Controversies that should have died decades and even centuries ago are kept alive by organizations invested in the answers of yesteryear, often because those old answers, say stalwarts, came from the Bible and are believed to have been laid down by God. These answers informed the thinking of a long-gone society that, through the rose-tinted glasses of those nostalgic for a better time, looks moral, family-oriented, and respectful of God’s laws in ways that the present age is not.
Many evangelicals, skeptical that a PhD after a name gives any reasonable authority, have come to sympathize with and even celebrate Fox News’ and its most well-known anti-intellectual, Bill O’Reilly. O’Reilly, who pits his understanding against that of experts in their fields of study, is fond of scoffing, “sorry, professor, not buying it,” suggesting that expertise is really just opinion.
There are many academic historians, geneticists, psychologists, and other intellectuals within the Christian tradition who do not deny the knowledge claims of their respective fields. Such believers, however, are viewed with suspicion if they do not speak the language of biblical inerrancy, anti-evolution, and conservative politics embraced by other Christians. The intellectual trajectory of American evangelicalism is not encouraging.
The full article is available here
