An Evangelical Is…
A few days ago, I posted on the Evangelical Manifesto, a recent document signed by a number of leading evangelicals which hopes to clarify what it means to be evangelical. John Mark Reynolds, in his post What is an Evangelical?, addresses this same issue. I like this portion of his overall discussion:
Evangelicals are committed to reason. They love books, ideas, debates, and finding things out. All over America millions of Evangelicals will attend seminars by philosophers such as William Lane Craig or theologians such as John Piper. When they are losing an argument, they think harder, adapt, and try again.
Like all post-moderns, they too are tempted by anti-intellectualism, but there is a cottage industry of books, such as those by J.P. Moreland, calling them back to their better selves.
Evangelicals want the truth. Not for them are soft platitudes that hide problems. If they became persuaded that their religious ideas were wrong, they would change their minds. For Evangelicals part of faith is a kind of knowledge. They care about being right and hope to avoid being wrong.
Of course, Evangelicals know that reason has limits. They know intellectualism is just as dangerous as fundamentalism. In a mixed up and complicated world, Evangelicals are practical and suspicious of rigid, Utopian ideologies that don’t take into account fundamental human ignorance.