Finding Fashionable Friends and Foes
May 09, 2006
Thomas Albert Howard (in Books & Culture) and Wheaton prof. Alan Jacobs (First Things) write in support of Wheaton and other Evangelical colleges hiring Catholics, rather than firing them, as Wheaton did with TNP contributing editor Josh Hochschild. Howard sees this as a step toward a kind of new ecumenism.
Meanwhile S. M. Hutchens at the Touchstone blog criticizes Fuller Seminary and “the inner dynamic of the main stream of the Evangelical intelligentsia,” which, he asserts, “has from its beginnings in the forties rested upon the desire, both rabid and unadmitted, to prove to the liberal establishment, to the Menckens and Fosdicks and their progeny, that it is NOT fundamentalist–that it is, by the criteria that establishment establishes, bright, learned, and urbane. The upper portion of Evangelicalism has a permanent crick in its collective neck from looking over its shoulder to see if the liberals approve, exulting over every bone thrown from that table. […] What has this gained them from their masters? By and large, condescending tolerance, tolerance as one might tolerate a flatulent spaniel that is, his aroma notwithstanding, an excellent retriever. […] Many in this same group of Evangelicals now seem to have sensed that there is also something in “ecumenical orthodoxy” they wish to get in on–not quite the Touchstone variety, of course, which would be a bit, well, severe, but something friendlier that they can join (or start) in a hail-fellow-well-met sort of way–complete with their egalitarianism. How nice it would be to get validated not only by the liberals, but the Catholics and Orthodox, too–to be admired not only by Wither, Frost, and Devine, but by Hingest and Dimble as well.”
Hutchens’ remarks seem borne out somewhat by this article at Comment from James K. A. Smith (a professor at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan), possibly Howard’s as well, and this take on Fuller from a student there.
This is Finding Fashionable Friends and Foes in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: Continued Crunching | Next: Sincerely and Death to America | TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)
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