WANTED: A FEW MORE SCHOLARS/POPULARIZERS/ACTIVISTS!

I am a scholar who spent several years of my life completing a PhD. But for better or worse, I am best known as a popularizer. In fact, my problem ,if it is a problem, runs even deeper. I have tried not only to combine popularizing with scholarly work but I’ve also been an activist and organizer.

Trying to do what I have done is problematic. Good popular writing almost inevitably requires an interdisciplinary understanding that no single scholar possesses. But the general public has little interest in simply that aspect of, for example, world hunger discussed in technical detail with professional expertise by the professor of business or the professor economic history or Christian ethics or Old Testament or New Testament, and more. But all those specialities, and more, directly relate to the question:  What is a faithful Christian response to world hunger today? The typical Christian layperson wants to read a coherent, reliable response to that broad question, not some specialized technical paper that deals with one small aspect of the problem. Unfortunately, no scholar, however brilliant, is familiar with all those fields. Hence every popularizing scholar knows they are doing what in a sense they have no business doing.

There is another problem because popularization requires simplification.  That is not to say that simplistic distortion is inevitable. But good popularizing demands that  one set aside many complexities in order to offer a clear, coherent statement of the central issues. This easily frustrates the popularizer who is also a scholar –not to mention the scholarly critics who are not popularizers!

I have tried to work at this problem in several ways. My Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger is certainly my most successful effort at popularization. Had I known, when I was a student,  what I was going to  do later in life, I would have  taken courses  in economics, politics, Christian ethics and more. I took only economics 101 as an undergraduate and no courses in Christian ethics when I was studying at Yale Divinity School in the 1960s.  Knowing my lack of preparation in economics, I asked a number of friends who were economists to read the early drafts. I did not always take their advice but they certainly helped me avoid  many mistakes.

I took a different approach in the 1990s. Evangelicals for Social Action had received a substantial grant to work on the question: If the United States truly wanted to reduce domestic poverty dramatically, what would be the full range of things that government and other sectors in society would need to do simultaneously?  We assembled a group of scholars to work on scholarly papers and eventually published the results in a scholarly volume. But part way through the process, it dawned on me that I should consider writing a shorter, more popular book drawing on the careful chapters being written by scholars. Several of the scholars read the relevant chapters of my more popular book which was published as Just Generosity: A New Vision for Overcoming Poverty in America.

My third effort combining scholarship, popularizing and activism happened around the question of the inter-relationship between evangelism and social action in faith-based ministries. Thanks to the excellent work of a graduate student of mine, Heidi Roland (who was trained as a sociologist), I received a large Lilly Endowment grant to do a five-year study of diverse ways that evangelism and social ministry interacted in 15 different congregations. Baker published a popular book on the results: Churches That Make A Difference. And Oxford published a scholarly volume on the results: Saving Souls, Serving Society.

Since popularizing requires interdisciplinary knowledge, I have tried to develop friends who are experts in the relevant fields. I try to listen carefully to their advice without being intimidated by them.

Here are a couple conclusions from my experience. First, good popularizing requires special skills, and ability to develop a broad synoptic vision, an instinct for  quickly discerning the most crucial issues, a personality and mind that enjoys moving quickly from one issue to another, and the ability to write clearly and powerfully.

Second the kinds of choices I have made have consequences. Hardly anyone can attempt the level of popularizing and activism I have sought and also become a widely recognized scholar.

Third I would discourage anyone from trying to do what I have done unless you feel called. Not many people should do it! I do not mean for a moment to urge most scholars to abandon the life of extended, focused scholarly research in their specific area of professional expertise. What I tried is not for everyone.

Finally, some scholars must do it! Plato said that if the wise disdain the task of politics, then they must suffer being governed by fools. Somebody will write popularizing books for the average person. If those with scholarly training will not do it, they should not complain when those with little expertise do it badly, embarrassing the church, and misleading lay people with one-sided, simplistic nonsense.

I hope that at least a few in each generation of Christian scholars will pray for the gifts, develop the skills, and pay the price of becoming far better popularizers and more active activists than I have managed to be.

For a longer statement of this, see my God’s Invitation to Peace and Justice (Judson, 2021), chap 9—available at Amazon and Judson.

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