Evangelical Scholarship?

Before I left for the University of St Andrews I mentioned to several people that many, perhaps most, Biblical Studies scholars are not professing Christians; some (not all), in fact, are in it to ruin the credibility of the Bible as a reliable guide to understanding the "real", "historical" Jesus. Many who heard me say this were shocked, some even appeared to be skeptical.

I participate in a "List Group" on the internet. Biblical Scholars and doctoral students in Biblical Studies from all over the world discuss various issues related to Biblical Studies. Below I have posted the discussion question for today, which gives you a sense of the climate of which I am apart. I have removed all names, but even without them you get the flavor:

Reading [Biblical Scholar who is a strong advocate for secular Biblical Studies]'s essay and some recent list discussion on "biblical archaeology" brings to mind a question that have always bugged me: the term "evangelical scholarship." Is there such a thing as this? [Here he points to an evangelical scholar who writes on the resurrection in Matthew] seems to show me that "evangelical scholarship" (if such a thing exists) seems to be no more than an ideologically motivated attempt to prove the Bible true by using methods that RESEMBLE critical historical research - a kind of "cargo-cult" history where all the external trappings but none of the core substance are present.

This has led me to reflect again on my calling. Why am I pursuing a PhD in Biblical Studies? My primary aim is to serve the Church, and more particularly, to equip pastors for a lifetime of ministry. My primary source for doing this is the Bible. My PhD studies are preparing me to be a better teacher of the Bible.

But recent on-line discussions, and books like The Da Vinci Code, The Jesus Tomb, The Jesus Dynasty, The Gospel According to Judas, and Misquoting Jesus--just to name a few, remind me that one of my roles in serving the church is to engage with scholarship which is no less ideologically motivated than Evangelical scholarship, and which believes that by using historical critical methods it can have the objective, authoritative, 'pure' knowledge about what the Bible is really all about, knowledge which is untainted by faith.

Incidentally, my response to the chap above would be brief, something to get him to think about his own presuppositions, something to spark a conversation; something like this:

All scholarship, and all knowledge for that matter, is ideologically driven. That is, we believe in order to understand; we must have pre-conceived notions about our world and how it works in order to makes sense of what we interpret. The historical-critical methodology that you advocate is as much a faith-system as any other approach and does not yield untainted, pure, scientific knowledge as you assume. So, what makes your faith system better or more reliable or more authoritative than the Evangelical approach?