Mark Noll leaving Wheaton for post at Notre Dame

Mark Noll leaving Wheaton for post at Notre Dame
By Robert Marus


WHEATON, Ill. (ABP) -- One of evangelical Christianity's premier scholars will leave one of it's premier institutions of higher learning for a position at a premier Catholic university, according to news reports.

The website of the magazine Christianity Today reported Feb. 9 that Mark Noll, longtime professor of history at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill., will leave there for the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., at the end of this academic year.

Noll is perhaps best known in Christian circles for his 1994 book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, which criticized evangelicalism's tendency toward anti-intellectualism. However, his 2001 book, America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln, raised his stature -- and that of evangelical historical scholarship -- in the wider academic community.

Noll's departure "is one of the most painful announcements I've had to make" in his tenure at Wheaton, said Stan Jones, the school's provost, according to the magazine. "Noll is an exemplar of all that's good in Christian academia. He set the standard of what it means to be a Christian scholar and a Christian teacher."

Wheaton, sometimes referred to as the "Harvard of evangelicalism," is considered a center of conservative Protestant scholarship. One of the Chicago-area school's most famous alumni is evangelist Billy Graham.

However, in recent years, Notre Dame has attracted a large group of evangelical scholars. Prominent Baptist scholar George Marsden has been a longtime leading light in the school's history program. Noll will be groomed as something of a replacement for Marsden, according to Christianity Today.

"We're delighted to have him," John McGreevy, chair of Notre Dame's history department, told the magazine. "We feel we have a strong program already. Mark will augment that."

Noll also is a leader in promoting dialogue between Catholics and evangelicals. McGreevy said Notre Dame would be a fertile environment for such efforts. "Notre Dame is a good place to do that," he said. "There are lots of serious Catholics and Protestants who want to think about those issues."

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