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Title: The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
Author: Mark A. Noll
Narrator: Trevor Thompson
Format: Unabridged
Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
Language: English
Release date: 06-26-17
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 23 votes
Genres: Religion & Spirituality, Christianity
Publisher's Summary:
"The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." So begins this award-winning intellectual history and critique of the evangelical movement by one of evangelicalism's most respected historians.
Unsparing in his judgment, Mark Noll ask why the largest single group of religious Americans - who enjoy increasing wealth, status, and political influence - have contributed so little to rigorous intellectual scholarship in North America. In nourishing believers in the simple truths of the gospel, why have evangelicals failed at sustaining a serious intellectual life and abandoned the universities, the arts, and other realms of "high" culture?
Noll is probing and forthright in his analysis of how this situation came about, but he doesn't end there. Challenging the evangelical community, he sets out to find, within evangelicalism itself, resources for turning the situation around.
Members Reviews:
Still Relevant. Wonderful narration.
I read this book years ago in seminary. It was compelling then... and now. I loved the chance to revisit old themes and ideas. Mark Noll has captured so much in this book. A classic! It is amazing how ideas transcend time. The narration was spot-on. Trevor Thompson did a great job.
Explains the Evangelical World.
Second "read." It explains so much about what has happened to evangelical Christianity. Worth listening to again. Solid narration by Trevor Thompson. Recommended!
Still a valuable book for Evangelicals to read
Did Trevor Thompson do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?
Reader was so-so. He certainly mispronounced some names, at least as far as I could tell.
Any additional comments?
Many of Noll's criticisms of Evangelical (stipulated components of Evangelicalism: biblicism, conversionism, & activism) thought life are spot on. This book is plenty convicting (and, I think, inspiring/encouraging) even if there are quibbles with some of his criticisms. Particularly powerful are Noll's thoughts on the ways Evangelicalism has "teamed up with" or drawn on Enlightenment goals and methods and Americanism. Specifically, he describes the Evangelical dependence upon 19th-century Enlightenment thought (Scottish Common Sense Realism) and shows some of the limitations of that dependence. Noll demonstrates Jonathan Edwards's Christian stand against the overwhelming tide of Enlightement thought (though not so much in method). Finally, to quote James Brown, on the good foot, his criticisms about the "inductive" method of Bible study were shown to have roots in Enlightenment empiricism. I've long been dubious about "inductive" methods. All this was quite helpful and clarifying to me. Thanks, Dr. Noll.
Interestingly, Noll notes many contributions to Evangelical thought from outside Evangelicalism. Dutch Calvinism, Lutheranism, Anabaptism, Roman Catholicism, mainline Protestantism, and a little bit of Eastern Orthodoxy. He mentions Theonomy / Reconstructionism, noting that it tends toward Libertarianism. He hardly notices Francis Schaeffer, but then again, Schaeffer is was self-consciously dedicated to Christian intellectual enterprise.
Less edifying were Noll's criticisms about Evangelicals and scientific thought.