Four tiers, forty authors

Last August I wrote up a long piece about “tiers” in Christian/theological writing. Go there for the details. Regular readers will know all about this by now; it’s become a bit of a hobbyhorse, as well as a shorthand—both with fellow writers and with editors and publishers.

I’ve found that, in these conversations, we don’t limit ourselves to one of the tiers but say “a high two” or “a low three” or “maybe a one point nine.” Four slots ain’t much. So I decided to unpack the tiers by decimal points into a total of forty options. I’ve also taken the liberty to put an example of the kind of author I have in mind for that particular number. If the author is prolific or tends to write on the same “level” across his or her books, then I don’t mention a title. If not, though, I give a sample book title to indicate which “version” of said author I have in mind.

Consider this your friendly reminder that the point of the original post was not that these rankings are indexed by quality; you don’t get books that are per se “better” as you get bigger numbers, nor are higher tier books per se “harder” to write compared to lower tiers. A lot of Tier 3 authors wish with all their hearts they could manage a successful Tier 2 book. But it’s really hard to do that, and to do it well.

The tiers, rather, are about intended audience, style, accessibility, density, presumed education, background knowledge, literary purpose, and so on. From normies with a day job who may read no more than a handful of books per year to fellow scholars in the academy who read hundreds—that’s the range of imagined readers for these books. Which isn’t to say that folks in the former category don’t occasionally wander “up” into Tiers 3 and 4 or that academics don’t enjoy books in Tier 1 and 2 (I do!).

But enough preliminaries. Here are forty authors across four tiers, limiting myself to authors who are either living or who have published in the last few decades and whose books continue to be in print.

1.0 – Sadie Robertson Huff
1.1 – T. D. Jakes
1.2 – Tony Evans
1.3 – Max Lucado
1.4 – Beth Moore
1.5 – Jonathan Pokluda
1.6 – Austin Channing Brown
1.7 – John Mark Comer
1.8 – Bob Goff
1.9 – Andy Crouch (in The Tech-Wise Family)
2.0 – Ben Myers (in The Apostles’ Creed)
2.1 – Tish Harrison Warren
2.2 – Jemar Tisby
2.3 – Henri Nouwen
2.4 – Alan Jacobs (in How to Think)
2.5 – Tim Keller (in The Reason for God)
2.6 – James K. A. Smith (in You Are What You Love)
2.7 – Esau McCaulley (in Reading While Black)
2.8 – N. T. Wright (in Simply Christian)
2.9 – Cornel West (in Democracy Matters)
3.0 – Beth Felker Jones (in Practicing Christian Doctrine)
3.1 – Tara Isabella Burton
3.2 – James Cone (in The Cross and the Lynching Tree)
3.3 – Ross Douthat
3.4 – Lauren Winner (in Dangers of Christian Practice)
3.5 – Miroslav Volf
3.6 – Justo González
3.7 – Fleming Rutledge (in The Crucifixion)
3.8 – Stanley Hauerwas
3.9 – Peter Brown
4.0 – Sarah Coakley
4.1 – Katherine Sonderegger
4.2 – Paul Griffiths
4.3 – Kathryn Tanner
4.4 – Willie James Jennings
4.5 – Jonathan Tran
4.6 – David Bentley Hart
4.7 – Bruce Marshall
4.8 – David Kelsey
4.9 – Alvin Plantinga

I imagine most readers would rank these authors a bit differently; others would include names I’ve not mentioned and scratch ones I have. I hope the gist is accurate, though. I’m going to use it as a springboard for further reflections later this week or next.

Aping the Inklings

Who are the most-quoted, oft-cited authors in popular (American Protestant) Christian writing from the last half century?

The names that come to my mind are Lewis, Chesterton, Tolkien, Guinness, Chambers, Schaeffer, Henry, Graham, Kuyper, Piper, Keller, Bonhoeffer, Barth, Brueggemann, Stott, Packer, Machen, Niebuhr, Hauerwas. Also (from philosophy) MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, James K. A. Smith. For more academic types, you’ll see Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Hauerwas. For Reformed folks, you’ll see Piper and Keller, Kuyper and Schaeffer. For biblical scholars, you’ll see Packer and Stott and Brueggemann. For Catholic-friendly or philosophical sorts, you’ll see Chesterton or Tolkien, MacIntyre or Taylor.

I’m sure I’m missing some big names; I’m pretty ignorant about true-blue evangelical (much less bona fide fundie) writers and sub-worlds. And I’m not even thinking about American Catholicism. But with those qualifiers in place, I’d say this sampling of names is not unrepresentative.

I’m also, by the way, thinking about my “four tiers” of Christian writing outlined in another post. Not professional (level 3) or scholarly (level 4), but universal (level 1) or popular (level 2) writing. What types of names populate those books? The list above includes some big hitters.

That’s all by way of preface. Here’s what I want to say—granting that it’s a point that’s been made many times by others. I’m also, it should be clear, addressing the following to myself as a writer above all. Here it is, in any case:

Popular American Christian writing would benefit from taking a break from constantly quoting, self-consciously imitating, rhetorically centering, or otherwise “drafting” off these figures.

Why? Here’s a few reasons.

First, it generates an unintended homogeneity in both style and perspective. When everyone’s trying to ape the Inklings, even the most successful attempts are all doing the same thing as everyone else. The result is repetition and redundancy. My eyes start rolling back into my head the moment I see that line or that excerpt quoted for the umpteenth time. We all know it! Let’s call a ten-year moratorium on putting it in print. Deal?

Second, it ensures a certain derivative character to popular Christian writing. Whereas, for example, Lewis and Chesterton and Barth and Niebuhr had their own domains of learning in which they were masters, and on which they drew to write for the masses, Christian writers whose primary “domain” is Lewis, Chesterton & co. never end up going to the (or a) source; all their learning is far downstream from the classics (not to mention unpopular or unheard-of texts) that directly informed the more immediate sources they’re consulting.

Put it this way: Evangelicals are to the Inklings as J. J. Abrams is to George Lucas. Lucas, whatever other faults he may have had, was creating an epic cinematic myth based on Akira Kurosawa, Joseph Campbell, and countless other (“high” and “low”) bits of source material. Abrams and his “remake as sequel” ilk don’t play in the big boy sandbox, creating something newly great out of old great things. They play in the tiny sandbox Lucas and others already created. That’s why it feels like cosplay, or fan fiction. They’re not riffing on ancient myths and classic archetypes. They’re rearranging toys in Lucas’s brain.

At their worst, that’s what evangelical and other Protestant writers do when they make the Inklings (or similar popular modern classics) their north star.

This is a problem, third, because the evangelicals in question mistake the popularity of the Inklings as a sensibility or strategy that can be emulated rather than the unique result of who the Inklings were, when and where they lived, and what they knew. Maybe we should set the rule: If you are an Oxbridge don or Ivy League prof, and if you are a polymath who has read every book written in Greek or Latin or German or Old English published before the birth of Luther, and if you are a world-class writer of poetry, fiction, and apologetics, then you may consider the Inklings’ path as one fit for walking. Otherwise, stay in your lane.

Now, I trust it is obvious I’m being facetious. As I said earlier, I’m talking to myself before I’m thinking of anyone else—I’ve quoted most of these figures in print, and I have books for a Tier 2 audience coming out next year that cite Barth, Hauerwas, Lewis, and Bonhoeffer! Nor do I mean to suggest that a Christian writer has to be as brilliant as these geniuses to write at all. In that case, none of us should be writing. Finally, there do continue to be scholars and writers (few and far between though they be) who have useful and illuminating things to say about the actual Inklings—Alan Jacobs comes to mind—not to mention the other authors in my list above.

All I mean to say is this. On one hand, the way to imitate these masters is by doing what they did in one’s own context and realm of knowledge, not by becoming masters of them and making them the sun around which one’s mental planet orbits. On the other hand, if you want your writing to be original, creative, distinctive, stylish, thoughtful, and punchy—if you want it not only to be good but to stand out from the crowd—then the number one thing to do is not make these guys the beating heart of your writing. Doing that will render your work invisible, since such writing is a dime a dozen, and has been for three generations.

What then should your writing be like? Who or what should it “draft” off of? That’s for you to discover.

Writing for a Tier 2 audience

Last month I published a typology of four audiences for Christian writing: Tier 1 (anyone at all), Tier 2 (college-educated laypeople), Tier 3 (pastors and intellectuals), and Tier 4 (scholars). The post continues to generate a lot of conversation with friends and acquaintances. It’s been generative for my own thinking.

I’ve found myself wondering: What does Tier 2 writing look like? And I’ve got some ideas. What follows is a list of basic mechanics. I’d call them do’s and don’ts, but they’re pretty much all the latter. In another post I plan to think about how to make one’s Tier 2 writing not just accessible but good. In both cases, though, I’m not describing what makes prose in general good. I’m thinking about a particular kind of prose. So this isn’t a list of what makes for quality writing simpliciter. We need to ask first: What sort of writing? In what genre? For whom? With what goals? Those are the questions that matter, at least in this case.

Without further adieu, then, here are twelve rules for Tier 2 writing:

1. Short(er) sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. Not much more to say here. Don’t try your reader’s attention. Be direct. Be declarative. Be fruitful and multiply your five-line sentences, trim your flowery filler, kill your adverbs, and stop interrupting your flow of thought with so many em dashes.

2. No footnotes. Footnotes are intimidating and, in a Tier 2 book, unnecessary. Use endnotes, preferably unnumbered. Resist the urge to defend and support every claim you make on the page with a dozen citations. Appropriate elsewhere, not here.

3. No jargon. “Plain English” is the rule here. One editor I’ve worked with on multiple essays uses the “P.E.” line as a shorthand for any time I revert to academese. Remember: No one but academics speaks that language, and then only some of them, cordoned off by rarefied disciplinary dialects. Remember further that, outside of highly technical discursive contexts—you see what I did there?—jargon is a crutch. And if something can’t be said in language a Tier 2 reader can understand, then perhaps you’re writing for the wrong audience.

4. No untranslated words. This means, above all, never use a word from another language as if the reader should know what it means: eschaton, torah, phenomenological, faux pas, Aufklärung, munus triplex, whatever. If you must, on a rare fitting occasion, introduce the reader to a foreign word, then do so gently and seamlessly, and be clear that you have reasons for doing so. (Why, in other words, you aren’t just saying “church” instead of ekklesia.) Furthermore, avoid fancy Latinate words like “omnipotent” when “almighty” or “all-powerful” are ready to hand. Sometimes a whiff of antiquity is pleasant, but more often it reeks of self-importance and showing off.

5. No, or spare use of, massive block quotations. Like footnotes, these break up the flow of a page’s writing and can scare off otherwise curious readers. It also suggests that the reader should maybe be reading someone other than you, since apparently you can’t put it well in your own words. (A friend’s anecdote: Reading famous Evangelical Writer X as a teenager, the quotations and block-quotes of C. S. Lewis were so prevalent that it made him realize he ought to be reading Lewis instead of X. The intuition proved correct.)

6. No incessant, cluttered, or paragraph-littered use of parenthetical references to passages of Scripture. This is a tough one. It’s my own habit, as it is just about any Christian writer’s who engages Scripture for a believing audience. I think this is fine at Tier 3 and for works in the 2.3-2.9 range. But my sense is that true Tier 2.0 readers find this practice distracting, off-putting, and intimidating. It’s not that they can’t handle it. It just doesn’t help you, the author, accomplish your purposes with the reader. There are other ways of citing, quoting, and alluding to Scripture than parentheses constantly interrupting clauses or concluding every third sentence. Be creative!

7. No unidentified authors, historical figures, historical events, doctrines, or concepts. This one’s simple. Don’t write, “As Saint Irenaeus says…” Write instead, “Saint Irenaeus, a bishop from the second century, once wrote…” Or if the reader won’t know what a bishop is, call him “a pastor and writer.” Or, if “from the second century” rankles, then say “who was born about a century after the crucifixion of Jesus.” Or “who died about a century after Saint Paul and Saint Peter were killed in Rome.” Or whatever would least ostentatiously and most intuitively make sense as a chronological point of connection for your audience. (You could always just put the date of the figure’s life in parentheses if that were to fit the nature of your book, too.) The point, in any case, is to avoid random and unqualified mention of “Saint John of Damascus” or “the Great Schism” or “the perseverance of the saints” or “imputed righteousness”—readers run for the exits at that sort of thing, especially when they add up.

8. No preface to quotes, events, books, or authors as “famous.” This is a minor rule, but it’s common enough to call out: Writers call things “famous” out of insecurity. Namely, they want the reader to know they’re not being original, that they’re aware that “everyone knows” the line or text or person being trotted out for display. But in a Tier 2 setting, not everyone knows this. Calling something “famous” to a reader who’s never heard of it is inhospitable and condescending. Drop this tic!

9. No passing reference to what only the extremely-online would know. Some Gen X, many millennial, and most Gen Z writers spend a lot of time online. When you live online, you forget that most people don’t—or at least, that their online living is nothing like yours. Normal people don’t know what “edgelord” means. (I’ve had to Google it more than once to remind myself! My time off Twitter is having an effect…) Normal people don’t follow sub-cultural dramas litigated on social media between no-name writers. Normal people follow Selena Gomez and Taylor Swift. So don’t write like you’re online; don’t write like your book has hyperlinks; don’t make tempest-in-a-teapot episodes illustrative of some larger point. Write about the real world, the one we all live in together.

10. No passing reference to culture-war topics (as though the topic itself, the nature of the debate, or the “right” opinion is obvious or given). Most people are aware of this or that culture-war issue. But most people aren’t particularly informed about it in detail. And most people certainly don’t like it being parachuted onto the page out of nowhere. It raises their blood pressure. If the context calls for discussion of some hot-button issue, then introduce it with care and charity. But let your writing lower the temperature—even if what you have to say is passionate or fiery. Understanding should precede argument, and if argument is called for, then the matter shouldn’t be treated as self-evident.

11. No glib swipes at “backwards” or stupid or wicked ideas. I don’t mean ideas like eugenics or Stalinism. I mean ideas that continue to generate fierce debate, ideas that mark out one tribe from another. Often these are ideas that the author herself has left behind for greener pastures. We always treat our own former selves least generously. Don’t put down readers who happen to agree with your younger self. Even if they’re wrong, they deserve your respect. Nothing loses a reader faster than being talked down to.

12. No presumption of universal or shared agreement on just about anything. This is only a slight exaggeration. Obviously, if you’re writing for Christians, it’s appropriate to assume a general Christian framework or backdrop. But what does that entail? Christians disagree about a lot! Instead of assuming—and you know what that makes of you—address the reader as an intelligent and curious disciple whose specific beliefs and ideas are opaque to you. Make the case for what you think, assuming only that the reader is open-minded and open-hearted enough to hear you out in good faith. Cards are on the table and nothing is being taken for granted. That’s a recipe for reaching readers and not alienating any of them, no matter how strongly they disagree with you or how skeptical they were when they first opened your book.

In the next post, hopefully sometime next week, I’ll return with another dozen or so suggestions about what makes Tier 2 writing not just accessible for its intended audience, but good. Part of that has to do with style, but another part has to do with resisting certain tropes of the genre that bear on substance. Until then.