The Christian Intellectual

If one of the goals of the CFFA is to provide an intellectual foundation for the Christian worldview as it relates to Finance, then we must decide if it is possible and desirable to do so. Jonathan Fitzgerald answers the latter question in his December 18, 2009 WSJ article, "Winning Not Just Hearts but Minds". He addresses Evangelical Christianity in particular. Regardless of how you label yourself, do you think his comments apply to Christianity in general?

From the article:

"On Dec. 8, some of America's brightest contemporary intellectuals gathered at the New School to discuss the tenuous relationship between "Evangelicalism and the Contemporary Intellectual." Sponsored by Brooklyn-based literary magazine n+1, the panel featured The New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell and James Wood and The Nation's former associate literary editor Christine Smallwood. While these thinkers all grew up in close proximity to evangelicalism, there was one conspicuous absence from the conversation: an intellectual who still professes the Christian faith. The discussion was predictably thoughtful, though evangelical belief was treated as something necessarily dispensed with on the way to becoming a public scholar."

"At the n+1 forum, all of the panelists discussed their move away from evangelical faith as a part of becoming intellectuals. I asked them whether such a shift was inevitable. Malcolm Gladwell did not respond, but James Wood answered by listing a series of names of those who are, in fact, both Christian and intellectual. Though he acknowledged that most of them—including the literary critic Terry Eagleton and Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams—were either Catholic or Anglican, not evangelical at all."

I suggest that we begin to think about what an intellectual Christian worldview of Finance means. Certainly, we do not want anyone to think that Christianity is opposed to rigorous thought. Of all the adjectives used to describe Jesus we rarely hear "brilliant". We should. A casual reading of the Gospels partially reveals His genius and amazing insight into Finance.