On the Essence of Marriage, Writing Well, and Good Popular Academic Writers

I want to write a book on marriage titled “ On Marriage”. It has been a recurring thought of mine that an intellectual and heartfelt defense of the classical Christian view of marriage (one man, one woman, lifetime commitment, love, kids, under God) would be timely. My goal is to defend the Christian view of marriage against the modern liberal take of marriage, which is, as far as I can tell, summed up in a few phrases: “We love each other. We want the benefits of civil marriage. No more questions.” My hope is that the book will appeal to the average reader (Christian or not) and not go over anyone’s head.

I have begun my research, taken some notes, and just the other day I wrote a preliminary outline. Things are going well (though slowly). Still, there are a few snags that will have to be solved along the way. One of these problems is particularly troubling to me: I don’t know if I can write a book like this for a popular audience.

After reviewing my first outline I realized that no one would read this book but academics and pastors due to the technical language, depth, and possible length of such a book. It is not terrible for a book to be read only by academics and pastors, since scholars and pastors have quite a bit of influence these days, so I might change my target audience. But for now, I want to provide a teaching on classical Christian marriage that will appeal to the average reader.

(I became aware that I tend to write more academically after giving my thesis paper, “Virtue Ethics and Pastoral Ministry”, to some well-intentioned family members. One family member said they had fallen asleep when they first attempted to read my thesis. They have not gotten back to me yet. The other family member said that it was quite technical and also has failed to get back to me on any further impressions.)

These thoughts all lead me to wonder: what makes for good, popular –yet academic – reading? I currently have few answers to this question. The clues I have gathered come from other authors who are very clever and draw audiences both academic and average. The best way for me to think about this is to focus on four authors who I think do a good job of being both popular and academic: Malcolm Gladwell, Gilbert Meilander, Josef Pieper, and Clive Staples Lewis.

I think I was too young when I read my first book by Malcolm Gladwell. I was twenty or so. The book was The Tipping Point. I didn’t quite understand the book, but I believe it is about when things (movements, brands, etc.) go from moderately popular (or worse) to very popular. It was a good book as far as I can remember.

The second of Gladwell’s books I have read is called Blink, which is an interesting book about how important intuitive knowledge is. By intuition I don’t mean the type that we often think of when we hear the word “intuition”. Here I am not talking about unstudied, almost mystical, intuition, but the intuition that comes after long study of a subject or topic, which results in the ability to make correct snap decisions. Now, I’m not sure if that is what the book is really about, but I think it is. I didn’t totally get that book either. I was probably twenty-one or so.

In the past five months or so I’ve become more acquainted with and therefore more comfortable with Gladwell. Over the past year I have started to understand him better. I have listened to some interviews of Gladwell regarding one of his newer books, Outliers, and I have been reading the collection of his best pieces from the New Yorker called What the Dog Saw. I have been impressed with Gladwell in two specific ways: depth of insight and the eloquence (readability). Gladwell has an ability to talk about complex things with patience enough not to overlook important factors that audiences need to know about, and he does this in a very readable and interesting way.

Therefore, I have decided to learn from Gladwell. What have I learned so far? I’ve learned that someone can make me interested in why Heinz Ketchup is so popular and that attempts to make a new ketchup fail. Gladwell knows how to make any topic interesting, whether they are serious topics (the character traits of geniuses, CEOs, etc) or not (Ketchup). Gladwell also strikes me as somewhat quirky, which is endearing.

From Gladwell’s works I have gleaned a few important pieces of advice: 1) It is important to be patient with your audience; don’t assume that people will follow (and therefore want to read) your work if you get lazy by assuming that people can understand your inferences. 2) A certain mastery of style is necessary, or a writing can become quite boring; it is good if your topic is interesting, but it is even better if you can get people excited about your topic through your persuasiveness and ability to write with style.

I have only a few words on Gilbert Meilander and Josef Pieper. First, I must note that these two authors are more academic than they are popular, though they have found admirers among more average readers. I have learned from Meilander that good writing often involves the weaving of story and fact. I have found that this provides a certain beauty to his academic musings. Then again, other times I find that this distracts me and makes it difficult to pull out what he is actually trying to get at. Pieper, on the other hand, writes succinctly and powerfully. Most of Pieper’s books are on topics of major philosophical importance, and yet he rarely spends more than a hundred pages on a volume, which is amazing to me.

Thinking on the works of Meilander and Pieper I realize that little is added to what can be gleaned from Gladwell: Style (whether more poetic or more powerful) and content (providing evidence and making good points based on the evidence) are essential to master.

These same essentials appear in the works of C.S. Lewis. Lewis, for me, is almost the pinnacle of making very deep things extremely understandable. The first book of Lewis’ that I read was his very popular, very influential, and very scholarly (and yet simple) Mere Christianity. I did not understand much of that book during my first read-through. (To be truthful, I now recall that I have had very little understanding of Gladwell, Meilander, Pieper, and Lewis upon first encounters. I attribute this to my young brain. By young brain I mean the brain I had before I actually began to think of things with depth; before I could read well. In fact, I used to read merely for the pleasure of consumption rather than for knowledge, intellectual sparing, or the simple pleasure of reading itself. I was like a glutton who ate food even after he was full; I cared little for true nourishment. But perhaps this is another point to be gleaned from popular academic writers, that not everybody will understand them at first, but more exposure will help.)

I believe that Lewis’ ability to boil down major problems into a few understandable paragraphs must come from his own intellect, which I believe did this almost automatically (though, perhaps is more like the intuitive knowledge that I referred to when speaking of Blink; a great ability to see things quickly, but only after having much previous exposure).

Look at Lewis’ works. They are not very long, and yet they deal with topics of such depth that we could spend a lifetime of study on them. It was only after having studied, in depth, the seven virtues of the Christian life, (four natural: prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance; three supernatural: faith, hope, love) that I looked back at the sections in Lewis’ Mere Christianity that cover these virtues and found, to my amazement, that he boils some of these teachings down to mere pages. Lewis was also great using examples that made sense.

There is one common trait that I see in the authors mentioned, which must be essential to any intellectual writing: Gladwell, Meilander, Pieper, and Lewis have the uncanny ability to see the essence (the core part or parts) of a thing (whatever topic they write on). Therefore, they can boil there topics into their most basic elements, and if you explain these most basic elements, then you have done a good job of boiling a difficult topic into something bite-sized, or at least manageable. I can also divide the four authors into two different stylistic schools (some of these authors fit nicely into either school): 1) Flowy, and; 2) Brisk. The Flowy school is easily identified because it often weaves different ways of saying the same thing together, though almost unnoticeably, or it brings up certain themes over and over again without us noticing until right before it comes up. The Brisk school writes short works powerfully and succinctly.

To sum up the two major lessons I have learned I will use two key phrases and define them. The first issue in writing popular academic works is what I will call the “academic concern”. Academic concern has to do with discovering the essence of a topic, or finding the core element or elements of a topic. Once this is discovered, a writer will be able to explain difficult topics in more easily managed pieces, unless the author gets lazy. The second lesson can be called “poetic concern”. The poetic concern refers to the ability to use a particular style (Flowy, Brisk, etc.) well, or the ability to combine styles well in one’s writing.

How can I apply this gleaned advice to my (hopefully) upcoming book, “On Christian Marriage”? First, I must address the “academic concern” by see the essence of the thing clearly. And being able to explain the essentials of marriage in a understandable and logical way.
Second, I can apply the knowledge gleaned from good popular academic authors by writing “On Christian Marriage” in a specific style (the “poetic concern”), either Flowy, Brisk, some combination of the two, or in a school that I have not thought of.