The Letter of Recommendation: Reliable or Not?

As s a form of literature, the letter holds a central place in communicating the Christian faith. One-third of the New Testament is made up of letters or epistles. Thus the modern Christian owes much to the practice of letter writing. It is therefore difficult to imagine the Christian minister misusing or distorting the values of letter writing. Yet this is frequently done with that special kind of letter called the letter of recommendation.

Perhaps the following sardonic quatrain is relevant:

A clergy letter penned with tongue in cheek

Is like a cup of tea that’s pale and weak—

For tea it is, as you can plainly see,

But sipping it reveals from taste it’s free!

Undoubtedly many clergymen write what appear to be letters of recommendation but are really little more than aggregations of pale words, devoid of real meaning.

At a recent meeting of college and university admission officers, one official remarked, “We require two letters of recommendation, not including the one from a clergyman.” When asked to explain, he pointedly said, “Experience has shown us that the letter from the minister is useless, little more than a string of platitudes and worn-out clichés.”

The pastor may claim that he has far too many other demands on his time to be particularly concerned about writing good letters of recommendation. But that is hardly a satisfactory answer. For after all, some conscientious ministers do write letters which are exceedingly helpful, individualistic enough to show close knowledge of the candidates and realistic enough to show that the writers have not adopted the all too prevalent attitude, “If I can’t say something good about a person, I won’t say anything.”

The traits of a good letter of recommendation are not hard to identify:

A letter of recommendation should be honest. The recipient of the letter does not expect the clergyman to offer expert judgments on another person’s emotional, intellectual, and physical conditions. Other sources yield this kind of information. But the letter can give important facts about character as honestly perceived by the writer.

Without doubt ministers are generally honest in their letters of recommendation; the trouble is that they are not honest enough. The generalized list of virtues, no matter how idealistic the writer or reader might be, does not come close enough to reality to be taken seriously. “No one can be that perfect!” is the only realistic response to the pyramids of complimentary words stacked high in too many letters of recommendation.

Honesty merely means that the writer tells what he believes the recipient of the letter should know. Probably the best way to handle this crucial judgment is to ask ourselves what we would wish to know about this person if we were on the other end of the corresponence. Most of us would appreciate honesty, even if it were not always flattering to the candidate.

A letter of recommendation should be concrete and specific. It is about a particular person, not generalized mankind. The form letter has no place in this area of writing; every sentence ought to be about the person in question.

Truths about honesty and other virtues need to be individualized. This can often be done by relating a concrete illustration of honesty, or loyalty, or whatever the virtue might be, as practiced by the candidate. A specific illustration, briefly stated, is worth a hundred generalizations.

A letter of recommendation should be brief. There may be circumstances which warrant giving three pages of information, but generally such a length is not only unnecessary—it is frightfully ineffective. There appears to be a direct relationship between knowledge and verbosity: the less we know, the more we write.

Vigorous writing is concise. George Orwell once took a biblical passage and attempted to rewrite it with the verbosity and pedanticism too often characteristic of our writing. Here is his translation of Ecclesiastes 9:11:

Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must inevitably be taken into accounting.

The biblical passage reads:

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

The “sighted sub; sank same” radio message from the aircraft pilot of World War II fame may be an overemphasis, but it nevertheless demonstrates that a great deal can be said concisely and with vigor.

A letter of recommendation should be invitational in tone. There are times when a letter cannot possibly tell the whole story, not even an important part of it. This is a good reason to invite the reader to ask further questions.

Too often letters of recommendation show anger and curtness between their lines. They say: “Look, this is time consuming! Here’s a letter! Now forget it, will you?” But such an attitude does not express our deepest responsibilities as pastors. There are many reasons for the letter of recommendation, but the most important one from the writer’s point of view is that it can be of assistance to other persons, especially the person about whom we write.

In analyzing our letters of recommendation, we can well reread Paul’s letter to Philemon. True, this cannot serve as a pattern; no one letter can. But it does offer much in the way of illustration. For it is honest: “I mean Onesimus, once so little use to you, but more useful indeed, both to you and to me.” It is concrete and specific: it deals primarily with the life of one person, the slave Onesimus. It is brief: the shortest book in the New Testament; and note the concise but completely descriptive sentence: “And if he has done you any wrong or is in your debt, put that down to my account.” It is invitational in tone: Paul will be seeing Philemon in the future—“Have a room ready for me, for I hope that, in answer to your prayers, God will grant me to you.”

Honesty, specificity, brevity, and an invitational tone are simple characteristics, but they will greatly improve most clergymen’s letters of recommendation.

Orlo Strunk, Jr., is dean of West Virginia Wesleyan College, from which he received his A.B. He also holds the S.T.B. and Ph.D. degrees from Boston University.

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