Book Reviewed: Benjamin Merkle and Adrianne Cheek Miles, Christian Academic Writing: Twelve Practices and Principles for Becoming a Successful Writer (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2024).
Journal of Christian Teaching Practice, Volume 11, 2024 (January – December)
Reviewed by: Julie Borkin
Reviewer Affiliation: Taylor University
Total pages: 158
ISBN-13: 9781540965998
In Christian Academic Writing: Twelve Practices and Principles for Becoming a Successful Writer, Benjamin Merkle and Adrianne Cheek Miles have entered the important conversation on scholarly writing from a fresh angle. Their delicate balance of truth, encouragement, and faith-integrated content offers Christian academics a good overview of the mindset, habits, and skills to become successful writers. Even in their more hard-hitting moments of honesty, such as when they emphasize the inevitable hard work and resilience required in scholarly writing, the authors offer us a friendly yet persistent invitation to engage, reminders of why engagement matters so much, and good support from a wide range of seminal books on writing. Though both authors are affiliated with a seminary, their advice is aimed at Christian academics in any field and is valuable for those working on content both secular and spiritual.
The authors’ credibility and contributions work well together. Merkle, a seminary professor of New Testament and Greek, is a well-published author and frequent editor, with publications in myriad scholarly journals and books. The twelve principles flow from Merkle’s own process, while Miles, a writing and linguistics professor, is credited with expanding the ideas and adding explanations throughout. Each chapter addresses aspects of the motivation, challenge, and process of writing and Miles’s poignant chapter-end questions help the reader slow down and imagine how to apply each principle.
While some of the principles in Christian Academic Writing may seem familiar, the way in which the authors address both the mind and heart of each concept makes this book a valuable voice about the writing process. For example, chapter one, “Love Your Topic,” lays the foundation for writing as an opportunity to lean in and use one’s influence to impact the discipline. Particularly for those who may, at the core, believe writing to be a mere obligation or means to achieve promotion or tenure, the rest of the chapter’s content lays out a much richer ‘why’: that academic writing, like all writing, is an opportunity to draw on one’s passion and steward one’s influence for good. In a later chapter on not waiting to write, the authors not only give the expected advice to write regularly but also remind us that building the habit of writing stems from a desire to be helpful—a concept resonant even to junior faculty, whose very profession is about helping students.
The book’s other principles are similarly framed. Several of Merkle and Miles’s ideas on the process of giving and receiving feedback offer a helpful approach to collaboration with other writers and readers, framing it in terms of forging and engaging community. Their gentle reminder to receive feedback—even unwelcome critiques—with gratitude, and to offer to read the work of others in our circles who have given feedback, spotlights the authors’ own intentionality to model humility and generosity without overfocusing on prescribing it. This approach commends the virtues of intellectual generosity and kindness and thus resonates with those of us who want our faith to influence not only our content but our process as well.
Other books on academic writing often fail to invite the reader beyond the performance of writing as an obligatory task on the path to promotion and tenure. In contrast, Merkle and Miles’s Christian approach helps reframe academic writing as stewardship and calling, and does so in an invitational yet challenging way that models the faith integration many Christian academics practice. While other books focus on exercises to build writing habits, edit projects, or navigate feedback, Merkle and Miles go further in explaining proven methods, sharing their own examples, carefully laying out the rationale for each habit, and then offering questions to guide the reader to reflect on their own barriers, goals, and next steps. The extensive bibliography of resources is helpful for exploring other specific writing habits the reader may want to address.
If there is a shortcoming in Christian Academic Writing, it is that the book can sometimes be a bit confusing when it tries to speak to both faculty and students. On the other hand, this dual-audience approach could be helpful for those who work regularly with graduate students, who also need to hear these ideas and apply them to be successful. And while the twelve principles each make a unique contribution, addressing the full academic writing process, they can be a lot of information to take in all at once. Though the authors do not explicitly address this, perhaps reading the book through once and then selecting one or two principles for implementation would easily solve this issue. It would be helpful to see these twelve principles presented one by one in a blog or listserv format as well, so that the content gets in front of readers regularly in small chunks, as we need those frequent reminders and encouragements about the “why” and the “how” of disciplined writing.
In sum, Christian Academic Writing: Twelve Practices and Principles for Becoming a Successful Writer is the kind of book that is well worth the investment to read, incorporate, and regularly review. Christian academics new to the habit and expectations of scholarly publication will find not just a useful process, but an encouraging reminder of the privilege of academic writing as well, while Christian academics whose own process is already formed may find new ways to frame and refine their labor.