is a taste of J. Brady McCollough’s long-form piece at the Los Angeles Times: Signs offering football ticket discounts cover the campus, and posters...
A Morning with Christian College Provosts and Student Life Leaders
I was in St. Petersburg, Florida yesterday with the provosts and student development administrators from schools affiliated with the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU). I spoke at a session titled “Christian Colleges in the Age of Trump: Challenges...
Intellectualism and Anti-Intellectualism in the Age of Trump
Here is a taste of Adam Water‘s and E.J. Dionne‘s recent piece at Dissent: “Is Anti-Intellectualism Ever Good for Democracy?” Intellectuals are not entitled to special privileges, and “intellectualism” should not be seen as a superior way of life. But the...
Are Catholics the “Brains” of the Christian Right?
Check out Gene Zubovich’s piece at Aeon titled “Evangelicals bring the votes, Catholics bring the brains.” I think he is largely correct. When evangelicals mobilised politically in the 1970s and declared a ‘culture war’ against the menace of secularism, they...
Will Someone Please Explain to Donald Trump That He Did Not Denuclearize North Korea
Here is Uri Friedman at The Atlantic: Donald Trump got little of substance out of his summit with Kim Jong Un. But that didn’t stop him from making a triumphant, demonstrably false claim about how things went. Trump declared in an early-morning tweet...
Have Conservative Intellectuals Gone Lowbrow?
Ohio University historian Kevin Mattson thinks so. He argues that conservative intellectuals are now in the business of attacking “educated elites.” He calls this behavior “a grave danger to our democratic discourse.” Here is a taste of his piece at Democracy:...
Salmon Rushdie on Global Anti-Intellectualism
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qAgmpX6c4U&w=560&h=315]...
The Very Latest from the Randall Stephens Collection
Here it is: Click here for the rest of the Randall Stephens Collection....
Trump’s Assault on Knowledge
Ariel Dorfman, a writer and literature professor at Duke, is the latest intellectual to take on Trump’s anti-intellectualism. Here is a taste of his piece at the New York Review of Books: There has always been a disturbing strand of anti-intellectualism...
Alan Jacobs Teaches Us How To Think
Baylor University humanities professor Alan Jacobs‘s latest book is How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds. Over at Religion News Service, Jacobs talks with journalist Jonathan Merritt about the book and the state of Christian thinking. Here...
George Will: Trump is Disabled
Conservative columnist George Will believes that Donald Trump is incapable of speaking and thinking clearly. “This seems to be not a mere disinclination but a disability,” he writes, “it is not merely the result of intellectual sloth but of...
Readers Respond to My Piece on Evangelicals, Fear, and Anti-Intellectualism
Read the piece here. A distinguished professor of religion at a church-related, non-evangelical liberal arts college writes: Well done, John. Though I’d want to push on the anti-intellectualism a bit. We want to go beyond attention to verifiable evidence to...
Evangelical Fear and Anti-Intellectualism in the Age of Trump
Here is a taste of my latest column at Religion News Service: (RNS) Seventy-six percent of white American evangelicals supported President Trump’s recent executive order temporarily banning travelers from seven predominantly Muslim nations as well as all refugees, according to Pew Research (59...
Quote of the Day
The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind. An extraordinary range of virtues is found among the sprawling throngs of evangelical Protestants in North America, including great sacrifice in spreading the message...
We Have A LOT of Work to Do
This is what anti-intellectual populism breeds. Richard Hofstadter looks like a genius right now. So does Mark Noll. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSrEEDQgFc8&w=560&h=315]...
Church Libraries as an Antidote to "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind"
God calls Christians to love Him with all their heart, soul, strength, and mind. (Luke 10:27). Many Christians are pretty good at orienting their heart, soul, and strength toward their Creator, but few really know what it means to love...