If we look at this evangelical renaissance as an intellectual movement, one theme overshadows all others. In virtually every field the principal interaevangelical debate has been the same: Do evangelical Christian scholars pursue their science or discipline differently from the way secularists do? By now the literature on this subject is vast. In almost every field today, evangelical scholars are divided basically into two camps, with some hybrid in between. These camps are the Warfiedians and the Kuyperians, although they do not necessarily identify themselves as such or follow their mentors precisely. The Warfieldians—those who believe in one science or rationality on which all humanity ought to agree—point to the breakdown of any promised consensus in secular twentieth-century thought and claim that evangelical Christians can still argue their way to victory, at least in individual cases. To do so, they must stay on common ground with the non-Christians as long as possible, pursuing the technical aspects of their disciplines with just the same methodologies as their secular contemporaries do, but adding to them Christian moral and theological principles that truly objective people will see are rationally necessary to complete the picture. The Kuyperians, in contrast, emphasize that discipline is built on starting assumptions and that Christians’ basic assumptions should have substantial effects on many of their theoretical conclusions in a discipline. Thus two conflicting worldviews may be scientific or rational if each is consistent with its starting premises. People who start with the premises that exclude God as an explanatory force and people who start with belief in God as among their basic beliefs may be equally rational and may be able to work together on technical scientific enterprises; but on some key theoretical issues their best arguments will simply come to opposed conclusions. There will be two or more sciences. Rationality alone will not be able to settle arguments among them.

At the moment the issues in the intraevangelical debate are far from resolved. The Warfieldians still look back, in effect, to the days of evangelical hegemony in the emerging American scientific culture and still look forward to a time when true science and true Christianity will be compellingly synthesized. The Kuyperians, on the other hand, are frankly more pluralistic in their view of the human scientific community. Their outlook is thus suited to those aspects of the evangelical psyche that see evangelicalism as a minority view in a pluralistic society. Much of the confusion in understanding what popular evangelicals and fundamentalists want vis-a-vis American society today stems from the lack of resolution among evangelicals (and fundamentalists) of these intellectual issues. Do they want to dominate the scientific culture or simply be recognized as one voice, as legitimately intellectual as the next? (pgs. 151-152)

Marsden, George M. (1991). Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism.