Every so often a book comes along which is able to capture the intellectual climate of its age. Such a book performs the task of doing to the intellectual elites what the words of the young boy did to the tailors of the emperor’s new clothes. In 1987 Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind did just that in its exposing of the epistemological and moral relativism as well as the politicizing which pervades academic intellectual life in America. In 1995 Phillip Johnson’s Reason in the Balance has provided us a tome of similar significance, exposing and critiquing the anti-theistic assumptions of America’s intellectual elite culture. Johnson, a law professor at University of California, Berkeley, as well as a former law clerk for Chief Justice Earl Warren, presents a very straightforward case: metaphysical naturalism is the assumed, though unargued, established religion of America’s elite culture. American intellectuals assume that science is the paradigm of knowledge, and since an essential presupposition of science is metaphysical naturalism, any claim outside of this view of ‘science’, including any claim that metaphysical naturalism is false, is ‘not knowledge’. Consequently, and appeal to God or something outside of the quantifiable physical domain of ‘science’ is de facto irrational and not worthy of the name ‘knowledge’. But, as Johnson points out, such a stacking of the deck automatically excludes Christian theists from the realm of public discourse, whether in law, science or education. Take for example this fictional scenario (this is my example, not Johnson’s). Suppose a Christian philosopher comes up with a logically sound and highly persuasive argument for the existence of the Christian God which contains certain scientific premises which are accepted by the scientific community (but which have never been envisioned by that community as a means to establish any theism). According to Johnson’s thesis, such as a philosopher will be greeted with sceptical howls from scientific elites. His or her argument will not be handed over to ‘experts’ for critique. Rather, it will be dismissed and buried under a litany of unargued, assumed scientistic’ truisms and insults, such as: ‘Science and religion are separate domains’, ‘You’re not a scientist’, ‘God can’t be part of a scientific hypothesis’, ‘You’re violating the separation of church and state’, or You’re not one of those backwater, ill-mannered, fundamentalist, wacko creationists, are you?’ Notice that no argument was refuted, no counter-thesis sustained, no premise challenged, no validity called into question. The reason why this type of reaction occurs, Johnson maintains, is that the intellectual elites have smuggled in (both overtly and covertly metaphysical naturalism as part of their criteria of what constitutes rationality and/or scientific reasoning. So, the theist who comes up with a knock-down, drag-out argument for God’s existence (or some type of creationism) can’t be right, since naturalism is true and part of being scientific is assuming metaphysical naturalism. Of course, this is entirely question begging, no better an argument than the one proposed by the zealous Boston Celtic basketball fan that the Celtics are the best team because no team is better. But this does not deter the designers of intellectual fashion. Evidently, bad reasoning in defence of ‘rationality’ is no reason to abandon it. This is why Johnson’s previous work, Darwin on Trial (IVP, 1991, 2nd edn, 1993), was greeted with such disdain by both secular and Christian intellectuals, though it received a hefty number of important reviews because it was arguably the best-argued critique of evolutionary theory in print. In Reason in the Balance, Johnson goes through a number of legal, scientific, philosophical and educational issues, which space prevents me from going over in this review. This book is an important work which should be in the hands of every Christian university student (both post-graduate and undergraduate), faculty member, attorney, and concerned citizen. There are significant enough parallels in the UK, and many other countries, to ensure international applicability as well.