Consensus, Bullying, and Social Pressure in Gospels Studies

Is consensus in Gospels scholarship really diverse? The sad fact of the matter is that there is a great deal of social pressure not to be "too conservative," and even some Christian scholars engage in subtle and not-so-subtle pressure tactics against conclusions that are deemed overly conservative. These include name-calling without engaging arguments, straw-manning harmonization, blurring crucial distinctions, and more. Often such unprofessional scholarly tactics even make it into books published by well-known presses. There is an enormous blind spot in this area in the discipline as a whole, so that often the only people who can take positions deemed "too conservative" are outsiders who are not dependent upon the discipline for their careers. What this means in practice is that scholarly consensus in this field is far from diverse.