Alan Jacobs has spent his career insisting on something that sounds almost quaint in an age of acceleration: that reading is a moral act before it is an intellectual one. His work—spanning literary criticism, Christian humanism, cultural analysis, and the quiet craft of teaching—returns again and again to the conviction that how we read shapes who we become. And who we become, in turn, shapes the worlds we are capable of building or destroying.
Jacobs is not merely a scholar of reading; he is a steward
of the moral imagination. His books and essays form a kind of apprenticeship in
attention, patience, and charity—virtues that feel increasingly
countercultural. For those of us who write, teach, or lead with an eye toward
formation rather than performance, Jacobs offers not just arguments but a way
of inhabiting the intellectual life with fidelity and gentleness.
A Life Formed by Books and the Church
Born in 1958 in Alabama, Jacobs came of age in a region
where the Bible and the public library often stood as the two most accessible
portals into larger worlds. He studied at the University of Alabama and
completed his Ph.D. at the University of Virginia, where he immersed himself in
British literature and the Christian intellectual tradition.
His long tenure at Wheaton College—nearly three
decades—shaped him into a teacher whose vocation was not merely to interpret
texts but to form readers. Later, at Baylor University, where he now serves as
Distinguished Professor of Humanities, Jacobs has continued to cultivate a
humane, Anglican-inflected vision of reading as a practice of neighbor-love.
These biographical details matter because Jacobs’s work is
not the product of a detached theorist. It is the fruit of a life lived among
students, parish communities, and the long company of the dead. His writing
carries the pastoral patience of someone who has spent decades helping young
people learn how to read not only texts but themselves.
Reading as a Moral Encounter
Jacobs’s central claim—developed across How to Think,
Breaking Bread with the Dead, and The Pleasures of Reading in an Age
of Distraction—is that reading is a moral encounter with another mind. When
we read, we enter a space where our own assumptions are suspended, our
certainties unsettled, and our sympathies stretched.
This is the heart of the moral imagination: the capacity to
see the world through another’s eyes without surrendering one’s own moral
agency.
Jacobs argues that reading cultivates what he calls
“temporal bandwidth”—the ability to inhabit the past without either
romanticizing it or dismissing it. In Breaking Bread with the Dead, he
writes that the voices of earlier ages can enlarge our moral horizons precisely
because they are not us. They speak from worlds shaped by different
assumptions, different wounds, different hopes. To read them well is to
practice humility and hospitality.
In a culture that prizes immediacy and outrage, Jacobs’s
vision of reading is a quiet rebellion. It insists that the moral life requires
slowness, receptivity, and a willingness to be changed.
The Teacher as Moral Guide
Jacobs’s classroom presence—reconstructed from student
accounts, interviews, and his own essays—reveals a teacher who understands that
reading is not merely an academic exercise but a formative one. He teaches
students to read with both rigor and tenderness, to resist the temptation to
flatten texts into ideological tools, and to approach authors with what he
calls “the generous assumption.”
This pedagogical posture is itself a moral act. It models a
way of being in the world that refuses cynicism and cultivates hope. Jacobs’s
teaching embodies the belief that literature can enlarge the soul, not by
offering escape but by offering companionship.
For those of us who write or teach with an eye toward
formation, Jacobs provides a model of intellectual hospitality. He shows that
the work of reading is inseparable from the work of becoming a certain kind of
person—patient, attentive, capable of wonder.
Reading as Resistance to the Age of Distraction
Jacobs is acutely aware of the technological and cultural
forces that erode our capacity for deep reading. In The Pleasures of Reading
in an Age of Distraction, he does not scold or moralize; instead, he offers
a gentle but firm reminder that reading is a practice that must be chosen and
protected.
He understands that distraction is not merely a cognitive
challenge but a spiritual one. It fragments our attention, narrows our
sympathies, and diminishes our capacity for contemplation. Against this, Jacobs
proposes a counter-discipline: read what gives you delight, follow your
curiosity, and cultivate the habits that make sustained attention possible.
This is not escapism. It is a form of resistance—a way of
reclaiming the interior life from the forces that would colonize it.
The Moral Imagination of Reading
To speak of the “moral imagination of reading” in Jacobs’s
work is to recognize that reading is a training ground for the virtues required
in public life. It teaches us to:
- Attend
to voices not our own
- Discern
the moral shape of a situation
- Hold
complexity without collapsing into relativism
- Practice
charity without abandoning truth
- Receive
wisdom from those who came before us
Jacobs’s work stands within the lineage of Christian
humanists—Lewis, Eliot, Weil, Maritain—who believed that reading is a civic and
spiritual discipline. It forms citizens capable of deliberation, leaders
capable of humility, and communities capable of hope.
Why Jacobs Matters Now
For someone like me—shaped by military service, teaching,
and the long work of writing—Jacobs offers a vision of intellectual life that
is both demanding and humane. He reminds me that reading is not a retreat from
the world but a preparation for it. It trains the imagination to see clearly,
judge wisely, and act with fidelity.
In a polarized age, Jacobs’s insistence on the moral
imagination feels less like an academic argument and more like a lifeline. He
calls us back to the slow, patient work of attending to the voices of
others—living and dead—and allowing them to enlarge our own.
His work is a quiet but persistent witness to the belief
that reading can still form souls, shape communities, and sustain hope.
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