Chapter 11: Evangelicals Two-Truth

Chapter 11 serves to explore how Evangelical thought both helped defend the faith and also hurt it by

reinforcing the upper and lower story narrative. Also, the tension between Christian approaches of head vs.

heart continues during this period. Both sides were attempting to convey the Gospel in relevant terms.

Common sense realism, which was a philosophical approach that emphasized truths being self-evident,

emerged as the dominant strategy to build foundational truths.. Pearcey summarizes this way “...these self

undeniable or self-evident truths of experience provide a firm foundation upon which to build the entire edifice

of knowledge…”1. The inductive method of science was then added to this self-evident mental framework. This

method focused on gathering observable facts and then using them to extrapolate general conclusions. This

appealed to Evangelical thinkers of the day because it made the bible “...accessible to everyone who cared to

look at its “facts” -- an idea that appealed to a newly born democratic culture”2. While this was very popular

and effective when it came to apologetics, it did have its pitfalls. It put a scientific processes in a place higher

than the Bible itself, it created wooden and one dimensional exegesis, it lent itself toward proof texting, and

finally it meant that everyone had to start from scratch whenever they spoke to anyone about the bible. It failed

to use all the wisdom and scholarly thinking that had been done in the previous millennia by Godly men who

spent their lives with scripture. The consequence of this was Evangelicals delivering Ethics that they could

“prove” through naturalistic means and reinforced the lower story model. The end of the chapter explores how

Francis Schaeffer combined both common sense realism and worldview analysis to defend the faith. Basically

he is using self evident truths to hold people accountable to the way they live, and how that isn’t consistent with

a darwinian naturalistic worldview. Schaeffer sums it up this way ““ The Non-Christian pursuing his research

has no choice but to rely on his senses, just as everyone else does; but he has no philosophical basis for doing

so. He is inconsistent with his own worldview”.3(315) There are several examples given about how this line of

logic plays out in different scenarios. The summary of the chapter points out that American Evangelism is

largely positive but unfortunately reinforces the “scientific” lower story against the “emotional” higher story. As

this divide grows and Christians retreat from engaging science, it again pushes religion as a whole into a

1
Nancy Pearcey and Phillip E. Johnson, “Evangelicals Two-Truth,” in Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural
Captivity (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), pp. 298
2
Pearcey, “Evangelicals Two-Truth,” pp. 300
3
Pearcey, “Evangelicals Two-Truth,” pp. 315
subjective emotional experience. The chapter ends by leading into the topic of how gender roles furthered this

divide.

Chapter 12: How Women Started the Culture War

Chapter 12 discusses the role of women played in adding another schism to the Christian worldview by

separating the public and private domains. According to Pearcey, prior to the industrial revolution the family

worked more as a cohesive whole. Trade businesses were family-run and multi-generational. Men and

women both played active roles both in parenting and running the needs of the business. Husbands valued

duty and suppressing vulgar passions over personal ambition. In fact, fathers were considered the primary

parent, with both parenting and housekeeping books addressed to them. The industrial revolution changed all

of this. Men were moved out of the house to work in factories which broke up the family dynamic. It turned

wages into an impersonal and mechanical endeavor that encouraged “survival of the fittest” in the workplace.

The effect this had on the home was to make it an oasis of peace in an otherwise harsh environment, one

where the woman was the chief steward. Pearcey adds ““ Instead of enjoying a sense of economic

indispensability, women were reduced to dependents living off the wages of their husbands”4. This is important

to call out as it sets the stage for womens discontentment, because women didn't feel like they were doing

equally meaningful work. There was also a shift in church focus toward women. As men become more

competitive and ambitious at work, churches began to turn to women to be the spiritual anchor to tame the

men. This shift in church focus was disastrous, however, as it undermined the role of the man in the church

and the teaching/leading of men in the home. ““The churches were releasing men from the responsibility of

being religious leaders”5. This gave rise to the Temperance Movement which basically set womanly virtue on a

pedestal and expected women to overcome their sinful and aberrant husbands. The backlash from men was

strong. Men resisted this attempted taming, and instead became “hyper-manly”. They embraced the rough

and scruffy lifestyle and elevated stories like Davy Crockett and Daniel Boon as paragons of virtue. Their

image of Jesus followed suit, portraying of him as a powerful businessman or salesman. This was an

unbiblical position and used only to validate their own behavior. Men abandoned the home, children, and their

wives. This whole chapter is an example of huge overcorrections back and forth by men and women.. Women

4
Nancy Pearcey and Phillip E. Johnson, “How Women Started the Culture War,” in Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from
Its Cultural Captivity (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), pp. 331
5
Pearcey, “How Women Started the Culture War,” pp. 335
responded to this with the Feminist movement and interest in abortion and contraception. The purpose was to

liberate women from this perceived homebased prison. After all of this, Pearcey offers some solutions toward

the end of the chapter. She calls Christians to challenge the concept of the “ideal worker”, one that holds that

the employee should do whatever the employer wants regardless of the impact on the family. She also

suggests some resources for women to start home based businesses while taking care of children. The

chapter ends by summarizing the evangelical split into “Sacred and secular, domestic and economic,

masculine and feminine, private and public”6. The whole journey in this book so far has painted quite a grim

picture of the current state of Evangelical Christianity. I hope there are some strong solutions offered in the

remaining chapter.

6
Pearcey, “How Women Started the Culture War,” pp. 346