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Continuing the conversation found at The Rise of Cosmopolitan Evangelicalism . . . Comment Magazine has an excellent Interview with Timothy Shah, director of The Emerging Evangelical Intelligentsia Research Project, a Senior Research Scholar with the Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs (CURA), and Senior Fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. As an alum of the Pew Younger Scholars Program, I concur that it’s loss is significant. Pray for Emerging Scholars Network (ESN) and Following Christ Conference as part of InterVarsity's Graduate & Faculty Ministry will press forward in this area of significant concern . . .

Here’s Shah’s response to the question, If you are a young emerging evangelical, where should you go for “care and feeding?

I think young evangelical intellectuals should consider taking some time to do serious theological study, perhaps in the middle of their graduate studies, before they pursue their doctorates. Regent College and Fuller Theological Seminary are two places to consider. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything quite like the Pew Young Scholars Program to nurture them specifically in their discipline or chosen field of endeavor. Hopefully, this will be corrected in the near future. The only current alternative is the Harvey Fellows Program. I was a Harvey Fellow and I continue to appreciate the network of relationships that it fostered.

In my area, which is world religion and politics, I run a summer seminar with Peter Berger on religion and world affairs, and we’ve had a number of evangelical students participate in the past. It is a very rich theoretical experience as well as provides a wealth of basic empirical information about trends in world religion and politics. Of course, I’m biased, but I think it would be very valuable for students interested in religion and international relation, religion and world politics, or religion and comparative politics. The Institute for Religion, Culture, and World Affairs at Boston University sponsors this summer seminar.

John Seel: What kind of education should a thoughtful evangelical student seek in high school or college to prepare him or herself to become a public intellectual?

Timothy Shah: One can get this kind of preparation in any number of different institutions including Christian colleges. But there are also secular institutions, which provide excellent formative training for Christian intellectuals.

One of the most important things and often one of the most neglected, in my own experience, is a solid grounding in the history of ideas, not philosophy narrowly understood, but the history of social, moral, and political thought coupled with a solid grounding in history. These are essential.

Rising evangelical scholars need to understand the fundamental debates and discussions that have constituted the philosophical and political traditions. And then understanding how specifically Christian thinkers and ideas have been a part of this conversation. And then, as I mentioned earlier, one should understand how specifically evangelical thinkers figure in this history. One will necessarily have to supplement one’s courses particularly at a secular institution with the kind of reading and sources that I described earlier. But we lack perspective when we are not grounded in history.

Unfortunately, we tend to neglect precisely these subjects as they don’t immediately lend themselves to success in the job market or are required in core curricula. Nonetheless, they are essential for the development of a Christian public intellectual.