What is it about the younger generation of manly Protestants who dabble in Christian nationalism and write for outlets like American Reformer and Davenant?  With all of the calls for Protestant ressourcement (the last syllable pronounced “maw”!), the awareness of the past among some of these writers is surprisingly limited when it comes to recent history. The case of evangelical elites as scholars with standing in the mainstream academy is a case in point.

A couple of recent complaints about the failure of evangelical institutions to hire and sustain scholars of distinction echo Aaron Renn’s argument about the absence of evangelical elites. [link to first article.  One asserts that evangelical colleges do not snatch up “credentialed, talented, and scholarly” Protestants as they should. Why didn’t said institutions either snatch them up for themselves or work to propel them to “mainstream” posts? The piece goes into accusation mode:

 You, Evangelical elite, are not retaining potential talent, those people who fit the bill, who are “200% respectable,” as Renn put it. If you fail in this regard, you will not be able to reproduce or extend your rule. You aspire to elite status, you take all your cues from the broad mainstream elite world, but you neither staff your own colleges (i.e., elite production) nor staff those outside your predominantly clerical institutions.

The other complaint faults evangelicals for failing to think in theological categories about their scholarly work:

The bottom line is that Catholic intellectuals tend to assume that all theology is relevant to all areas of intellectual endeavor. If it’s not obvious how, it’s still worth assuming it nevertheless until it becomes apparent. On the other hand, theology for the evangelical scholar tends to be a sort of God-of-the-gaps, an occasional mortar to stick in crumbling joinery. 

What both of these writers, as well as Aaron Renn, miss is that as recently as twenty-five years ago evangelical scholars were actually elites in American universities.  The October 2000 issue of The Atlantic Monthly devoted a cover story to scholars at (then) Calvin College and Wheaton College as part of “The Opening of the Evangelical Mind.”  Part of Alan Wolfe’s conclusion after covering the breadth of evangelical colleges and scholarship was a warning:

So long as they continue to marginalize themselves, evangelicals will be unable to equal the accomplishments of the generation that brought us Marsden, Noll, Plantinga, and Wolterstorff. That would be the true scandal of the evangelical mind.

That negative judgment should not obscure the recognition that evangelical institutions actually had nurtured elite scholars in philosophy, history, and sociology (for starters).  To be sure, Wolfe faults evangelicalism for separatism and parochialism which could support those calling for more and better evangelical elites.  Someone could say that with all the accomplishments of the generation of scholars associated with Mark Noll and George Marsden, they were still unable to create a set of institutions that reliably produce elite professionals.

And yet, those calling for evangelical scholars today do not consider the effort to create an evangelical mind that began roughly in the 1970s (I am currently writing a book about this, tentatively titled, The Rise and Fall of the Evangelical Mind).  That collective endeavor which went from Gordon College in the East to Westmont College in the West, and depended on the Rust Belt center of gravity at Calvin, Wheaton, and Notre Dame (thanks to a Protestant provost), lasted all the way until 2015 or so (which coincides with Renn’s point about the start of the Negative World).  Today’s proponents of Protestant scholarship could well consider the earlier building blocks of the evangelical mind and how it unraveled. 

But the failure to consider the recent past is not the fault alone of the recent advocates of an evangelical elite.  Even those who promoted the creation of an evangelical mind, complete with a Kuyperian w(orld-and-life-vie)-w had not studied the efforts of mainline Protestants in the 1950s who themselves argued for a Protestant mind.  Those Christian scholars were remarkably successful in creating religion departments at colleges and universities where undergraduates studied Scripture, ethics, and church history.  That endeavor also ran out of gas eventually, partly because the professionalization of religion as an academic discipline inevitably watered down the aggressively Protestant character of religious studies.  But this is another case from which advocates of an evangelical elite might learn about the arguments, scholarship, and institutions that made a Protestant mind possible. 

Despite the lessons that history might teach about the creation of an evangelical elite now, a fundamental hiccup in the ideal, whether mainline Protestant, evangelical, or Christian nationalist, is the distinction between the sacred and the secular that pietists (high and low brow) refuse.  Simply put, teaching Sunday school and preaching is different from teaching an undergraduate seminar at a private college.  The church is not the academy.  The credentials the Christian ministry requires – a seminary degree and ordination – is not the same as the gate by which scholars may enter the academy – a terminal degree and accreditation.  The church is a private and voluntary institution in ways the academic is public and involuntary (through government oversight and regulation). 

Some proponents of aggressive Protestantism may object to the academy’s use of standards other than the ones that govern the church.  They could argue that all institutions should submit to Christ (which is the academic version of Christian nationalism).  But that is not how the world of universities and specialized research works.  Nor is the lack of a Christian vision the reason that Protestants use for using evaluating academic, medical, and legal experts whether or not they are Christian. 

What makes scholarship special is its capacity to make sense of most parts of the world, not that it is based on the Christian faith of the scholar.  To suggest that Christians need Christian scholars so that believers can have trustworthy learning is as pietistic as it is fundamentalist.