Checking the Fruit: Skepticism as Epistemic Politics in American Evangelicalism

This article examines rationality in American evangelicalism through the prism of epistemic politics, focusing on how believers navigate the ethical demands of living among others who claim different access to truth. Whereas existing research on the cultural psychology of belief highlights how evangelicals manage skepticism about their own supernatural beliefs and experiences, I focus instead on how they navigate competing knowledge claims in view of ordering collective life. I argue for more analytical attentiveness to clashing forms of intellectual authority within evangelicalism. Drawing on fieldwork at a traditionally noncharismatic congregation in Nashville, Tennessee, I examine members’ efforts to assuage their distrust of subjective religious experiences as they debate polarizing doctrinal reforms. I show how their situation reflects persistent ethical tensions between charismatic and noncharismatic spirituality, despite the former’s dominance in contemporary evangelicalism. Religious knowing is not just a matter of personal faith. It is also about reconciling one’s own experiences, beliefs, and commitments with those of others.