The published articles, interviews, reviews, podcasts, and presentations on AnselmSociety.org are glimpses into what the larger world looks through the lens of that redeemed imagination.

The Anselm Society works off of quarterly themes that loosely align with the seasons, as well as with the church liturgical calendar. Learn more about these seasons, here.

Additionally, our content focuses on the particular, zooming in on a specific story, moment, place, or even object within one of three frameworks.

1. UNDERSTAND Category: Content that introduces and illuminates concepts and connections between beauty and truth.

2. ENCOUNTER Category: Content that lets people encounter elements of beauty/art, such as a song, a character from a story, a painting, a craft, a narrative, etc. Through feasting and singing, storytelling and reading, we expand each other’s Christian imagination every time we encounter a good and true and beautiful thing

3. EMBODY Category: Content that shows what the Christian imagination looks like when creatively lived out..

Here's an example of what we mean in answer to the question, “I want to write about feasting! But how?”

• UNDERSTAND: Why feasting matters (spiritually).

• ENJOY: Why feasting is wonderful.

• EMBODY: How I threw a feast, and here are three things you can do to have one too!

Looking for ideas? Check out our Creative Brief of our “Anselm 101” topics to help inspire your next submission!

What We’re NOT Doing

Grandiose philosophical writing: Anything that tries to give sweeping explanations of all reality or huge concepts.

Stream-of-conscious journaling: Anything that is more akin to self-indulgent, meandering personal devotional-style ruminations about what you’ve been pondering lately that don’t “finish”

Anything normally associated with “worldview” content: I.e., highly propositional simplifications of great truths that are thick on bullet points and thin on details, or “culture war”-style content that antagonizes or engages antagonists directly.

Anything that involves portraying the Church as the bad guy: We know there are better and worse churches, there are people who have had truly bad experiences in the latter, and there are definitely pastors who don’t get the whole Christian imagination thing. But it’s still the Church and we want to partner with the good ones. We don’t overgeneralize and we want to keep critiques to a minimum; we want to mostly “lead with delight” and let the truth and beauty of what we say cast contrasting alternatives in their own light by inference.

• Follow all instructions and vision outlined in Writing for Anselm (PDF Packet).

The planning, approving, writing, submitting, editing, and publishing processes for each piece may look a little different. Nevertheless, here is the general schematic for what to expect with creating a piece start to finish:

Ideas - What do I want to write about?

• Consider the kind of category you’d like to write within:
  (1) Understand
  (2) Enjoy
  (3) Embody
  - For more information, see “Communicating the Vision” above.
  We can help you brainstorm if you wish to connect with one of us during this stage of the process.

Idea approval (Optional, but Recommended) - Does this idea work?

• Send your proposed idea with a quick sketch of how it fits as either an Understand, Enjoy, or Embody piece. Click here to submit the proposal. We will review the proposal, giving any feedback necessary to help guide the direction for a more seamless editing phase.

*Submission - Where do I submit the piece and what does that all entail?

• Click here to submit the piece. *It’s possible you have a pre-existing piece that you’d like to submit!

• All submitted pieces must follow our sample manuscript page and format your manuscript according to its parameters.*

• Follow all instructions and vision outlined in Writing for Anselm (PDF Packet). This package will give you all the pertinent details required for submitting with Anselm. It contains the specific vision for what our pieces should aim towards; it will give you the scope and tone we are looking for, as well as Anselm's sample manuscript, writers guidelines, and editorial style guide.

• All submitted pieces must adhere to Anselm’s Statement of Faith and Ecumenical Policies. These policies are in the form and are stated here:

  Statement of Faith: As the Anselm Society, we firmly believe that goodness, truth, and beauty are in fact one thing, and that we have the responsibility to pursue God's vision for all of them together. To that end, we unequivocally adhere to the historic Christian faith handed down through Scripture and tradition, including but not limited to the unifying creeds used by all orthodox denominations throughout the history of the church (the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed of 381 A.D.). We acknowledge our responsibilities in God’s narrative for this world—Creation, Fall, Redemption, and now, Restoration—including to uphold mankind’s identity as the Imago Dei and model the goodness, truth, and beauty of God’s design to a watching world.

  Statement of Ecumenical Policy: As we are not a church, but an ecumenical organization whose members are Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant, we do not generally take institutional positions on issues on which the historic denominations have disagreed in good faith. Where these differences have affected their approach to the imagination or the arts, we may of course draw attention to them for educational and relational purposes. We encourage a culture of lively and formative discussion and we understand that leaders and members will in good faith express their personal views.

  But we firmly believe that goodness, truth, and beauty are in fact one thing, and that we cannot fully serve God in the area of beauty while denying His truth. Where the church has consistently held a position on an issue, we will not take a contrary position, nor to the best of our abilities will we implicitly endorse such a position by institutionally elevating those who do as officers, lecturers, etc., but will uphold historic orthodoxy and and Christian tradition.

Editing Process - What adjustments are needed?

• When you submit a piece with Anselm, you will be asked to agree to our Editing Policy, which allows our editors to edit and revise your piece. Our editors will look at the piece for brand adherence, styling, and concision/grammar editing, all the while trying to help illuminate your unique voice as a writer.
  **Note: you have the right to reject our edits and choose to not publish with us.***

• Additionally, when you submit a piece with Anselm, you will be asked to agree Anselm’s First Rights Agreement, which includes the giving up of all rights the author owns in the work until the author expressly asks Anselm to allow them to republish the work elsewhere. This will also allow Anselm to publish the work in any format — print, film, electronic formats, on the Internet. The author does retain the right to request his or her work to be taken down at any time, if he or she so chooses.

Revision Process

• Potential revision processes may be required. The process for revisions are as follows: 

  1. FIRST DRAFT: Once a piece is submitted, the editorial team will spend time looking over the piece. The team will look at all pieces four times a year. The these review dates are listed above in our “submission calendar.”

  2. NEXT STEPS OR SECOND DRAFT: If the piece complements Anselm’s vision and tone, the piece will move on to our copy-editors. Once edits have been confirmed by you, the author, we will have the piece ready for publishing in our scheduled pipeline.  If the first draft does not fit the vision and desired tone, we will communicate that to you. You have the option of revising the piece (with a two week deadline). If the piece still isn’t clicking for both parties, no worries! This will not bar you from writing with us, by any means. We will move on from that piece and allow you to submit a new piece.

Publishing Process

• We will post the piece online as well as share on social media.
  *In the future, the piece may also be published in a more formal quarterly digital publication.

More fun for deeper follow-up dives into the details (*List compiled by Anselm Director Brian Brown)

• Gerald McDermott, “Everyday Glory: The Revelation of God in All of Reality.”
  Best book I’ve found summarizing concisely the symbolism in the created order, in redemptive history, and in Scripture–and how they all dialogue. If you’re new to that space, it’s an eye-opener because it helps you see precisely how the heavens declare the glory of God, so to speak–how all stories participate in the Great Story, how nature is infused with echoes of heave...in short, how the whole world is a lot more like Narnia than you realize.

• Anthony Esolen, “Ironies of Faith: The Laughter at the Heart of Christian Literature.”
  A bigger book, but Esolen is just great at making you weep at the beauty of how Christians have told themselves their own story, via everything from well-known classics to unknown foreign-language epics to medieval mystery plays.

• Leland Ryken, “The Christian Imagination.”
  Slightly misleading title but it’s a collection of essays by people like Lewis, Tolkien, L’Engle, etc. on faith and literature.

• William Dyrness, “Poetic Theology: God and the Poetics of Everyday Life.”
  Lovely book looking at (and usefully contrasting) different streams of the Christian imagination in different points in history and works of literature.

• …and Schmemann’s “For the Life of the World,” Boersma’s “Heavenly Participation”
  and many other beautiful theology books we are happy to help you prioritize if you wish. ;-)