On being a female Christian writer who is not 'a female Christian writer'

Plus: The nature and purpose of diplomacy, scones, and more

Good morning! It’s Wednesday, and here are this week’s five items for you.

In this post, paid subscribers will receive:

1. the rest of the first item

2. the nature and purpose of diplomacy

3. scones

4. some recent work

5. my whole deal with the guinea pigs

If you’re not already a paid subscriber, please consider upgrading to read the whole post—and to support my work:

---

1. A take I haven’t written elsewhere

On being a female Christian writer who is not 'a female Christian writer'

(via)

Late last month, Abilene Christian University professor Brad East published a taxonomy of (American) Christian books at his blog: “Four tiers of Christian/ theological publishing.” Click through to read his whole scheme—which includes author and genre examples for each tier—but here’s the gist:

Tier 1: Universal

Audience: Anyone at all. […]

Description: This level includes authors who write Christian books for anyone and everyone. Teenagers, grandmothers, businessmen, stay-home moms, believers, skeptics, heretics, normie laity: you name it, they’re the audience. These books, when popular, sell in the tens or even hundreds of thousands. They are often deeply personal. […]

Tier 2: Popular

Audience: College-educated Christians who enjoy reading to learn more about the faith. […]

Description: This level includes authors who write books for Christians with a college degree, usually Christians who would describe themselves as “readers.” These readers, though, are not theological in any formal sense. They did not go to seminary. They are not pastors. They don’t know jargon. […]

Tier 3: Highbrow

Audience: Seminarians, pastors, scholars, literary types, lay intellectuals. […]

Description: This level includes authors who write for a wide audience of non-specialists who are otherwise interested in serious intellectual and academic Christian thought. Think of books in this group as a way of making the insights of academic scholarship available to folks who either are not academics or, being academics, do not belong to the field in question. […]

Tier 4: Scholarly

Audience: Fellow scholars and academics as well as some pastors and few laypeople. […]

Description: This level includes academics producing professional scholarship for their peers. They have an audience of one: people like them. They do not define jargon; they revel in it. They do not transliterate, much less translate; they write in Greek or Sanskrit and assume you can read it as well as they can. Their pages are full of footnotes: the more the better. […]

This is obviously of special interest to me as an author, and I think I’m accurate in saying A Flexible Faith was solidly in Tier 2 (and published by an imprint that mostly puts out Tier 1 books), and Untrustworthy was Tier 2 with a Tier 3 lean, which is about where I’d like all my books to land, though I’d probably sell more if I could lean toward Tier 1 instead. (Readers of either book, I’m interested to know if you disagree—reply to this email or leave me a comment.)

On the subject of sales, I also can’t help but highlight this part from East:

[There is] a certain perception of what it means to be “a female Christian writer” who “writes for a [read: female] popular audience.” This isn’t just a genre. It’s a whole sensibility. There are unwritten rules here. You need a social media presence. You need to interact with your fans. You need pictures, and not just of you but of your family (ideally your beautiful children). You need to “let people in.” If you don’t, is anyone really going to buy your books or pay you to speak?

I am hyper-aware of this dynamic as a female Christian writer who is not “a female Christian writer.” This is all insufferably “not like the other girls,” I know, but East is right that “a female Christian writer” is a clearly defined thing in the Christian publishing world.