First Person: Grazing the Green Fields of BAR

I recently read an Associated Press story about a study being conducted at Boston University’s Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs that, according to one of the study directors, sociologist Peter Berger, “explores an ‘evangelical intelligentsia,’ ” which Berger says “is growing and needs to be better understood.”

Evangelicals say they often aren’t well understood beyond their Bible-banging, evolution-hating caricature. Many equate evangelicals with fundamentalists, an evangelical subset that interprets the Bible literally—as in the six calendar days of creation—and is home to ardent evolution opponents. But [Timothy] Shah [the other director of the study] said most evangelical scientists believe in evolution guided by God.