When The Church Is Anti-Intellectual

There’s a mass exodus happening across the Western church, and anti-intellectual teaching could be to blame.

As I’ve been reading (and writing) about trends in the modern church, I noticed a recurring theme. More and more people are giving up on church because they can’t get adequate answers to questions.

In the book Life After Church, Brian Sanders writes:

So many leavers express that they need to move on because they aren’t able to ask the serious questions that deeply disturb their hearts and the simple faith they have always known. As their faith moves beyond conversion, they begin to ask deep and more destabilising questions … finding that clichés about God no longer seem to satisfy … Some leavers call these answers ‘Sunday-school answers’, a pejorative expression that simply means answers that would be given to a child.

There’s been a worrying anti-intellectual trend in Christianity in the past century. For those of us who aren’t professors or theologians, we can often get taught about our intellect as thought it’s always a stumbling block. We think of “simple faith” as not asking too many questions, and many of us get stuck trying to content ourselves with pat answers that don’t satisfy.

Questioning and scepticism – these are often dirty words. Those of us who do wonder if something is wrong with us. In the end, we get really good at hiding what we’re thinking.

Meanwhile, the world tends to regard the intellectual life of the Christian as poor. One writer observed that we’re at a point the term “Christian scholarship” sounds like backsliding to members of the church, and a hilarious oxymoron to everyone else.

Learning how to approach faith intellectually has been neglected in the church, but it shouldn’t be this way. Neglecting our intellect sells our faith short, and – as we’re seeing – can even turn people away from the church. Ourselves included.

Anti-intellectualism denies a key part of the faith experience

In Western culture, most people see reason and faith as concepts on two different planes – two concepts that can’t be reconciled.

It’s true that using our human logic and brainpower can’t give us every answer about our faith. But that doesn’t mean human wisdom has no value.

Looking at the Bible, you can see all kinds of intellectual objections from believers. Think of Job, who argues his innocence to God. Or Moses, who questioned God relentlessly. And Paul did intricate mental gymnastics to reason with his Gentile and Jewish audiences.

When you’re brave enough to ask big questions, you realise how much bigger God is than you imagined. One writer put it this way:

The Christian religion flourishes not in the darkness but in the light… [T]he true remedy [of unbelief] is consecration of intellectual power to the service of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We shouldn’t shut off our minds but submit them. Surely this is the subtext of 2 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 5:

… we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

Anti-intellectual faith is a weaker faith

Being convinced of your beliefs is one thing. But sometimes, Christians are content to sit back and let their church leadership do their thinking. We get intellectually lazy, uncritically accepting Christian writers and leaders, because, well, they’re Christian.

But as one person put it,

Intellectual slothfulness is but a quack remedy for unbelief.

Coasting on your beliefs is fine for awhile. But it can be a risky game. As another person said:

… you can practice Christianity without knowing much theology, just as you can drive a car without knowing much about internal combustion. But when something breaks down in the car, you go humbly to the man who understands the works; whereas if something goes wrong with religion, you merely throw the works away and tell the theologian he is a liar.

How do we expect to “demolish … every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 5) without the knowledge in the first place?

Anti-intellectualism prevents meaningful conversations with others

In the past, most people in the West were nominally Christian. But as society abandons cultural Christianity, Christians will need to work harder to be seen as something more than just superstitious and passe.

William Lane Craig describes it like this:

A person raised in a cultural milieu in which Christianity is still seen as an intellectually viable option will display an openness to the Gospel which a person who is secularized will not. For the secular person you may as well tell him to believe in fairies or leprechauns as in Jesus Christ.

Christians celebrate their own ability of “believing without seeing”. But getting to that point requires a journey, and usually one of logic and deeply-held beliefs. We need to understand and engage doubts, not dismiss them. And to do that, we have homework to do.

The truth is, when we’re making an argument for our faith, whether it’s in politics or anywhere else, we will be playing on an intellectual playing field. If we believe but can’t explain to others, how can we have a meaningful conversation?

So what do we do?

In our places of worship and beyond, we can’t underestimate the importance of learning, questioning and critical thinking. Intellectual arguments can oppose Christianity, but intellectual arguments can also bolster Christianity – and Christians neglect this space to their detriment.

As Jaroslav Pelikan, a Yale historical theologian, said once:

The church is always more than a school… But the church cannot be less than a school.

We can be conscious of taking questions seriously, not dismissing them or dodging them. We can also think humbly about our own presuppositions and keep weighing them up. What are our intellectual blind spots?

Our faith isn’t all based in intellect, but I am convinced it’s not inconsistent with it. God isn’t scared of my questions. Let’s read widely, think critically, and remember to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind.