For decades, Boston University sociologist Peter Berger says, American intellectuals have looked down on evangelicals.
Educated people have the notion that evangelicals are “barefoot people of Tobacco Road who, I don’t know, sleep with their sisters or something,” Berger says.
It’s time that attitude changed, he says.
“That was probably never correct, but it’s totally false now and I think the image should be corrected,” Berger said in a recent interview.
Now, his university’s Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs is leading a two-year project that explores an “evangelical intelligentsia” which Berger says is growing and needs to be better understood, given the large numbers of evangelicals and their influence.
“It’s not good if a prejudiced view of this community prevails in the elite circles of society,” said Berger, a self-described liberal Lutheran. “It’s bad for democracy and it’s wrong.”
[blockquote] “It’s when you view your tradition with such confidence that you want to offer it to others … that’s when you’ve made it,” Wolfe said. “I don’t see evangelicals having that pride in their own tradition, yet.” [/blockquote]
Confidence? By definition evangelicals have that confidence. It is the tyranny of the political correct crowd that keeps them in the background. I have explained God’s Covenant and Gospel to many a graduating PhD.
Naughty, naughty. Proper people sleep with their own sex and are called episcopalian deacon, priest, and bishop. Will those evangelicals never aspire to anything worthwhile? /sarcasm.
In cultural anthropology, American Evangelicals have long been thinking at the cutting edge. It is impossible to overlook the contributions of Charles Kraft, Eugene Nida, Stephen Grunland, Marvin Mayers, Engel, Wagner, Priest, etc.