Mark Noll: The Evangelical Mind Today

Still looking at last month's First Things.
Mark Noll has credentials to speak with authority regarding matters evangelical. He is more sanguine about the future of Evangelical Christianity than he was a decade ago, but still able to examine a mote or two in the eye.

"But how will evangelicals pursue goals defined by phrases like 'first-rate Christian scholarship' or 'the Christian use of the mind,' when these phrases sound like a call to backsliding for some in the churches and like a simple oxymoron for many in the broader world? For a Christian in the evangelical tradition, the only enduring answer must come from considering Jesus Christ as sustaining the world and all that is in it. In the light of Christ, we can undertake a whole-hearted, unabashed, and unembarrassed effort to understand this world. [Emphasis Added] In a mind fixed on him, there is intrinsic hope for the development of intellectual seriousness, intellectual integrity, and intellectual gravity." Link
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After pointing out room for improvement in the intellectual life of the modern church, he ticks off a string of encouraging developments, particularly but not limited to the world of scholarship.

The article is not old, but it takes on fresh timeliness in the light of the results of the election.