Book Review: The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

Written by an author who describes the work as "an epistle from a wounded lover", the Scandal of the Evangelical Mind is a must read for all Christians who yearn to understand the backdrop of the cultural crisis directed at the heart of the Church. In the book, Mark A. Noll provides an extended and thoughtful critic of the modern day church, and how the church has abdicated its role as an institution in articulating God's revealed truth - in its totality and authenticity - to a world desperate for answers.

As Noll puts it:

"The much more important matter is what it means to think like a Christian about the nature and workings of the physical world, he character of human social structures like governemtn and the economy, the meaning of the past, the nature of artistic creation, and the circumstances attending our perception of the world outsde ourselves. Failure to exercise the mind for Christ in these areas has become acute in the 20th century. That failure is the scandal of the evangelical mind"

The book is by no means the easiest of reads, and one has to have a basic level of understanding contemporary and modern society to see the trajectory of the arguments put forth in this work. However, as Os Guinness puts it in his review, "Noll's cri de coeur is powerful and superb. Those of us who are evangelicals should finish it on our knees. The character of evangelicalism is at stake in our response".