In 2004, reflecting back on his 1994 The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Mark Noll perceived some auspicious developments: " "increasing engagement between evangelicals and Roman Catholics," an "ongoing renascence of Christian philosophy," evangelical colleges "season[ing] their sectarian certitudes with commitment to 'mere Christianity,' " breakthroughs in engagement with the sciences, "multiplying Christian presence in the nation's pluralistic universities," and serious efforts in Christian publishing." Noll's hopefulness was lost on Randall Balmer, who, two years later, excoriated evangelicals for being dumb and hypocritical, to list but two of their lesser vices, in Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America.
Jonathan Dudley, native of Grand Rapids, Michigan was raised in the evangelical setting decried by Balmer. He learned, growing up, about the "big four": "that abortion was murder; homosexuality, sin; evolution, nonsense; and environmentalism, a farce"—and, from some in his community, that his eternal salvation hinged on sharing these views with others. All this would be bad enough, but add to this injury the insult of how cocksure evangelicals are of everything and the immoderation and partisanship that follows such certainty and you get the nasty and oppressive right-wing movement we've known pretty much since Francis Schaeffer's politicization in the mid 1970s. That is to say you get the combined ignorance and arrogance that characterize contemporary evangelicalism according to Balmer and, now, Dudley.
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