Christian Storytellers Manifesto

Calling Christian Fiction to Higher Standards

The Manifesto

As human beings created in God’s image, enabled to sub-create stories that reflect and reveal God’s story, and enlightened by the Word to see and display this reality, we resolve the following:

– We resolve to be passionate and dedicated in our pursuit of excellent storytelling, knowing that we are reflecting the Creator’s image within us and fulfilling God’s commands to take dominion over the earth, love fellow image bearers, and steward the resources He has provided.

– We resolve to fearlessly embrace and wisely exercise imagination as a gift from God, trusting Him to use it, not by limiting our creativity but by benevolently directing it.

– We resolve to look for ways to explore meaningful themes while delighting our readers, avoiding futile attempts to depict truth devoid of beauty.

– We resolve to infuse our storytelling with truth, being bold and unafraid of our stance while presenting it with love and tact, recognizing that truth in storytelling is best communicated when shown, not told.

– We resolve to avoid pointing readers toward false sources of hope or unbiblical answers to thematic questions, but to seriously consider how we can naturally and powerfully portray or allude to God’s reality in our stories.

– We resolve to craft characters who remain true to how flawed human beings live and act, affirming that Christian storytellers have the freedom to portray the full human experience in all its beauty and depravity, not to glorify or endorse sin but to accurately reveal the brokenness of the world.

– We resolve to seek to understand readers’ thought processes, emotions, and worldviews so we can connect meaningfully with them in our storytelling, knowing that human nature is repelled by simplistic representations.

– We resolve, in light of God’s ultimate victory in our fallen world, to paint traces of hope in even the darkest situations.

– We resolve to accurately represent beliefs that differ from our own in order to help readers understand people rightly and challenge misconceptions.

– We resolve to strive for excellence and not settle for mediocrity by developing a competent command of grammar and style, understanding that skilled use of language points to the splendor of God’s created order.

– We resolve to let our work shine before others in an effort to reach, encourage, and challenge them.

– We resolve to exhibit Christlikeness by nurturing authentic connections with readers that transcend their potential as customers, building a rapport with fellow authors, and responding to critics with patience and grace.

– We resolve to base our confidence in God and not the opinions of others, to rely on God by praying over our writing, and to bury ourselves in Scripture, for we can only exemplify truth when we are immersed in it ourselves.

– We resolve to be teachable, weighing the advice of others because we always have room to grow, and to be humble, acknowledging that we are not writing the greatest story but merely pointing readers to it.

– We resolve to remember that the purpose of storytelling is to glorify God and that our worth is not founded in our authorship, but in being sons and daughters of the King.

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