THE PROMISE OF A SECOND EVANGELICAL MIND: FREE WILL BAPTIST BIBLE COLLEGE AND THE HYBRID MODEL OF CHRISTIAN HIGHER EDUCTION

Abstract

Historians often describe conservative Protestants of the twentieth century as an anti-intellectual group whose focus on the spiritual world engendered an unreflective engagement with the physical world. This mindset was founded on the synthesis of faith and reason formed during the eighteenth century. Mark Noll suggests that when revivalism engaged this epistemic synthesis it rendered the conservative Protestant intellectual life moribund. Further, conservative Protestant higher education of the twentieth century inculcated this mindset by institutionally dividing study of God from study of the world.

The history of Free Will Baptist Bible College’s first thirty years complicates the historical narrative. Committed to teaching both knowledge of God and knowledge of the world, the college’s administration formulated a theologically integrated approach to knowledge that rejected the old synthesis in favor of a theologically integrated approach to knowledge of the world. This proves the development of a second conservative Protestant mind.