"[S]cientists who care about the public knowledge of science . . . should set forth an agenda for dialogue and deprivatization of discussions about religion, one that emphasizes a more nuanced view of religion and a more realistic view of the limits of science"

-Elaine Howard Ecklund

Back in December, a number of ex-evangelicals gathered in New York City to discuss evangelicalism's relationship to intellectual life. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, "some of America's brightest contemporary intellectuals gathered at the New School to discuss the tenuous relationship between 'Evangelicalism and the Contemporary Intellectual.' The discussion was predictably thoughtful, though evangelical belief was treated as something necessarily dispensed with on the way to becoming a public scholar." The article, "Winning Not Just Hearts but Minds," kindly mentioned Chesterton House among recent efforts to "foster the life of the evangelical mind."

To be sure, anti-intellectualism in the pews is a real problem. Still, this is a strange moment to suggest that becoming an intellectual necessarily entails discarding faith.