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American Fundamentalism and Culture

What J.S. Bach gained from his Lutheranism to inform his music, what Jonathan Edwards took from the Reformed tradition to orient his philosophy, what A.H. Francke learned from German Pietism to inspire the University of Halle's research into Sanskrit and Asian literatures, what Jacob van Ruisdael gained from his seventeenth-century Dutch Calvinism to shape his painting, what Thomas Chalmers took from Scottish Presbyterianism to inspire his books on astronomy and political economy, what Abraham Kuyper gained from pietistic Dutch Calvinism to back his educational, political, and communications labors of the late nineteenth century, what T.S. Eliot took from high-church Anglicanism as a basis for his cultural criticism, what Evelyn Waugh found for his novels in twentieth-century Calvinism, what Luci Shaw, Shirley Nelson, Harold Fickett, and Evangeline Paterson found to encourage creative writing from other forms of Christianity after they left dispensationalism behind - precious few fundamentalists or their evangelical successors have ever found in the theological insights of twentieth-century dispensationalism, Holiness, or Pentecostalism.

-Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

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That's okay; I liked reading it aloud to you better as well. :)

The view of most evangelicals significantly lacks historical perspective, that is historical theology. Johnny-come-lately US evangelicalism has not considered the loooong struggle that the church has experienced, wrestling with such weighty matters.

Oh, come on! This Noll guy certainly could've included, "What LaHaye and Jenkins gained from their Dispensationalism to inform their cult-followed Left Behind series."

Exactly.

Andrew,

Have you ever read, _No Place for Truth or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology_ by Wells?

Marie

No, I haven't. I'm assuming that's David Wells? I read some stuff by him for my thesis.

Cool blog, interesting information... Keep it UP » »

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