Preaching the Gospel in Academy and Society

Abstract

“Many academics turn from church or synagogue sometime in early adolescence, and their image of religion remains what they learned in fourth grade Sunday School. It is as if one assumed that the curriculum of a college mathematics department culminated in long division, or that biological research consisted exclusively in gathering the leaves from different species of trees and pressing them flat under three volumes of the World Book Encyclopedia. If those no longer involved with churches want to update their views of religion, they sometimes turn their television dials to the cable evangelists and find most of their prejudices confirmed.”