Navigating Authenticity and Peer Pressure in Faith and Academia

A theologian and professor at an Evangelical Theological Seminary describes a very unique, but instructive, “slippery slope” experience.

As promised, here’s our second conversation with someone who walked that “slippery slope” out of Evangelicalism, but did so while leading and teaching a large group of Evangelicals who were still quite comfortable with their own Christian worldviews.  Last week it was John James Kirkwood, as the pastor of a church with strong Christian Nationalist leanings.  This week, it’s Dr. Pete Enns, a theologian and the Abram S. Clemens Professor of Biblical Studies at Eastern University (formerly Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary).

We talked about the Christianity he grew up within (German Methodist), and his early years at Messiah University (a private evangelical Christian university in Pennsylvania) getting his BA in Behavioral Science, followed by an M. Div from Westminster Theological Seminary, and then a PhD at Harvard University (Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations).  During those 16 years of academic learning, Pete’s understanding of the Bible changed completely. He now saw human fingerprints all over it, and his interpretation of it looked very different from that of many Evangelicals (and completely heretical for Fundamentalists).

We talked about that journey, and why it seemed to look and feel so different from the “slippery slope” experience that many of the rest of us typically describe.  Instead of the incapacitating elements of confusion and disorientation, for him it was more of an invigorating intellectual evolution.  He also didn’t experience the peer pressure that I had expected: the coercive influence of what his peers (scholars; professors; intellectuals), his employer (the University) or his students (bright-eyed Evangelicals themselves) might think.  Instead, he was motivated by being true to himself and following the evidence to its logical conclusion … being authentic and maintaining his integrity.  But he did experience one other key element of the “slippery slope” syndrome: the emotional collapse at the end of the journey.  He described the sadness he felt when he realized “I may never sing another Christmas carol again.”  The isolation, and loss of a community.  The uncertainty of having no guardrails, nor Someone constantly watching over him.

We also talked at length about his confrontation with the Board at Westminster Theological Seminary, where he had been teaching for years, and how it ended with the resignation of almost a dozen leaders at the University, including Pete himself.  How it was clearly a battle over orthodoxy, and the control of orthodoxy, especially how that crystalized around one particular book that Pete had written (Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament) … the VERY different perceptions about that book held by the Board, the Faculty of the University, his book publisher, his readers, and even himself.

Finally, we also talked about a couple other books he’d written which were particularly relevant to this discussion: The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More than Our ‘Correct’ Beliefs (a clear reference to orthodoxy), and Curveball: When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming (or How I Stumbled and Tripped My Way to Finding a Bigger God).

We thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, and are sure you will find much to learn from it.  Enjoy!

Find more information about Dr. Pete Enns at his faculty page, his podcast page, and this link to the books he’s written.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also want to look at our collection of similar life stores of people leaving traditional Fundamentalism/Evangelicalism to find a Christianity that looks completely different.

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