On Popular Theology: The Roots and Fruits of Anti-Intellectualism

The following is a paper I presented at the annual conference of Theological Fellowship at Covenant Seminary. It is a brief expedition into the historical and theological reasons for why popular theology differs so greatly from what we find in academic circles - most importantly, why many Christians feel little or no need to study theology. 

Reviving Popular Theology: Re-Situating^[1]Theology for the Ekklesia

INTRODUCTION — Who is theology for? That is, who does theology? In an important sense the answer is everyone.^[2]No one’s conception of the transcendent is completely blank — even the New Atheists have a conception of the divine (which they then reject). We are imbued with the capacity for imagination, and being creatures of God, our imaginations are primed for thoughts about God. But for many in the pews, the answer to this question is that theology is for the theologians, viz. the pastors and scholars and teachers of the church. The average churchgoer need not trouble themselves with dry doctrinal studies. But is theology “proper” — the ecclesial and academic discipline, the accompanying institutions, etc. — reserved only for erudite individuals with several letters after their names? Or is it something endemic to Christian discipleship? In this paper, I will argue for the latter: in an environment of occasionally explicit anti-intellectualism and otherwise general ignorance – which has been shaped by decades of cultural and political formation – we are invited to remember the calling of every Christian to grow in knowledge and grace. After a brief historical survey, we will tour the dogmatic infrastructure humming underneath, and tease out some of its pastoral implications.

PART 1/The Historical Sector — Evangelicalism in America came to the fore as the country was in its early formation^[3]- because of this heritage, evangelicalism has deeply influenced American culture and society since its foundation. With roots going back to the Reformation, evangelicalism brought a clearer sense of self and a deep trust in the Bible as God’s word, and these two ideas have inexorably shaped American identity.

            Two Great Awakenings occurred roughly forty years before and forty years after the Revolutionary War and the Declaration of Independence. During the First Great Awakening in the 1730s and 40s, institutional churches and their accompanying theologies were at the forefront, and the revivals which spread across the country were largely within existing denominations. More than seventy years later, the Second Great Awakening was a grassroots movement; its calling cards were anti-institutional, pro-individual, anti-intellectual sentiments. Wesleyan challenges to the Calvinism of Whitefield and Edwards placed greater emphasis on individual freedom, as historian George Marsden notes, and found wild success because it already jibed with “the revivalists’ practice of urging people to make an immediate decisive commitment” and “the emerging American spirit of freedom and self-determination.”^[4]The efforts of revivalists like Charles Finney, as well as clergymen like Bishop Francis Asbury, flourished because of their flexibility in contrast to the “well-educated, settled clergy”^[5]of other Protestants. Without an anchor in a particular place, or the requirement of years of schooling, evangelists were able to move about the country and preach and lead revivals almost anywhere and at any time.

            A brief word on the anti-intellectual tendencies is warranted. Marsden notes that many “of the most popular evangelical movements started out disparaging formal education” and did so by an appeal to “American democratic impulses”, challenging “the authority of the educated elite and insist[ing] that it was not necessary for clergy to have a higher education.”^[6]In large part because of these factors, the faith of the tent revivalists and itinerant preachers in the early 19th century was widely spread; it was easily grasped, required no formal training, and appealed by and large to the working and lower class because of its frank, vernacular language, spiritually and emotionally enthralling revivals, and deeply practical application. Thus, the faith of Baptists and Methodists, who did not have the same educational requirements on clergy as other Protestant denominations did, was spread more rapidly and more broadly.^[7]

            The anti-intellectual tendency of American evangelicalism has been well attested to, thanks in part to the work of Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Noll briefly alludes to the paradox of evangelical scholarship — “North American evangelicals enjoy a rich theological harvest”^[8]; but this harvest is not reaped among the laity. We enjoy its fruit in the form of seminary libraries and intellectually stimulating conferences, but many of our friends and family have little desire to study the theological interpretation of the gospel of Mark, or the problems of over-using the term “sacramental”. Noll’s work goes on to articulate a wider problem, namely that evangelicals do not express interest in the “life of the mind” in areas beyond theology (indeed, theology is outside of the book’s purview), but his reflections are germane to our present discussion. Though the scandal itself is not uniquely theological, Noll makes it clear that the scandal of the evangelical mind has greatly reduced the impact of the above-mentioned harvest. 

            Part of Noll’s diagnosis is cultural, as he puts it, “the evangelical ethos is activistic, populist, pragmatic, and utilitarian. It allows little space for broader or deeper intellectual effort because it is dominated by the urgencies of the moment.”^[9]More important than intellectual reflection is zeal, a trend finding its origin in the tent-revivalists’ preference of spiritual inspiration and experience over theological stimulation. If the situation is as urgent as Finney and others made it sound, there’s simply no time for deeper study. Over-simplification fits the occasion better, and it requires less effort to boot. 

            But this hints at another level of Noll’s diagnosis: the scandal is theological. Indeed, he says, for an “entire Christian community to neglect, generation after generation, serious attention to the mind…may be, in fact, sinful”^[10]. Os Guinness echoes this when he says that it “has always been a sin not to love the Lord our God with our minds as well as our hearts and souls”.^[11]The role of theology is to work against this tendency — to develop a model for the people of God of a way of worshiping and loving the Triune God with our minds as well as our hearts and souls. For this reason, I want to spend the rest of this paper developing a theological argument for a revived popular theology in the church. 

            Very briefly, I want to make clear that Iam not advocating for a bloodless academic approach to Christian maturity, but rather arguing that real growth in knowledge and love for God comes through serious engagement with theology of many flavors and varieties (e.g. historical, systematic, and biblical; contemporary as well as past; American and European as well as Ethiopian, Chinese, Syrian, etc.). Accounting for differences in temperament and intelligence, and maintaining that not everyone needs a PhD, I am arguing for a greater emphasis on theological awareness and understanding (what we might call theological dexterity) among clergy and laypersons alike. This is because all of us have been given the great dignity and gift of having minds oriented towards personal knowledge of our Creator, and this is too important to be left to a handful of experts.

PART 2/The Dogmatic-Ecclesial Sector — In the words of Gordon T. Smith, “a holy person is a wise person.”^[12]And a holy person is characterized by holy speech – John Webster’s two-word definition of theology.[13]Holy speech is speech that is “set apart for and bound to its object – that is, the gospel – and to the fellowship of the saints in which the gospel is heard as the divine judgment and consolation – that is, the Church.”^[14]Thus, theology is done under the Church’s authority and for its sake; a communion of saints divorced from serious theology will be inhibited from fuller participation in the gospel, and a theology bifurcated from the community in which it is meant to thrive will produce dry and malnourishing fruit. We proceed then with the assumption that the church and theology are integrally related. “The proper end of theology… is the saints’ edification.”^[15] Gordon Smith is well-aware of “our revivalistic heritage” which “was marked by a deep skepticism about all things associating with the intellectual life and the work of study and scholarship. These were viewed as a threat to true spirituality and devotion.”^[16]But as his is a book about true spirituality and devotion as it relates to Christian maturity, we are not surprised to find he does not share that perspective. Smith instead argues that wisdom requires that everything be viewed through the lens of a “biblical vision of life, work, and relationships”, a perspective that “comes naturally to no one. It is learned.”^[17]The Christian life lived as a life of wisdom requires attention to the life of the mind — our revivalistic heritage was wrong on this point.

            In an appendix to Smith’s book, he writes of the calling of the church to be the environment in which Christians “grow up in every way in to him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.” (Ephesians 4.15-16). One important aspect of the church’s worship is that it is pedagogical; and it is pedagogical in a distinctly (Smith would add “consciously and intentionally”) trinitarian and christocentric way. We are formed in worship to know and to love the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we give thanks for the redemption we have in Christ Jesus, even as we continue to gain a deeper appreciation of its meaning, impact, and applications.

            Such an understanding of the pedagogical (and thusly intellectual) function of the church has a long history, but more recent is the history of textual interpretation which works against it. A locus classicus for this discussion is Paul’s apparent repudiation of his intellectual apologetics at Athens in 1 Corinthians 2. Kevin Vanhoozer and Daniel Treier note that, in an attempt to make the wisdom of Christ work over-against wisdom more broadly conceived, it was once a popular reading of the text to argue that Paul regretted his appeal to Greek philosophy in Athens and changed course. The authors note that such a reading encouraged ministry practices like “suspicion of seminary education, neglect of sermon preparation, celebration of backward simplicity and the like.”^[18]They did this under the auspices of centering on Christ, but “ironically, in the name of Christ-centeredness it becomes easy to rely on oneself.” 

            An attempt to serve Christ earnestly, uprooted from the living tree of theological reflection, can unfortunately serve to exacerbate one’s condition as incurvatus in se. “The freedom of the gospel,” however, “fosters in theologians and their congregations wisdom for truly spiritual interaction and mutual edification”.^[19]Doing theology in the church (what Treier calls “everyone’s communicative praxis”^[20]) actually serves to turn us outward, towards the other and ultimately toward God. And this is transformative for many reasons, but among them is that the practice of beholding the beauty of God is itself formative. Jonathan King has argued that God’s life — both in its immanent (inner, invisible) and economic (visible, i.e. redemptive-historical) aspects — is beautiful.^[21]What feeds our understanding of the beauty of God is his revealed character, writ large in the narrative arc of Creation-Rebellion-Redemption-Restoration, and focused most acutely in the person and work of Christ. As we grow in knowledge of him who “called [us] out of darkness and into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2.9), we are more caught up in his beauty, more amazed by his splendor, and more conformed to the image of his Son. This telosis both beautiful and glorious, and it is for the benefit of the church.

PART 3/The Pastoral Applications — As pastors and teachers, our role is the pedagogical scaffolding of the ekklesia. This building which God is constructing finds the necessary structure and form in the Word, the norma normans. Its ultimate end, determined by God himself, is explicated and expounded by the shepherds whom he has entrusted for the building up of the church (cf. Ephesians 2.11-16). So ours is not a light task. 

            At the same time, our role is not, as it were, gatekeepers of knowledge. A more apt (and appropriately geeky) metaphor might be park ranger: one who has comprehensive (though never exhaustive) knowledge of the terrain and the flora and fauna and is able to guide others to similar knowledge. And ultimately what we want to guide our congregations and students into greater faith in and love for Jesus Christ our Lord — faith and love which find nourishment through deeper engagement with Scripture and theology.

            Along with this, we recognize that an overly simplistic and anti-intellectualistic account of the gospel does not have the adequate resources to deal with the realities of life. There are a myriad complexities in our day-to-day operations to which such a simplistic understanding of God‘s action offers very little. In contrast, a rich, textured understanding of our theology can give us a broader, deeper, and more nuanced approach to the problems we face as we seek to follow the way of Jesus.

CONCLUSION—Though far from historically opaque, evangelicalism in America is complex, and its history of anti-intellectualism dense and difficult to extricate from other parts of its praxis. Even so, we have seen that the calling of every Christian is to grow in knowledge, and that such knowledge is not impractical or lofty but realistic. It works in real life. More than that, though, it brings us to deeper love for the Triune God and draws us further up into his life. In other words, it makes us more truly human.

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^[1]Re-situating in that we are analyzing the nature of popular theology and its place in the church — but also retrievingin that popular theology often takes a back seat to post-secular consumeristic Christian publishing, and a discussion of the nature and place of popular theology requires a retrieval in such an environment.

^[2]See Daniel J. Treier, Virtue and the Voice of God: Toward Theology as Wisdom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), especially chaps. 2-3.

^[3]For more on this, see Francis Fitzgerald, The Evangelicals, esp. chaps. 1-4. 

^[4]George M. Marsden, Religion and American Culture: A Brief History, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 60.

^[5]Marsden, Religion and American Culture, 60.

^[6]Ibid., 62.

^[7]Interestingly, Marsden notes the upward mobility emphasized in evangelical Christianity which often led to higher education — what initially started out as an anti-intellectual movement eventually began to establish more colleges and seminaries than almost anyone else. Among other factors, this led to the rise of particularized evangelical institutions and the secularization of American universities which were initially founded as Christian institutions.

^[8]Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 7.

^[9]Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, 12.

^[10]Ibid., 23.

^[11]“Persuasion for the New World: An Interview with Dr. Os Guinness,” Crucible 4, 2 (Summer 1992): 15. Quoted in Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, 23.

^[12]Gordon T. Smith, Called to Be Saints: An Invitation to Christian Maturity(Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014), 64.

[13]John Webster, Holiness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003). 

[14]Webster, Holiness(accessed via Kindle).

[15]Ibid.

^[16]Smith, Called to Be Saints, 73.

^[17]Ibid., 74.

^[18]Kevin J. Vanhoozer and Daniel J. Treier, Theology and the Mirror of Scripture: A Mere Evangelical Account (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), 137.

^[19]Vanhoozer and Treier, Theology and the Mirror of Scripture, 196.

^[20]Treier, Virtue and the Voice of God, 84.

^[21]Jonathan King, The Beauty of The Lord: Theology as Aesthetics(Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018).