Dr. David Carey Dixon - September 10, 2023
Growing in Jesus vs. Sentimentalism (Jeremiah 15:15-20)
Mark Noll is a well-known evangelical historian who wrote a book in 1995 entitled The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, in which he contends that the scandal is that there’s simply not much to the evangelical mind. That’s how he starts off this award-winning intellectual history and critique of the evangelical movement. His underlying concern is, why the largest single group of religious Americans –who enjoy increasing wealth, status, and political influence– have contributed so little to rigorous intellectual scholarship in North America. If we truly nourish believers in the simple truths of the gospel, why would that cause evangelicals to flounder when it comes to sustaining a serious intellectual life? Are these two somehow at odds? Why would we not promote a strong evangelical witness in the realms of high culture? His answer has to do with a certain evangelical characteristic that tends to cloud the intellectual horizon: the strong focus on emotions and sentimentalism, which Noll sees as a tendency inherited from Pietism.
Scripture References: Jeremiah 15:15-20
