Tuned IN
Going Green
Apostles of
Reason: The
Crisis of
Authority in
American
Evangelicalism
by Molly Worthen
reviewed by Robert N.
Hosack
Hank and John Green
John Green is best known as the
prize-winning author of young adult
books like The Fault in Our Stars. He also
has a vast online presence, most notably
on the video-sharing website YouTube.
Green shares the spotlight with his
brother, Hank. The brothers have over
half a dozen YouTube channels, including
Mental Floss and Crash Course, but their
first, VlogBrothers, remains the most
popular.
In 2007, YouTube was in its infancy
when John and Hank started VlogBrothers. They agreed to post video web blogs
to each other for one year. What started
as a conversation between two brothers
bloomed into over 1,100 “vlogs” and over
What started as a
conversation
between two
brothers
bloomed into
1,100 “vlogs.”
34 THE BANNER | March 2014 | www.thebanner.org
500 million views. Fans of VlogBrothers
are called Nerdfighters.
In their vlogs, the brothers discuss a
variety of topics: health care, world religion, and John’s dog, Fireball Wilson
Roberts. Both brothers use a rapid-fire
style of speaking peppered with humor,
and their tone ranges from serious to silly.
Most vlogs have subtitles to aid listeners
who have a difficult time hearing everything.
John is a professed Christian, but
neither brother enjoys publicly engaging
on the topic, mainly because, in John’s
words, “the quality of discussion on this
topic on the Internet is atrocious.” The
brothers have also created projectforawesome.com, which has raised almost a
million dollars for charity. Check them
out. The Nerdfighter in you will be glad
you did. n
Kathryn Hoffman keeps up
with all things young at her job
at Living Stones Academy and
at Neland Avenue Christian
Reformed Church in Grand
Rapids, Mich., where she
is a youth group leader.
Of the making of books on
evangelical navel-gazing there
is no end. But newcomer
Wor then’s meticulously
researched Apostles of Reason
offers an epic interpretive history of American evangelicalism. The author artfully traces
the new evangelicalism
through icons like Billy Graham, Carl F. H. Henry, and
Christianity Today, finding a
crisis in authority at the heart
of the movement. The tension
between the head and the
heart is one that could not
b e e s c a p e d . Wo r t h e n
observes, “Scratch a neoevangelical and underneath
you would likely find a
fundamentalist who
still preferred the
comforts of purity
to the risks of free
inquiry and collaboration.” This is one
of the most important books on evangelicalism in the last
20 years. (Oxford
University Press)