Program Particulars
*Times indicated refer to online version of audio

(01:48) Number of Evangelical Americans
The number of evangelical Christians in the United States varies according to the year and the sample group being surveyed. In a 2001 Gallup poll, approximately 40 percent of survey participants described themselves as evangelical Christians, compared to 45 percent in 2000. On average, 39 percent of Americans identify themselves born-again/evangelical since the poll's introduction in 1975.

(02:13–04:49) Music
"The Multiples of One" from Awakening, performed by Joseph Curiale

(02:25) What's It Mean to Be an Evangelical
The word "evangelical" derives from the Greek word, euangelion, meaning "good news." Although defining Evangelicism can be difficult because of the wide variety of beliefs among Evangelicals — who are typically Protestant Christians — several fundamental concepts are stressed among most followers: a supreme belief in the authority and inerrancy of the Bible — with an emphasis placed on the four gospels of the New Testament, a relationship with Jesus Christ that comes through personal conversion, a belief in salvation by faith in Jesus Christ's death, and an emphasis placed on spreading God's word. Evangelicals are typically Protestant Christians, with representation across many denominations, but they may also be Roman Catholic or non-denominational.

(02:50) Publications on Evangelicals
Within the last several years, major national newspapers, magazines, and television programs have devoted significant space to understanding evangelical Christians — including myriad articles in the New York Times, Newsweek, and Time. A four-part series in The Atlantic Monthly in October 2000 entitled "The Opening of the Evangelical Mind" [subscription required] examined the changing intellectual stature of evangelical thinkers in the academic community. In May 2005, Harper's Magazine featured two articles by well-known journalists: "Soldiers of Christ I: Inside America's Most Powerful Megachurch" by Jeff Sharlet and "Soldiers of Christ II: Feeling the Hate with the National Religious Broadcasters" by Chris Hedges. The PBS documentary unit Frontline explored the evangelical influence on President G.W. Bush's politics in "The Jesus Factor.

(03:40) Reference to Smith's Blogs
Smith publishes two blogs: Fors Clavigera, his thoughts on politics, culture, the Church, and miscellany and What I'm Reading, a journal dedicated to his thoughts on current literature.

(03:50) Passage from Smith's Writing
The passage recited was excerpted from Smith's essay, "It Only Hurts When I Laugh," which was originally published in the June 30, 2005 edition of Sightings:

The May issue of Harper's magazine is, as usual, a feast. There is a distinct theme running through this issue, which comprises an almost apocalyptic collection of editorials and essays chronicling the dangers of evangelical Christianity — from Lewis H. Lapham's characteristic fundamentalism of the left, through Jeff Sharlet's foray into the exurban world of Ted Haggard's megachurch, to Chris Hedges's hilarious and frightening tour of the National Religious Broadcasters conference. The writing is crisp and witty, the research is thorough, and the tone sometimes even charitable. This is just the kind of stuff that makes some of us shell out cash for Harper's, The Atlantic, and other favorite cultural observers.

But I can't stop thinking about French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, as periodicals are increasingly publishing pieces that I would call "Harper's anthropology" (though you'll also find examples of this type of journalism in The Atlantic, the New York Times, and other key media outlets). Just as western anthropologists of generations past trudged through island jungles in search of the exotic "other" in "primitive" societies, so today journalists depart from the safety and civilization of Manhattan to the exotic environs of … Kansas! — or Oklahoma, or Florida, or Colorado Springs.

Not having seen middle Americans who actually believe in God, these journalists cum anthropologists are simultaneously awed, bewildered, fascinated, and frightened by what they find. Their articles read a bit like dispatches from strange lands. "I've been to red America," they seem to say, "and it's stranger and scarier than you could have imagined."

(06:00) High-Profile Evangelicals in the News
James Dobson is the founder and chairman of Focus on the Family — a large, entrepreneurial ministry that broadcasts radio programs and publishes books and magazines — and has been declared a kingmaker by some because of his clout in presidential politics. Also based out of Colorado, Ted Haggard is the leader of one of the largest megachurches in America and president of the National Association of Evangelicals. Sharlet says of Haggard: "No pastor in America holds more sway over the political direction of evangelicalism." Both Haggard and Dobson are profiled, along with some of the evangelical thinkers and writers mentioned by Jamie Smith in this program, in a Time cover feature in February 7, 2005: "The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America". The intellectual Christian blog/magazine, Christianity Today, reflected on, questioned, and added to Time's definitions and choices. Christianity Today's editors also reflected on the responsibilities that come to Evangelical leaders given the movement's new "prime time status."

Jamie Smith singles out a few voices who exemplify his sense of the breadth and depth of the evangelical movement, such as Yale theologian Miroslav Volf [listen to Krista's public dialogue with Volf in "Religion and Violence"] and Mark Noll, a professor of Christian thought at Wheaton College in Illinois and the author of The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Smith also recommends the ideas and vision of Brian McLaren, a leading thinker in a new movement dubbed "The Emerging Church," Stanley Hauerwas of Duke Divinity School; and a future-oriented examination of global evangelicalism, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, by Philip Jenkins.

(11:24–12:27) Music
"Biscardi: In Time's Unfolding" from Contemporary Eclectic Music for the Piano, Vol. 7, performed by Jeffrey Jacob

(11:53) Reference to Reformed Protestantism
Reformed Protestantism loosely describes those churches whose traditions emerged from the basic reformation tenets of John Calvin rather that Martin Luther, including, most prominently, Presbyterianism. The smaller Christian Reformed Church (CRC) stresses a seriousness about the Scriptures and the sovereignty of God in every part of life — in the family, the church, the state; in world affairs; in economic, social, and political life; in business; and in learning and the arts. The Christian Reformed Church subscribes to three statements of faith (in addition to the early Christian Apostles Creed) which stem from the Reformation period: the Heidelberg Catechism, which is the most famous and widely translated of all Reformation creeds; the Confession of Faith written by the Belgian theologian, Guido de Brèges, in 1561; and the Canons of Dort. In this country, the Christian Reformed Church traces its origin to a band of immigrants who sought freedom in the nineteenth century from the established church of the Netherlands. They settled in western Michigan and, after an early period of religious unrest among the thousands of Dutch settlers who soon joined the earlier immigrants, organized the Christian Reformed Church in 1857.

Christian Reformed tradition historically exhibits a high regard for the life of the mind, and places value in intellectual rigor. Calvin College has been a leader, for example, in the field of Christian philosophy, which has in recent generations assumed a new stature in the discipline of philosophy as a whole.

(13:07) Biblical Books Taken Seriously by Evangelicals
When reading the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Amos, Smith says that people should note the messages of helping the poor and the less fortunate rather than only the wrath that is invoked. This passage Smith alludes to, from the book of Jeremiah 22:13-17, accentuates this principle:

Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbors work for nothing, and does not give them their wages; who says, "I will build myself a spacious house with large upper rooms," and who cuts out windows for it, paneling it with cedar, and painting it with vermilion. Are you a king because you compete in cedar? Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is not this to know me? says the Lord. But your eyes and heart are only on your dishonest gain, for shedding innocent blood, and for practicing oppression and violence.

(17:31–19:17) Music
"Prelude No. 24, BWV 869" from Music for Two, performed by Béla Fleck & Edgar Meyer

(18:05) Web-Only Audio with Jamie Smith
This Web-only audio features Jamie Smith describing his discovery of the intellectual rigor of the Christian Reformed tradition, and how he has found this to be holistic, especially as practiced together with Pentecostal spirituality. Christian Reformed theology provides deep resources for "thinking about the hard things," he says, and this draws many Evangelicals. In Charismatic tradition, he values a "radical openness" to mystery and surprise.

(18:40) Concept of Radical Orthodoxy
Radical orthodoxy is not an evangelical movement, per se, but a network of thinkers across several denominations and traditions. A scholarly journal, Ekklesia (the Greek word for "church") is perhaps the movement's most official publication. "Radical Orthodoxy" urges Christians to rethink every sphere of life, including politics, economics, natural sciences, as well as social and cultural theory in light of core Christian values. But it does not advocate the kind of partisan political strategies at which some evangelical Christians have recently been so successful. The church would keep an engaged distance and exhibit an alternative model that would take place within the church. Ashley Woodiwiss sums this up succinctly in her review of one of Smith's book on the subject:

What Smith from his Reformed tradition, and RO theologians from their more Anglo-Catholic perspectives, seek is to re-direct Christian loyalties and re-form Christian affections away from the state (unlimited power) and market (unbounded desire), and bend them back towards the church which exists in the world, through God's Spirit, as the singular exemplary human community.

For a comprehensive introduction to this subject, read Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-Secular Theology by Jamie Smith or see what Smith's fellow colleagues are thinking on Think Tank: Generous Orthodoxy in the Academy, a collaborative blog by progressive evangelicals discussing these issues as it pertains to the Christian tradition and the wider culture.

In this clip not heard on the radio, listen to Jamie Smith describe "radical orthodoxy" in more detail, including how this sensibility is helping him think about the core question of his identity in the contemporary situation. Specifically: what does it mean to be an Evangelical after 9/11 in the United States in the second Bush Administration?

(21:32) Book by Charles Marsh
Charles Marsh's book is titled The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movements to Today.

(23:00) Citation of Daniel Bell
Arguing that the church should serve as a polis, a political space that helps shape people's values, Smith says he is building on the idea of "statecraft" Daniel Bell articulated in Liberation Theology After the End of History: The Refusal to Cease Suffering:

The modern vision of "politics as statecraft" was given its classic articulation by Max Weber when he defined politics as "the leadership, or the influencing of the leadership, of a political association, hence today, of a state. "Politics as statecraft" is the conception of politics that emerged with the Enlightenment and reached its pinnacle in Hegel that holds that the realm where persons come together in polity, in a politics, is rightly overseen by and finds its highest expression in the state; it is the investiture of the state with sovereign authority over the socius and, consequently, privileging the state as the fulcrum of social and political change. The assertion that "politics precedes being" calls this into question by suggesting that the arrangement of social space is not in fact attended by a metaphysical fixity that would bestow upon a particular arrangement the status of an unchanging and unchangeable "given." More specifically, the organization of social space with the state at its summit does not precede the multitude of contingent relations that constitute social space. In other words, this arrangement of social space, with the sovereign state at its center, is a particular arrangement of social space, an arrangement that can (and, as we shall see, must) be otherwise.

(24:34–27:35) Music
"Tony" from Unspeakable, performed by Bill Frisell

(27:37–29:10) Music
"Short Trip Home" from Heartland: An Appalachian Anthology, performed by Edgar Meyer, Joshua Bell, and Mike Marshall

(29:07) Evangelicals on Gay Marriage
To listen to two Evangelical points of view on gay marriage, listen to "Gay Marriage: Broken or Blessed? Two Evangelical Views," a Speaking of Faith program featuring Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, and Virginia Mollenkott, professor emeritus at William Paterson University.

(33:17–33:55) Music
"To The Workers Of The Rock River Valley Region, I Have An Idea Concerning Your Predicament" from Come On Feel The Illinoise!, performed by Sufjan Stevens

(35:29) The Orchard Tea Room
The Orchard Tea Room in Grantchester, England is a rural tea house with a tradition that dates back to 1897. One of its most famous inhabitants, the poet Rupert Brooke, wrote one of his best-known poems, "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester" in 1912 about his days spent in Cambridge:

Just now the lilac is in bloom,
Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
Gentle and brown, above the pool?
And laughs the immortal river still
Under the mill, under the mill?
Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain?… oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?

(36:21–37:14) Music
"Concerning The UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois" from Come On Feel The Illinoise!, performed by Sufjan Stevens

(36:45) Web-Only Audio with Jamie Smith
In this Web-exclusive audio, Smith defines the post-modern observation that the idea of a neutral public sphere, governed by reason alone, is no longer tenable. The public sphere now is pluralist, governed by a broad range of commitments and agendas both religious and secular.

(37:21) The Church of the Brethren
The Church of the Brethren is a religious movement that originated in Germany in the early 18th century and migrated to America several decades later. The Brethren place an emphasis on the individual search for truth through the the authority of the scriptures. Brethren believe that God's revealed purpose began with the Hebrew Scriptures and fully surfaced through the New Testament and the life of Jesus Christ. Followers do not adhere to creeds or doctrine but regularly celebrate the rituals Jesus carried out in his daily life: baptism, communion (or lovefeast), feetwashing, and anointing of those in need.

(37:48) Book with George Ellis
Nancey Murphy and Quaker cosmologist George Ellis co-authored the book On the Moral Nature of the Universe. In the Speaking of Faith program "Science and Hope," Ellis describes his idea of kenosis, a guiding ethic that he believes provides a moral foundation to the cosmos just as there are physical laws that govern it.

(38:03) Intelligent Design
Intelligent Design (ID) is the proposition that living beings are so diverse and complicated that they can be explained not as the outcome of natural processes but only as products of an "intelligent designer." Some proponents equate this intelligent designer with a Christian God. Others make no explicit reference to God in order to maintain the separation between religion and state so that it can be taught as an alternate to, or in conjunction with, the theory of evolution. Many scientists assert that ID is a thinly veiled attempt to introduce creationism in public schools and that it doesn't pass the test of verifiability.

Natural History magazine published a special report dealing with ID debate. In it, three proponents of Intelligent Design presented their views of design in the natural world, which was followed by a response from a proponent of evolution. Also, The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life provides a extensive list of resources about the debate, including a transcript of the public dialogue about teaching religion in public schools. And, The New York Times has a dedicated section to the debate containing some enlightening articles and multimedia presentations.

(43:44) Passage from "Jesus with a Genius Grant"
The following passage was excerpted from Alan Rifkin's article, "Jesus With a Genius Grant," which originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times Magazine on November 23, 2003:

The woman behind the name tag Nancey Murphy looks marooned, albeit cheerfully. Even in a swirling sea of misfits—a New York Academy of Sciences conference on Madison Avenue—she stands out. She has green eye shadow, dumpling features, eyes that hum on the edge of surprise. Eventually a scientist from Denmark wanders over to ask a collegial question, which she answers—but in a herky, Captain Kirk cadence, as if she's replying by satellite.

Then the lights flicker and it's time for Murphy's presentation—the first slot on the day's program, which says she is a professor of Christian philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. No wonder she looks marooned. Usually Christian academics don't address international bodies of the scientific elite. If they do, they fly in from a liberal school of religion such as Claremont in Southern California or Yale, not from one of history's bellwethers of the born-again, conservative, evangelical Christian world—a place founded by a fundamentalist radio preacher, a place chartered to train pastors and missionaries and supply scholarly defenses of the Bible.

(44:40) Fuller's Statement of Faith
In December 1962, the event known as "Black Saturday" led to Fuller's current Statement of Faith. The crux of the debate is recounted in George Marsden's Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism:

"Ockenga, as chairman, — opened the door for major debate by asking, 'But why do we need a new creed?' He could see no such need. Dan Fuller, the model of candor, and now on his own terrain of theology saw his chance to assume his new leadership role. He pointed to what he saw as a vital need to revise the statement on inerrancy. … He went on to explain the whole theory of the nature of biblical inerrancy—essentially, that the Bible claimed inerrancy only for its 'revelational' teachings, that is, matters that make us wise unto salvation. On incidental matters, such as cosmological theories or historical details, Fuller stated, God accommodated himself to the imperfect standards of the day. The Bible thus contained incidental errors; but these did not hinder God's revelational purpose." …

"The conservative side heard these open attacks on the creed and on the traditional reading of 'inerrancy' with consternation. In their view, inerrancy was the logical implication of the statement in 2 Timothy that 'all Scripture is inspired by God' (3:16). God would not inspire an error, small or large. Furthermore, Jesus' use of the Old Testament implied that he regarded it as historically accurate in detail. In the end, if one said that parts of the Bible were inerrant and other parts had error, who was to decide which was which? What standard higher than the Bible itself was to be used? Christians would be left in a morass of subjectivism and fallible human opinion."

(45:11–46:24) Music
"Moses: Journey" from Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone, performed by Yo-Yo Ma

(49:24–52:58) Music
"Out Of Egypt, Into The Great Laugh Of Mankind, And I Shake The Dirt From My Sandals As I Run" from Come On Feel The Illinoise!, performed by Sufjan Stevens

(50:16) Essay by Jamie Smith
Smith's essay, "It Only Hurts When I Laugh," originally appeared in the online journal, Sightings.