(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority American Evangelicalism . By Molly Worthen . New York : Oxford University Press , 2013. viii + 354 pp. $27.98 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesMolly Worthen's remarkable Apostles of Reason is an authoritative guide past six decades of American evangelical Christianity. It is one of most important accounts we now have on post-World War II evangelicalism, alongside books such as Joel Carpenter's Revive Us Again , Darren Dochuk's From Bible Belt Sunbelt , and Steven Miller's The Age of Evangelicalism . Yet Worthen's highly engaging book may not garner as much of an audience among American evangelicals as one might hope, because contest between evangelical conservatives and myriad evangelical dissenters, Worthen is not hesitant take sides. Her preference is for dissenters.Worthen's wide-ranging survey centers on evangelicals' quest for certainty and biblical authority, and especially effort defend of inerrancy. From Carl Henry, founding editor of Christianity Today , leaders of Southern Baptist Convention's Conservative Resurgence, traditionalist evangelicals have elevated inerrancy as an indispensable precept for Bible-believing Christians. Inerrancy posits that Bible (in original manuscripts) is God-breathed, authored by Holy Spirit working through inspired saints, and is therefore entirely free from factual or ethical error. The obvious problem with inerrancy is that it never solves debates over scripture's meaning: even conservatives do not agree on all manner of biblical issues, from proper method of baptism theology of end times.Worthen takes a skeptical--even hostile--view of real agenda of inerrantists. Whether they perceive it or not, doctrine of inerrancy was a comforting gauze that concealed a great deal of ugliness, she says. It was and is, in essence, a means of managing Bible's vulnerability subjective judgment (199). Evangelicalism, Worthen contends, has always been a multivalent, fractious conglomeration of perspectives rather than a unified set of principles. Anyone who suggests that there is a set of defining evangelical doctrines--as authors of The Fundamentals argued a century ago, just as today's conservative seminarians do--are really acting on their anxiety about free inquiry and about their movement's impermanent qualities.Twenty-five years ago, his magisterial Evangelicalism Modern Britain , historian David Bebbington, whose name does not appear index, offered his famous quadrilateral of conversionism, biblicism, crucicentrism (the centrality of cross), and activism as defining traits of evangelical Christianity. Whether or not Worthen has Bebbington mind, it is precisely attempt define evangelical faith that she finds objectionable, and usually politically motivated. Pop evangelical gurus from Francis Schaeffer Christian America history writer David Barton have promoted their own versions of historical, theological, and scientific orthodoxy--usually more crass than those of scholars like Bebbington--in order give the appearance of sophistication and unassailable truth, but ultimately, to shut down debate (209). …