My latest: on incarnation, Theotokos, and abortion, in Commonweal

I have an essay in the newest issue of Commonweal called “Mother of the Unborn God.” It’s something of a sequel or peer to previous essays in The Christian Century on similar themes: “Birth on a Cross” and “Jewish Jesus, Black Christ.” This one takes conciliar confession of Mary as Theotokos as the metaphysical starting point for theological and moral reflection on Christian teaching about abortion—a topic, if memory serves, that I’ve never written about before. I hope I do justice to it, or at least to the confluence of theological questions raised by faith in Him who was conceived by the Holy Spirit / and born of the Virgin Mary.

Click here to read the full essay.

Letters to a Future Saint: cover, blurbs, pub date, and more!

I’m pleased to announce that my next book, Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry, has an official publication date, a cover, blurbs galore, and more. It’s due October 1. Now feast your eyes:

Isn’t that lovely? The theme continues on the inside, too; I can’t wait for folks to see how it’s designed.

Here’s the official book description:

An invitation to the Christian faith for the bored, the distracted, and the spiritually hungry 

Dear future saint, 

Why is the gospel worth living for? 

Why is it worth dying for? 

In these letters, a fellow pilgrim addresses future saints: the bored and the distracted, the skeptical and the curious, the young and the spiritually hungry. Lively and readable, these bite-sized letters explain the basics of Christian life, including orthodox doctrine, the story of Scripture, the way of discipleship, and more.

Interweaving Scripture, poetry, and theological writings, Letters to a Future Saint educates readers in the richness of the Christian tradition. But beyond that, this earnest and approachable volume offers young people— who may be largely uninformed of the depths of faith despite having been raised in Christian homes —an invitation into the life of the church and into a deeper relationship with God.

And here are the endorsements, which—well, just read on:

“Rule number one in sharing the Christian faith with young people: don’t patronise. Assume they are morally serious and intellectually curious; that they are in search of a structure that will carry the weight of their anxieties, passions and imaginative energy. And if you start from that sort of point, the book you might well want to put into their hands is something very like this one—clear, respectful, challenging, candid, gracious.” 
—Rowan Williams, 104th Archbishop of Canterbury 

“In this little book, East teaches about the gospel—he catechizes. But its epistolary format allows what could seem tiresome or didactic to become conversational and approachable. These letters tell the story of Jesus in many ways, from many different angles, and with a lightness of touch. They also convey what it might feel like to be a Christian and to think about the world in light of the story of Jesus. If you are someone who cares about young people or those of any age finding their way in the spiritual life—if you care about future saints—read this book and share it with others.” 
—Tish Harrison Warren, author of Liturgy of the Ordinary and Prayer in the Night

“The letters that Brad East writes here are signed, ‘Yours in Christ, a fellow pilgrim,’ and that tells you most of what you need to know about this wonderful book. It’s a warmhearted, clear-sighted account of life ‘in Christ,’ not pronounced from on high, but narrated by someone a little farther along the Way than the young people it’s addressed to. This is a book to give to many of those pilgrims near the outset of their journey.” 
—Alan Jacobs, Jim and Sharon Harrod Chair of Christian Thought, Baylor University   

“Sometimes catechisms seem to emphasize truth at the expense of life. The parroting back of doctrinal answers to posed questions, while often valuable, can be dangerous for those tempted to think of Christianity as the mastery of syllogisms rather than as the Way of the Cross. In this book, Brad East takes us along as he guides a young pilgrim in the path that is Jesus. Reading this will help you see your own faith with fresh eyes and will prompt you to be not just a disciple but a discipler.” 
—Russell Moore, editor in chief, Christianity Today   

“Brad East does not cease to astound. This book is both spiritual meditation and pocket catechism—it instructs as it inspires, and its contents explain Christianity in a way both simple and profound. This is the kind of book to spread around everywhere: airports, homes, churches, used bookstores, universities, and so on. Professor East has something important to teach each one of us!” 
—Matthew Levering, James N. Jr. and Mary D. Perry Chair of Theology, Mundelein Seminary  

“In this time of widespread unclarity, Brad East’s insightful letters help us see what being a Christian might look like. A fascinating book that helps us see the fascinating character of our faith.” 
—Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Divinity and Law, Duke University 

“A personal, readable, informed, and confident exposition of the Christian faith—so confident, in fact, that it starts and ends with an invitation to martyrdom in the service of Christ! East’s unwillingness to make Christ into a founder of a ‘religion of comfortableness’ (Nietzsche) is admirable.” 
—Miroslav Volf, Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology, Yale Divinity School

I have no words. I swung for the fences, and somehow managed multiple grand slams. I’m speechless. I’ve been reading these writers since seminary, some for going on two decades. It’s such an honor to have their endorsements for this book. Thanks to them and to all who decide to give the book a chance based on their recommendation.

Letters to a Future Saint is out in just over five months. (Three weeks later my other new book, The Church: A Guide to the People of God, will be published. When it rains, it pours!) You can pre-order it wherever you prefer: Eerdmans, Christianbook, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon. Or pre-order a copy from each just to be safe! Your call.

This book’s publication is a dream come true, in more ways than one. I’m beyond excited to share it with readers. I hope you’ll be one, and will share it with others.

Un-paywalled: me in Hedgehog Review on Slow Horses

Back on March 1, I shared a link to my essay in the latest issue of The Hedgehog Review on Mick Herron’s spy novels (now turned into a TV series) called Slow Horses (or Slough House, as you please). But for those without a subscription it’s been behind a paywall for the last seven weeks, which means almost no one could click on the link and actually read the essay!

As of today, however, it’s out from behind the paywall and available for reading by any and all comers. You should still subscribe to a wonderful magazine. Let my essay be the nudge you needed…

My latest: on Volf/McAnnally-Linz’s Home of God, for Syndicate

Over the last month Syndicate has been hosting a symposium on Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz’s book The Home of God: A Brief Story of Everything. My response to the book is the very last in the sequence, and it’s up today. It’s called “The Home of God in the Body of Christ” and here’s how it starts:

The Home of God is stuffed to the brim. Or better, it is overflowing, like its vision of human flourishing. For starters, it is a systematic theology. It is also part of a larger multivolume project. It consists of an extended commentary on not one but three major biblical texts (the Exodus from Egypt, Saint John’s Gospel, and the Revelation of Saint John the Seer). It is an intervention in numerous moral, political, philosophical, biblical, and theological conversations. It is a proposal of what makes for the good life, here and now. It is, in short, just what its subtitle promises: a brief story of everything.

Its ambitious aims are commendable. Theology isn’t good for much when it narrows its gaze from everything—God and all things in God—to something less. As Robert Jenson writes, “theology must be either a universal and founding discipline or a delusion.” Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz agree. Not for them the false humility of modern theology, which John Milbank once called “a fatal disease.” To be true to itself, theology must function, in Milbank’s words, as a “meta-discourse.” In this book Volf and McAnnally-Linz engage in meta-discourse via meta-narrative, that ineradicably Christian scourge of postmodernity. They are right to do so.

The venture of the book is to narrate cosmic reality through the metaphor of “home.” How? By running the metaphor through three climactic points in the canonical story: YHWH’s deliverance of Israel from slavery in the house of Pharaoh; the advent and exodus of Israel’s Messiah in his death and resurrection; and the same Lord’s descent from heaven at the End of all things to make all things new: “Behold, the home of God is among humans!” (Rev 21:3). The dwelling of God not only with or alongside but in and among his people and, ultimately, all of creation constitutes the theme as well as the aim of each episode and the story as a whole. The world is a homemaking project. God is the homemaker. His epiphany is a homecoming. It is a home for Creator and creature alike, which is to say, it must become a home apt for each and each in relation to the other. Glimpsing this vision of the End, Christians—following Volf and McAnnally-Linz—are able to see where the story was always heading and thereby glimpse anticipations of its finale at key moments along the way.

Click here to keep reading. Following my piece, Miroslav and Ryan—the one my former teacher, the other my former fellow doctoral student at Yale—offer a reply of their own. Things get a teensy spicy but mostly it’s a love fest among friends.

My latest: biblical literacy in a postliterate age, for CT

My latest column for Christianity Today is called “Biblical Literacy in a Postliterate Age.” Here’s how it opens:

Christians are readers. We are “people of the book.” We own personal Bibles, translated into our mother tongues, and read them daily. Picture “quiet time” and you’ll see a table, a cup of coffee, and a Bible spread open to dog-eared, highlighted, annotated pages. For Christians, daily Bible reading is the minimum standard for the life of faith. What kind of Christian, some of us may think, doesn’t meet this low bar?

This vision of our faith resonates for many. It certainly describes the way I was raised. As a snapshot of a slice of the church at a certain time in history—20th-century American evangelicals—it checks out. But as a timeless vision of what it means to follow Christ, it falls short, and it does so in a way that will seriously impinge on our ability to make disciples in an increasingly postliterate culture, a culture in which most people still understand the bare mechanics of reading but overwhelmingly consume audio and visual media instead.

This is a theme I’ve reflected on before here on the blog. Eventually I engage with recent writing on Gen Z literacy among college students by folks like Adam Kotsko, Jean Twenge, and Alan Jacobs. And I try to be tentative and non-despairing in the final turn. See what you think.

My latest: how (not) to talk about Christian nationalism, in CT

This morning Christianity Today published my column. Titled “How (Not) to Talk About ‘Christian Nationalism,’” it argues we should retire the term entirely, because it has ceased to refer to anything concrete while functioning in our discourse as a slander term for “politics and people to my right I dislike.” It’s true, though, that there are things worth worrying about that go under the label, like racism and lawlessness; we should just talk about those things instead of a huge umbrella term that no longer picks out anything specific in the world (or picks out far too much). Here’s how the piece starts:

Some years ago, the Reformed philosopher Alvin Plantinga gave a useful definition of fundamentalist. He noted that, in academic settings, it served as little more than a smear word; he offered an expletive I can’t print here, so let’s just substitute son of a gun.

Where it retained any content beyond the smear, Plantinga argued that fundamentalist meant “considerably to the right, theologically speaking, of me and my enlightened friends.” Thus did academics, journalists, and many Christians come to deploy fundie to mean a “stupid [son of a gun] whose theological opinions are considerably to the right of” their own. And because there’s always someone to one’s right, the F-word is essentially relative: It has no stable reference, but it certainly can never refer to me.

These days we might say the same about Christian nationalism. The phrase has lost all substantive content. In nearly every conversation, it has little reference beyond those “stupid [sons of guns] whose political opinions are considerably to the right of mine.” Allegations of Christian nationalism can mean almost anything: Maybe the accused is a literal Nazi. Or maybe he’s just a lifelong Republican whose big issues are abortion and tax rates.

Click here to read the rest.

My latest: on Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis in LARB

This morning The Los Angeles Review of Books published my review of Marilynne Robinson’s new book, Reading Genesis. Here are the opening two paragraphs:

MARILYNNE ROBINSON HAS always been a theologian at heart. It’s merely convention that theology today is one among dozens of specialized academic subdisciplines. If that’s what theology is, Robinson doesn’t write like it—and thank God for that. Theology’s mother tongue is prayer and confession, the language of the liturgy, but these aren’t genres so much as modes that transform disparate genres into vehicles of divine discourse. Like Jacob’s Ladder, the traffic runs both ways.

It just so happens that Robinson’s theology has taken shape in essays, novels, and prose so patient and unpatronizing that it’s embarrassing how long one sometimes takes to catch the point. She has been doing this for almost half a century. She has won all the awards, sold all the books, chatted with presidents, and garnered every laurel and medal. She has nothing to prove. And so, having just turned 80, she has chosen to mark the occasion by publishing a commentary on Genesis, the first book of the Torah.

Click here to rest the rest. (See also Francis Spufford’s review and Ezra Klein’s interview with Robinson.)

My latest: on faith and doubt in CT

I’ve got a column in Christianity Today this morning called “Doubt is a Ladder, Not a Home.” About a third of the way into it, I write the following:

I’m not describing atheists, apostates, or “exvangelicals” here. This is how many ordinary Christians feel. Or at least, it’s the water they swim in, the intrusive thought in the back of the mind, the semi-conscious source of inertia they feel when the alarm blares on Sunday morning. American Christians face no Colosseum, but this emotional and intellectual pressure is very real. The doubts add up.

It doesn’t help that doubt is in vogue. Doubt is sexy, and not only in the wider culture. I cannot count the number of times I’ve been told by a pastor or Christian professor that doubt is a sign of spiritual maturity. That faith without doubt is superficial, a mere honeymoon period. That doubt is the flip side of faith, a kind of friend to fidelity. That the presence of doubt is a sign of a healthy theological mind, and its absence—well, you can fill in the rest.

The pro-doubt crowd gets two important things entirely right. First, they want space to ask honest questions. Second, they want to remove the stigma of doubt.

I go on to elaborate what they get right, but also to point out four ways they go too far. Click here to read the whole thing.

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.

2024: forthcoming

I’ve looked back on 2023 in three posts: what I read, what I wrote, and what I posted on the blog. Here’s a look at what’s to come in 2024.

Books

The biggest thing is not one but two books, both set to be published in the fall. I should have actual publication dates and links to pre-order soon. I’m confident both will be out by AAR/SBL/Thanksgiving/Advent—in other words, for all your Christmas gift needs.

I’ve discussed these books plenty at this point, but here’s another reminder.

The first is called The Church: A Guide to the People of God. Published with Lexham, it’s part of the Christian Essentials series, which features previous entries by Ben Myers, Peter Leithart, Wesley Hill, and others. The series as a whole has become a trilogy of trilogies: Creed–Decalogue–Lord’s Prayer, Baptism–Eucharist–Forgiveness of Sins, Bible–Liturgy–Church. Out of nine books total, mine is the sixth. Without endnotes it’s just over 30,000 words. I signed off on the final typeset proofs last week; the cover is official; the blurbs are in. It’s heading to the printers this month, I’m told. I’m excited, y’all! This one’s meant for churches, Bible studies, Sunday School, small groups, and college curricula. For thoughtful Christians of all ages wanting to learn more about the Bible’s story of the calling and purpose and course and destiny of God’s chosen people. Mostly, as you surely expect, it’s an unhurried figural stroll through the Scriptures of Israel.

The second book is called Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry. Published with Eerdmans, this one comes from the heart. It’s written directly for the undergraduate students I’ve taught for going on seven years now. Call it an epistolary catechism, if you want to use a phrase you won’t find in the book, since it’s written at a level any graduating senior from high school wouldn’t find odd or off-putting. It’s not a work of apologetics; I’m not convincing a skeptic to convert. The book consists of brief letters written to a young believer who wants to move from milk to meat, from adolescence to maturity, from thinking about Christ to following him all the way to the cross. I think it works. I hope it works. I know the great need for a book like this. Much more anon!

As I said, book #1 is out of my hands. Book #2 is in between copy-edits and type-setting. But it’s moving fast. I expect proofs and a cover in my inbox in the next month or two. Then an Amazon page in the spring, and we’re off to the races.

I imagine much of my fall will be taken up with podcasts and other marketing duties for both books. To all professors, editors, magazines, journals, bloggers, and podcasters: Consider this a heads up! Request the book! Read it! Review it! Have me on! Let’s get this done.

Sabbatical + the next book

Next academic year (fall 2024–spring 2025) I will be on research leave, my first ever sabbatical. I’m going to dedicate an entire blog post to that remarkable fact, about which I’m still somewhat in disbelief. The primary “product” of that time is meant to be a manuscript due to Lexham in summer 2025; it’s part of their Ministry Guides series, called Technology: For the Care of Souls. More on that in the future as well.

My goal is to avoid writing a single word of that manuscript in 2024. This calendar year my goal, before and during the sabbatical, can be summed up with one word: read. Read, read, read. Double or triple what I usually read. In all the things, but especially in tech.

Which means less writing than usual. But not nothing either.

Essays, articles, reviews, and more

I’ve already got a number of pieces in the hopper for this year:

• In Interpretation, a review of Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter’s The Making of the Bible: From the First Fragments to Sacred Scripture, in Interpretation (just published, in fact)

• In Restoration Quarterly, an article called “Churches of Christ: Once Catholic, Now Evangelical”

• In Syndicate, a long review of Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz’s The Home of God: A Brief Story of Everything (part of a symposium dedicated to the book)

• In Commonweal, a review of Matthew Thiessen’s A Jewish Paul: The Messiah’s Herald to the Gentiles

• In Comment, a review essay of Christian Wiman’s Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair

• In The Los Angeles Review of Books, a review essay of Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis

• In Christianity Today, a review of John Mark Comer’s Practicing the Way: Be With Jesus, Become Like Him, Do As He Did

• In The Hedgehog Review, an essay on the politics of the Slow Horses/Slough House series of spy novels by Mick Herron

• In a volume for Baylor University Press on teaching theology, a chapter on … teaching theology

Two more essays are written but have yet to find a home: one on Albert Borgmann and one on Mary, Theotokos, and abortion. I’ll also be giving a paper at the SBL conference in San Diego. But aside from that, and assuming most or all of the above essays and reviews are published by April at the latest, the remaining eight months of the year are basically a clean slate. For once!

I’ve no doubt ideas for reviews and essays will bubble to the surface over the months, and I’m always mentally ticking off publications for which I’ve never published but would love to. My hope, though, is to use my time wisely from May through December to focus on research and not to let my extra time be dominated by writing I can always make time for, even with a 4/4 teaching load, when for once I have time for the reading my teaching load doesn’t allow for.

All in all, God willing, it should be a good year, professionally speaking, and in more than one way. Now to hurry up and wait.

2023: blogging

I published about 70 blog posts in 2023. That’s about one every five days. Sometimes a post is just a link to something I’ve written, or perhaps a quote. I used to do a lot more quotes from books and excerpt-links to stuff I’ve read online. But even the 10-20 minutes it takes to do that can be a timesuck at work, so I’ve backed off that habit.

Below, I’ve organized what I wrote on the blog this year into ten categories. Clearly, I use this blog primarily for two topics, church and technology, alongside other topics that intersect with them, such as politics, writing, and academia. Some of these should have been turned into essays, instead of dashed off in the half-hour before class; oh well.

*

10. I wrote about Ahsoka, about how awful most Marvel TV shows look, and about the all-time best series finales for TV dramas.

9. I wrote about fantasy: how every epic fantasy series is finally a comedy (never a tragedy, and always a theodicy—whether or not the author is theistic, whether or not the fictional world features gods or divine justice), what it was like returning to Osten Ard (you should visit if you haven’t!), and how Chuck Klosterman’s decade-old theory about the NFL’s popularity applies to J. K. Rowling and Harry Potter.

8. Call this the miscellaneous bucket. I wrote about Calvin, election, and the zombie problem; Christianity East and West as a love story; how to define the little word “culture”; fitting punishment and penance for people whose “cancellation” is justified; how Christianity might be understood as a kind of conspiracy theory (let the reader understand); and an approach to reading widely in Christian tradition: twenty texts for twenty centuries.

7. I wrote about politics a lot less in 2023 than in years prior; I’m not sure why. In any case, here’s a reflection on Christians and politics (in response to Richard Beck), a brief set of thoughts in response to Reeves’ Of Boys and Men, and a long piece thinking about Catholicism, Protestantism, and why intellectuals convert to the former not the latter.

6. I wrote two posts on the Churches of Christ: one attempting to define them in a way that excludes other evangelical groups (spoiler: I failed) and another following up on the attempt.

5. If others write about kids these days, I write about church these days: about young Christians and their reading habits (or lack thereof); about the divide between biblicist and catholic Christianity; about ecclesial and societal decline; about the church’s reputation in a hostile culture; about reasons why people leave church; about catechesis, catechesis, catechesis; about a “loosening” over the last generation; about generational differences in church leadership (this one was good, I think); and about why you can’t die for a question.

4. I wrote about digital technology: about A.I. fallacies in the academy, about smartphones in the church, about the tech-church show, about living in a tech bubble (NB: it’s sarcastic), and about quitting social porn. I also sketched a digital decision tree for church leaders as well as outlining how to be efficient and timely with email and how, as a professor, to use one’s hours in the office. Finally, I wondered whether it’s possible, wise, or both to find a way to limit one’s entanglement with Silicon Valley’s Big Five—to whittle one’s investment and time down to a single company, thereby expanding into and dwelling within a single digital ecosystem while divesting from all the others. I went with, am going with, Apple. Will report.

3. I wrote about life in academia: about prestige scholarship (not what you think it is), about two ways of reading, about naming the errors of our influences and authorities, about publishing widely, even promiscuously, and about the smartest people I’ve known in my life. I also expanded John Shelton’s map of academic theology across the last three generations.

2. My longest and most heartfelt post, written for students and readers near and far, was about whether and how to get into a theology PhD program. I hope this one has legs; I think it can be helpful to young Christians considering the academic life.

1. By far the most-read blog post from the year was my typology of four tiers of Christian publishing. It keeps popping up online, in my inbox, at conferences, in conversations with publishers. I’m glad people have found it useful. I followed up with applying the tiers to preaching; acknowledging my debt to James Davison Hunter; giving advice(!) about writing for a Tier 2 audience; and pointing out the most popular names and authorities in evangelical Tier 2 writing (and how and why to avoid them).

2023: writing

Unlike last year, when my output was heavy in the first half then MIA in the second, this year was rather even. All in all, I count one journal article, one book chapter, three academic reviews, five podcasts, nine magazine essays, and a dozen or so talks/lectures/“speaking events” (gag). I also discovered a review I thought hadn’t been published, which had been published more than a year prior. Well then.

So much of my time this year was spent revising and writing, writing and revising two books that are both set to come out next fall. So I’m grateful to have gotten this much out there in the meantime. More about those books in another post. For now, the year in writing and related artifacts…

Speaking

Each year I find myself with more opportunities to speak or teach at local churches. This year I taught about martyrdom, technology, hell(!), and the soul, among other things. I seem to be brought in to represent the tradition on this or that view; or to be an alarmist on digital domination. Everyone has to have a calling card, I suppose.

I also participated in an annual meeting of pastors to discuss the theology of the body. I traveled to Austin to talk tech and catechesis and to Oklahoma City to talk election and God’s word. And in February I gave an “address” to an academic honor society induction ceremony then, two months later, gave another to the chapel service celebrating graduating seniors who received ACU’s honor of being “university scholars.” That one was a treat.

Podcasts

The Church’s Book (A History of Christian Theology, 4 January 2023).

The Church’s Holy Scripture (The Great Tradition, 10 March 2023).

Theology, Technology, and Ministry (Live from the Siburt Institute, 5 June 2023).

Called into Questions (Mere Fidelity, 24 October 2023). A conversation about Matt Anderson’s new book.

Faith, College, and Technology (Know Why, 1 November 2023).

Academic

Review of David H. Kelsey, Human Anguish and God’s Power, in Stone-Campbell Journal 25:2 (2022): 265–267. David is in his tenth decade of life. He was a dear member of my dissertation committee. This will surely be his last book, following his magnum opus, Eccentric Existence. I missed the review when it came out. Short, but gives you the gist.

Review of R. B. Jamieson and Tyler R. Wittman, Biblical Reasoning: Christological and Trinitarian Rules for Exegesis, in International Journal of Systematic Theology 25:3 (2023): 504–506. I say some very nice things here! Check out the book.

Review of Fred Sanders, Fountain of Salvation: Trinity and Soteriology, in Pro Ecclesia 32:1-2 (2023): 200–204. Ditto and ditto. Fred agrees!

Review of Jordan Senner, John Webster: The Shape and Development of His Theology, in Scottish Journal of Theology 76:1 (2023): 92-93. One of the very first serious works of scholarly reception of Webster’s thought. More, please.

“The Fittingness of Holy Orders,” Journal of Christian Studies 2:3 (2023): 71–86. I’ve had a surprising number of folks reach out to me for the PDF. I never planned to write on this topic, but I loved doing so; in the process I realized, reader of Jenson and Ramsey and Ratzinger that I am, child of a primitivist tradition that I am, that I had some thoughts.

“Liberating the Least of These,” in The Liberating Arts: Why We Need Liberal Arts Education, ed. Jeffrey Bilbro, Jessica Hooten Wilson, and David Henreckson (Walden, NY: Plough, 2023), 163–174. The culmination of a years-long project begun at the outset of Covid. This one was a fun one to write. Levertov, Aristotle, Coates, Shakespeare, Boethius, Saint Augustine, and Rowan Williams all make an appearance. Buy the book!

Essays

Once More, Church and Culture (Mere Orthodoxy, 18 April 2023). A long-gestating reflection on Niebuhr and James Davison Hunter. I think the story told in the first six or seven paragraphs is on the money. Also the criticisms of pro-work “vocational” theologies that actually function to consecrate upper-middle-class Christian careerism.

Theology in Division (First Things, April 2023). Equally long-gestating, given the number of times the question I open the essay with has been posed to me. Also a tribute to the late Jenson and Ratzinger for their wisdom in answering it.

What Makes Critical Theory Christian? (Comment, 28 June 2023). A review of Christopher Watkin’s Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture. I really like Watkin—we met and discussed the review in San Antonio; he couldn’t have been more generous—but I didn’t love the book. The review attempts to outline my reasons why.

America the Biblical (The Christian Century, 1 August 2023). A review of Mark Noll’s America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization. A remarkable achievement, says little old me.

Stay the Course: How to Keep Your Faith in College (Christianity Today, 21 August 2023). A fun one to get out into the world. Share with the rising freshman in your life next August!

AI Has No Place in the Pulpit (Christianity Today, 27 September 2023). Can I get an amen?

Living in a WEIRDER World (The Hedgehog Review, 12 October 2023). A review of Andrew Wilson’s Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West. One of the best books of the year. If not for the tenth commandment, I’d be jealous of Andrew for this one. Thankfully, I’m above all that.

The Brand Called You (Commonweal, 15 November 2023). A review of Tara Isabella Burton’s Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians. A fun and insightful romp. I close the review by suggesting the next book for Burton to write so as to round out the trilogy she began with Strange Rites.

The Ends of Theological Education (Sapientia, 29 November 2023). Part of a symposium on the present and future of theological education. I have a 5,000-word essay on the same subject coming out as a book chapter next year; consider this a preview.

My latest: the ends of theological education

Sapientia is the online periodical of the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding, housed at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. They regularly publish series organized around themes or questions, and the latest is on theological education. You can read Joshua Jipp’s introduction to the series here. My entry is the first to be published; it’s called “The Ends of Theological Education.” Here’s how it starts:

The first and final end of theological education is the knowledge of God. The God in question is not just any deity, much less generic divinity, at least if the theological education in view is Christian. Christian theological education is instruction in the Christian God, which is to say, the triune God of Israel. Theological education is about him, namely, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ revealed by his own Holy Spirit. Whatever else it may be, whatever other ends it may have, theological education aims at the Holy Trinity or it misses the mark entirely.

There are many genres and locations for theological education. The modern research university is only one among many institutional habitats for it, the latest and perhaps the most expansive home, if not the snuggest fit. The monastery is one ancient and abiding institution for instruction in divine knowledge. Sunday school is another. Sometimes theological education happens within the Church, sometimes not; sometimes taught by the ordained, sometimes not; sometimes in a catechetical or devotional spirit, sometimes not. There is no one right way to do it.

Read the rest here.

Three podcasts and two reviews

A bunch of links to share with AAR/SBL and Thanksgiving just around the corner.

First up is three podcasts I went on in the last month:

• On Mere Fidelity I joined the guys to talk about Matthew Lee Anderson’s new book Called Into Questions. I imagined a grilling, but the book is so good it just ended up being a conversation about the topics raised, which are particularly acute for pastors, teachers, parents, and professors. In addition, on Matt’s Substack, I interviewed him with a print Q&A about the book over two editions of the newsletter.

• On Know Why, I spoke with Liberty McArtor about my Christianity Today column on how to keep one’s faith in college as well as the challenges facing all of us, young people especially, by digital technology.

• On Theological Table Talk, I spoke with Keith Stanglin and Todd Hall about my article for the Journal of Christian Studies called “The Fittingness of Holy Orders.” We talked about the academy, the sacraments, catholic tradition, and churches of Christ. (The Zoom conversation includes video on YouTube.)

Further, two more reviews of my books are out:

• In the Journal of Analytic Theology, Caleb Lindgren reviews The Church’s Book. An odd fit for the journal, he admits, but he finds some points of contact with analytic thought. The review is quite positive while also wanting more from the book’s arguments and proposals, if not from me then from analytic theologians who might extend them.

• In the newest issue of the Stone-Campbell Journal, Rob O’Lynn also reviews The Church’s Book. I don’t yet have a link to an online version of the review; I’ll post it once I do. O’Lynn is mixed on the value of the book, tilting more negative than positive; or at least, positive at the level of the parts but underwhelmed by the whole.

Finally, be on the lookout for these:

• An essay on theological education in Sapientia.

• A review of Matthew Thiessen’s A Jewish Paul in Commonweal.

• An essay on Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz’s book The Home of God in a symposium on Syndicate.

• An essay on the late Albert Borgmann … somewhere.

• An article on evangelicalism, catholicity, and the future of churches of Christ in Restoration Quarterly.

• A review of David Kelsey’s latest (and final) book Human Anguish and God’s Power in the Stone-Campbell Journal—published more than a year ago without my realizing it!

More stuff in the works, whether already written or to be written soon, all due out sometime in the new year. I’ll be in San Antonio this weekend for the annual SBL/AAR conference; no papers, but I will be chairing one of the “Theological Interpretation” sessions: a panel responding to Amy Peeler’s book Women and the Gender of God. Should be good fun. Perhaps I’ll see some of y’all there.

So you want to get a PhD in theology

I’ve been asked for advice about how to apply to doctoral programs in theology for more than a dozen years. I’ve had the goal, that whole time, of writing up a blog post that I could share with people when they ask. I’ve always found a way not to write it, though, at least in part because the ideal post would be either vanishingly short or impossibly long. In the latter case, a short book. In the former case, a simple sentence:

ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE

Is it possible to split the difference? I think, at long last, I’m going to try. At the very least, I owe it to the students who meet with me each year with the question in mind, as well as the readers who email me regularly asking the same thing. If I do end up saying something useful to them, perhaps I can put it in writing here.

So let’s do it. The format won’t exactly be FAQ, but I’ll frame my advice in response to perennial queries—twenty in total.

NB: I’m not advising folks interested in English or engineering. I’m speaking to students interested in theology of some kind, or at least a theological discipline. The further one’s field is from Christian systematic theology, the less likely my advice applies. I’m also assuming a Christian interlocutor. Plenty of my answers will still apply to a nonbelieving applicant, but those are the folks who come to me, those are the folks likeliest to pursue Christian theology, and those are the folks who share my reasons and goals for becoming a theologian. Reader beware.

*

1. Should I apply to a PhD program in theology?

Only God knows, but here are some pointers:

• Ask yourself why you’re drawn to it. A sweet job? Love for God? Like being a pastor, but for brainy types? Because you like to read? Because you feel called to it, as in, this is why God put you on planet earth? Let me tell you now: The first four answers aren’t good enough.

• Here are two related questions that can help in discerning an answer to the larger question. (a) Would you be happy that you spent 6-10 years of your life earning multiple graduate degrees in theology even if you never became a professor? Alternatively: (b) Even if you never pursued graduate studies in theology, would you nonetheless find ways to “be a theologian” (read theology, write it, teach it, talk about it with others) in your spare time, outside of your civilian day job? If your answer is an unqualified and emotional Yes! to both questions, then a PhD might be for you. If a No to either, much less both, then don’t do it.

• How are your grades? Have multiple professors pointed you to doctoral studies? If your grades aren’t top of the class and/or your professors seem not to have noticed you, there may be extenuating reasons, but in general it means a PhD is probably not for you.

2. How hard is it to get into a PhD program?

Pretty hard, though I’m assuming that you mean (a) a high-quality program that’s (b) fully funded. The thing to understand is that, at the best of times, applying to programs is a crapshoot. I got into my program, an Ivy, on my first round of applications (and not via the wait list)—the very same year that nine other programs turned me down. (A few of those did put me on the wait list; one program whittled down the applicants to two others and myself. I was the odd man out; they admitted the other two. I’m still friendly with both!) There’s just no formula for this, much less logical predictability.

You need to know, at any rate, that you will be going up against dozens (occasionally hundreds, at least on the job market) of other applicants, all of whom will have impressive degrees from impressive institutions and loads of experience—even, these days, with a filled-out CV and publications. Them’s the odds.

3. Where should I apply?

That depends. For theology specifically, lists of the best American programs generally include Yale, Notre Dame, Chicago, Princeton Seminary, Duke, Emory, Vanderbilt, Catholic University of America, Saint Louis University, Marquette, SMU, Baylor, Fordham, Boston University, Boston College, Dayton—in something like that order, depending on one’s specific field and areas of interest. I think it’s fair to say the first half dozen or so are typically thought of as the top tier or cream of the crop.

(I should add: These things aren’t especially controversial in ordinary conversation among academics; after all, the rankings reveal themselves in how hard it is to be accepted, funding, stipends, who gets job interviews, and who gets the jobs themselves. Prestige and symbolic capital are by definition unequally distributed. At the same time, it’s a bit awkward to put in black and white, because academics are as a rule fiercely competitive, deeply ambitious, and insecure. But I said I’d try to be helpful, and that means honesty, so there you go.)

Some schools I left off the list:

• British universities: Oxford, Cambridge, Aberdeen, St Andrews, et al. Excellent programs, but not on this continent!

• Canadian schools, like Toronto or McGill. Both likewise excellent.

• Harvard, which so far as I know does not have a PhD in Christian theology. Harvard Divinity School does, I believe, have a ThD, just like Duke Divinity School (which is in addition to Duke University’s PhD in theology via its religious studies department). For those new to all this … yes, it’s complicated.

• Religion programs like Princeton University (≠ Princeton Theological Seminary), the University of Virginia, Brown, Rice, and the University of Texas. (There are others!) Typically these may be excellent programs for Old or New Testament, for church history, for philosophy, and so on, but not for theology. Princeton and Virginia are exceptions; they don’t necessarily produce systematic theologians, but they are happy to produce scholars of religion, philosophy, and ethics who are not allergic to theology; who, even, are theologically literate, informed, and conversant. Mirabile dictu!

• Evangelical schools like Fuller, Wheaton, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Dallas Theological Seminary, and the various Baptist seminaries. These programs include excellent scholars and wonderful programs, albeit with two drawbacks. First, a doctoral degree from these schools almost always means that you will be hired “back” at them. In other words, an evangelical PhD means an employer pool of evangelical schools. That’s not a dealbreaker for plenty of folks, since many would like to be hired by such schools and/or have no interest going elsewhere. But forewarned is forearmed, etc. Second, many (most? all? I don’t know the numbers) of these programs are not fully funded. That means you, the doctoral student, will have to pay for the privilege of being a student out of pocket or via loans. That’s a tough row to hoe without a job—or with a job that doesn’t pay much—awaiting you at the end of five or six years. Compare that with, for example, Yale’s PhD students, who are fully funded for six full years and receive an annual stipend of around $40,000 and have access to free health care in the Yale New Haven hospital system. You can see how at a certain point it’s apples and oranges. No salary cap means the Yankees always have the best roster.

• Primarily or exclusively online programs. Speaking only for myself, but speaking frankly, I would advise against this—which is distinct from advising against programs that facilitate part one’s degree being completed long distance. Certain prestigious and well-funded schools have a long track record of doing just that.

I hope that gives you a reasonable lay of the land.

4. How do you or anyone else know all this?

Gossip. The epistemology of academe is gossip. It’s the only way anyone knows anything about anything.

5. How should I choose where to go?

Well first, you don’t choose anyone, they choose you. But from this direction, too, it’s a crapshoot. If you have the time and the money, apply to five or ten or fifteen programs! Cast the net wide and see if you catch anything. Beyond that, there are different schools of thought, and none of them is “right.”

(a) Some advise that you find a particular scholar and apply to where she or he is so that you can work with her or him.

(b) Some advise that you go where your particular sub-field of study is thriving, whether it’s Barth or von Balthasar, classical theism or practical theology, christology or critical theory.

(c) Some advise that you say yes to the most prestigious school that admits you, no matter what.

(d) Some advise that you put your ear to the ground and head to the school with the reputation for the healthiest environment for student flourishing. (For example, for decades Chicago has been known as the program that will take the longest to finish while taking the most out of you. It also has meant that those who do finish are assumed to be mega-scholars bound for greatness. Like an eight-year medical residency for a certain kind of surgical specialist. It’s all about tradeoffs.)

What do I think? Depends on the applicant, her prior studies, her major field, her interests, who lets her in, and so on. My purely anecdotal two cents is that I’d lean in the direction of a combination of (c) and (d), with less emphasis on (a) or (b). I applied to my doctoral program almost on a whim, and got in knowing next to nothing about the culture or the professors or their expertise. If you had given me a certain kind of lowdown in advance, I would have expected to be an odd fit. And yet my time as a PhD student was pure bliss, more or less. So I’m weary of supposing anyone can know, prior to arriving, whether a program is a good fit. You see the fit after you unpack your boxes! But that’s just my story. You should take all these factors into account.

6. Are there really no jobs in academic theology anymore?

Yes and no. Yes, there are jobs and there always will be, in some form. No, they really are shrinking, and fast. You’d be surprised at the number of Apple and McKinsey employees with PhDs in religion.

7. Whenever this comes up, I hear race and gender mentioned. These really do matter—myth or fact?

Fact. In this country, theology and adjacent disciplines (religion, philosophy, ethics, Bible) have been a white man’s game for a very long time. Accordingly, over the last half century seminaries and religion departments have been responding at two levels: PhD students and tenure-track posts. Even still, the fields of Bible and theology remain some of the most male-dominated in the American academy, alongside philosophy, economics, and physics. Most others have reached relative parity or have swung the other way, gender-wise.

What that means for you is, yes, you will have priority as an applicant if you are a woman or person of color. If that’s you, great! Let it put a little wind in your sails, though don’t let it give you undue confidence; you’ve still got to beat out tons of other folks. If that’s not you, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t apply, but neither should you go in naive. This is simply the way things are, like it or not. Don’t get pouty. I can tell you right now, that will ensure you never advance one inch in this world.

8. You mentioned “tenure-track” posts. I’ve heard that phrase but don’t know what it means.

“Tenure-track” (TT for short) jobs are the most coveted gig for academics. In a word, it signals long-term job security. Non-TT jobs are likelier to pay less or involve higher teaching loads or be nixed when budget cuts appear on the horizon. Tenure track means that you will begin without tenure, but around year six or seven you will “go up” for tenure. This means you will apply to your university to receive tenure (plus promotion—hence “T&P”). This comes with a change of rank (Assistant to Associate Professor) and a raise, usually, but the real thing you get is the other t-word: tenure. You’re now, in a sense, employed for life. (Not really, but this is big picture.)

Tenure functions in theory to protect your free speech as an intellectual. You can study, think, write, and speak whatever you believe to be true or worthy of investigation, and nobody can fire you for having “wrong” ideas or “bad” politics. Now this is an ideal with many asterisks and exceptions. Nevertheless it’s not an empty gesture. It does have teeth. For that reason you have to be granted it; it’s not automatic. Depending on your institution, your application will weight things differently: research, teaching, collegiality, service. Ivy League schools are notorious for being stingy here, lower-tier schools less so. But everywhere occasionally (or more than occasionally) denies professors T&P. If you don’t get it, you finish out your year (or two), and then you have to leave. Yes, it’s that brutal.

9. Say I’m still interested. What should I do to try to get into a program?

Depends on when and where you are in the process. If you’re in high school, as opposed to finishing your second Master’s degree, my advice will be different. But here are some things worth doing:

• Learn languages. Master at least one language beyond your native tongue. If you can manage learning one ancient language and one living foreign language, you will automatically be a strong candidate.

• Study something relevant in college, whether that be religion, Bible, history, philosophy, ethics, theology, linguistics, or classics.

• Get a 4.0 GPA, in both college and Master’s programs.

• Form relationships with your professors. Not only will this begin to induct you into the world of academia, it will grease the wheels for the letters of recommendation you’ll eventually ask them to write for you. Also, just as academic epistemology is gossip, academic training and hiring is nothing but networks. It’s all in who you know.

• Study hard for the GRE, and ideally take it more than once. I’m convinced that I made the cut at Yale because the committee at that time culled applications on the front end with a hard GRE cut-off score. Some programs don’t care, but others do.

• Learn your field. Follow down footnote rabbit trails, ask professors for recommendations—try to get a sense of the hundred or so most prominent names in your sub-area of theology, and if possible start reading their work!

• Read everything. And I do mean everything. The memory that comes to mind is sitting in bed after my wife had fallen asleep, aged 22 or 23, and reading William Cavanaugh’s Torture and Eucharist. No one assigned it to me. I don’t know how I happened upon it. I was just reading it because I felt I should, out of pure interest.

• Reach out to professors elsewhere. Email them, see if they’ll chat by phone or Zoom, ask if they’ll meet you at AAR/SBL. No joke, the summer before I applied to programs, I physically mailed letters to professors there. Many of them replied!

• Go to AAR/SBL. That’s the annual conference for the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion, held in tandem the weekend before Thanksgiving each year. My first time, as a Master’s student, was a revelation. I met people there (circa 2010) I’m still friends with—for example, my now colleague Myles Werntz!

• Visit the schools you plan to apply to. As you’re able, obviously. I took a little road trip myself; I was able to visit Duke, UVA, and Vanderbilt. Worth it!

• Ask a professor to review your materials, especially your statement of purpose and CV.

• Have a community of support. Not entirely something you can control, but necessary all the same. Application season is brutal. My household had a lot of tears before the happy email arrived in my inbox.

• Pray. I saved the most important for last…

10. I’ve heard horror stories. Is a PhD program bound to wreck my marriage and suck my soul while making me work 100-hour weeks and hate my life?

No. At least, that’s not inevitable. There are programs that function like law school or medical school. But even then, you usually retain a great deal of agency and responsibility for your time allocation. In my view, most (not all) programs permit a disciplined student to get his work done while continuing to function as a healthy person with family, friends, church, and a life outside the library. Granted, I do know people who would reject that proposition. Either way, it is not a foregone conclusion that you must decide between what matters most and your degree. No way.

11. What about my faith? Can a PhD draw me closer to Christ rather than “deconstruct” or diminish or steal my faith?

Yes! It can. That’s exactly what it did for me. But it’s good to ask this question and to be aware of the danger. There are people for whom doctoral studies challenged, complicated, revised, and sometimes destroyed their faith. Perhaps that was bound to happen at some point. Some people, though, just may not be cut out for a PhD, at least in religion.

In any case, your faith will not emerge from your studies unchanged. And here, as elsewhere, naivete is the enemy. You will read books by atheists and anti-Christians and members of other religions and representatives of views you find risible, heinous, or dangerous. You will have professors who repudiate all that you hold dear. You will have teachers who claim to be Christian who openly reject or even mock beliefs and behaviors you supposed nonnegotiable for any confessing Christian. You need to have a spine of steel even as your mind is open to learning new ideas and being challenged by what you’ve never considered. Does that describe you? Or does it frighten you? Your answer matters a great deal for whether you should pursue a PhD.

12. What does a PhD program actually entail?

Briefly: Two years of classes, one year of comprehensive exams (“comps,” written and oral), two or three years of writing a dissertation. Comps test your mastery of basic topics and texts in your field. A dissertation is, basically, a book based on your special area of research, led and read and assessed by a committee of three to five professors, headed by a single professor, called your “advisor.” Your “defense” of the dissertation is usually when you “become a doctor,” namely, by undergoing oral examination by the committee and defending your writing, your arguments, and your research “live”—sometimes with an audience! It’s a stressful day, to say the least. For those who pass, and not all do, the catharsis is overwhelming.

13. What’s the point of a PhD, anyway? How should I think about it?

Opinions differ. Some say: To become an expert in one specific thing, perhaps the world’s most informed expert. I say: To become a theologian. That is, to sit at the feet of masters, to apprentice yourself to them, as to a trade, to be inducted into what it means to be a member of the guild, to learn the grammar and habits that make a theologian a theologian. And thence and therein to learn some concrete expertise.

14. Is the quality of one’s doctoral training really convertible with an institution’s money and prestige?

No. Some of the most brilliant scholars I know and learn from got PhDs in out-of-the-way programs or unpretentious institutions; indeed, some of the world’s greatest minds and writers are effectively autodidacts. Don’t fall for the cult of credentials and gatekept expertise. It’s a game. If you want to be a professor, you have to play it. That’s it.

Now, money and prestige don’t count for nothing. They’re often a proxy for a certain quality floor, along with a certain quality ceiling. You’re rarely going to get a poor education at a top-5 school. And the degree will always count for something.

15. Suppose I get in somewhere, and I’m wondering how to flourish. Any tips?

Here are a few:

• Put your head down. You’re there to learn. Study, study, study. Then study some more.

• Set limits and boundaries. One guy I knew treated his studies like a job: he worked from 8:00am to 5:00pm, then he stopped and spent time with his family. Not for everyone, but incredibly useful for some.

• Don’t waste your time. Don’t read online. Delete all your social media accounts. Focus entirely on what you’re there to learn. Some doctoral students “work all day” without getting anything done: Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok see to that, not to mention the New York Times, the Atlantic, and Jacobin.

• Develop good habits now. They’ll stay with you in whatever future employment you find.

• Just as before, devote time to forming relationships and mentorships with your professors.

• Begin networking not just within your institution but outside of it, whether professors or fellow students.

• Don’t try to make a name for yourself yet. Don’t tweet. Don’t write for a popular audience. Don’t, for the most part, publish in scholarly spaces—unless your advisor gives you the thumbs up, and it’s work you think is A-quality, and it’s likely to matter for job applications. If you’re gong to have an academic career, there will be time enough for publishing. Now’s the time for input, not output.

• Learn how to do two things: (a) read for long, uninterrupted stretches of time and (b) write a certain daily word count. Learning how to skim and how to type fast are also useful skills. Best of all, learn how to take quality notes and to organize them in relation to your research and writing goals. These will serve you for a lifetime.

• Keep learning languages. I can’t emphasize this enough: Languages are the secret sauce of theology (and the humanities generally). If you have two or four or six or more, you’re gold. If you’re stuck in no man’s land with one, or 1.5, or a bunch you can only half-read, you’re at a serious disadvantage—for jobs and for your scholarship. Mastering languages pays dividends!

• Listen to your advisor. She knows best.

• Pray. Not a joke! Better to keep your soul than to lose it and gain the whole world. Focus on what matters most, even in a time of stress and compressed study. Focus on God, church, spouse, children, friends, life. It keeps things in perspective. (Also not a joke: Drop out if this isn’t for you. There’s no shame in it if the alternative is ruin.)

16. Any other tips?

Yes, one: Don’t be a jerk. It is not your job to police the opinions or beliefs or politics of fellow students, much less professors. You don’t have to announce yourself in every seminar as the expert or True Believer on whatever topic. Drop the show. Be a normal human. Keep your own counsel. Be collegial. Even if the people around you espouse crazy things, it is not your job to set them straight. It’s your job to get a degree. Do it.

17. Say I make it to the job market, dissertation finished and PhD in hand. What then?

Not much to say here. Apply widely, prepare to move cross-country even as you prepare for nothing but rejections, and keep up those prayers.

18. What about the dissertation itself?

Not every program, not every advisor, and not every dissertation allows this, but in general I think you should write the dissertation as though you are already under contract with a publisher for a book. Write it as a book, that is, not as that unique and uniquely unreadable genre, “dissertation.” Or at least write toward the eventual book.

That, by the way, is what often happens. Your “first book” is the dissertation, in revised form. Not always, not for everyone. But ideally for many, perhaps most. Sometimes it’s chopped up into journal articles. Sometimes it remains background for the next research agenda. How you approach it matters, though, for what it eventually becomes, or is likely to become.

There’s a balancing act to aim for here. You don’t want the dissertation to try to do everything. You don’t want to swing for the fences and decisively answer the biggest question facing the field. On the other hand, you don’t want it to be so niche, so remote, so granular that no one cares. This also touches on the “faddishness” of one’s dissertation topic, its relative “timeliness” or “sexiness” as an academic subject. Sometimes a fad will get you a job; sometimes it will ensure your perpetual obscurity.

I say: Focus on the perennial topics, questions, and figures. They’ll never go away, even if they’re not in fashion for a time. (Miroslav Volf once gave me the advice that Jürgen Moltmann gave him: Always do two things as a theologian. Take up the ultimate questions humans always ask, and do so through engagement with Scripture. That’s what it means to be a theologian, and it doubles as ensuring you’ll never be irrelevant.)

A final addendum: The one thing doctoral programs routinely fail to do is train their students to teach, even as the one thing they never fail to do is train their students to write awful prose. At to the first: Seek out opportunities to teach, and seek to T.A. (be a teaching assistant) for professors who are good in the classroom. Having said that, the best way to become a better teacher is sheer repetition, and you’re unlikely to get that until you have a job, and the truth is that few schools will hire you based on your already being a good teacher. So, in terms of tradeoffs, focus on research and finishing the dissertation, not teaching.

As to the second, then: It’s near impossible not to pick up bad writing habits in a PhD program, for the simple reason that most academics are bad writers, and most academic writing is meant not to be readable but to impress a small circle of experts with jargon, quotations, and footnotes. I suppose the best way to resist bad prose during doctoral studies is by reading poetry, novels, and literary essays on the side throughout one’s time. Another way is to read major scholars in other fields who write for highbrow general-audience publications like NYRB, NYT Magazine, The New Yorker, The Point, LARB, Harper’s, First Things, and elsewhere. Many academics never unlearn their bad writing habits, and for those who do, it takes years. Just knowing going in that your dissertation will be poorly written, no matter how hard you try, is to put you ahead of the curve.

19. What about jobs? Which should I plan on applying to?

All of them!

Besides that answer, which is true, I’ll add that TT academic posts are typically differentiated by “teaching load”: in other words, how many classes you teach per year (or per semester). If you’re at an R1 University (a level-1 research school), then you’re likely to teach a 2-2 (two courses per semester), with generous regular sabbaticals for research. If you’re at an R2 or R3, you’re likely to teach a 2-3 or 3-3. If you’re at a new R3 or teaching university or community college, you’re likely to teach a 3-4 or 4-4 or even 5-5.

A couple years back I wrote a four-part, 12,000-word series on what it’s like teaching with a 4-4 load. Spoiler: Not a fate worse than death! But depending on where you earn your PhD, you might be told that it is. I won’t say much more here except that the mindset that supposes any job outside of R1 or Ivy isn’t worth taking is deadly. Don’t indulge it, and exorcise that demon if it possesses you at any time during your studies.

20. What about serving the church?

Well, isn’t that the right way to end this.

Christians study theology because of the living God, in obedience to Christ’s command to love the Lord with all our mind. We become theologians to serve the mission of his people in the world. Our knowledge, such as it is, exists to his glory and the advance of his kingdom. It certainly does not exist to advance our ambitions or careers.

You do glorify God through academic theological writing, even when such writing is not obviously or directly “applicable” to or “accessible” by ordinary believers in the pews. I can’t say more here to defend that claim—we’re wrapping this post up!—but it’s true. Trust me for now.

More important, it’s crucial to approach the question of pursuing a PhD as an exercise of love for God and service to the church. That will guide you as a lodestar throughout your academic adventures (or misadventures). If this is what God has called you to, so be it. It might involve suffering; it’s likely to involve professional wandering; it’s certain to involve uncertainty. Offer it to Christ; put it in his service. He’ll use it, one way or another. Expect that use to involve a cross, even if the trajectory of your career looks “successful” from the outside or after the fact.

But if he’s not calling you to this, that’s okay too. Don’t do it just because. Discernment works only if it’s possible to hear a No and not just a Yes. Prayer enters at this point for a final time. If the job of the doctoral candidate is study, study, study, the job of the disciple is pray, pray, pray. Prayer will carry you through, whichever path you end up on.

Let’s say, then, that my advice is not for the PhD-curious to abandon all hope. Abandon all false hope, yes. But hope is not optimism. As for pursuing an academic career, put it this way: With mere mortals this may be impossible, but with God all things are possible—even getting a PhD in theology.

My latest: a review of Tara Isabella Burton

I’m in the latest issue of Commonweal with a longish review of Tara Isabella Burton’s latest (nonfiction) book, Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians. Online, the title is “Have We Become Gods?” In the magazine, it’s “The Brand Called You.” Here are the opening two paragraphs:

I am what I want, and I have the power within myself to make myself what I want to be, if only I find the will to activate this inner potential—or rather, to manifest this authentic identity. Such is the thesis under review in Tara Isabella Burton’s new book, Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians. The thesis is not a new one. It has a long history, which, in Burton’s telling, begins around the fifteenth century. Though she finds its philosophical culmination in the eighteenth, with the Enlightenment, most of her story covers the past two hundred years: from bon ton and Beau Brummell to “the two most prominent self-creators of the past twenty years,” Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump. Across Western Europe and the Anglophone world, self-creation as both a transcendent possibility and a moral imperative trickles down to ordinary people’s lives and self-understanding, mutating in tandem with religious, economic, and technological changes. Since creation is traditionally the prerogative of deity, Burton’s story is ultimately about “how we became gods.”

Burton is a reliable chronicler. This book continues a theme explored in her 2020 work, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World. There she argued that rumors of religion’s death in the West have been greatly exaggerated. The God of Abraham may be on life support, so to speak, but other gods are alive and well. We haven’t refuted religion so much as “remixed” it. Postmodern spirituality is a potent cocktail of magic, money, and memes; a hybrid made possible by the internet, the dynamic power of capitalism, and the loss of authority once vested in religious institutions and their ordained leaders. America, at least, is not a land of atheists or even agnostics. It’s full of witches, cosplayers, crystals, fangirls, Proud Boys, and Goop. Is SoulCycle a religion? What about wellness culture? The borders of religion turn out to be porous. Accordingly, Burton suggests we’re misreading the signs of the times. We don’t live in a secular age. The gods haven’t vanished; they’ve migrated. Our age is as religious as any other. You just have to know where to look.

Read the rest here. And take note, please, that the URL for the review concludes in this way: “burton-trump-kardashian-east.” Go back a decade and find me somewhere in New Haven, nose buried in a book, prepping for comprehensive exams on systematic theology, and tell me that one day I’d write an essay with those names in the URL. My assumption would have been that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong in my career…

How do you spend your time in the office?

A couple years back I wrote a long series of posts reflecting on what it’s like to teach a 4/4 load, how to manage one’s time, how to make time for research, and so on. Recently a friend was mentally cataloguing how he spends his hours in the office, both for himself and for higher-ups. So I thought I’d work up a list of ways academics use their time in the office. I came up with twenty-five categories, though I’m sure I’ve overlooked some. The hardest part was thinking about scholars outside of the humanities (you know, people who work with “hard data” in the “lab” and create “spreadsheets” with “numbers”—things I’ve only ever heard of, never encountered in the wild). Here’s the list, with relevant glosses where necessary, followed by a few reflections and a breakdown of my own “office hours”:

• Teaching (in the classroom or online)

• Grading

• Lesson prep

• LMS management (think Blackboard, Canvas, etc.)

• Writing

• Reading

• Supervising (a G.A. or doctoral student, or providing official hours toward licensure)

• Experiments/lab work

• Data collection/collation/analysis

• Meetings with students

• Meetings with colleagues

• Emailing

• Phone calls

• Admin work

• Committee work

• Para-academic work (blind reviewer, organizing a conference panel, being interviewed on a podcast, etc.)

• Vocational work (say, seeing clients as a therapist or making rounds at the hospital)

• Church work (preparing a sermon or curriculum)

• Family duties (paying bills, ordering gifts, taking the car to the shop, leaving early to pick up kids, staying home with a sick child)

• Loafing (hallway chats, office drop-ins, breeze-shooting)

• Eating (whether alone or with others)

• Devotion (prayer, meditation, silence and solitude)

• Social media (call this digital loafing)

• Filler (walking, parking, shuttle, etc.)

• Other (this is here, lol, so you don’t have to think about questions like “how much time per semester do I spend in the restroom?”)

Now suppose you are (a) full-time faculty with responsibilities in (b) teaching, (c) research, and (d) service, and that a typical work week is (e) Monday through Friday, 8:00am to 5:00pm, spent in an office. That comes to 45 hours. How do you spend it in a given semester? That’s a factual question. It’s paired with the aspirational: How do you wish you spent it?

Answers to both are going to vary widely and be dependent on discipline, institution, temperament, desire, will, gifts, talents, interests, and job description. The chair of a physics department with 2/2 teaching loads will spend her time differently than an English prof with a 4/4 load and no administrative duties. So on and so forth.

Here’s how my time breaks down in an average week this semester (numbers after each category are estimated average weekly hours spent on that activity):

• Teaching – 9

• Grading – 1

• Lesson prep – 2-3

• Writing – 3-6

• Reading – 10-15

• Meetings with students – 1

• Meetings with colleagues – 0-1

• Emailing – 3-5

• Committee work – 0-1

• Para-academic work – 0-1

• Church work – 0-1

• Family duties – 6

• Eating – 1-2

• Devotion – 1

• Other – 1

• LMS management, supervising, lab work, data collection, phone calls, social media, loafing, vocational work, admin work, filler – 0

Check my work, but I think the numbers add up: at a minimum, these activities come to 38 out of 45 hours, with an unfixed 7 hours or so in which to apportion the remaining 16 in variable ways, given the week and what’s going on, what’s urgent, etc.

Now for commentary:

• Note well what’s in the “zero hours” category: admin work, social media, supervising students of any kind (including in a lab), and LMS management. Anybody with duties or habits along these lines will have a seriously different allotment of hours than I do.

• Notice what’s low in my weekly hours: email (which I wrote about yesterday), grading, meetings of any kind, and in general duties beyond teaching and research. On a good week, 30 of my 45 hours are spent teaching, reading, and writing. That’s not for everyone—nor is it a viable option for many—but it’s the result, among other things, of how I organize and discipline my time in the office. Teaching, reading, and writing are the priority. Everything else is secondary.

• Well, not quite. Notice what’s (atypically?) high: family duties. I drop off our kids at school every morning, which means I sit down at my desk no earlier than 8:00am, sometimes closer to 8:30am. At least twice (often thrice) per week I leave around 3:00pm to pick them up, too. So if we’re thinking of the standard “eight to five office day,” that’s an average of at least five hours weekly that I’m not in the office. That’s not to mention dentist and doctor appointments, the flu, stomach bugs, Covid, choir performances, second grad programs, and the rest. Not everyone has kids, and kids don’t remain little forever, but this is worth bearing in mind for many faculty!

• (Addendum: I am—we are—fortunate to have an employer and a type of job that permit the sort of flexibility that doesn’t require us paying for a babysitter or childcare after the school bell rings. That’s a whole different matter.)

• Because I’m piloting a new class this semester, I’m teaching only three courses for a total of nine hours. Typically it’s four courses totaling twelve hours. In that case, in the absence of a new prep I wouldn’t have two to three hours weekly devoted to lesson planning. Once I’ve taught a class a few times, it’s plug and play. In other words, if this were describing my semester a year ago, teaching would have twelve hours next to it and lesson prep would have zero.

• I should add, while I’m thinking of it: Sometimes my reading goes way down when a writing project is nearing a deadline or in full swing. Neither of those things is true at present, so I’m doing more reading than writing this semester. But sometimes the numbers there flip flop, and I’m writing 15+ hours weekly and reading only 3-5 hours, if that.

• My institution requires generous office hours for students to come by and talk to their professors. I keep those hours but encourage students to set up meetings in advance, whether in person after class or by email. That way I won’t randomly be gone (at home with a sick kid, say, or in a committee meeting), and we can both be efficient with our time. I’ve mentored students in the past, which involved more of a weekly time commitment. At the moment I probably meet with two or three students per week, usually for 15-30 minutes each. But I know that not only here at ACU but elsewhere there are professors who give five, ten, or more hours each week to meeting with students. So, once again, there’s the question of decisions, priorities, institutional expectations, personal giftedness, and tradeoffs.

• I’ve already mentioned two of the three great timesucks for professors: email and social media. Both threaten to rob academics of hours of time they could otherwise be using on what they love or, at least, what’s important. I gave my advice yesterday for how to resist the lure of the inbox. The cure for social media is simple: Just delete it. It can’t steal away your time if it quite literally does not exist for you.

• The third great timesuck is loafing. This isn’t a temptation for academics alone, but for any and all office workers. Who wouldn’t prefer to shoot the breeze with coworkers in lieu of putting one’s nose to the grindstone? To me, this is purely and simply a personal decision. Loafing is not only fun, but life-giving. Many office jobs aren’t endurable without a healthy dose of loafing. You can often tell the relative health of an office by the nature and extent of its occupants’ shared loafing. So don’t hear me knocking loafing. It’s a kind of social nutrient for office work. In its absence, the human beings who make up an office can wither and die. Having said that, when I say it’s a “decision” I mean to say, on one hand, that it’s active, not passive (one has agency in loafing—a sentence I hope I’m the first to have written); and, on the other, that it involves tradeoffs. I’ve loafed less and less over the years for the plain reason that I realized what loafing I did inevitably meant less reading and writing (not, mind you, less busywork or email or grading or meetings: those, like death and taxes, are certain and unavoidable features of the academic life). And if the equation is that direct—less loafing, more research—then given my priorities and the tradeoffs involved, I decided to do my best to cut it out as much as I could.

• Not much else to add, except that, when I can avoid them, I don’t do “work lunches.” I’m sure the portrait painted here is sounding increasingly, even alarmingly, antisocial; the truth, however, is that every hour (every minute!) counts in a job like this one, and you have to be ruthless to find—by which I mean, make—time for what you value. I like my job. I would read and write theology in my spare time if I weren’t a professor. So I don’t want to waste time in the office if I can help it.

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.

My latest: no to AI in the pulpit

I’m in Christianity Today this morning with a piece called “AI Has No Place in the Pulpit.” It’s in partial response to a CT piece from a few weeks ago about the benefits of using AI in pastoral work. A couple sample paragraphs from the middle of the article:

Pastors are students of God’s Word. They are learners in the school of Christ. He teaches them by the mouths of his servants, the prophets and apostles, who speak through Holy Scripture. There is no shortcut to sitting at their feet. The point—the entire business—of pastoral ministry is this calm, still, patient sitting, waiting, and listening. Every pastor lives according to the model of Mary of Bethany. Strictly speaking, only one thing is necessary for the work of ministry: reclining at the feet Jesus and hanging on his every word (Luke 10:38–42).

In this sense, no one can do your studying for you. I’ll say more below about appropriate forms of learning from professional scholars and commentaries, but that’s not what I have in mind here. What I mean is that studying God’s Word is part of what God has called you to do; it’s more than a means to an end. After all, one of its ends is your own transformation, your own awesome encounter with the living God. That’s why no one can listen to Jesus in your stead. You must listen to Jesus. You must search the Scriptures. This is what it means to serve the church.

Read the whole thing! And thanks to Bonnie Kristian, among others, for commissioning and sharpening the piece in editing.