Write for The Big Picture

Christ plays in ten thousand places.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins

“All of life and all of our humanity in its many dimensions come from God and we are called to glorify God in all these dimensions. God is already at work in all of life, but Hopkins’ statement calls us to see and attend to God’s many ways. Sadly, our busyness, and sometimes our excessive focus on “doing for God,” prevent us from seeing and savouring the myriad signs of God’s work.

Sometimes we are also captive to an unbiblical view of what it means to be human. The art historian Hans Rookmaker would ask his students, “Why (to what end) does God save us?” His wonderful answer was, “To make us fully human!” Similarly, the early church father Irenaeus says that “The glory of God is the human person, fully alive!” This is not a call for sinful indulgence, but it is a call to become fully ourselves in the very best sense of the word. Indeed, it is as we become ourselves that we image God and enhance his reputation in his creation.

TBP aims to embody the myriad ways in which Christ plays in our lives.”

- Craig Bartholomew

Issues of The Big Picture centre on a theme, such as craft or economics, but TBP is eclectic. We encourage submissions on any topic relevant to public theology and Christian living. A first draft should be sent for consideration by the deadlines that we publish here, though we encourage you to submit earlier if possible.

Themes and Dates for Submission and Publication for Issues 13-14:

Issue 13: Health & Wellbeing – Submission date: 18 March 2025; Publication date: May/June 2025

Issue 14: My Town, My City – Submission date: 26 June 2025; Publication date: August/September 2025

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

We welcome our readers’ contributions! Before submitting, please download our cover letter, add it to the top of your submission document and fill in the relevant information. Email your document in .docx (or .pdf if .docx is unavailable) to tbp@kirbylaingcentre.co.uk.

Please feel free to email us with any questions or submission ideas too!

When writing for us, please adhere to the guidelines listed here.

Article length

Try to keep your piece as short and focused as possible. The word limit of a submission is 1500 words, including footnotes, for ordinary submissions, or 2000 words for those who have been invited to write a feature. (If you have an essay that exceeds our maximums, we may be able to publish it in a different form; please email us about it.)

Please also include an author bio of 40 words or less.

Short is good! We welcome contributions even shorter than 500 words in the form of a great recipe, a poem, a short film review, a book notice, etc.

Please be aware that your submission will be edited for length, readability and quality. We may ask you for additional feedback during the editing process.

Theme

Although TBP issues tend to have a core theme, submissions that do not reflect the theme are welcome.

Format

We use UK English and Chicago Style / SBL Style for references. (Refer to the Concordia University Summary of SBL Style Guide.) Please avoid footnotes other than for referencing and provide full publication information.

For written submissions, please use MS Word format (PDF is acceptable if you are not able to work in Word). It also makes things much easier if you avoid adding any formatting, such as by changing fonts and spacing. This overrides our publication style and causes complications. Work in the Normal paragraph style. (Basic bold, italic, and the footnotes tool are fine.)

Images

We welcome the submission of images and artwork, though we need written permission to use the image from the rights holder, and permission to use the likeness of anyone pictured.

Please ensure that the images are at least 1000 pixels wide (bigger is better), with minimal compression, and please supply any information that must appear in a caption (such as a title or an image credit).

Please note that we do not guarantee that the images will be used and we reserve the right to add images to written submissions at our discretion.

Our use of your work

We are deeply grateful to our community for your contributions. Please be aware that we cannot publish every submission that we receive, and while we aim to use as many as possible, we regret that some may be held over for a future issue or declined.