C. S. Lewis, on the apologetic value of Christians writing on various topics from Christian presuppositions (rather than writing overt works of apologetics):

I believe that any Christian who is qualified to write a good popular book on any science may do much more by that than by any directly apologetic work…. What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects—with their Christianity latent. You can see this most easily if you look at it the other way round. Our Faith is not very likely to be shaken by any book on Hinduism. But if whenever we read an elementary book on Geology, Botany, Politics, or Astronomy, we found that its implications were Hindu, that would shake us. It is not the books written in direct defence of Materialism that make the modern man a materialist; it is the materialistic assumptions in all the other books. In the same way, it is not books on Christianity that will really trouble him. But he would be troubled if, whenever he wanted a cheap popular introduction to some science, the best work on the market was always by a Christian.

I think what Lewis says here is spot on and still holds true in our day. I would, however, like to extend his thought in one direction (and I’m unsure what he would think of it). I’ve been thinking lately about how useful it would be to draw out the latent Christian assumptions in popular books by non-Christians. Some of my favorite popular books over the last few years have been written by non-Christians but, in my view, seem deeply congruent with the biblical imagination. For instance, Four Thousand Weeks—Oliver Burkeman’s anti-productivity book on time management—offers stimulating thoughts on our finitude (creatureliness is really the concept he’s grasping for), the freedom of embracing our insignificance, and the importance of patience. It’s a slightly different angle from Lewis: Demonstrating how the assumptions of these popular books are actually deeply Christian. That, to me, would be a worthwhile endeavor.

I have an essay percolating somewhere in the recesses of my brain about the latently theological anthropology of Matthew Crawford that would fit into this category. And yes, I’m aware that Crawford has recently converted to Christianity. This would not invalidate the approach, since Crawford’s writing to this point has not been expressed in any sort of explicitly theological frame. Though, again, my point is that his working assumptions about humanity seem to resonant with a Christian vision.