Charitable Writing – Overview and Introduction
I had a class this summer that required me to read a whole bunch of the Sermons of John Wesley and interact critically of them. My professor had two motivations. The first was to make another Wesleyan in the program, and in this goal she was more or less successful. Her second goal was to encourage me to find a way to digest these texts that not only fit the shape of my brain, but also allowed me to develop a body of work that I could reference throughout my studies. To that end, the requirement that I “interact critically with the texts” was purposefully open ended.
Over the course I settled in to a format of writing a short, reflexive essay on the given section of reading each time, eventually becoming a set of summaries for me inside of my Obsidian database, written in my own language, for myself as an audience. I'm looking forward to referencing it throughout my time studying the things of God.
In that vein, and in the desire to keep the quill sharp during these couple of weeks between the summer term and the fall semester, I've assigned myself some reading, “Charitable Writing: Cultivating Virtue Through Our Words” by Richard Hughes Gibson and James Edward Beitler III. I've also given myself the assignment of writing for a mass audience, rather than myself, as a way to, hopefully, grow my writing a bit more. We will see whether that has the intended purpose.
This post will be on the overall book and the introduction to the book. Think of it as a book report, chapter by chapter.
Overview
“Charitable Writing” is written by Composition or Writing professors that are also people of Christian faith, and the audience of the book is others people of Christian faith as well. The title of the book is taken from the traditional translation of the Greek “agape” into the Latin “caritas,” transliterated “charity.” Most modern translators of the word agape choose the English word “love.” “Charitable Writing” can therefore be thought of as “Writing Full of Love.” The goal of the book is to reposition the activity of writing as it's own spiritual discipline, like fasting and prayer, and to introduce three “threshold concepts” to the science of writing. Threshold concepts are a term of art in their field, described by Jan H. F. Meyer and Ray Land as ideas one must learn to take part in academic disciplines. This is described more in the Introductory chapter.
Ch 0 – Introduction
Included in the introduction is an opening meditation on the San Luca Altarpiece by Andrea Mantegna. It takes the form of a polyptych, a collection of portraits arranged in a grid with some significance on the persons chosen, their position and relative size, etc. The author points out that, rightly, Christ is at the top and in the center, but right beneath Christ is a large, central portrait depicting St Luke hard at work writing the gospel which bears his name. The depiction is anachronistic, which the author (rightly, I think) points out for the purpose of dismissing; Luke is writing at a codex, a book form which wasn't invented yet. It's also likely Luke employed a scribe, rather than writing it himself. However, examining the other saints depicted shows them all either holding, reading, or writing books. The Altarpiece depicts the saintly writers that were important to the monks that the polyptych was originally commissioned for. The authors encourage the reader to imagine the polyptych they might construct for themselves, and then to imagine that they occupy one of the spaces, contributing to the great tradition and canon of the Christian faith.
The introductory chapter fleshes out the purpose of the book quite well, I think, and I will use their headings to organize this section.
What is “Charitable Writing”?
“In brief, 'charitable writing' is writing that embodies the distinctive Christian understanding of Love, which used to go by the name 'charity' in English.” Pg 10
The Authors intend to use the entire book to flesh out and complicate this definition, but I will say that I think they're really trying to name and define a spiritual discipline, using the word “charitable” here to distinguish the disciplinary form from the secular practice of “writing.” This distinction can be made among all the Christian spiritual disciplines. Fasting without prayer and contemplation is a crash diet. Prayer without attention to God is mindfulness meditation. Generosity without attendant care and attention to our dependence on God in all things is a self-serving “feel good” activity. “Charitable Writing,” therefore, is writing done in the light and life of God. The rest of the book lines out what that means.
Spiritual Threshold Concepts
“Educational theorists Jan HF Meyer and Ray Land coined the term 'threshold concepts' to describe the ideas that one must learn to take part in academic disciplines, ... For example, a threshold concept from the discipline of mathematics is the notion of complex numbers — that is, numbers that include imaginary elements.” Pg 11
Being teachers themselves, the authors have imported some important jargon to describe the sort of thing that I might have heard referenced as a key learning metric or a “big idea” from a part of learning. The threshold concept is something of a gate and a crossing over point. Imagine a mystery novel, once you learn who the killer is, the rest of the information of the story realigns and finds new meanings, perhaps even the only cohesive meaning. Learning the derivative in Calculus was a major threshold moment for me, and I never made it past my second semester. It reframed and recontextualized everything I did in Algebra. The authors give several examples from their discipline, writing studies:
- Writing is a social and rhetorical activity.
- Writing involves making ethical choices
- Writing speaks to situations through recognizable forms.
The work cited by Adler-Kassner and Wardle, “Naming what we Know,” includes thirty-seven such concepts! The authors wish to use this idea in a cross-disciplinary way to tie two disciplines to each other; in fact the “threshold” described by these threshold concepts is the idea that these two disciplines are intimately connected for the believer. To extend my metaphor, these concepts “stitch” these disciplines together. They are that charitable writers listen humbly, argue lovingly, and keep the time of writing hopefully. Each of these three are enumerated in large sections of the book.
Writing into Virtue
In this section the authors spend quite a bit of time enumerating a concept that is near and dear to my specific discipline (Spiritual Formation), that spiritual practices must be practiced over and over, again and again, for the disciple to become disciplined. This is where, I think, it became clear to me that the authors are arguing for charitable writing as a distinct spiritual discipline, subject to the same logic and practices that the other disciplines are. If we are to become disciplined in our writing, if our writing is to become charitable, if our “agape” will fill our writing, then we must get started now. We must begin to write with charity, we must begin to practice the discipline, we must get to work.
I will confess that it was at this moment in the book that I decided that I needed to continue my practice of writing about what I had read from the summer. I understand my calling at this time to be the calling of a writer, someone who ingests, digests, and creates new texts for the benefit of the Kingdom of God. I don't know that I ever formally entered in to my apprenticeship as a writer, being raised in a wordy household it's likely I came by it honestly. However it happened, an apprentice I am, and whether the apprentice is a carpenter, a mason, a sewist, leather crafter or motorcycle mechanic, the apprentice learns, the apprentice does, the apprentice fails, the apprentice tries again. Over and over. Day after day.
How to Use this Book
The authors here detail that they intend this book to be the first word, not the last. I'm excited for the elucidation of a Christian spiritual discipline that was before unknown to me, and the opportunity to learn. The authors command, “Talk back to this book,” a command which I did not require but will embrace regardless.
A Benediction
At the end of the introduction, the authors remark on the nature of thresholds, and how academics are not the only ones who view and mark them. In my mind these thresholds feel like lights at the end of the tunnel, opportunities to slough off claustrophobic constraints and enter in to a brand new, wide open frontier. I never get tired of that feeling, the openness that characterizes the world in that moment. The authors muse on the fact that a book is, itself, a physical space and the introduction is it's own threshold, inviting the reader in. They end the introduction with a description of the practice of marking a house's threshold or entry with “+ C + M + B +” during epiphany, the season following Christmas. “They stand for the words of the Latin prayer 'Christus mansionem benedicat,' meaning 'May Christ bless this house.' By marking our threshold with this sign, we offer that prayer on your behalf.
Come in, reader. May Christ be your companion here.”
Conclusion
Hopefully the dual format of my personal reading notes also being a blog post is not confusing. Consider it a form of “working in public” more than a form deliberately composed for your consumption. I hope to have a chapter a day on this book, and I'm excited to read it with you tomorrow.