Writing for us

A guide for contributors: understand our target audience, and our editorial themes, values and style.

Introduction

Thank you for considering writing for the Centre for Cultural Witness web site – Seen & Unseen. As you set out to write for us, we want to lay out what we're looking for and guide you as you craft your contribution.

The overall aim of the Centre for Cultural Witness (CCW) is to change the public narrative about Christian faith by making it better understood in public.

In particular, we want to help people look at the world through Christian eyes. Rather than trying to win arguments with those who don't share our faith, we see our task as doing our best to describe a world as seen through the lens of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

We are looking for contributions that examine every aspect of human life from a broadly Christian perspective. We are open to contributions from different traditions and denominations as they help illuminate Christian faith, and the world seen through its eyes.

Our ‘statement of faith’, if we need one, is simply the Nicene Creed, the one Christian Creed that is used and accepted across the entire Christian Church, a framework of belief that is rich and deep, and expands rather than narrows our minds.

Below we set out our themes, audience, and editorial values and style.

Our themes

We are looking for content that will fit under one or more of the four themed sections of the website.

Creed

Part of our aim is to increase the level of Christian understanding amongst our non-Christian readers. We will look to publish articles that explain to the intelligent but unspecialised reader aspects of the Christian tradition in accessible language. This may include articles on key Christian theologians or historical figures, books that have been influential on culture in the past, works of Christian art, music or architecture, books of the Bible, Christian doctrines etc. Think of the style of explainer videos or the revelation a how-to article brings.

Culture

We want to offer a sustained mix of both appreciation and critique of contemporary culture and some of the major movements and experiences within it. For example, we will want to examine a Christian assessment of consumerism, environmentalism, globalisation, technology, populism, liberalism and many strands of influential cultural movements. This will include reviews of contemporary books, films, theatre, poetry, or digital media. We will also reflect on the experiential as much as the media: examining travel and place, leisure and sports. Sometimes this will point out the Christian origins and character of such movements and experiences, and sometimes it may point out how far they fall short of Christian ideals. So much of culture today is predicated on sharing, we want to be part of it and use that aspect to amplify us.

Comment

We will publish articles offering a Christian take on the issues of the day. While we are not a news website aiming to break new stories, we will want to comment on current events probably not on the day they happen, but a few days afterwards, offering that little bit of critical distance and time for reflection, yet fresh enough to catch the story before it becomes past news.

Change

We also want to tell stories of the impact Christian faith has on individuals and communities both in the UK and around the world. We will be looking for compelling stories of transformation and impact, especially those that show the practical outworking of faith in the life of societies. This will particularly highlight stories of religious persecution around the world that are not always reported well in mainstream media.

Our audience

Here are some insights and tools to help you understand our audience. Our primary audience is the person outside the church. We want to keep the focus relentlessly on addressing the questioning and curious person who does not yet have a faith in Christ. We do not write for Christians, although many do benefit from reading our articles.

As part of our research, we have used several audience research studies commissioned by Christian organisations in the UK. The Bible Society’s Lumino web site is home to insights, personas and other resources. We particularly identified with a persona dubbed ‘Bible Conflicted’. What does that mean? Go have a look at the site, it is immensely rewarding and will help you focus your writing.

There are about three million people in England and Wales who could be described as ‘Bible Conflicted’, according to the Lumino classification. These are people for whom life feels meaningful, and most are happy in their lives (55%). A lot say they are searching for meaning (43%) perhaps because they have a sense of dissatisfaction (33%). They tend to be younger, with liberal modern values and like big ideas. Three-quarters of them say it is important to make a difference in the world, but some don’t think they can. They are searching, some struggling, but hopeful for the future - “I’m not sure what I think, to be honest, convince me.”

They are asking:

‘will it be OK?’

They have a head-heart conflict too. They may be spiritual but not religious. The majority (60%) don’t say they are Christian. Religion could be one of the big ideas but are ambivalent on the influence of Christianity in society. It could have a role serving the poor and vulnerable. However, some see the Bible as contradictory (36%) or complex (33%). They are challenged by the Bible on issues of violence (Old Testament) and sexuality.

Our audience is anglophone but not British alone. We hope to engage people across the world. For example, we’ve had requests from The Netherlands, the USA and South Korea to syndicate our articles.

Answer The Public and Keywords People Use are web sites that presents Google search queries and their component language in visually interesting ways. Use them to explore the topic you are writing about. It may surprise you what other keywords and concepts the reader associates with your topic. Consider the language people use to describe it. Perhaps incorporate some of the questions they ask, or unpack the keywords they search on and incorporate them in the article.

Go on try entering your favourite topic into one of these fantastic tools. It may spark an idea for an article.

Our editorial values

Outward, positive, smart, charitable, generous

Outward: address the person outside the church

Our primary audience is the person outside the church. We are aware that many who already have a faith will be accessing this site for their own learning. However, we want them to feel they can, without embarrassment, pass on our content to others who don't share that faith. So, we want to keep the focus relentlessly on addressing the questioning and curious person who does not yet have a faith in Christ. Write for the thoughtful, non-Christian reader.

Positive: commend Christian faith

We are not looking for overtly evangelistic articles, but we do want what we produce to commend Christian faith in one way or another, either explicitly or implicitly, and speak positively of it.

Smart: intelligent and accessible

We want to provide content that will make people think. And think again. We want to make the fruit of deep Christian thinking accessible to a wider audience, so don’t be afraid to tackle big subjects but do it with a lightness of touch.

Charitable: avoid criticism of other Christians

We will encourage a variety of voices, perhaps even sometimes offering contrasting views within the Christian church, however, because the primary audience is those outside the church, this is not an internal Christian debating site. We want to speak charitably of other Christians therefore we won’t run pieces that are overtly critical of a section of the Christian Church.

Generous: critique ideas but not people

How we write is as important as what we write. There is much online material that is deliberately polemical, attacking other people for their views and seeking to demonise them. We don't want to get into this. We will offer critiques of lines of thinking we think are mistaken, and model the ability to disagree agreeably. Yet we will seek to avoid direct criticism of individual people, trying to separate out the arguments from their authors.

Our editorial style

Articles not sermons

Seen & Unseen speaks from a Christian perspective to non-Christians and that, while most non-Christians are intelligent thoughtful people, they know much less about Christianity than we realise!. Seen & Unseen publishes articles, not sermons. If people want a sermon, they can go to church. Our pieces by contrast are not there to lecture, or exhort, but to invite reflection and make an accessible point for every reader to ponder, whether they have faith or none. This means they do not explicitly need to spell out the message of the Bible, or quote Jesus or the Apostles or resolve every tension - in fact, it's often better if they don't. Neither do we want to run articles packed with Christian jargon or emotional manipulation. Instead, we want to offer our readers the opportunity to think, to be challenged, to wrestle with life's complexities and to discover how the Christian faith sheds a new light of so many of the mysteries of life.

Digital: write for the medium

Write for the browser, be they on their laptop or phone, write with an eye on their feed. In an attention economy, your words and article need to cut through and engage the user, and, hopefully, lead to them sharing your writing with others on social media.

Front load the big question, insight or idea early in the article. We want to encourage reading-on down the page, to interrupt their doom scroll down their feed. Some shorter sentences, simpler paragraphs can pave the way to the end of an article no matter its length. Don't leave the big reveal to the end. Tease them with it early.

You may be aware of The Conversation and its mission to bring academic content to a wider audience. As one contributor to it writes: ‘readers like to know what to expect from an article, but they also need to understand, right at the start, why it’s relevant. This means your opening paragraph has two jobs to do: to give an idea of where your article is going, and explain what makes it topical today - that might be a story that’s hit the headlines, or an issue that is being talked about. Two sentences should do the trick.’

Lively and Intelligent

We are looking for a writing style that will appeal to the reasonably well-educated reader who doesn't have any particular theological or Christian background. Articles should not include too much unexplained technical theological language, and aim at accessibility with thoughtfulness. At the same time, we are not looking for dumbed-down or overly-simple. We look for lively, good, flowing prose that delights as well as educates the reader. We want readers to share our content with others because it is pleasure to read too.

This means a less academic writing style. Not every point asserted needs to be defended in detail.

How long?

We're open to both short and long form articles. Shorter articles should be between 500 and 1,000 words long.

Our themes will also influence the length of article commissioned. For example, an explainer article for our Creed section may tackle a major theological concept and require more words than a quick-take article for our Comment section.

Chapter and verse?

The article we write that share Christian wisdom will, almost inevitably, share biblical texts and stories. This begs a question on how our writers reference them.

Prefer the author over the title. Use ‘Paul explains…’. Quote or reference their words like a normal source. Stay human rather than academic. Do you need to say which book of the bible? The quote may stand on its own. Also, the reader may not necessarily know who the authors are either! So, consider phrases like:

"One of the early church leaders, Paul, said..."

"Peter, one of Jesus' earliest followers, said..."

"David, one of Israel's most best-known Kings, wrote..."

(Thanks to The Bible Society editorial team for these great examples.)

Don’t quote chapter and verse from the bible. Bible references have brackets, abbreviations and numbers. These all interrupt the reading eye as it scans. Many non-Christian readers will not be familiar with books of the Bible. So quote scripture but you don’t have to reference it. If the reader really needs to know the passage exactly, they can google the text.

Avoid repetition and preaching, just saying. We can’t always name the authors so be creative when citing the Bible. Repeatedly reading ‘the Bible says’ may irritate the non-Christian reader for whom the Bible is not an authoritative voice. Also, avoid language that can be considered preachy or dogmatic, for example ‘the Bible tells’. It may deter them reading on – are we Bible bashing? Who are ‘we’ to ‘tell’ them?

Here’s an example of an original sentence, and the suggested edit, that result in a less preaching tone.

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Using AI?

If you are not confident about your writing style, please do not resort to using AI. We have experienced editors who will work with you to improve a piece; our aim is to produce original, thoughtful work rather than computer-generated jargon.