Marsden’s classic work is a hard, honest look at whether distinctively Christian scholarship is actually possible, and if so, what relevance it would have to the academy at large. He argues that in fact, the “secular rules of the game” do not allow for an unbiased playing field. Rather they are full of assumptions that bias the scholar in favor of secular conclusions. He takes seriously the problem of allowing distinctively Christian scholarship in a pluralistic setting like the secular academy, arguing that if such a setting is truly pluralistic, it would allow professors to teach from Christian perspectives as well as from other religious and worldview perspectives, as long as such content remained  objectively accessible to scholars from all persuasions. He declares that a Christian scholar will ask different questions in her research, thus allowing her to go in different directions and discover solutions that a secular scholar would have overlooked. Far from arguing for right-wing activism, Marsden  is at times as hard on Christian fundamentalism as he is on secularists. 

If there is a flaw in Marsden’s work, it is that it takes too thin a view of academic integration, viewing it only as an intellectual enterprise of assimilating two areas of knowledge and relating that to the academy. A thicker view of integration would include the scholar’s mission as a follower of Christ and how that relates to other people (evangelism), as well as including sapiential knowledge (wisdom) in the definition of knowledge and how that relates to the scholar’s life. Marsden seems to argue merely for a Christian seat at the academic table, when part of the Christian mission is to argue that Christianity is true and publicly defensible (of course, allowing persons of other religious persuasions and beliefs to do the same). These critiques aside, Marsden’s work is an excellent and thought-provoking introduction that belongs on every Christian scholar’s shelf.

Reviewed by: Mark Hansard