HOW TO SUBMIT A PIECE
Earth & Altar welcomes proposals for articles on the topics of theology, church history, liturgy and worship, preaching, the bible, the practice of ministry, theological engagement with popular culture, church administration, christian education, hymnody, poetry, creative writing, visual arts, and more. Abstracts of 150-200 words for proposed articles may be sent using the following google form. And don’t worry—even if you’re not sure how to put together an abstract, please still reach out to us at editors@earthandaltarmag.com and we’ll work with you to get your idea into abstract form. In the case of works of art (original pieces of poetry, hymnody, other music, creative writing, and the visual arts), you may send in a proposal for what you will create, the original piece itself, or a picture of the piece for consideration. Please remember that Earth & Altar aims to be accessible to the thoughtful non-specialist, so please keep that in mind both when proposing material and composing your submission. Content Editors will, at their discretion, engage with the submitters within a week of submission to prepare for publication. The Content Editor in question will give guidelines for manuscript composition and set a deadline for delivery of the manuscript to them which will be no less than three (3) weeks before the proposed date of publishing. Unless otherwise specified by the Content Editor, final manuscripts should be 1250-1500 words. The Editor-in-Chief may, in concert with the Editorial Board, invite submissions based around specific themes at certain periods.
CREEDS AND CONFESSIONS
2025 marks the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. This council inaugurated the common practice of churches defining their beliefs through the use of creeds. Those who refused to affirm the contents of a given creed were often anathematized, literally “accursed,” and presumed to be outside the boundaries of the church. The creeds of the early church—Nicene, Apostles’, Athanasian—focus on the Trinity and Jesus’ work on earth. In the Reformation, Protestant churches began to write confessions. These early modern creeds specify a tradition’s beliefs about the nature of salvation, the role of the church, and more. While the Church of England did not formally adopt a confession of faith, it is arguable that formularies like the 39 Articles of Religion served a similar purpose for it.
Earth & Altar is founded on the belief that radical inclusivity is fully compatible with Christian faith as articulated by the Nicene Creed. But one can ask many questions about the church’s practice of creed-making. How do we go about reading the creeds and confessions inclusively? What does it mean to be a confessional, or credal, church? What do we make of churches that reject creeds and confessions on principle? How do we sort through the dizzying variety of creeds that have been produced?
Earth & Altar invites proposals for articles addressing the above questions, or any other topic related to the theme. Articles may focus on one particular creed or confession, compare multiple creeds or confessions, or investigate the nature of such documents overall.
CREDOS Y CONFESIONES
El año 2025 marca el 1700 aniversario del Concilio de Nicea. Este concilio inauguró la práctica común entre las iglesias de definir sus creencias usando credos. Los que rehusaron afirmar los contenidos de un credo en particular a menudo eran anatemizados, literalmente “maldecidos”, y supuestos estar fuera de los límites de la iglesia. Los credos de la iglesia primitiva: el Niceno, el de los Apóstoles y el de Atanasio, se enfocaron en la Trinidad y la Cristología. Durante la reforma, las iglesias protestantes empezaron a escribir confesiones. Estos credos modernos tempranos especificaron las creencias de una tradición en torno a la salvación, el papel de la iglesia y más. Mientras que la Iglesia de Inglaterra no adoptó formalmente una confesión de fe, se puede argumentar que los formularios como los 39 Artículos de la religión servían un propósito similar.
Tierra y Altar fue fundada en la creencia que la inclusividad radical es completamente compatible con la fe cristiana como es articulada en el Credo Niceno. Pero uno puede hacer muchas preguntas acerca de la práctica eclesiástica de escribir credos. ¿Cómo podemos leer los credos y las confesiones de manera inclusiva? ¿Qué hacemos con las iglesias que rechazan credos y confesiones por principio? ¿Cómo podemos clasificar la vertiginosa variedad de credos que se han producido?
Tierra y Altar invita a presentar artículos que aborden las preguntas anteriores o cualquier otro tema relacionado. Los artículos pueden centrarse en un credo o confesión en particular, comparar varios credos o confesiones, o investigar la naturaleza de dichos documentos en general.
OUR CAPITALIZATION PRACTICES
The question of properly and equitably identifying racial and ethnic identities in print has become an incredibly important conversation for publishers. A number of different possibilities have been put forward for how to engage in proper capitalization practices. The position taken, for instance, by the Associated Press is to capitalize Black and Indigenous but not to capitalize white. The argument here is that this practice draws attention to identifies traditionally marginalized in public discourse and also refers to people with broadly conceived shared identities while emphasizing that “White” carries baggage associated too often with white supremecist ideologies. The APA has suggested capitalizing all racial and ethnic identifiers, including White, Black, Native American, and Latino/a. While recognizing that capitalizing White has been associated with supremacist ideologies, this approach attempts to recognize that whiteness is indeed a racial identifier and put it on par with other such racial identifiers in order to require a kind of “coming to terms' with” whiteness and its distinctiveness, rather than perpetuating the idea that whiteness is a default or neutral position. Finally, Chicago style, which we follow at Earth & Altar, allows for terms to be either capitalized or left lowercase, so long as it is done consistently and universally (i.e, all such racial and ethnic identifiers are either capitalized or left lowercase). Those who favor all uppercase may do so for the same reasons as the APA suggests this practice, while those who favor all lowercase may want to indicate that while race and ethnicity are real and operative in the world, we should be careful about practices that lead to either essentialism or reductionism by drawing undue attention to these facets of human experience. In order to try to honor the ongoing conversation around this important issue, to recognize that it is not settled, and to try to remain consistent with our own style commitments, we will follow the Chicago practice broadly conceived. In other words, we will leave it up to our individual editors (and authors when there is a strong preference) whether to capitalize or leave lowercase racial and ethnic identifiers so long as this practice is consistently and universally employed within a piece. Again, though, we want to recognize that this is not a settled issue and there are arguments to be made for other practices. For that reason, we have provided links to various style guides as well as arguments and advocacy for different practices around capitalization.
https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php
https://blog.ap.org/announcements/the-decision-to-capitalize-black
https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/capitalizeblack/
https://cssp.org/2020/03/recognizing-race-in-language-why-we-capitalize-black-and-white/
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/time-to-capitalize-blackand-white/613159/
https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/racial-ethnic-minorities