The Evangelical Brain

A friend of mine forwarded an interesting article from the Wall Street Journal. Written by Jonathan Fitzgerald, the article called “Winning Not Just Hearts But Minds” discusses the current interest in intellectualism as it relates to evangelicalism, attempting to suggest that some work must be done on this frontier.

What struck me most about this article was how bizarre it sounded to me. Not because I’m not a capital E-evangelical or because, as an Episcopalian, I have some latent Anglo-Catholic tendencies that prevent me from fully understanding the movement (which is inherently BS), but because I found the very basis for this line of argument patently absurd. My primary arguments are these:

Not all evangelicals are Evangelicals
His arguments are based in unarticulated opinions and suppositions
His (borrowed) model for the future is outdated and doesn’t take modern or postmodern education concerns.

Instead of boring you with my arguments, I’ll post them in the comments section.

But the article did get me thinking. I thought about how most mainline churches could use a bit more evangelical zeal AND intellectualism. Though we pride ourselves on being thinkers, it sometimes feels like we’re the champs of the kiddy pool, measured to such low standards.
Mostly I am thinking about how strange it is to bifurcate our theology into halves when shared thinking makes us stronger. Living as an evangelical doesn’t allow us to feel rooted as our catholic halves long for. In fact, this bifurcation seems to not be a separation of our heart and head, but a separation of the hemispheres of the brain itself. The rational, logical, ordered half from the creative, emotional half. Perhaps this brings new insight to the phrase “half-brained”.

Don’t hear me as suggesting that we should be moderates. That we should live in the middle of the road (I’m not throwing away the via media—keep reading!) as it is currently understood. In the current political climate, being moderate means holding the majority and minority hostage to gain political influence and power. It also serves as a means of being now when one group is looking to reclaim the past and the other is looking to redefine the future. This iteration of moderate and the ‘middle road’ is compromising in the face of a win-win situation.

I’m speaking instead to a both/and understanding. Seeing our love for the Gospel and our worship of GOD as central. Or better, holding these close to our hearts, knowing that the hierarchies distract us from fully embodying our faith; that the weight of grasping our faith in our hands means that we hold it in tension with gravity and the world around us. Living and loving fully. Gathering in excitement and anticipation: whether this be a solemn or joyous time. This is the fully-realized Christian brain.

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One response

addowns

December 21, 2009

1) Not all evangelicals are Evangelicals. The late 20th Century Evangelical has only a passing similarity with the historic and postmodern evangelicals. We may want to paint all with the simple brush, but Evangelicals are a narrow strand of evangelicalism. Fitzgerald seems to treat all as the same.

2) The stated division between evangelicalism and intellectualism appears to be based on unarticulated opinions and suppositions. What I can deduce is that the author presupposes that a) Many Evangelicals have an anti-intellectual bias; b) There is a mental inability on the part of many evangelicals to hold zeal of the gospel (ostensibly in the heart) in tandem with reason (in the head); c) That all evangelicals are the same and have the same theological hang-ups (see the first problem 1); and d) That people taking pot-shots at others should be taken seriously as critics and receive an equal voice in the discussion.
I certainly don’t mean to disrespect Mr. Fitzgerald in any way. He seems to have researched his subject thoroughly. I also don’t run in the circles that he does, where the conversation is likely to be entirely different from the one I would have. I do want to highlight, however, that I don’t see any true problem with being evangelical and intellectual or any implicit difficulty in balancing these two pursuits. They don’t seem mutually exclusive, and quite to contrary, they seem mutually dependent.

My personal story involves my passion increasing the more knowledgeable about the subject I become. At the same time, mastery of the subject becomes increasingly elusive, which is interesting. I became quite evangelical in seminary precisely because I was learning about Scriptural authorship, argued with my Systematic Theology professors, and ingesting church history like Krispy Kremes. In fact, many evangelical giants are devout believers in reading Greek and Hebrew, which requires not only a lot of training, but is intellectually rigorous.

My own bias rears its ugly head in articles like this when I sense that critics are granted an unfairly elevated position. This is because I am increasingly tired of people whose theological beliefs, practices, and expectations are on the fringe of Christian thought cherry-picking from the cheap seats AND being taken seriously. Almost as bad is the perpetually skeptic curmudgeon that not only claims “there’s nothing new under the sun,” but that EVERYTHING that comes along is a repackaged past movement AND therefore must be treated like the trash that the past movement has become. These are intellectually lazy and dishonest positions that are being treated as equal to the people who are living out a totally new experience or have much broader intellectual and/or theological support.

3) His (borrowed) model for the future is outdated and doesn’t take modern or postmodern education concerns. The third (and final) problem with the piece is that Fitzgerald gives weight to the final argument by John Marks Reynolds that the solution to the intellectual divide is that evangelicals should be trained in both Greco-Roman philosophy and Judaeo-Christian theology. I’m not sure what this actually means. It does seem to suggest a return to premodern thought and historic theology. Inherent in this supposition is not only a Western bias, but it refuses to deal with the current conversation over education at all! Current interest in education (not just theological, but K-12 and college, too) is in developing ways to deal with multiple intelligences and learning styles to better help each person realize their potential. This isn’t some pie-in-the-sky proposition, but a way for the physically gifted to flourish as artists and craftspersons, not get locked into fields that are incompatible (or moderately so) with their skill set. The implications of these changes on the way we live our lives are tremendous, and the changes themselves are also Biblically sound. Attempting to shoehorn our children into the current academic model is bad enough for our culture. To ask us to read Plato and Aristotle as the height of reason further shackles the postmodern brain within a forgotten and obsolete paradigm.

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Drew Downs

The Evangelical Brain

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