The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
Debby Applegate wrote a biography of Henry Ward Beecher called The Most Famous Man in America. It is one of the finest such writings I have ever read about anyone, and she presents the famous preacher in all his splendid and sordid reality.
Beecher’s father, Lyman Beecher, was a noted evangelical, but his son less so. She contrasts current evangelicals to those of the nineteenth century with this brief and highly illuminating observation: “In the twentieth century” (she published her book in 2006) “evangelical Christians came to be characterized as reactionary and anti-intellectual, but in the 1830s they were the nation’s most ardent advocates of education, believing that ignorance and sin went hand in hand.”
What a cogent observation that is! Much of American evangelicalism in the 18th century did prized learning and intellectual rigor. Jonathan Edwards was a theological giant in the second quarter of the 1700s, even if we might disapprove of some of his ideas, which to us are outdated. Edwards was a leader of the Great Awakening of the early-to- mid-18th century, just as Henry Ward Beecher was a luminary of sorts for the Second Great Awakening in the mid-19th century. Many of the finest American colleges of the 1700s through the early 1900s were founded by evangelicals, and the positive influence of those institutions continues in the present. But, as Dr. Applegate says, today many if not most of the best-known evangelicals appear to be both reactionary and anti-intellectual.
Why is that? For one thing, only a small percentage of American college graduates over the past two generations have received a “liberal” education, meaning an emphasis on history, literature, comparative religion, general science, the social sciences, and foreign languages. Instead, they concentrate on what leads to the most lucrative employment and on “STEM”: science, technology, engineering, and math. The primary purpose of a liberal education is to teach people to think. The primary purpose of a technologically-oriented education is to teach what others have discovered about certain subjects, subjects that can be utilized in finance, sales, and the mass production of products. Thinking is strongly encouraged in a liberal education; utilizing the thinking of others is the essence of a technical education.
For another thing, too many contemporary evangelical Christians do not think about what they are taught; they simply accept it without contemplating its validity. The more conservative the content, the more they may be emotionally drawn to it, but there is limited intellectual content in it, except among the evangelical elite. In addition, this attitude is far too frequently attached to conservative politics. For the masses, simple is good; complexity is, if not bad, then at least to be avoided, because it might lead to questioning, and that might definitely be bad.
All of us engage in undeliberate thinking. However, too many of the fleeting thoughts of evangelicals about long-held doctrines, and especially about newly-held political positions, are damaging the Church of Jesus Christ and the American body politic.
From the time of America’s founding in the late 18th century until the early 20th century, evangelicals were among the most effective actors on the stage of American life; now too many of them have become mere reactors with respect to the events in which we are all immersed. Active people highly value thought; reactive people fear it, because it might lead to new patterns of thinking, which might lead to new, previously untested activities.
Twenty-first century evangelicalism has inverted itself from what it was in the early days of our republic. If it resurrects itself in its historic essence, it will be a major force for a brighter future. If it does not, it will find itself mired in some of the worst tendencies of the past.
- July 8, 2021
John Miller is Pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC. More of his writings may be viewed at www.chapelwithoutwalls.org.