Intelligelicals

Last year Neuhaus raised a friendly caution about B&C editor John Wilson's playful self-distancing from populist Protestantism. "...we sip Starbucks and speak easily of Neruda and pretend that we believe in cause and effect," mused Wilson in response to the I-just-discovered-Christians-exist alarmism of Charles Simic in the New York Review of Books. Responds Neuhaus,

"Yes, there are redneck evangelicals, but then there is also the wine and Brie set that reads Books and Culture. Might one not infer from what Wilson says that Simic's hysterical generalizations about 'them' are fully warranted? Just asking, mind you" (10/05).

And though I wish I had thought of it, now, thanks to the Japery, we have a word for the self-conscious hipster academic evangelical on the make - intelligelical - and it's a warning rather than a compliment.