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While other defining elements of a scholar's identity, such as race or gender, are routinely taken into consideration and welcomed as providing new perspectives, the perspective of the believing Chrisitan is dismissed as irrelevant or worse, antithetical to the scholarly enterprise. This book demonstrates what the ancient relationship of faith and intellectual scholarship means for the academy today. George Marsden argues forcefully that mainstream American higher education needs to be more open to explicit expressions of faith and to accept what faith means in an intellectual context. Marsden contends that a religiously diverse culture will be an intellectually richer one, and that it is time scholars and institutions who take the intellectual dimensions of their faith seriously become active participants in the highest level of academic discourse. Whether the reader agrees or disagrees with this conclusion, Marsden's thoughtful, well-argued book is necessary reading for all sides of the debate on religion's role in education and culture.
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