Because
evangelicals tend to subordinate discursive truth to
evangelical truth, limiting inquiry by the creation of discursive orthodoxies to match their
evangelical ones, dissipating the tension and traducing the complementarity which reside within the fullness of truth, they appear to have disabled themselves for the kind of free university inquiry out of which, historically, has come the growth of knowledge and
culture.
In the past, the fundamentalist and
evangelical traditions within Christianity have
tended to stand in a counterculture relationship with American society while the mainline churches have been more identified as a
culture - affirming religious tradition.