Tuesday Tidbit: the wounds of a "friend"

Mark Noll is something of a legend at Wheaton College. Not too many years ago his office was 2 floors below the spot where I am sitting right now as I type this. From that basement room he wrote a book that dropped like a bomb on campus and sent tremors throughout the Evangelical world. The book was as shocking as it was painfully true.

Here's the opening line: "The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." Ouch.

He continues, "American evangelicals are not exemplary for their thinking, and they have not been so for several generations" (3). Noll includes the text of a dedicatory speech given by Charles Malik for the Billy Graham Center in 1980 (the building in which most of my classes have been held on campus). Malik minced no words: "The greatest danger besetting American Evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. . . . People are in a hurry to get out of the university and start earning money or serving the church or preaching the Gospel. They have no idea of the infinite value of spending years of leisure in conversing with the greatest minds and souls of the past, and thereby ripening and sharpening and enlarging their powers of thinking. The result is that the arena of creative thinking is abdicated and vacated to the enemy." Malik challenged his listeners, "Evangelicals cannot afford to keep on living on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence" (26). Noll says it took him years to fully absorb and process the truth of Malik's words. Evangelicals are known for their activism, but not for their minds.

Noll now teaches at Notre Dame, the premier Catholic liberal arts institution less than 3 hours from here. When I took a class there last summer I lost count of the number of conversations I had that went something like this.

ND student/faculty/person: Where are you studying?
Me: I'm working on a PhD at Wheaton College in Illinois.
ND student/faculty/person (cheerfully): Oh! Do you know Mark Noll? He teaches here.
Me: I've never met him, but I've heard him speak.
ND student/faculty/person: He's great!

Each of those I spoke with gave me two impressions. (1) Mark Noll embodies evangelicalism. And (2) Mark Noll is a prized member of ND's faculty. I gather that he is carving out a space for intellectually rigorous dialogue and changing the way Evangelicals are perceived, little by little. And none too soon. Let's hope that by the time my kids go to college Noll's prophetic critique of Evangelicalism will sound downright strange because it's no longer true.

Wheaton Theology Conference 2013: Christian Political Witness

The annual Wheaton Theology Conference has just come to a close. This year's topic was Christian Political Witness. I enjoyed stimulating lectures by Peter Leithart, Stanley Hauerwas, Mark Noll, and David Gushee and a lunch discussion with retired Anglican Archbishop of Kenya, Rev. David Gitari (in conjunction with our monthly Global Theological Education Discussion Group meeting).

Leithart's message was provocative: God is never violent and never condones violence. The key to his message was learning to define violence the way the Scriptures do: "Violence is unjust and sinful use of force." Leithart called the church the "one true polity and God's main instrument against violence."

Hauerwas made us laugh, groan, and gasp with his profound analysis of the problems facing the church in America (and, yes, with his colorful language). He imagines an ecclesial alternative to power, that is, a church so convinced that "Jesus is Lord" that peaceful non-resistance is the only option. His provocative lecture concluded with these words: "I believe Christendom is finally coming to an end. . . . Let's make the most of it."

Noll spoke about the use of Scripture by Christians in politics, cautioning us that the use of Scripture does not guarantee the "Christianness" of a political endeavor. He called us to a way of reading Scripture marked by comprehensive discernment of biblical theology that takes into account cultural, contextual, and theological issues (as opposed to proof-texting). My fuller report of his lecture may be found on the Wheaton Blog.

Gushee had the delightful task of getting into the "nitty-gritty" of Christian political witness by speaking prophetically on the issues that confront the church today. He took this job seriously, addressing a whopping 10 hot issues in 45 minutes: abortion, creation care, the death penalty, modern capitalism, gay rights, guns, immigration, torture, war-making, and women's issues. His exhortation to us was clear and unequivocal: "We must remain calm and steady in engaging public and political issues, believing that the kingdom of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ."

These lectures should be available for viewing on the conference website in the near future, and they will be released in print by IVP later this year. In the meantime, summaries of many of the lectures will be available on the Wheaton Blog (written by Wheaton PhD students). I've just posted my notes on Mark Noll's lecture here. You can read about Gitari's lecture here. Check back for more lecture notes written by other Wheaton students. It's been a lively conversation!

Has the KJV been bad or good for America?

Mark Noll's answer to the question is "both." Today I had the privilege of hearing him lecture on the topic, "'Isn't This the Book of the People?' The King James Version in America." Mark Noll is an emeritus faculty member of Wheaton College and Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. He has written two dozen books, many of them on the relationship between theology and culture.

Noll outlined the pervasive influence of the KJV on American culture and politics. From the retail business to place names like Beulah and Salem, from art and film to language and literature, there is no doubt that the KJV has left its stamp on America. Even the inaugural addresses of many of our presidents have been laced with quotations and allusions to the King James Version. (He mentioned John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon as recent examples, noting that Barack Obama is the first American president whose general practice is to quote from more modern translations). Also notable are the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963 (quoting Amos 5:24 and Isa 40:4) and Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address, where quotations from four biblical passages in the KJV formed the very skeleton of his speech! There is no question that the KJV's lofty style elevated English literature and shaped public discourse.

The popularity of the KJV in American high culture did not preclude its widespread use among common people, though, even among the marginalized. Noll mentioned feminist and African American readers who preferred the KJV over other versions available. This is remarkable considering its coercive use by proponents of slavery. The King James was so widely available that no one group could co-opt it for their own ends. It was everyone's Bible. That was its strength.

As with most things, strengths can become weaknesses. Noll pointed out some disturbing historical problems arising from the use of the KJV. These problems do not stem from the translation itself (Noll thinks it was a good one for its time), but because of its overwhelming popularity and pervasive use.  The KJV gave America the lofty language with which it could talk about any number of subjects. Noll called it "an omnipresent source" for allusions and quotations which betowed a "sacred aura" on public discourse. The mere cadence of KJV-inspired speech was seen as having a certain authority, quite apart from the content of the message. Critical thinking skills were numbed by familiarity. This resulted in confusion between literary and spiritual influence, and between the role of church and state. It was easy to sound Christian without being one.   

I couldn't write fast enough to capture all of the items in Noll's scathing rebuke of the anti-intellectualism that has been engendered by the KJV. It was shocking. The KJV has, he says, spawned the wrong kind of creation science and the misuse of the Bible to promote slavery, and has even given rise to bibliolatry, or worship of the book itself (in this version!) rather than the God who inspired it. Noll would prefer a dozen modern dynamic-equivalence translations over a lofty, literal, archaic one because the meaning of Scripture is made plain to those who need to know Jesus Christ. He asked, referring to the ability of modern translations to speak to lost souls, "Isn't the worse translation the better Bible?" [This, in case you're wondering, did not go over well with Dr. Leland Ryken, in whose honor the conference is being held.  Ryken evidently feels that something crucial is lost when lofty style is abandoned in favor of common speech.]

In short, Noll sees both positive and negative effects of the KJV on American culture. Its popularity was a boon to biblically-infused literary expression.  But any monopoly has its drawbacks. We need healthy dialogue, not dominance of one point of view. Noll is encouraged by the signs that evangelicals are beginning to make substantive intellectual contributions to society. Ironically, the number of empty seats in the auditorium may have been an indication that he is right. While most evangelicals are willing to admit the great literary, cultural, and spiritual legacy of the KJV, it appears that they are also eager to move on.