Anti-intellectualism and the Subculture of Fundamentalism

Though my increasingly exiguous mental capacities prevent all notions of me being even casually intellectual, the last thing I want to be accused of is being 'anti-intellectual.'   As a Christian, and even worse, a Christian who is a member of a fundamentalist church, I align myself with a culture that is often portrayed as just that.  I find this a frustrating place to be.  In a single conversation I will find myself shaking my head at the smug, twisted attacks from the left and then wincing at the declarations from the loud mouthed representatives of the right.    The idea of the "Christian", or maybe more descriptive ''Evangelical", subculture has been on my mind lately and was the subject of this Op Ed from The New York Times.  From 'The Evangelical Rejection of Reason':

Like other evangelicals, we accept the centrality of faith in Jesus Christ and look to the Bible as our sacred book, though we find it hard to recognize our religious tradition in the mainstream evangelical conversation. Evangelicalism at its best seeks a biblically grounded expression of Christianity that is intellectually engaged, humble and forward-looking. In contrast, fundamentalism is literalistic, overconfident and reactionary.

I can't disagree.  'Biblically grounded', 'intellectually engaged', 'humble', 'forward-looking'.  Right on!  And yeah, this idea of a sub-culture, one that has significantly lost its influence in contemporary society and has been reduced to the joke in an SNL skit, stems largely from an 'overconfident and reactionary' response to the threat of liberalism.  But I think the authors take a misstep from there.  In their article, Giberson and Stephens present an expression of Christianity that may be engaged, humble and forward-looking, but I wonder about the intellectual effort to be biblically grounded.  Does societal norms influence (dare I say dictate) biblical interpretation?  What does it mean to be concertedly 'biblically grounded' and 'intellectually engaged'?    While I think anti-intellectualism runs deep in evangelical and fundamental circles, I don't think holding fast to a particular (often literal) hermeneutic places a person in the anti-intellectual camp.  While I do believe the rejection of science to be anti-intellectual, I don't think that holding to a literal interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis is necessarily anti-intellectual.   While it is unreasonable to gauge a society's conscience on its rejection of homosexuality alone, to dismiss what the Bible does have to say on the matter as irrelevant is no more an intellectual stance.   

The way I see it, an intellectual mindset is no more the acceptance of a certain tenant than anti-intellectualism is the rejection of that same tenant.  Reason is in the conversation in-between.   Reason has more to do with the arrival to the conclusion than the conclusion itself.  And what I find frustrating in the fundamentalist/evangelical circles I'm a part of is not the dogma that is held on to, but the lack of conversation that surrounds it.   "The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it" has got to be one of the stupidest phrases ever pronounced from the pulpit or put on a refrigerator magnet.  The problem with the church and its sub-culture is not that it doesn't agree with the masses, but that it spends far too much time protecting and defending itself against culture rather than engaging it with the Gospel of Christ.