Under the theme: “Are we losing more than we’re gaining” I noticed the words “An Anti-intellectual faith and the tragic consequences for Britain’s Evangelical Awakening. “ I just had to read the article and smuggled the magazine to our office consoling myself that it is already an older issue and that no-one at the base seems to read them anyway.
In his article Jonathan W. Rice relates how the evangelicals impacted British society in the 18th and 19th century. They played a key role in ending slavery, abolishing sati and infant sacrifice in India, bringing education, rehabilitating prostitutes, reforming prisons, lunatic asylums etc. Yet they were also known for their petty legalisms and repressive behavior codes. The mixed results are summarized by a historian in the following way:
“Between 1780
and 1850 the English ceased to be one of the most
aggressive, brutal, rowdy, outspoken, riotous, cruel and bloodthirsty nations in
the world and became one of the most inhibited, polite, tender-minded, prudish
and hypocritical”
One of the saddest results of their “practical” religion however was the intellectual weakness of it.
"True Christianity, they believed, did not entail entering the marketplace
of ideas. They did not think it worthwhile to intelligently engage the skeptics,
German Biblical critics, agnostics and atheistic philosophers of their day.
Instead, they claimed, God had called them to a purely practical faith: to send
forth missionaries, to help the poor and downtrodden, to better peoples’
manners. These were the things pleasing to God; not intellectual debate or true
apologetics."
Rice goes on describing how as a result of this Anti-intellectual tendency an alarming number of the children and grandchildren of these Evangelicals turned from the faith of their parents. He tells the tragic story of the classic author George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) who at some stage wrote that she would be happy if the only music she ever heard again would be worship music. A couple of years later she rejected Christianity after reading Hennell’s Inquiry concerning the Origin of Christianity and Strauss’ Life of Jesus and became an ardent atheist.
What makes this anti-conversion of Evans so sad is the fact that the claims of both Hennell and Strauss have been completely refuted in modern times. Rice asks why Evangelicals from the 19th century failed to produce solid responses to Straus and others. Hennell and Strauss however have their modern day equivalents in the Jesus Seminar, Michael Baigent etc. Rice heckles the lack of response to the Anti-Christian propaganda of Arun Shourie in India and I am afraid that the situation for a few exceptions of people like McGrath and Wright is not much better in Europe or America.
The Anti-intellectual tendency of evangelical and charismatic Christianity of our day has bothered me for years. In the last year however as I started to participate in discussions on an internet forum, I have become increasingly aware of the unpaid bills of the section of Christianity in which I have been actively involved over the last two decades.
I have heard stories like that of Mary Ann Evans from different people. One of the key elements is usually a very naive literalistic reading of the Bible and some of the infallibility claims made about it. When people discover that the world is not as black and white as they have learned, it seems that they are often shocked into blindness. If only there would be guides who could take them by the hand and lead them through their first shocked moments into appreciating the rainbow of the colorful riches of a personal God displayed in the Scriptures. Were it not for a couple of people like Ed Sherman, Dirk Bouman, Wilrens Hornstra and the books of Wright, Peterson and others, I guess I might have chosen the safe dark corner of blind intellectualism where things fit nicely into the black and white categories albeit that all things end up being black.
Anti-intellectualism is an easy but in the long run devastating response to the new antichristian voices of our day. The Anti-intellectual sounds I often hear even in my own Christian community somehow remind me of the unwise choices of bank managers in the last couple of years. The immediate results are not bad. We can simplify faith with formulas and slogans. In the long run however, we pay a dear price when we do not teach people that loving God is not only done with your heart, but also with your whole mind.
The whole article of Rice can be read in the Archives of Mission Frontiers in the March-April 2008 issue under the title: “An Anti-intellectual faith and the tragic consequences for Britain’s Evangelical Awakening. “
