"And if pastors have trouble using their theological training profitably for pastoral ministry, why do historians even think their academic skills, while good and valuable, rival those of people who minister God’s word and bring to bear on ordinary human existence reflection on God’s ways?"
"Again, historians may need to recognize why evangelical readers and audiences value pastors and theologians more than those who teach history — because God matters more than the Civil War."
Be that as it may, one might note that with regard to this discussion that the comparison to Lewis is not entirely appropriate. Though Lewis was certainly a scholar of repute, the work for which he is remembered by American evangelicals is not his academic work or even relevant to his academic field. Most American evangelicals who have admired Lewis for his Chronicles of Narnia or Mere Christianity probably know that he was a professor of literature at Oxford, but they have little, if any, awareness of his specialty in medieval literature. American historians writing mostly for academic audiences interested in their specialty are not likely to have the same popular acclaim.
There are both legitimate and illegitimate reasons for the growing chasm between Christian popular and academic worlds. Among the illegitimate is the latent anti-intellectualism that has always characterized American evangelicalism and that tamps down evangelical interest in subjects such as history, even the history related to evangelicals' own faith.
However, it should be noted that Christians sometimes do show an interest in history; yet, when they do so, their most popular choices of historical guides is almost uniformly bad. Thus, American church goers helped make bestsellers of Eric Metaxas awful biographies of Luther and Bonhoeffer while ignoring far better accounts of the lives of these men. Even worse, evangelicals, especially in the south, have made a hero of David Barton, a self-described historian whose repudiated published work and public statements (see also here and here)make it hard to figure out if he is a half-wit or a charlatan. In spite of Barton's poor reputation, he has had tremendous influence among the Christian right and claims to have influenced several state legislatures and boards of education. For my own review of Barton's presentations at a home school conference, see here, here, here, and here.
Much of Christian anti-intellectualism unfortunately is self-perpetuating, as congregants with understandings of the faith that are divorced from serious reflection flock toward ministers who will give them the same. Many ministers are more likely to have recently read something on church marketing than anything remotely rigorous, and this shows up in the content of the worship experiences that they lead. While this has popular appeal, the self-perpetuating is arguably also self-defeating. While the American public may not have significant intellectual interests, those that shape the culture more often do, and Christians that complain about cultural elitists have abandoned that demographic.
I noted that many of the historians lamenting their lack of influence also placed that lament in a political context, and that is also a mistake. An academic desiring a wider audience for the purpose of directly shaping political attitudes is the wrong approach. Those who desire to read will often find good writers, but they will often reject those they perceive as looking down on their choices.
