On the latest Lorehaven podcast, the intro brushes by the foundational blog from which Lorehaven grew—this blog that you are reading, Speculative Faith. On occasion it’s good to review who we are and why we came into being. Below is an article published in 2006 by one of our founding writers, Mirtika Schultz. As I recall, there were six of us who banded together in 2004 to create this blog: Stuart Stockton, Mirtika Schultz, Shannon McNear, Beth Goddard, Carol Collett, and myself.

Some of us have continued to pursue writing and / or speculative fiction. Some have not. I’m the lone die-hard who has stuck with the blog. Over the years, various writers joined us for a time and others left. At one low point, when a number of writers had moved on, E. Stephen Burnett infused life into the blog. He joined the staff and took over the webmaster responsibilities. We added more writers, and the rest is history.

Over the years, regardless of which writers are on staff, our core purpose has remained constant. I think Mirtika’s article captures the essence of who we are, why we exist.

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What Is Speculative Faith?

By Mirtika Schultz

We are writers who share two passions—a genre and a Savior.

The genre is speculative literature. That ‘s the umbrella term that covers fantasy, science fiction, and allegory in all forms: short story, novella, novel, screenplay, and poetry.

The Savior is Christ. That is the faith part.

Genre + Christ: Speculative Faith

This team blog, Speculative Faith, will offer you our individual perspectives—and we don’t always agree—on any matter that resides in that spacious spot where our faith and our preferred genre blend.

And we’re an idealistic, motivated group:

~~ We believe that there is a diverse and sizable audience hungry for Christian speculative literature.

~~We want to find you.

~~We want you to find us.

~~We want to mobilize a reading and writing community that will impact the future editorial acquisitional decisions of CBA publishing houses. Right now, they are not favorably inclined toward speculative fiction.

~~We want better and more varied and just plain MORE novels from CBA [Christian Bookstore Association] publishing houses in our genre.

~~We intend to promote the good speculative literature out there, works that showcase talent as well as spiritual truth.

Does all that excite you? Had you given up hope of ever finding such novels—and enough of them—to suit your reading needs?

Do you believe this, as we do? Truth and wild imaginings are not incompatible. Space operas, allegories, Tolkienesque fantasies, hard science fiction tales, science fantasies, hip urban fantasies, magical realism stories, slipstream novels, surreal poetry . . . God can be glorified in these types of creative expressions.

We’re out to blaze trails. Come with us.

Saddle up your dragons. It’s time to fly into the wide and burning sky of Speculative Faith!