Patheos has a fascinating and frustrating interview with sociologist and historian of religion Rodney Stark. What is fascinating is everything Stark says in the interview, which is mostly about the Crusades. What is frustrating is trying to decide what to excerpt when the entire piece is so quotable.
Rather than pick a selection from the part about the Crusades (“Until about the start of the 20th century, the Muslims didn’t even remember there had been Crusades.”) or the part about science and religion (“Without the religious background, there wouldn’t be any science, because the fundamental notion that separated the West from everybody else was the notion that God is rational and created a rational universe, so there were rules out there to be discovered.”) I’ll share his views—which I whole-heartedly concur with—about evangelicals and politics:
Patheos: Some progressives say that evangelicals are making the same mistake on the opposite side, by confusing their faith with conservative politics.
Stark: What happens with “progressives” is that they cannot get any traction amongst evangelicals. Their audience, or their intended audience, is largely among the “mainline” congregations and the media that favor them. I don’t think they have found much traction amongst most evangelicals — and I think that’s for the same reason that everybody has fled the old mainline. You get tired of hearing that capitalism is sinful and that Cuba is the way of the future, and other kinds of idiocy like that. Yet when I look at evangelicals using survey data, they are not a bunch of right-wing Republicans. They’re conservative, but they’re about equally Republicans and Democrats. It’s religious and not political conservatism that defines them.
Very clearly, evangelicals don’t like abortion. They do like school prayer and a few things like that. If those were right-wing issues, then sure, evangelicals would be right-wing. But if they’re not right-wing issues — and the majority of Americans agree with evangelicals on those issues — then I fail to see that there’s anything right-wing or scandalous about it. But when it comes down to meat and potatoes politics, evangelicals are not that different from the rest of America, and that’s important for people to understand. A whole lot of them voted for Obama. Whether they will do so again, I don’t know.
So, I think those guys are entirely wrong. I am tired of people like Mark Noll worrying about “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.” What do they expect? I don’t consider it a scandal that a bunch of laymen don’t want to read academic books. It’s not a scandal that ordinary evangelicals are not left-wing seminary professors.
Too many evangelical intellectuals want to be the house conservative at the liberal banquet. So Martin Marty will invite you to his table because you can be the token evangelical. I’m sorry, but I’m not a token anything.
(Via: Justin Taylor)
May 18th, 2010 | 12:42 pm
As a non-believer I have never understood popular stereotypes of Evangelicals (whom I usually refer to as Bible Christians). Their role in the US is complex, and they are aggressively out to take over the US nor are they the obnoxious so-called Christians you encounter on YouTube and other venues.
Most Evangelicals take seriously the commandment to love your neighbor, even when your neighbor is a non-believer or “heretic” (as the Good Samaritan, praised by Jesus the Jew, was a Jewish heretic).
When Evangelicals ally with the right it is for a very limited number of reasons. If they were to deeply examine many of the anti-Democratic ideas and policies of the right they might recoil in horror.
May 18th, 2010 | 12:43 pm
Whoops, I meant to say that Evangelicals are NOT out to aggressively take over the US.
May 18th, 2010 | 12:58 pm
Based on this excerpt, I’m skeptical of Stark’s basic reading comprehension. Noll’s book isn’t particularly about laymen, but the fact that Evangelicalism as a whole consistently fails to produce serious engagement with the educated world. The scandal is that Evangelicalism churns out undergrad and graduate level students who can’t and don’t engage the intellectual world around them. The scandal is that despite the fact that universities set the intellectual agenda of higher education, there are no major Evangelical universities and Evangelicals have almost no influence at this level of society.
Stark’s book hasn’t exactly got glowing reviews either. Why are we promoting this again?
May 18th, 2010 | 1:09 pm
sounds more like his own complaints and personal convictions than anything else.
May 18th, 2010 | 3:40 pm
As to Nathan’s concern over an assumed “scandal” I suspect most Evangelical grad students hold somewhat similar views as Dr. Thomas Sowell’s recent book concerning “intellectuals”. A recent reviewer went so far as to say:
Too many educators substitute “intellect” for “wisdom”, imo.
May 18th, 2010 | 5:11 pm
@49erDweet,
You’re assuming a completely different meaning of “intellectual” than either Noll or I. Such equivocation is entirely unhelpful and misleading. Stark could be classed as an intellectual, quite easily under your criteria certainly, so why the ad hoc allegiance to him but dismissal of others?
Part of wisdom is realizing that some persons who dedicate themselves to the mastery of a discipline are actually more qualified than oneself to discuss their field of expertise. If such a person happens to be an “intellectual,” it does not automatically disqualify their arguments. (I should also note that Stark is going outside his field here: he’s a sociologist, not a historian.)
May 18th, 2010 | 5:23 pm
Rodney Stark wrote some of my favorite books from the last 10 years, and this interview is the best thing I’ve read all week. Thanks for posting it.
May 18th, 2010 | 8:28 pm
Nathan, my point was that many learned Evangelicals are not as enamored of interplay with the intellectual life as some might suppose, thus that could explain your findings. Not all, of course. Many seem more interested in developing an expertise in the “Apologies”. The late Francis Schaeffer comes to mind.
Mea culpa if I misled. As to Stark, I’m newly exposed to his writings and have yet to form much of an opinion. Thank you for caring enough to respond.
May 26th, 2010 | 4:16 pm
I fail to see why “serious engagement with the intellectual world” is important. The intellectual world in general has proven woefully out of touch with the real world.
Most of us evangelicals prefer to have lives instead of being a know-it-all blowhard trying to impress other know-it-all blowhards.
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