Hired Pens

Should Christian celebrity-writers have a higher standard than that of politicians and comedians? Most politicians use speechwriters (but few citizens are deceived). And most people don’t care that late-night television comics employ committees to write their gags. But Christian celebrities should have a higher standard.

Fourteen years ago, CT editorialist Paul Fromer condemned Christian ghostwriting as “a cunning attempt to skirt the edge of moral forthrightness, a refusal to trust ourselves to God to get across his message . . .” (CT, Sept. 17, 1982).

Things haven’t changed much since Fromer wrote those words. Publishers eager to sell books latch on to celebrity bylines and frequently give little or inadequate credit to those who make it possible for busy ministry heads to publish at all: the research staff who dig up the material and the hired pens who polish the prose.

One busy writer who has struggled to find ways to acknowledge staff help is CT columnist Charles Colson. Colson has set a good example by giving credit in his books to staff whose contributions are substantial.

It is trickier to acknowledge teamwork in magazine columns and radio programs. But beginning with this issue, Charles Colson insisted on sharing his byline with Nancy Pearcey.

Charles Colson you know, but who is Nancy Pearcey?

A former science writer who did graduate work at Covenant Theological Seminary and Toronto’s Institute for Christian Studies.
Coauthor with Charles Thaxton of “The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy.”
An adult convert to Christianity who met the Lord in 1971 at Francis Schaeffer’s L’Abri (and who met her husband, Rick, in 1972 at L’Abri). At L’Abri, Rick and Nancy came to see Christianity as a basis for an ongoing critique of culture.
That L’Abri insight fits Nancy for her current position: fellow and policy director of the Wilberforce Forum, the incipient think tank that Charles Colson hopes will extend and perpetuate his world-view message the way Prison Fellowship continues his prison ministry.

Nancy joined Chuck’s staff in 1991 to help him develop his BreakPoint radio program. BreakPoint has now grown to about 1,000 daily releases and elicits about 8,000 listener calls per month, and Chuck gave Nancy due credit for her work when Word published “A Dance with Deception,” a collection of BreakPoint commentaries.

Nancy hopes BreakPoint will soon be able to function without her so she can devote more energy to world-view issues–such as the ones discussed in “Lady with a Blue Dress On,” this issue’s commentary by Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey.