The evangelical church stands on the brink of a real crisis. Modern culture, with its 'soundbite' ideology, its consumerism, and its emphasis on 'feeling good' rather than thinking correctly, is making massive inroads into a church eager to attract people from the outside.
The result is, in many quarters, an uncritical abandonment of doctrinal emphases, of hard-headed theological thinking, and of historical evangelical identity, for an emphasis on experience over doctrine, and the 'feel-good factor' over thoughtfulness. In such a climate, theologians should have a key part to play in calling the church back to the Bible, and in helping it to think critically about its practices and agenda.
In theory, this should be entirely possible. Earlier this year, I attended a conference of evangelical scholars where we were told that the gains made by evangelicalism in the academy, as represented by the number not just of university posts but of university chairs held by evangelicals, far outstripped anything earlier generations would ever have dreamed possible. And yet, like Mark Twain who commented that reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated, I find myself regarding reports of evangelical scholarship's life to have been blown out of all proportion. Some of the claims for the gains made by evangelical scholarship are undoubtedly true, but some are based more upon sleight of hand rather than upon real achievement. As a member of the 'academy' and an 'evangelical', it saddens me to write this - but at least coming from an insider, my assessment cannot be dismissed as the ramblings of an anti-intellectual bigot.
