Puritans very effectively combined sound scholarship and profound spirituality. They led American society in education and science for a century. They founded most of the universities in the new england. Some modern Evangelical scholars lament that that combination has been lost. Evangelical Professor Mark Noll, a former professor at Wheaton College, but now a professor at Harvard University, argues that “the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” Noll is speaking of a comprehensive ability to think theologically across a broad spectrum of life (e.g., politics, arts, culture, and economics). Evangelicals, he argue, have a propensity for shallow analysis of complex cultural issues (See Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994). This is a view held by other scholars as well . See David F. Wells, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams (Eerdmans). “Surely the God who is rendered ‘weightless’ by modern culture [especially evangelical Christians] is quite different from the living god.” Do you agree with Noll and Wells? Is there hope that born Christians again will regain the high ground in culture and thought?
I believe the vanguard of that reclamation project is the evangelical home school movement!