Writers to Read: A Short Demonstration of Christian Engagement with Culture

Last updated on: August 18, 2015 at 3:52 pm by Kendrick Kuo

Writers to Read: A Short Demonstration of Christian Engagement with Culture 2015-08-18T15:52:30-06:00 Kendrick Kuo

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Review of Writers to Read by Douglas Wilson

Douglas Wilson is, for the time being, for better or worse, one of the Reformed world’s leading public intellectuals. Arguably christened or “welcomed” to this stature by John Piper when he was invited to speak at the Desiring God conference in 2009, Wilson has gone on to become known as an edgy apologist (Collision), classical educator (Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning), and questionable historian (Southern Slavery, As It Was). Beyond this, however, Wilson is also known for being wordsmithy. Writers to Read is his second book on writing Writers to Read. In it Wilson explains what you should learn from nine authors that allegedly belong on your bookshelf.

Wilson is a delight to read. And in this book he continues to deliver. Like many books on writing style (think Clear and Simple as the Truth or On Writing Well), Wilson demonstrates the lessons in the way he writes the very text we read. Discussing Chestertonian paradox? Demonstrate the use of truth-revealing paradoxes into Christian theological paradoxes. What about Wodehouse’s famous metaphors? Wilson crafts his own striking and, since we’re talking Wodehouse here, hilarious word images for us to savor. Wilson’s prose is difficult to skim because it demands attention.

But Writers to Read has a number of objectives. It is meant “to help us all become better readers of some fine writers.” And better writers too, since “anyone who wants to write well should return to these authors again and again” (p. 12). Wilson succeeds to varying degrees — the variation changing chapter by chapter. Each chapter is dedicated to one author, nine in total: G. K. Chesterton, H. L. Mencken, P. G. Wodehouse, T. S. Eliot, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, R. F. Capon (not usually initialed, but for consistency sake), M. S. Robinson (same here for Marilyn), and N. D. Wilson (Douglas’s son).

Image Source: Crossway

Wilson does not successfully convince us that all these authors deserve to be on this list or will stand the test of time (a criterion that Wilson himself puts forward as a sign of true classics). Each chapter begins with a brief sketch of the author’s life, followed by a section “Digging Deeper” that tries to expose the mechanics behind their thought life and how it relates to the Christian faith, and concludes with helpful “If You Read Nothing Else” recommendations. The chapters on Chesterton, Mencken, and Wodehouse are gripping. Chesterton “bends what is bent so that we might see it straight” (p. 17). From Mencken we learn, “A ‘sense of poetry’ is at the bottom of all sound prose” (p. 33). On analyzing Wodehouse’s metaphors, Wilson writes, “Metaphor works for a reason. … The universe goes together in some very odd ways” (p. 53).

The last six chapters, unfortunately, never reach the stylistic and turn-of-phrase heights of the first three. The reader never really gets a sense of Eliot; his treatment of Tolkien and Lewis read more as a work of literary criticism; we finish Capon unconvinced that he is actually worth reading; and anyone who has actually read Robinson’s work will not learn anything substantively new. The chapter on N. D. Wilson feels the most shallow. The opening biographical snapshot reads more like an extended account with unnecessary details (how can a father resist?) and Wilson’s analysis grasps at low-hanging fruit. He identifies literary themes such as fatherless and courage, which unabashedly rest on the very surface of many young adult novels. The case for Nate Wilson’s proto-classic-status is wanting.

Wilson states that his mission in Writers to Read is to create better readers and better writers. A third, underlying, objective becomes clearer page by page. He is teaching Christians how to engage with culture, both by “digging deeper” into literary luminaries who shaped the twentieth-century mind and by explaining how these authors themselves interacted with (and critiqued) the zeitgeist of their time. Along the way, he not so subtly prunes the church’s intellectual hedges.

Ever the contrarian, Wilson warns that the popularity of worldview thinking should be tempered. “The problem is not with the word worldview. The problem is with what we naturally tend to think of as our eyes. … But the real organ that we must view the world with is the imagination” (p. 18). Moreover, “many modern Christians do all their worldview analysis through the simple process of counting [hells or damns in books]” (p. 48). He takes a swipe at N. T. Wright fan clubs as contrarians who may be as thought-less as the stampeders, chasing fads. A favorite Wilsonian word to describe Christian engagement with culture is “shrill.” Rightly, he argues that:

“The besetting sin of many cranky, conservative Christian types is their inability to make any good point whatever without sounding shrill. And the better the point, the shriller the making of it can be. The more serious the point, the shriller it gets. When it gets down to matters of life and death, we sound like so many teakettles on a full boil” (p. 55).

And,

“Our cultural criticism tends to be brittle and shrill rather than proceeding from faith. Living by faith includes our criticism, and, oddly enough, the Latin for “with faith” is con fides, that is, confidence” (p. 38).

And here comes the punchline: “Shrillness is therefore a lazy man’s indignation. Shrillness is cheap bluster” (p. 55). This is the negative. What does Wilson say positively about how Christians should do “cultural criticism” while leaving aside the shrillness?

Christian writers should “assume the center” (p. 38). They should, like Machen, have a brain and the courage of their convictions, and “use both of them in the battle” (p. 43). Christians should embrace metaphors because “the more we use them fittingly, the more we grasp what God is like [i.e., the Word made flesh]” (p. 53). In fact, “[t]he test of a theology is what kind of culture it builds” (p. 67). Christians should “affirm a fundamental loyalty to the world and constantly thwart the world’s desire to become disloyal to itself” (p. 25). Applying some Chestertonian paradox: “Worldliness is just a clever way of deserting the world. This is the explanation of why worldliness is so consistently wary of the world” (p. 25). And a word of encouragement: “The Christian faith is permanently sane and is therefore always a bit out of fashion” (p. 27).

With Writers to Read, Douglas Wilson has given us a book part literary guide, part style instructor, part cultural criticism. There is a lot packed into this relatively slim volume. And as with any book that tries to do so much, readers may leave dissatisfied. But if anything, it serves as an invitation to explore these nine authors as “a wonderful place to begin” (p. 151).

Books

Christian

Reading and Writing

Previous Post

August 11, 2015

Fantastic Four is a fantastic flop

Next Post

August 21, 2015 Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet Can’t Transcend a Tired Framing Story

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Action AFI Top 100 Animation Best Picture Winner BFI Top 250 Biography Biopic Books Childrens Christian Classics Classics Comedy Crime Documentary Drama Editor's Choice Family Fantasy Fantasy Films Foreign Historical Historical Fiction History Horror Horror IMDB Top 250 Indie Memoir Modern Novel Musical Mystery Non-Fiction Oscars Philosophy Poetry Popular Literature Reading and Writing Reality Romance Science Fiction Science Fiction Silent Sports Thriller TV Show Uncategorized Western Westerns Young Adult

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 June 2017 January 2017 December 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

I am the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes. Paul was not ashamed of me. What am I?

Select your answer to see how you score.

God's word The cross The gospel Faith