Even if we lay aside the great cathedrals and the advancements in every art form that they entail, and the canon of western music, the most accomplished of our painters, and even if we set aside for the moment the great civic achievements — the invention of hospitals, orphanages, and such, and science, let’s leave science to one side too — there are still other areas of human creation, either invented whole cloth or practiced all but entirely by Christians, without whom they would cease to exist in any meaningful way.
There are in fact too many of these to go on about, even within the genre of literature, wherein I mean to situate us. Consider: would apocalypse as a genre, exist without people for whom the end times are a concern? Or devotionals — would there be books with dates in them to tell readers when they should be read without the quiet time crowd? Would allegory be necessary as a category, and thus as a mode of creation, if there weren’t people who shared an over-story to which allegories might refer? I doubt it very much.
Here though, I want suggest a mode of literary creation which I think understudied as such, and which all but certainly would not exist without Christians practicing it. It’s important not only for that fact, which after all may be nothing more than a novelty, but for its vast reach, influence, and sheer number of practitioners, of whom, I count Frederick Buechner among the best.
I mean the sermon, of course, a writerly creation often but not always in the expository mode, with distinct features and generic expectations, that is, I would contend, the most widely created and experienced literary genre practiced in the English-speaking world (and in many others besides).
Is that overstating things? At last census, there were around 400,000 individual churches in America alone. Think of it: every Sunday, every year, decade after decade, in at least 95% of those, someone is sitting down and drafting sentences which they will read aloud as a kind of performance in front of a (mostly) rapt audience. Are short stories written more often that? Poems? Is any mode of literary creation more commonly written, or, more tellingly, more commonly received? How many families will not read a single book in a year, but will go to listen to sermons week in and week out?
What’s more, in most cases, it’s the same audience the writer had the week previous. What a strange bit of work this is! How unique its demands! Stand-up comics, by way of comparison, also script a verbal performance based on sentences, but they get to reuse material week after week, refining the hits, beats, and pauses. Even the most popular of them don’t perform every week. But preachers will often preach to the same crowd for years. Their parishioners know all their stories, all their jokes, and often know them personally and their families as well. Every bit of this is unique in the literary world. I give poetry readings and talks all over, but like the comics, have the good fortune to face a fresh crowd for each one.
Read the full essay at The Buechner Review (Frederick Buechner Center) →
Originally published in The Buechner Review (Frederick Buechner Center), 2026-03.
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