If Pagels were to write an evangelistic work for Gnosticism, I wouldn't care. But her "evangelism" is presented as scholarship, data, and hard facts, when they are often anything but
I agree. But, then, the entire Christian faith is a matter of, well, faith, not fact! :) Nevertheless, the same can be said of the opposing side. We accept the Scripture on faith. Jews, who disagree with us do so based on their faith.
However, if it were all a matter of faith things would be easy. Unfortunately, facts get in the way. The world is not as smooth and self-congratulatory as we would like it to be, unless we choose to hide in our own little box and pretend that no one else could possibly be right, or – God forbid – that we may be wrong.
There is a difference. There are very few scholars holding views that support traditionalist views of any kind who do not readily acknowledge that they are part of a community of faith, and that their job is, at root, a service to that community of faith. So one cannot say that there is an equivalence.
The fact that they acknowledge their faith and their service to the Church, does not mean that they believe that their views are entirely blind-faith, contrary to reason, or indefensible from a scholarly point of view. Quite the contrary. Knowing that they are swimming against the tide of post-Enlightenment thought, most academics with traditional beliefs are scrupulous in their treatment of the evidence at hand, knowing that any mis-step will be pounced on.
On the other hand, most anti-Christian scholars teach at a seminary, which means that they are intellectually dishonest and morally fraudulent: they are on the payroll of an institution that they don't believe in and that are intent on destroying. The rest are in secular institutions where they assume the guise of completely objective, "scientific" investigation.
In either case, dishonesty is involved, and in either case the superficial presumption by an outside observer is that it must be the anti-Christian scholars who are right: the former because "it must take a lot of courage for him to question his own faith," and the latter because "what those traditionalists say is just faith, but what those people at Princeton and Harvard say is *science* and *hard facts*."
Ann Rice gives testimony to theh prevalence of this superficial impression. She *knew* that Pagels and the like were the real scholars, and that Christianity was helpless in the face of the skeptical critiques. What she learned is what anyone who honestly digs deeper can learn for themselves.
No one defending the Church's positions has ever thought that the world was a smooth and self-congratulatory place. No-one who participates in FR could think so. I doubt SS. Paul, Irenaeus, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory Palamas, etc... thought it was.
They prayerfully used their considerable intellects and extensive educations to discern the mind of the Church and to defend the traditional faith of the Church from attack using every scholarly and literary tool at their disposal. And they weren't intellectually dishonest in the process -- they made no secret of their faith in and union with God.