Reflections on Carl Trueman’s Fascination With Edward Said

By June Engdahl
March 1, 2009
www.unashamedofthegospel.org

In the December 2008 issue of Tabletalk magazine, published by Ligonier Ministries, a review of Carl
Trueman’s book, Minority Report appeared. The reviewer noted that one of the chapters dealt with the
subject of what Carl Henry’s followers could learn from the late Edward Said. This got my attention
because I knew Edward Said was a highly controversial scholar. What, I wondered, could Trueman
possibly be suggesting. A Google search located an essay that sounded like the chapter in question. It
can be downloaded from The Gospel Coalition website at http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/publications
under “Archived Themelios Issues”, Issue 30-2. The essay is entitled “Uneasy Consciences and Critical
Minds: What the Followers of Carl Henry Can Learn from Edward Said.”
http://s3.amazonaws.com/tgc-documents/journal-issues/30.2_Trueman.pdf

I do not know if the essay was edited or updated for publication in the book. This paper will interact only
with the essay as it appears in Themelios. I believe a response to this controversial essay is needed. Its
thesis is questionable and Trueman’s argument for it unconvincing. Even to suggest that Christians
should take lessons from a leftist whose mentors were Marxists and revolutionaries is lamentable. This
paper will highlight and discuss Trueman’s criticisms of Evangelicalism and also take issue with his main
thesis that Evangelicals should learn from Edward Said.

Carl Trueman is a young, but already highly esteemed, academic who teaches Historical Theology and
Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, as well as holding other positions
there. I have profited from his writings, his Reformation 21 blog entries, Internet interviews, sermons and
lectures. Therefore, it is difficult to have to take very serious issue with this 2005 Themelios article, now
reprinted in his book Minority Report.

Trueman is from the United Kingdom and describes himself elsewhere as being “center-left” on the
political spectrum. The Themelios article leaves the impression that he is more than a little “left” of the
“center”. His high regard for Edward Said and the other scholars who influenced him is puzzling. None
of them are Christian. They are enemies of Christianity. They are leftists, Marxists and post-modernists.
They despise the West while they enjoy its benefits and freedoms. To suggest that Carl Henry’s followers
can learn from Edward Said and his friends is disconcerting to say the least, especially coming from a
Reformed academic. Trueman himself said Henry and Said were “strange bedfellows.” Neither “would
appreciate the company of the other” (p. 45). Why then such a provocative essay?

The first half of Trueman’s essay is very interesting and with few exceptions non-controversial. Trueman
claims Evangelicals are heirs of Carl Henry in putting into practice his initial vision for cultural
engagement. Trueman believes Henry’s most influential book was The Uneasy Conscience of Modern
Fundamentalism. It was instrumental in helping bring about a “new Evangelicalism” out of the “cultural
and moral legalism” of fundamentalism. Henry and those new Evangelicals around him sought to be
“less polemical,” and urged the like-minded among them to get rid of their apathy, become activists in a
common Evangelical front, and rise above differing theological traditions to confront and engage modern
secularity.

Trueman rightly points out that getting Christian influence into the culture is especially difficult because
doctrinal distinctives of individual churches must be downplayed in some respects in order to get a
general consensus. A case in point is the deterioration of Christianity Today magazine. It began with high
theological standards and serious articles. It now makes its appeal to ever broader segments of the
Christian culture. As Trueman so well states: CT gravitates “towards lowest common denominator
themes.” It can be said to even manufacture “consensus.”

1
Trueman makes a good point in stating that Henry’s vision needs “to be modified, indeed radicalized, to
include careful reflection upon how Evangelicalism is to be held accountable to the church.” This
subject, however, was not adequately pursued. More effort was given to show the shortcomings of much
of the political involvement of Evangelicals. How that related to the problem of accountability to the
church was left unclear.

I believe Trueman gets off the track when he starts discussing the political engagement of Evangelicals.
He criticizes them with misstatements and hyperbole worthy of a politician: They practice “right-wing
politics of a fairly radical kind.” There is “fierce loyalty to the Republicans being exhibited by most
white Christians.” He claims “[w]hen individuals from other countries and cultures, with different
political convictions, come to America, they are disenfranchised because the church has created
unnecessary barriers to evangelism” (p. 40). This is an odd assertion and makes no sense.

Trueman must be unaware of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States which
specify the rules for citizenship. Only persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens.
Immigrants are not disenfranchised when they come to America. They simply are non-citizens and do not
have the same rights and benefits that citizens have. The franchise has not been taken from them. It
simply has not been given to them. That would happen if and when they satisfactorily complete the
citizenship application process and pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America.
Thus Trueman is accusing Evangelicals of something totally outside their prerogative.

It is not clear what Trueman meant to convey with this odd statement. He uses the phrase “the church has
created unnecessary barriers to evangelism.” Does he mean that the church discriminates against
immigrants “with different political convictions” and that this makes it more difficult for them to go
through the citizenship process? If he were to take a look around him at all the wonderful things
Evangelicals and other Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) do for legal immigrants in this country
he would realize he spoke too hastily. The many ESL (English as a Second Language) programs offered
by Christian churches and para-church organizations are a case in point. There are other services
Christians perform which help immigrants. Even though Trueman implies it, Evangelicals do not
discriminate against immigrants for holding to “different political convictions.” Most of them espouse
different religious beliefs as well. The immigrants and their convictions and beliefs are treated with
dignity and respect. The good work that the churches and other organizations do for immigrants is
actually lowering barriers for their assimilation into American society, not raising them as Trueman
claims.

Trueman goes on to suggest that there is a “colour bar which runs through American church life,
particularly as it relates to whites and African Americans” and that the “white churches’ record on
slavery” causes economic and “class divisions” (p. 41). These accusations of racism and classism were
not backed up with any reasoned argument, and are similar to those Edward Said hurled against
imperialistic societies. Trueman is here unilaterally charging one group (white churches) and society
(America) with sins that are universal. While not denying the fact of racial discrimination in the history
of the American church, a more nuanced discussion of this subject would have been helpful.

The American church is not acting “as the nation’s conscience” as Carl Henry stressed it should (p. 39).
Henry would not have approved its “black and white, simplistic politics.” Certainly Henry could be
critical of certain aspects of Christian political involvement, but does anyone doubt that certain issues
would indeed be “black and white” issues for him, abortion being just one. Evangelicals and other pro-
life individuals have been attempting for decades to instruct the nation’s conscience on the abortion issue
and have succeeded, at least thus far, in keeping a pro-life position in the platform of one of the political
parties. Even though Trueman said Henry’s vision needed to be “radicalized” he didn’t apply that
radicalism to the fight against abortion:

2
 “The current function, however, of abortion as the card which trumps everything has killed
meaningful political thinking on other issues in many Evangelical circles” (p. 39).

“The relationship between the church and politics is always going to be complicated. This is not
least because political thinking is a culturally specific, occasional activity, where the black and
white moral categories of right and wrong do not always, or even often, apply” (p. 40, emphasis
supplied).

“Only the crudest of Bible-thumping simpletons can possibly correlate the teaching of the Bible
in a direct, no-nonsense way with the party political platforms of the early twenty-first century. . .
. Yes, God hates the slaughter of infants – but abortion is merely the most obvious way in which
this takes place” (p. 40, emphasis supplied).

Trueman then sets forth the typical leftist litany of other political issues and causes that should be part of
any Evangelical political agenda because, he says, “they kill infants too.”

But it is patently obvious that AIDS, famine, war, pollution, and the rest of the litany of leftist issues and
causes he lists do sometimes kill infants. But it is always after they are born. Babies who are aborted
don’t get out of the abortion clinic alive. The right of “choice” was established by judicial fiat to allow
women to murder their unborn if they so desire. And abortion happens all over the world not just in
America. It is not a “culturally specific, occasional activity.” It is odd that a Christian theologian is
unable to see it as a black and white issue that “always” applies. Christians should always oppose it and
seek to stop it in every non-violent way possible.

If any issue should be a defining issue for the Christian community it is the abortion issue. Yet Trueman
believes Evangelicals are overzealous and polarizing for giving it so much attention. There must be “root
and branch criticism of the culture” and there are worthier causes in Trueman’s “wider world” (p. 43):

“[t]he enemy at the moment is consumerism, reinforced by the old mythology of Western
superiority. These foes are deadlier in many ways than the Red menace if only because they are
that much more insidious and seductive . . . . The prophetic voice must speak to this in the
coming years if the church is not to become a religious form of wholly secular substance . . . .
Evangelicals need to heed the cultural criticism of a Said if they are to avoid a simplistic and
idolatrous identification of Christianity with a particular political project, whether of the right or
of the left” (p. 44).

Granted, consumerism is a problem but it doesn’t rise to the level of importance that surrounds the issues
of abortion and homosexuality. It is acceptable in most contexts to speak negatively about consumerism.
The same cannot be said for speaking negatively about abortion and homosexuality. And to say that the
myth of “Western superiority” reinforces consumerism is only partially true. Greed and lust are part and
parcel of human depravity, which includes everyone, whether living in the “superior” West or in countries
ruled by tyrants, most of whose citizens lack sufficient money and opportunity to indulge the
consumeristic habit. If given the money and opportunity, would inhabitants of these countries be any
different? Christians have Jesus’ command not to lay up treasures on earth (Matt. 6:19) as a guide when
dealing with a problem like consumerism. Why is Jesus’ command not enough? When Trueman
demands that “the prophetic voice must speak to this in the coming years” he wants the “cultural criticism
of a Said”, his prophet extraordinaire, to inform that prophetic voice.

Yes, consumerism is a menace and Christians are guilty of its attractions as well as unbelievers. The West
is particularly prone to self-absorption, luxury and concupiscence. Christians are guilty of these sins as
well. The economic stresses the West is now suffering are in part a direct consequence of the foolishness

3
of idolizing and hoarding up earthly treasures. The Bible speaks to these sins. When Christians do not
heed its guidance they falter. Christians have Jesus as their instructor in how to live righteously in the
context of a materialistic culture. It shows the strength of the leftist categories that govern Trueman’s
social analysis, at least in this essay, that he finds the “cultural criticism” of Edward Said more
compelling in speaking to these problems than the teachings of Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount.

It is also noteworthy that in 2005 there was no deadly “Red menace” but there was, and still is, an Islamic
menace, which Trueman does not mention at all, even though America was involved in two wars against
Islamic terrorists at the time of his original essay. His high regard for Said, who was vociferously against
the United States policy in these conflicts1, may have influenced his decision to remain silent. Also his
belief that Christians need to be critical of the culture in which they live may have played a part. In any
case, Trueman did not bring up any kind of criticism of the religion that motivates people to maim and
kill in its name.

Trueman is also critical of what he calls American “myths.” Particularly unsettling to him is the
“insidious” myth that many Evangelicals believe “America has a special place in God’s providential
care.” This is to harbor the error of “manifest destiny.” Myths are everywhere in America, especially the
myth of “superiority.” The “mythologies” began with the Founding Fathers (never explained or
qualified), are taken up by Hollywood, and carried forward by a media obsessed with “strength, beauty
and superiority.” Christians identify “America and the American way, with its freedom, democracy and
free market philosophy as identical with God’s way.” This all stems from “a basic human pride in
anything that allows one to feel superior to others” (p. 40).

This sweeping denunciation of so-called American “myths” which Evangelical Christians are caught up in
is unjustified. Why brand America as peculiarly “obsessed” with the “myth” of “strength and beauty”
when this is a world-wide phenomenon. Trueman’s sniping at freedom, democracy and free market
capitalism is also unjustified. People privileged to live in the Western world should be thankful to God
for the freedom and democracy of their governmental systems. In the providence of God, Americans are
further blessed with having had Founding Fathers who preserved our people’s rights in a Constitution and
Bill of Rights. Why Trueman would castigate Evangelicals for believing that their own and other free and
democratic governments are “superior” to, for instance, Socialist, Marxist or Islamofascist ones is
amazing. He then adds insult to injury by accusing them of harboring a “basic human pride in anything
that allows one to feel superior to others.” In actuality, American Evangelicals would be happy if the
entire world were so blessed to live in democracies with Constitutions allowing those under its
protections to live in freedom and dignity.

Generally speaking all Christians, but perhaps even more so the Reformed, believe in God’s special
providence over their lives as individuals, and over all countries and mankind in general. Why Trueman
would call this an “insidious” myth is odd. He even wrote a scholarly book on John Owen, the great
Puritan divine, who had a highly developed sense of his country’s special place in the providence of God
during the English Civil War, the Cromwellian Protectorate and the eventual restoration of the monarchy.
God is sovereign over all. He has a sovereign plan for every country. Why should not Christians pray for
and desire and strive to accomplish God’s known will in every area of their lives, personally,
professionally and politically? That God might also bring unexpected judgment to individual Christians,
churches and nations is also part of what it means to hold to the principle of having a “special place” in
God’s providence. John Owen certainly understood that in his historical context.

Trueman’s harsh portrayal of Evangelicals culminates with a final indictment that they regard “a
particular brand of politics as of the essence of the gospel.” He says:

“[m]ost white evangelicals are Republicans, while most African Americans are Democrats.
Bluntly put, if I have to buy your political manifesto in order to buy your gospel, then your

4
 church is indulging in a dangerous confusion of categories and excluding individuals and groups
from its congregation. They are excluded on grounds other than that of simply being outside of
Christ. A gospel that is too American in this sense is no gospel at all” (p. 41).

While some Evangelicals hold strong political positions and actively work for various causes it doesn’t
follow that they believe their political beliefs and activism are “of the essence of the gospel.” Trueman
needed to give some examples before making such a strong criticism. Likewise, he should have told us
which churches are asking people to “buy” a “political manifesto” before they can “buy” their gospel.
This charge is totally unwarranted. Of the various faith commitments, and ethical and doctrinal standards
that potential members are expected to submit to before joining a Christian church, fealty to “political
manifestos” would not be included among them.

After setting forth all the ways Trueman thinks Evangelicals fall short in their cultural engagement, the
last half of his essay is spent discussing ways they can improve their prospects for success, if they heed
his advice and seek the insight that he claims can be found in the ideas of the famous
Palestinian/American academic Edward Said. However, Trueman did not tell us enough about this man’s
ideas or his character, and those who influenced him, information Christians need to know before they
can endorse him or his ideas as being worthy of the Christian’s attention.

Edward Said was born in Palestine into a wealthy, nominally Christian Palestinian/Lebanese family. He
spent more of his youth in Egypt than in Palestine. He had the best of private school education all
through college. He became ardently pro-Palestinian and was a hearty PLO supporter but broke with
Arafat when the latter made concessions to Israel. Said wrote his memoir Out of Place2 late in life. In it
he reflects upon his childhood and early adult years in a highly interpretive way bringing to bear on his
childhood and youth his mature worldview.3 Almost every reference to Christianity is negative. He was a
highly regarded scholar at Columbia University where he taught English and Comparative Literature. He
authored many books. His most successful and controversial one was Orientalism,4 which propounded a
thesis on how the West views the Orient that has become the standard “doctrine” in most university
Middle East Studies departments. As Trueman so well puts it: Said claimed “that ‘the Orient’ was a
construct of Western ideology and thus part of the mechanism of Western imperial power” (p. 41).
Trueman does not take issue with this thesis. He appears to agree with Said, who took his thesis further
and applied it to famous English writers, most notably Jane Austen. One of her characters had a
plantation in Antigua and Said attempts to implicate her in having favorable views of the slave trade.5

In an article written shortly after the events of 9-11, Stanley Kurtz in The Weekly Standard had this to say
about Edward Said and his very successful “Orientalism” thesis:

“The public knows Edward Said as the most prominent American supporter of the Palestinian
cause . . . who was famously and incongruously photographed – a Columbia professor in southern
Lebanon – hurling a rock at a guardhouse on the Israeli border. But Said’s real influence has been
as the founder of ‘post-colonial theory,’ arguably the dominant intellectual paradigm in those
sections of the academy dedicated to the study of non-Western cultures.”

“At a stroke, Said’s 1978 book Orientalism created post-colonial theory. . . . Orientalism is built
upon the supposition that there is no such thing as disinterested knowledge, that all knowledge is
contaminated by its entanglement with power. It follows that all Western knowledge of, say, the
Middle East or south Asia must wittingly or unwittingly serve the purposes of imperialist (or
present-day ‘neo-imperialist’) domination.”

“But the cleverest twist in Said’s theory is his claim that even the most sophisticated and
respectful Western accounts of foreign cultures are actually tools of imperialist oppression. Just
by treating Islamic societies as different from the West, scholars commit an act of highhanded

5
 condescension. The insinuation hiding behind even the most respectful study of cultural
difference, Said claims, is that the people who practice exotic customs, however intriguing or
complex they may be, are sufficiently irrational as to be unfit to rule themselves.” See
http://www.travelbrochuregraphics.com/extra/edward_Said_imperialist.htm.

David Zarnett, a scholar at King’s College, University of London, wrote an article in 2007 entitled
“Edward Said and the Iranian Revolution.” It appeared in Democratiya, an online journal and can be
found at http://www.democratiya.com/review.asp?reviews_id=92. Zarnett set forth how badly flawed was
Edward Said’s analysis of the Iranian Revolution. So convinced was Said of his own thesis in
Orientalism that he viewed the Iranian Revolution through its lens. In doing so he misinterpreted that
Revolution’s true character. Zarnett specifies two points which led to Said’s errors: (1) Said was not an
expert on Islam, Iran, the Shah or Farsi and thus believed the Western press’s portrayal of the Revolution
had to be “inherently wrong”; and (2) Said didn’t take seriously what Khomeini said about the Jews and
Shari’a law. As Zarnett states:

“What irked Said most was the idea that the Iranian revolution symbolized a ‘Return to Islam’.
Contrary to how the media reported it, Said saw the Iranian revolution as unrelated to Islam. The
real roots of the revolution, and of resentment towards the West throughout the Middle East, he
thought, lay not within Islamic culture or society but rather Western treatment of the region.”

“After his years of research and writing for his book Orientalism (1978), Said thought he knew
exactly what was going on. His analysis of systematic Western misperceptions of Islam –
orientalism – was to be vindicated by a stinging critique of this orientalist discourse about the
Iranian revolution.”

“His out-of-hand rejection of the media’s characterization of the revolution as ‘Islamic’ resulted
from his a priori hostility to all American mainstream media discussions of Islam. His method
blocked a more nuanced approach that might have seen the Islamic and the political dimensions
of the revolution. It would have served Said well to consider one of George Orwell’s dictums:
‘Just because you read something in the Daily Telegraph doesn’t mean it’s wrong’.”

“The irony is that while Said made his career criticizing the West for denying Muslims or Arabs
their own fully autonomous existence, his own thought – as Kanan Makiya has pointed out [citing
Makiya’s Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising and The Arab World] contributed to that
very denial. Through the distorting lens of ‘orientalism’ key Muslim and Arab personalities and
movements are routinely denied their identity, their words ignored, and an alternative and self-
serving image is thrust upon them (and us).”

Zarnett’s well documented essay makes it clear that Said was not a trustworthy guide in truthfully
deciphering and interpreting the Iranian Revolution. The traits of character Said displayed throughout his
involvement in the Iranian issue and the quality of his interpretation of the whole project were not
praiseworthy. If Christians can “learn” anything from Edward Said it would be not to emulate him or
subscribe to his ideas.

In Out of Place Said often portrays himself as a victim in all areas of his privileged existence. He creates
a narrative that is captivating and full of detailed observations of events spanning decades, family
members and conversations and people who passed through his life and how he interacted with them.
One can’t help but wonder how such minute details could be remembered by anyone, even a brilliant man
like Said, especially when they are decades removed from the actual occurrences. Some, (see Endnote 3),
have questioned some aspects of his narrative’s veracity.

6
The circumstances surrounding Said’s birth are telling. After having lost one baby because of the
Egyptian hospital’s inability to properly treat an infection it contracted at birth, Said’s parents went to
Palestine in 1935, so Said could be born in a hospital more advanced than what Cairo offered. To the end
of his days, even after becoming totally Americanized, he promoted and acted as an apologist for the
Palestinian cause and denigrated Israel accordingly. He spent more of his youth in Egypt than in
Palestine, yet the way he goes back and forth with such details in his memoir the reader never gets a clear
picture of that truth. He became such a proponent of the Palestinian cause that claiming deeper
Palestinian roots than he actually had could only help enhance his personal narrative and standing among
his compatriots in Palestine, even while enjoying all the privileges and comforts of an influential
university professorship at Columbia.

Of interest to Christians is Said’s reference to his great-grandfather, Yusef Badr, who is mentioned in
American missionary Henry Jessup’s memoir as the first native Protestant minister in Lebanon, around
1880. Said was referring to Jessup’s Fifty-Three Years in Syria published by Fleming H. Revell
Company, in 1910. Said claims in Out of Place that Badr and other Protestants in Lebanon:

“[h]ad an embattled, even belligerent, sense of what it meant to be Christian in a Muslim part of
the world. My mother’s first cousins and her uncles were educated at the American University
(formerly the Syrian Protestant College), and all had been or were still avidly religious, and
further developed these affiliations through frequent trips to the United States and graduate
studies there, plus, in my later view, too close an identification with American views on Islam as a
depraved and unregenerate religion”6 (emphasis supplied).

Even though Trueman initially gives generally high praise to both Henry and Said, the impression might
be left that they are on an even keel in his thinking. But upon closer reflection a different picture
emerges. Trueman says that Said had the “greatest influence on his thinking of all non-Christian writers”
(p. 43). Evangelicals need to learn from this “dazzlingly brilliant and eclectic thinker” who has
“something with which Christians should familiarize themselves” (p. 41). This one-sided lofty praise,
alongside the overall critical depiction of Henry’s followers, diminishes Henry himself and elevates Said
disproportionately. The latter was “a polymathic scholar who also wrote widely on Middle Eastern affairs
in a passionate and engaged way.” Henry, however, “was a high-class journalist who, though
undoubtedly very clever and accomplished, really devoted much of his life to a popular explication and
application of the Christian faith in the contemporary world” (p. 32). Such a portrayal of Henry sounds
rather pedestrian when compared to Said’s pristine erudition and style. Henry’s scholarly attributes, and
whether they encompassed the “great learning,” viz. “polymathic” qualities of Said’s scholarship, are left
for others to plumb. Even a cursory look into Said’s vast writings proves he is indeed a very learned, well
read scholar. But are his passionately held opinions and analyses valid?

Other writers and scholars have lower opinions of Said. Martin Kramer writes that after the 1960’s the
institutions of higher education turned ever more leftward:

“Academization translated radical political agendas into the theoretical framework of

postmodernism, which postulated the subjectivity and relativity of all knowledge. In a time of
diminishing opportunities in academe, this challenge increasingly took the form of an insurgency,
which ultimately overran university departments in the humanities and social sciences.

“Said’s Orientalism far from bucking convention, actually rode the crest of this immensely
successful academic uprising.”7

In the years following the publication of this book it became acceptable for scholars to

7
 “spell out their own political commitments as a preface to anything they wrote or did. More than
that, it also enshrined an acceptable hierarchy of political commitments, with Palestine at the top,
followed by the Arab nation and the Islamic world. They were the long-suffering victims of
Western racism, American imperialism, and Israeli Zionism – the three legs of the orientalist
school.”8

Trueman’s essay shows that he has imbibed at least some of the academic thinking Kramer describes
above. Another trait worth noting in Said’s character is his McCarthyist tactics. Here is how Kramer
described it:

“The analogy to McCarthyism, an American phenomenon, rested upon Said’s tendency to list his
protagonists and antagonists. Listing was a consistent feature of his style – a favorable reviewer
of a later book noted Said’s tendency to run together ‘a string of names, as if that in itself
constituted an argument’ [citing a review in the New York Times of Culture and Imperialism by
Michael Gorra, Feb. 28, 1993] – and when he listed his orientalists, this effectively became a
blacklist.”9

Should not Trueman have made his readers aware of such negative traits in his hero before he suggested
Christians learn from him? It is also important to know a little about the men from whom Said himself
took lessons. In Evangelical circles they are not usually viewed as legitimate sources of wisdom, nor
should they be. Antonio Gramsci was an Italian Marxist; Michel Foucault, who agreed with Ayatollah
Khomeini’s revolutionary politics, was a French homosexual leftist activist; Frantz Fanon grew up in
Martinique and wrote The Wretched of the Earth (1961), called by its publisher "the handbook for the
black revolution." Trueman offers no caveats of these men’s ideas or character. One has to ask: Why
would a Christian theologian give credence of any kind to such men? Here’s why Trueman thinks they
are worth listening to:

“From these he learned both the ways in which established power uses all aspects of wider
culture in order to extend its own project of control and manipulation, and the need therefore to
be critical of the culture in which one lives lest one be unwittingly co-opted into its wider
agenda” (p. 41).

It is obvious that the “established power” he speaks of is Western. Would Said and his Marxist mentors
have been as critical of the power structures of the Palestinian Authority for instance? Or the power
structure of the Iranian Ayatollahs? Of course not. This criticism is meant to apply to the governments of
the free world, particularly the United States.

When commenting on colonialism’s legacy, Said quoted Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth approvingly:

“We should flatly refuse the situation to which the Western countries wish to condemn us.
Colonialism and imperialism have not paid their score when they withdraw their flags and their
police forces from our territories. For centuries the [foreign] capitalists have behaved in the
underdeveloped world like nothing more than criminals.”10

So even though the European colonialists have left their colonies, often in better shape than they found
them; and even though many of those same colonies now find themselves suffering under the terrible
conditions imposed on them by their own ruthless dictators; yet the West is still being blamed for all those
“wretched of the earth” having to exist in such miserable conditions. This is the social analysis Trueman
suggests is relevant in critiquing imperialistic institutions and power structures, i.e. America’s, and right-
wing political activism of American Evangelicals by necessary inference.

8
Said is praised especially for criticizing the “cult of specialization” (p. 42) in the academy. This is a
practice that prevents those who have competence in some specialized calling from then making
statements outside their specialty. Those who do so are accused of “speaking out of their hats” as
Trueman so Britishly puts it. Said claimed that “academic specialization is being used by a political
establishment to marginalize a dissenting voice.” When, if ever, does the political establishment
marginalize dissenting voices of leftist academics? While he was alive, Edward Said’s voice was heard in
many venues outside his Columbia classroom. The academy is chock full of scholars speaking outside of
their specialties. And they are definitely not hectoring from a “right-wing” perspective. The only people
the political establishment tries incessantly to marginalize are Evangelical Christians.

One “specialist” Trueman admires and made a point to mention in his essay is Noam Chomsky.11 He
claims Chomsky made “significant . . . contributions” to the ‘theoretical linguistics’ field yet what he says
outside his specialty is “often denigrated.” Trueman applauds Chomsky for making “major contributions
to understanding how propaganda functions, how the West has frequently played a duplicitous game with
regard to human rights abuses and geopolitical issues” (p. 42).

Does specialist Chomsky have anything to say about how propaganda functions in Iran, Sudan, China,
North Korea, Putin’s Russia, the Gaza Strip, and in other terrorist states? What about human rights
abuses in these tyrannical states? Did Said have anything to say about them? No, the criticism is all one
way – against the democratic West. And Trueman acquiesces in this totally unbalanced view. He wrote
his initial essay post-911 yet made no reference to that terrible event. Nor did he mention the continuing
murderous acts of terror perpetrated by Islamists like those who committed the atrocities against America
on 9-11. What caused such an oversight? Was it a concern about not wanting to be considered an
“orientalist” or to be overcritical of Muslims and Islam?

Certainly people should be allowed to speak outside of their particular areas of expertise. But why does
such a concept need Edward Said to commend it and Noam Chomsky to model it? Christians have
examples from the Bible. The New Testament is a record of lowly, humble people speaking outside their
areas of “expertise.” The disciples of Jesus spoke outside their professions of fishing and tax collecting as
they brought God’s truth to the worldly powers of their day. And Priscilla and Aquila spoke outside of
their profession of tentmaking contending for Gospel truths. And the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 1: 21,
25, 27 teaches believers to be wary of worldly-wise specialists, operating in any era, when Christians
have the Word of God to guide them:

“For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God
through the folly of what we preach to save those that believe.”

“For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”

“But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the
world to shame the strong. . .”

Some of the great Christian missionaries of the past lived during the days of the British Empire, including
William Carey, Reginald Heber, Henry Martyn and Samuel Zwemer, to name just a few. According to
Edward Said’s thesis, they would never be able to truly understand the Orient. Carey, Heber and Martyn
because they were part of the British Empire. Zwemer because he was from America, which had no
foreign colonies but did have international influence. Yet these were godly men, who believed they were
instruments in God’s hand to spread the Gospel, not instruments of the governments from which they
came. Said was only partly correct when he stated the following:

“Even the legendary American missionaries to the Near East during the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries took their role as set not so much by God as by their God, their culture, and their

9
 destiny. The early missionary institutions – printing presses, schools, universities, hospitals, and
the like – contributed of course to the area’s well-being, but in their specifically imperial
character and their support by the United States government, these institutions were no different
from their French and British counterparts in the Orient.”12

It is true the good works done by the missionaries were a fact and much appreciated by the people
benefiting from them. But Said is wrong to attribute “imperialistic” motives on behalf of America for
what they did among the people they truly loved. Robert Kaplan saw things a little differently:

“In marked contrast to the conduct of European colonials in the underdeveloped world or
American expatriates in the Panama Canal Zone and the Pacific holdings, imperialism and
commercial exploitation were entirely missing from the baggage carried by the missionaries in
Lebanon. Nor did the Americans even present a threat to the local religious culture, as the
missionary colonies in India, China, Burma, and Siam would. For if truth be told, compared to
the missionaries in the Far East, who won over significant numbers of Chinese to Protestant
Christianity, the American missionaries in the Middle East were complete failures. The
intractability of Islam quickly forced them to give up any hope of converting souls to Christ.

“It would be only as purveyors of Western education that the Americans in Lebanon were to
succeed. And for that the local Arabs would learn to love them.”13

Kaplan portrays the early 19th century American Christian missionaries very sympathetically. He makes
clear that they did not have the imperialistic “baggage” Said attributes to them. They learned the
languages and identified with the people. But Kaplan sees them more “like romantic explorers and Peace
Corps workers than real missionaries.”14 However, to claim the Christians were “complete failures” in
“converting souls to Christ” is perhaps too strong an indictment. Even if few, we are aware that Jesus
does tell us there is “joy in heaven” over even one sinner who repents (Luke 15: 4, 8, 10).

Kaplan writes that “by 1860 the American missionaries were operating thirty-three schools in Syria.”15
They wanted to “civilize” Syria and were downplaying proselytization and replacing it with education.
Their one enduring success was the creation of The Syrian Protestant College in Beirut. It was founded in
1866 with 16 students. Kaplan described its importance this way:

“The Syrian Protestant College . . . was probably the most inspired idea in the history of foreign
aid. Not only was it a quintessential cottage industry project for filtering Western values into the
Arab world over time, but it also provided a permanent aesthetic monument to America in the
region, a monument that posed no threat to anyone else’s sovereignty. In fact, the school became
an agent for the promotion of Arab sovereignty.”16

Christians might not be satisfied with the missionaries’ decision to be more concerned with education
than with evangelization. Said’s adherents might continue to view the Protestant College as another
example of American imperialistic meddling where it did not belong. But it still was a force for good in
the region. It eventually became the American University of Beirut. It actually helped foster Arab
nationalism, the outcome of which has not always had positive results. The ensuing years of turmoil in
Lebanon had effects on the University also. The new Islamists were using Said’s Orientalism to stir up
strife. As Martin Kramer explains:

“[I]n Orientalism, Said determined that American hospitals and universities in the Middle East
were tainted by ‘their specifically imperial character and their support by the United States
government’ [citing Said, Orientalism, p. 294] . . . . It was a telling coincidence that when a
militant Islamist movement arose among the Shi’ites of Lebanon in the 1980s, its zealots saw
these institutions in just this light and deliberately targeted university and hospital personnel. . . .

10
 “AUB drew much of the fire. In 1982, the university’s president became the first American taken
hostage in Lebanon. After the abduction, Malcolm Kerr arrived in Beirut to serve as president.
Kerr was a son of AUB, a founder and past president of MESA [Middle East Studies Association
of North America], a supporter of Arab causes – and the lone American critic of Said’s
Orientalism. That he continued to reject Said’s premises was obvious from his inaugural address
in Beirut. In it, he pointed to the evolution of AUB ‘from a university offering Western culture to
the Arabs, to one that promotes both Western and Arab cultures and implicitly looks for a
symbiotic relation between them, in the best tradition of European Orientalism.’ In 1984, Kerr
was gunned down outside his office, by assassins who must have seen this symbiosis and its best
tradition as forms of imperialism.

“There was much irony in the fact that Said and the ‘progressive’ scholars, from the safety of
American universities, should have delegitimized the one university in the Arab world where
academic freedom had meaning thanks to its American antecedents.”17

In a footnote to his remarks Kramer said that another irony was Said’s complete reversal of his former
view of American universities in the Middle East, telling an interviewer in 1997 they were the “last
utopian place.”

There are several reasons why I have given so much attention in this paper to probing into and exposing
Edward Said’s dangerous beliefs and criticizing Trueman for praising the man so highly. First, Said’s
influence is still dominant in the academy even though many scholars disagree with his ideas and the
political positions he held. He did not always tell the truth. Trueman’s high praise indicates there are
Christians willing to give his opinions acceptance. Yet the post-colonial, postmodern agenda espoused by
Said is detrimental to Christianity. His Orientalism thesis pervaded all of his thinking. If applied to
modern missions it could have deleterious effects. Christians should be wary of giving it credence.

Another reason for this paper is to register amazement that a Reformed scholar could suggest that
unbelievers, leftists and post-modernists are proper teachers for Evangelicals, or anyone else for that
matter. It jars one’s sensibilities. Obviously, learning what these people think and say is necessary in
order to understand and refute them. But to view them as valid arbiters of Christianity’s flaws is absurd.
The truth claims of their various writings in themselves are questionable. And the flaws that Trueman
asserts are attributable to Evangelical political activism over the past decades are themselves open to
more debate than Trueman’s one-sided negative discussion gave them. That the worthy Christian Carl
Henry, and his bumbling followers, had to be brought in as foils to the leftist Palestinian ideologue,
Edward Said, and his Marxist mentors, is a quite remarkable slice of chutzpah.

The Christian church has the authority of the Word of God to bring to bear on its own who overstep
biblical boundaries. American Christianity is a mixed bag, full of all kinds of egregious sins and
shortcomings and needs to be confronted when in error, which is often enough. There are biblical
principles which speak to Evangelicalism’s sins. There is also a vast treasury of Christian wisdom to be
found in Luther, Calvin, Owen and Edwards to name just four. That Trueman chose to make a case for
accepting the criticisms of Said, Foucault, Fanon, and Chomsky against Evangelicals is simply incredible.

One of the most common slogans offered up in praise of Edward Said was that “he spoke truth to power.”
It is ironical that in all of Trueman’s suggestions that Evangelicals learn from leftists and their social
theories against power structures (understood, of course, as Western power structures), it is actually Carl
Henry and those Evangelicals he influenced who actually did speak truth to power. Despite their many
sins and foibles, Evangelicals have for many years been an influence in the public square. They have
confronted political parties, legislative bodies, academics, the media and, when needed, even the
churches. Whatever errors and theological weaknesses were, and are, connected to such efforts, at least

11
the attempt to make Christian principles known and respected, if not heeded, is admirable. The best of
those efforts would have pleased the late Westminster scholar John Murray, who wrote:

“God alone is sovereign. His authority alone is absolute and universal. All men and spheres are
subject to God. The civil magistrate derives his authority from God. Apart from divine
institution and sanction, civil government has no right to exist. ‘The powers that be are ordained
of God’ (Rom. 13:1). Since civil government derives its authority from God, it is responsible to
God and therefore obligated to conduct its affairs in accordance with God’s will. The infallible
revelation of his will God has deposited in the Scriptures. It will surely be granted that there is
much in the Scriptures that has to do with the conduct of civil government. And this simply
means that the Word of God bears upon civil authority with all the stringency that belongs to
God’s Word.

“Furthermore, the Word of God reveals that Christ is head over all things, that he has been given
all authority in heaven and in earth. The civil magistrate is under obligation to acknowledge this
headship and therefore to conduct his affairs, not only in subjection to the sovereignty of God, but
also in subjection to the mediatorial sovereignty of Christ, and must therefore obey his will as it is
revealed for the discharge of that authority which the civil magistrate exercises in subjection to
Christ. . . . To recede from this position or to abandon it, either as conception or as goal, is to
reject in principle the sovereignty of God and of his Christ”18 (emphasis supplied).

In these days, when the complete secularization of the West is almost accomplished, and militant Islam is
posing an ever greater danger not only to the West, but to the entire world, Evangelicals need to remain
engaged in cultural confrontation according to biblical norms and imperatives. They would do well to
remember John Murray’s words and ponder how to understand and implement what he said about not
abandoning the headship of Christ “over all things” either as “conception or as goal.”

ENDNOTES

12
1
See Edward W. Said, From Oslo to Iraq and the Road Map, Pantheon Books, New York, 2004, by the Estate of Edward W.
Said, which incorporates many of Said’s essays in Arabic media publications between December 2000 and July 2003, to get
a flavor of how he presents his case against the United States and Israel to the Arab world.
2
Edward W. Said, Out of Place, A Memoir, Alfred A. Knoph, New York, 1999.
3
A very interesting article appeared in the magazine Commentary in September 1999 entitled “’My Beautiful Old House’
and Other Fabrications by Edward Said”, written by Justus Reid Weiner, an Israeli scholar, who meticulously researched
claims Said had been making in different venues over many years about his so-called home in Jerusalem. It is most
illuminating. Said was capable of creating a highly inventive personal narrative. In Out of Place published after Weiner’s
massively researched exposé, Said left out his former fanciful narratives about this “house” which proves Weiner’s efforts at
truth-telling bore fruit. The article has proof of many more discrepancies in Said’s memory and can be found here:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/-my-beautiful-old-house--and-other-fabrications-by-edward-said-
9062 for a fee; and here also in different formatting:
http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/glosses/weinerAttackOnSaid.html; a further response from Weiner to critics of
this article is found here http://www.meforum.org/article/191.
4

Edward W. Said, Orientalism, Vintage Books a Division of Random House, New York, October 1979.
5
Mansfield Park illustrates this in Said’s view. See Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism, Alfred A. Knopf/New York,
1993, pages 80-97 for his reasoning. For a critique of Said’s view of Austen see Ibn Warraq’s July 2007 essay entitled “Jane
Austen and Slavery” in the online journal New English Review located at:
http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/8722/sec_id/8722.
6
Said, Out of Place, pp. 168-169.
7
Martin Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America, The Washington Institute for
Near East Policy, 2001, p. 31.
8
Ibid., p. 37.
9
Ibid., p. 38.
10
Said, Culture and Imperialism, p. 12.
11
For more on Chomsky see the following http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=7A71842F-32D5-
4401-9D64-276122F38563 which is the Introduction to The Chomsky Reader by David Horowitz and Peter Collier. Here is
a brief excerpt of Collier’s Introduction: “Some of the ideas on his intellectual curriculum vitae that are discussed in the
following pages—his defense of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge; his support of holocaust revisionism—may surprise those
who know Chomsky only generally as a critic of U.S. foreign policy. Other of his commitments—the assertion that the U.S.
as a world power is continuing the program of Nazi Germany and his fierce hatred of Israel—will, unfortunately, be more
familiar. But either way, as Chomskyism continues to grow at home and abroad, it is clearly time for a reckoning.”
12
Said, Orientalism, p. 294.
13
Robert D. Kaplan, The Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite, The Free Press, A Division of Simon & Schuster,
Inc., 1993, 1995, p. 16.
14
Ibid., p. 25.
15
Ibid., p. 33.
16
Ibid., p. 37.
17
Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand, p. 46.
18
Collected Writings of John Murray, Volume One: The Claims of Truth, The Banner of Truth Trust, 1976 Valerie Murray,
pp. 364-365.
__________________________

June Engdahl, the writer of this paper, is a retired legal secretary. She began her career in Minnesota and later
moved to San Francisco where, for 27 years until retirement, she worked for a large San Francisco law firm. Ms.
Engdahl enjoys reading history and biography, especially relating to the English and American Puritan era.
Since September 2008 she has edited Rev. Bassam M. Madany’s various writings dealing with the global
challenge of Islam. They appear on this and several other websites.