Molly Worthen’s Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism is a sobering encounter with an old friend. At first glance, one’s friend seems to have left some of his old ways behind. He’s more sophisticated, and more well-heeled than in his younger years. He thinks he’s changed a great deal. But when one sits down and chats for an hour, it becomes apparent that one’s friend has the same old problems.
“Scratch a neo-evangelical,” Worthen diagnoses this situation, “and underneath you would likely find a fundamentalist who still preferred the comforts of purity to the risks of a free inquiry.” Scratch a tattooed and spectacled Emergent speaker talking about carbon offsets, she might have said toward the end of her story, and you’ll find another Protestant hyper-individualist. In a nutshell, Worthen writes about a religious movement “that extols individualism but ensnares every individual in a web of clashing authorities.”
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