SOURCE: "For Whom the Bell Curves," in Christianity Today, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 14, December 12, 1994, p. 19.

[Lisa Graham McMinn is an American sociologist and Mark K. McMinn is an American psychologist. In the following essay, they fault The Bell Curve for asserting that "intelligence is of utmost importance for success."]

In The Bell Curve, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray suggest blacks are less intelligent than whites and assert that intelligence cannot be improved significantly enough to merit policies designed to help blacks.

The authors' conservatism may give The Bell Curve a stronger than usual hearing among some evangelicals, but the methodology and the implications of their findings ought to raise serious concerns.

Many of Herrnstein and Murray's arguments are not new—they are the 1994 version of what other researchers have proposed over the post century. Nor are their methods and conclusions universally accepted by scholars. Thomas Sowell challenged Arthur Jensen's...