Broken Words

April 15, 2011
Dudleys is a familiar story. Raised a conservative evangelical Christian, he learned that abortion is murder; homosexuality, sin; evolution, nonsense; and environmentalism, a farce. But from childhood, he doubted, and when he went to Calvin College to study biology, he discovered that scholarly evangelical opinion on the big four issues differed markedly from popular evangelical culture (i.e., the religious Right). Acquiring a masters in religion before starting medical school, he prepared very well to write this critique of popular evangelicalisms stances on the big four. In chapters on each, he shows not so much that the popular evangelical stances are wrong as that they are neither the only ones in Christian theology nor historically well established. Moreover, the framework of knowledge, assumptions, and culture within which popular evangelicals interpret scripture and science isnt the same as those of scholarly conservative or liberal evangelicals. Dudley clearly feels discussion, reasoning, and reconciliation rather than intransigence and rigid partisanship ought to be characteristic of popular evangelicals. Excellent argumentation, by no means only, though especially, for evangelicals.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)