“Worthen finds this intellectual project of postwar evangelicalism largely to be a failure, and she explains why. It produced pseudo-intellectuals like Lindsay and Schaeffer. It fashioned a theological scheme of inerrancy that seemed primarily intended to police ecclesiastical boundaries. And, in the end, the movement’s constituents did not agree on much.”

In 1994, historian Mark Noll published his slim but unsparing treatise Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Soon to be awarded the National Humanities Medal at the White House, Noll was already one of the preeminent evangelical minds of the late twentieth century. Yet his book expressed considerable ambivalence. He identified with evangelical tradition but worried that there was not much of an evangelical mind. His tradition mired in syrupy sentimentalism, holiness anti-intellectualism, and end-times hysteria, Noll contemplated whether it was “simply impossible to be, with integrity, both an evangelical and an intellectual.”

Twenty years later, Molly Worthen’s Apostles of Reason examines the historical context of what Noll refers to as his “epistle from a wounded lover.” In the postwar period, Christianity Today editor Carl Henry, Park Street Church’s Harold Ockenga, cultural prophet Francis Schaeffer, and others sought to articulate a rational defense and efficient distribution of the gospel. Bible colleges became increasingly bureaucratic. Megachurches adopted rationalized marketing strategies, and seminaries used sociological analysis to spark church growth. Missionary agency executives implemented anthropological missions strategies. Even amateur theologians like Hal Lindsey took pains to apply an intellectual gloss to their apocalyptic predictions. American evangelicals undertook a strikingly rational practice of a supernatural faith.

Worthen finds this intellectual project of postwar evangelicalism largely to be a failure, and she explains why. It produced pseudo-intellectuals like Lindsay and Schaeffer. It fashioned a theological scheme of inerrancy that seemed primarily intended to police ecclesiastical boundaries. And, in the end, the movement’s constituents did not agree on much. Mennonites pushed back against the Constantinian proclivities of evangelicalism, and many Wesleyans chafed against the eschatological pessimism of the movement. Worthen writes that there was a “tangled history within each strand of evangelicalism. Each was a blend of different theologies, personalities, and cultures, irreducible to any pristine essence or single authority.” The notion of sola scriptura offered a compelling mantra, but it proved difficult to implement with any coherence. Many conservative Protestant groups, including Mennonites, Wesleyans, Pentecostals, and the Reformed, hesitated even to use the label “evangelical.” Reason itself was not enough to bind very diverse groups together. The crisis of authority within the movement was, and is, very real.

Worthen narrates a gripping tale, managing to cohere a clunky, disparate constellation of religious groups. It is difficult to overstate how witty her writing is, and her sparkling prose is grounded in impeccable research. She demonstrates a considerable talent for marshaling apt illustrations and quotes from wide-ranging archival collections in support of broader arguments.

The great contribution of Apostles of Reason is its interpretive frame. The characters and institutions — the National Association of Evangelicals, Evangelical Theological Society, Christianity Today, and Fuller Seminary — are familiar enough if you have read any George Marsden or Joel Carpenter. But Worthen widens the lens to include groups on the periphery of the reformed neo-evangelical center. Consider the startling variety of evangelical figures and institutions sketched in chapter six alone: Southern California suburbanites, Jesus People (an evangelical version of the 1960s counterculture), charismatic Episcopalians, the fundamentalist Bob Jones University, David Yonggi-Cho’s Pentecostal megachurch in Seoul, and others. Though some remained marginal to the neo-evangelical project, they all asked similar questions, considered the problem of intellectual authority in the modern world, and instituted rational methods in their work. And they did so in a broader religious and political world. One of the book’s true strengths is that it positions evangelical conversations in the broader context of liberation theology, mainline Protestantism, fundamentalism, Catholicism, American political and cultural conservatism, and global religion.

Read More