CHRISTIANITY & THE ARTS

'For all the well-known and oft debated problems associated with reconciling faith and science, the ability to reconcile artistic creativity with Christian orthodoxy has proved to be a much bigger stumbling block for the evangelical tradition. Part of the reason for that lies in the long-standing evangelical distrust of the evils of fiction, theater, and the visual arts, or indeed anything to do with those strictly imaginative pursuits that emphasize passion over piety. That historical pattern is now changing quite rapidly within modern evangelicalism.'

David Hempton, Evangelical Disenchantment, p.12.

CHRISTIANITY & SCIENCE

'It is sometimes assumed that at the heart and center of the long conflict between evangelicalism and culture lay new scientific claims about a long-earth history and the theory of evolution by natural selection. The so-called war between Christianity and Science has attracted a great deal of attention, but specialists in the field generally agree that the military metaphor of war is overblown and that a great number of eminent scientists remained orthodox Christians.'

David Hempton, Evangelical Disenchantment, p.12.

EVANGELICALS

'Perhaps there is no better way of understanding the essence of any religious tradition than by looking at the lives of those who once loved and later repudiated it. Put another way, it has been said that nothing reveals as much about the inner workings of institutions as their complaint departments. Evangelical disenchantment narratives are in reality referrals to the complaint department of the evangelical tradition.'

David Hempton, Evangelical Disenchantment: 9 Portraits of Faith and Doubt, p.3.