February 02, 2005
More on the Intellectual Evangelical
Mark addressed my post below, and I think he makes a strong case that while there is room for improvement, things aren't nearly as bad as they seem. But allow me to flesh out my own idea a little bit. I'm thankful for men like Ravi Zacharias and Lee Strobel, but in terms of intellectual conservatism - in the tradition of Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, Norman Podhoretz and George Will - where are we as evangelicals? I'm not trying to throw stones; I'm twenty-three and still trying to read my way through the conservative canon, to say nothing of the Western canon as a whole.
I said in my original post at Matt Crash! that I felt blogs and Dobson-esque social activism can be a good thing (though not neccesarily). I stand by that, but I wonder if, in addition to our great theologians, apologists and philosophers, evangelicals will ever have a Bill Buckley or a Norman Podhoretz?
(Note: I originally attributed Mark's post to Jim, but have since made a correction. Also note the comments section in my post below that Rick and our pal DaddyPundit have reminded me that the Weekly Standard's Terry Eastland is also an evangelical. I stand corrected.)
Posted by Matt at 08:51 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
February 01, 2005
The Conservative Evangelical Mind
About a week ago I posted the following link over at Matt Crash! In the post, I discuss the lack of evangelical involvement in intellectual conservatism. Think about this for a moment. The major conservative publications are National Review, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, the American Spectator and perhaps the New Criterion. I can think two evangelicals working for those publications: Fred Barnes and Hugh Hewitt. That's it. No one else. This is rather disheartening.
Evangelicals with a conservative bent should ask themselves why we have found ourselves in this predicament. It can easily be fixed, mind you, but here at our new venue, I hope to call attention to this issue. I don't mean to imply that the our friends at these publications - be they Catholic, Orthodox, Hebrew or otherwise - are in any way bad. Indeed this is not the case. Yet if evangelicals want to maintain the influence we constantly discuss, then it's imperative that we train our minds to become part of the vibrant intellectuall spirit of conservatism.
Posted by Matt at 10:35 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Is this thing on?
Good morning, blogosphere! So here we are at the new Stones Cry Out super-duper megablog. Thanks for joining us.
I would love to start my first post here with some profound insight into the ways of the world, but alas, after a night at the symphony I woke up late and it's cold and rainy and well...I've got nothing.
My colleagues Rick, Jim, Mark and Drew are already bringing the content. I shall return later, but until then check out Al Mohler's thoughts on the Iraqi election.
Sidenote: I wonder how many GWB supporters paid attention to the Iraqi election returns? I'm not questioning anyone's support of the President, but if someone is not a political junkie, it might be easy to overlook what happened. I know a lot of war supporters looked on the whole matter as a security issue, and the liberation itself was not as important. I hope the emphasis can be placed now on self-determination for the Iraqis, and that our countrymen who cheered Saddam's capture can also cheer the self-liberation of the Iraqi people. The tip of my right finger is stained with ink in support of their cause.
Posted by Matt at 10:04 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack