George M. Marsden

Review: From the Outrageous to the Scandalous

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Cover image of "From the Outrageous to the Scandalous" edited by Robert H. Woods Jr. and Mark Allan Steiner

From the Outrageous to the Scandalous

From the Outrageous to the Scandalous, Robert H. Woods Jr. and Mark Allan Steiner, eds. Integratio Press (ISBN: 9781959685333) 2025.

Summary: A collection of essays reflecting on Christian scholarship 30 years after Marsden and Noll’s books.

The two books came out during the first years after I transitioned to campus ministry with graduate students and faculty members. The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark A. Noll and The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship by George M. Marsden provided a kind of raison d’etre for my work. The earliest American universities had been established by Christians and many had capstone courses focused both on the relationship of Christian faith to every discipline and evidences for the Christian faith. However, in the 1990’s Christianity had been either marginalized to barely surviving religion departments or was viewed as an enemy of both intellectual life and human freedom. These two authors inspired many of us to devote our efforts to raising up a new generation of scholars who brought to bear the mind of Christ to their academic research and practice.

In 2024, a group of Christians in Communications Studies conceived of the idea of hosting an “unconference” ahead of their discipline’s annual academic conference. They wanted to explore together in conversation the questions and challenges they faced thirty years after these landmark books. They also wanted to share opportunities they experienced of doing Christian scholarly work. Each participant read the two works. In addition, there were eleven short “legacy scholar” presentations by senior scholars including Marsden and Noll. Their presentations comprise part one of this book.

The second part of the book reflects small group discussions of questions and responses to the presentations. These were subsequently written up in and grouped in the five sections comprising part two of the book. The essays are short and reflect an ongoing conversation rather than finished research presentations. Given that the book consists of 63 chapters, I will touch on the high points of these essays.

Part I: Legacy Scholar Presentations

Mark Noll’s presentation opens the collection. He observes progress in examples of Christian voices and scholarly societies across the disciplines. But he notes the economic and ideological challenges as well as the disconnect between academia and the church. Marsden’s essay is more of a reflection on Christian scholarship. He highlights the importance of humility, discusses the challenges of polarization and hiring but affirms the high calling of academic work.

Several other Legacy Scholars from communication then respond with their ideas about Christian scholarship. Quentin Schultze outlines five root assumptions for communications scholarship. Calvin Troup offers a framework for biblical integration in communication. And Clifford Christians addresses the idea of substantive truth in intellectually plural settings.

Fr. Paul A. Soukup, SJ’s presentation stood out in offering a Catholic approach to teaching and research, particularly from a Jesuit perspective. He emphasized its values-based character, its purpose-driven nature, and the use of Ratio Studiorum, a sixteenth-century document. This prioritizes engaged learning, educating the whole person, education rooted in community including service-based learning, and a commitment to justice. I was struck that a number of essays engaged Fr. Soukup’s presentation.

Part II: Responses to our Legacy Scholars

Section One: Foundations and Historical Roots

The responses here ranged from Alexandria to Athens to Jerusalem. Mark A.E. Williams explored the cultural redefinitions of intellect that had a shaping influence on the beginnings of evangelicalism. John R. Terrill offered a fascinating essay on the history of the Chataqua Institution and how it might offer models for recovering trust between academia and the church. Lance Croy concludes the section with a history of Tolstoy’s school for peasant children, observing the parallels with Jesuit education outlined by Fr. Soukup.

Section Two: Reimagining the University and Christian Higher Education

A. Chase Mitchell responds particularly to George Marsden, noting the very different landscape of an ideologically fractured and tribal university, and the need for Christians to demonstrate unity with honest disagreement. David Dockery warns of the twin dangers of being driven by technology in the sciences and enacting tyranny in the humanities. He calls Christians to a virtuous middle focused on knowledge for God’s glory. In concluding this section, Elaine Fung and Brandon Knight write of the importance of community in the scholarly journey. For example, they point to Kristos Logos Paideia, an undergraduate communication society.

Section Three: Communication, Pedagogy, and Intellectual Formation

One of the highlights in this section was Kim Okesson’s profile of Dorothy Sayers. Specifically she highlights Sayers’ use of communications skills in arenas as diverse as scholarship, fiction, drama and essays. Janie Marie Harden Fritz highlights the theme of excellence in praxis that runs through a number of the Legacy Scholar presentations. She also reflects on her own scholarly formation a a Christian. Several essays engage specific theories or approaches including standpoint theory, dialogue, and the use of metaphor and image in Nick Wolterdorff’s Art in Action.

Section Four: Personal and Vocational Reflections

Geraldine E. Forsberg opens this section with a deeply thoughtful reflection on “The Christian Professor in the Twenty-first Century.” She emphasizes a Christ-controlled mind steeped in the wisdom of scripture affirming truth with love. Not only that, she believes Christian can offer a compelling vision for students and the university more widely at a time where vision has perished. Douglas Kelley offers the image of the long walk to Emmaus as a model for the space of dialogue between students and teachers. Adam Sonstroem recounts his own experience in one of Mark Noll’s classes and how his emphasis on excellent, careful thought challenged him.

Section Five: The Church, Public Witness, and Evangelical Identity

R. Tyler Spradley summarizes his research on the “managerial turn” in evangelical churches and how this has contributed to the scandal of the evangelical mind. This essay ought to be required reading in pastoral education! Then Mark Allan Steiner explores how scholarship with epistemological humility might serve the church’s efforts to develop discerning disciples. Building on this, Brian D. Mattson explores how the habits of curiosity, collegiality, and concentration might serve the church. Other essays explore the role of magazines, technology, and media may serve the church. Then in one of the concluding essays, Stephen D. Perry explores what it might mean for scholars to be scandalous and outrageous.

In Conclusion

I’ve only offered a sampling of what one will find in this book. A few concluding thoughts. Firstly, models of such mutual engagement are rare and this one was delightful. I had the sense that these scholars had a lot of fun at this “unconference.” Secondly, what impressed me was listening to these scholars talk about their lives–what formed them, what energized them, and the research they are engaged in and its relevance to the theme. Thirdly, I thought this a model for other disciplinary groups. While the focus was on communications, reading the essays suggests parallels for many other disciplines. Finally, I appreciated the focus on scholarship in service of the church as well as the academy. The divide is often great, as Noll observes and both the academy and the church stand to gain from one another’s gifts.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Religion and American Culture

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religion and american culture

Religion and American Culture (3rd edition), George M. Marsden. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018.

Summary: A survey of the interaction of religion and American civil culture from the nation’s beginnings up to 2016.

“The United States is both remarkably religious and remarkably profane.”

The opening line of this survey of the history of the interaction of religion and American culture is an accurate thesis summary of this work. In part, it reflects the point of view of the author, George M. Marsden. He notes in the introduction to the work that his thinking is shaped by an Augustinian outlook that recognizes both the dignity of humans in God’s image and the reality of human evil, the parallel cultures of “City of God” and the “City of Man,” and that Christians inhabit both cities.

Marsden traces this interaction from the Protestant heritage of the early immigrants, which held sway in the country until the Civil War and the conflicted engagement with Native Peoples–from uneasy coexistence, to violent displacement, to occasional mission efforts–a conflicted record. He examines the different streams of thought contributing to the American revolution–and how they converged and diverged. He examines the heritage of dissent, the secular and deist founders, and the ideas shared in common by Locke and the Puritans. He notes a paradox of high ideals of liberty and justice, and the beginnings of manifest destiny and the use of power to displace native peoples, and hold Africans in servitude. These threads continue into the nineteenth century with the revivalist spread of evangelical culture, marked by increasing levels of education as frontier denominations establish colleges. This culminates in institutions like Oberlin College, motivated by religious revival, enrolling female students, and advocating abolition in an increasingly divided evangelical church along the geographic lines of north and south.

The post-Civil war era on its face seemed to reflect a continued advance of Protestantism, including Protestant missions. At the same time developments of both social progressivism, and the advent of Darwinism and higher critical theories brought the first cracks in the established position of both mainline and evangelical Protestants. They also faced an increasingly plural situation with the immigration of large numbers of Catholics and Jews, as well as the growing influence of the African-American church, which in turn, made its contribution to the rise of pentecostalism.

The fault lines become more pronounced in the early twentieth century with divides in mainline denominations between north and south, a rise of fundamentalism in reaction to liberal scholarship. John Dewey’s secular ideals prevail in the educational establishment. The Niebuhr brothers and Karl Barth offer a neo-orthodox alternative to liberal scholarship in more mainline contexts while those of evangelical belief retreat into fundamentalism.

Marsden notes another great reversal post-World War 2 with the rise in church membership, the baby boom, the ministry of Billy Graham, a re-framed culturally engaged evangelicalism, as well as the growth of Jewish and Catholic influence in the country. The African-American church led by Dr. King awakens and asserts its call for justice and civil rights. Then a rising evangelical movement becomes increasingly politically engaged and Marsden traces this history from the rise of Jimmy Carter to the election of 2016, chronicling an increasingly fragmented, secularized, and polarized country.

This “brief history,” as the subtitle calls it, covers extensive ground, and various movements, sects, and various religious communities, in a history at once descriptive, and illustrative of the “religious and profane” theme. Marsden particularly portrays the conflict between religious ideals and our treatment of native peoples and African-Americans, the changing face of Protestant privilege, the unholy alliances that have existed between Christians and our government throughout our history, the growing pluralism, both religious and irreligious, and the perennial tension between the country’s religious and secular ideals.

Marsden concludes with a few thoughts on preserving a truly pluralistic society, which he believes begins with clarifying the rules that protect free speech and genuine diversity within various sub-communities, protecting them from the tyranny of the majority. He concludes by noting why knowledge of our history is so vital to this project:

“This book is a history, and it is much easier to describe how the United States got to the point it has reached with respect to its secular and religious diversity than it is to prescribe exactly how its future with respect to those diversities might be improved. Still, we can safely say that there will be no improvement without historical understanding of how we got to be where we are. One lesson is sure. When it comes to religion, it will not do to resort to easy generalizations; evaluation of its roles must always be nuanced. Such nuance will help us see that religion, even at what we may regard its best, appears in human affairs almost always as a mixed blessing.”

Marsden has given us the resources for that nuanced “understanding of how we have gotten to be where we are.” This seems critical for religious and political leaders alike, to enable wise and humble decisions that avoid the hubris and folly that sadly has too often characterized our history.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.