The state of the Christian faith today is the logical consequence of decisions made in the United States in the early 1900s to abandon one of the most powerful and important gifts God ever gave us – our intellect. I often get criticized for my negative view of the rise of Pentecostalism, but the Pentecostal movement is the poster child for dumbing down a true relationship with God in Christ. Not through evil intent, but in the rejection of advances in knowledge, those denying science as a protection of a simple and simplistic faith did incalculable damage. The road to hell truly is paved with good (often misguided) intentions. Let me explain.

When this all started is open to interpretation, but I will start in the early 19th century with the study of geology. For centuries, a “biblical” dating of the earth arrived at the whopping age of about 4,000 BCE. Eighteenth and nineteenth century earth studies expanded this age from 10s of thousands to millions to billions of years. Did the church balk at this? Catholics, yes, Protestants, no. In fact, the way most citizens of the United States learned of the advances in geology was from American pulpits. Preachers challenged parishioners to think of the majesty and omnipotence of God not in terms of centuries but millennia and eternity. As the century advanced, U.S. pulpits introduced most people to the concepts of Darwin, Mendeleev, Dalton, Pasteur, Maxwell and Freud (Google them), not as threats but as revelations. Toward the end of the century, especially in Germany, theology was keeping pace through ever more stringent and exacting biblical study through the emergence of form, literary, historic, source, textual, and redaction criticism. An amazing resurgence in the interest of the philosophy of religion – specifically philosophy of the Christian faith through advances in Christology and Pneumatology – stimulated the highest quality of scholarly attention ever known. The Parliament of Religion in Chicago in 1893 was a crown jewel in interfaith and ecumenical relationships and the cutting edge of a new enlightenment. Scientific advancement and learning was viewed as a divine gift from God, and the philosophy of religion pushed us to ask the very deepest and most sincere questions, not about truth, but about meaning, purpose, and the will of God.

Seminaries went through a full-fledged paradigm shift. It was expected of ordained clergy that they be among the most educated and erudite individuals in each community of faith, not only knowing the Bible, but understanding science, technology, medicine, business, politics, and world affairs. As the bar got raised higher and higher, an anti-intellectual counter move was launched. The basic premises of this anti-intellectual position were very simple, but also very attractive:

1. Science is not a gift from God, but a threat to true belief and a test of faith
2. We must become like children to inherit the Kingdom of God; children are ignorant and therefore most like Adam and Eve in their innocence
3. God uses whom God will; a seminary education is unnecessary – God can speak through even the most uneducated and simple
4. God blesses good people and curses bad people; intelligent people are trying to “play God” and so they are bad people – good people don’t listen to bad people
5. Corporate responsibility and connection to a community is irrelevant – the key question of the Christian faith shifted from “where have you experienced/shared God’s grace with others,” to “do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?” (and later to “Are you saved?”)
6. Social justice is a liberal farce based on an intellectual approach to God; it is a worldly concern and became a flashpoint of a renewed binary thinking. Christians focus on heaven, not earth; the future, not the present; personal holiness, not social holiness; the light of the world rather than the darkness; the holy, not the secular.

From such seeds grew “spiritual, but not religious,” hostile use of scripture as a weapon, condemnation of sins as acts of disobedience instead of sin as a state of separation from God, the loss of credibility of theology as a serious discipline, the religious right and the moral majority, as well as simplistic and unscriptural manifestations as the prosperity gospel, most televangelism, the megachurch movement, and the celebrity pastor.

Physics, astronomy, medicine, geology, biology, psychology, computer technology, psychiatry, pharmacology, communication, and other disciplines advanced by leaps and bounds during the 20th and 21st centuries, while theology, biblical study, and spiritual discipline forked off into two incompatible and often adversarial directions. Good scholarship moved into the liberal academies and seminaries; bad scholarship infected mainline and independent church industries. Look at religious publication in this country and you will see a subtle, but strong anti-intellectual undercurrent. Popular “Christian” writers pride themselves on ignorance of church history, biblical scholarship, and any theologian who wrote anything before these writers were born. Much devotional material and church curriculum is written at a third-grade level, and resists the introduction of any widely held scholarly consensus that contradicts anti-intellectual approaches to scripture. (Personal note: on three occasions, my own writing has been edited because I dared to suggest that Paul only wrote seven of the thirteen letters ascribed to him. No good scholar denies this, but Christian publishers of devotional material don’t want to upset their non-scholarly audience – who apparently are scared to death of the truth…)

The philosophy of religion – the ability to question anything and everything in pursuit of the very best information to lay the foundation for the very best knowledge to foster the very best understanding – fell out of favor in the early 20th century. To question was evidence of a lack of faith. To voice a doubt was to prove apostacy. I have a Catholic children’s study from 1966 that is a wonderful illustration:

“Where did the world come from?” God “How long did it take to create all that is?” Six days, with a seventh for rest. “How did God create the world?” It is one of God’s mysteries, not for men to know. This is just one sample of dozens of similar lines of questioning that have one answer: God and only God.

The opposite of faith is not doubt, but fear, and the fear of the world that fostered an anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-developmental Christian faith is being exploited today by Christian nationalists, political leaders who use their faith as a weapon and pretend to be scriptural authorities (yes, I am looking at you Mike Johnson), and by mega/MAGA-church pastors. An important corrective is to resurrect the philosophy of religion as a serious and necessary discipline and to engage in open, honest, intentional, respectful exploration together of our Hebrew and Christian scriptures, our church history, our rich and varied theological, Christological, and pneumatological traditions. Instead of proof-texting our way to further division and dismemberment, a return to the faithful curiosity and intellectual rigors of the 100+ years ago philosophy of religion just might enlighten us for a strong and vital next 100+ years.