Study to crack evangelical stereotypes

CNN: Study to crack evangelical stereotypes (HT: Bradley Wright)

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP)  — For decades, Boston University sociologist Peter Berger says, American intellectuals have looked down on evangelicals.

Educated people have the notion that evangelicals are “barefoot people of Tobacco Road who, I don’t know, sleep with their sisters or something,” Berger says.

It’s time that attitude changed, he says.

“That was probably never correct, but it’s totally false now and I think the image should be corrected,” Berger said in a recent interview.

Now, his university’s Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs is leading a two-year project that explores an “evangelical intelligentsia” which Berger says is growing and needs to be better understood, given the large numbers of evangelicals and their influence….