Lewis as Layman

 CS Lewis addressed all kinds of questions various people asked him, usually about theology-related topics, but often very practical ones -- on dealing with bereavement, on an unfaithful husband, on a bad pastor.   If he did not feel qualified, for example because he was unmarried, etc, he would mention it, but would still try to give a reply on general principles.   He was learned -- had quotes and examples from a wide range of sources-- but tried to encounter topics first on a human basis.  I might call it personalistic or practical rather than scholarly first.   He did not typically use specialized vocabulary especially in these letters.  He did use a "prose" style -- in other words, even in informal situations, he was careful about syntax and the basic rules of effective rhetoric.   

In some ways, though not Catholic, he summed up Newman's hope for the laity:

I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold, and what they do not, who know their creed so well, that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it. I want an intelligent, well-instructed laity; . . . I wish you to enlarge your knowledge, to cultivate your reason, to get an insight into the relation of truth to truth, to learn to view things as they are, to understand how faith and reason stand to each other. . . You ought to be able to bring out what you feel and what you mean, as well as to feel and mean it; to expose to the comprehension of others the fictions and fallacies of your opponents; and to explain the charges brought against the Church, to the satisfaction, not, indeed, of bigots, but of men of sense, of whatever cast of opinion.

 I guess Newman, in a very different way, also exemplifies these traits, and so did Flannery O'Connor and JRR Tolkien.   Letter writing was more of an art form in those days, as well.