Church Life Journal welcomes unsolicited manuscript submissions. Contributors should familiarize themselves with the journal before sending queries. Only finished material (previously unpublished) will be considered. We cannot commit to publishing proposals but might provide feedback on a per-case basis. 

The processing of submissions takes up to three months. 

General Formatting

• Word documents only (.docx preferred)
• Articles should be between 1500 and 4500 words and be single-spaced
• The document should be aligned left and use Times New Roman size 12 font
• The journal reserves the right to make the final call on the article title 

Article Body Formatting

• One space after periods.  One space after all punctuation.
• Use block quotes for quotations longer than three lines by employing the “increase indent” right arrow in Word. No quotation marks around block quotes
• Article section titles should use “Heading 2” style
• In-text links to publisher book product pages (never retailers) are preferred to footnotes.
• If needed, use footnotes instead of endnotes (Arabic numerals instead of Roman numerals)
• Citations of Papal or Conciliar documents may be cited in-text (full title in the first citation, abbreviated title thereafter); sections/paragraphs are denoted using §
• Biblical quotations should be in parentheses after the passage not in footnotes.
• Always use em-dashes —, rather than two (--) en-dashes
• Don’t use contractions
• Use Oxford commas
• When in doubt about style considerations, see: The Chicago Manual of Style or the USCCB Style Guide.

Static Features Formatting

• Put the first letter of your article into the following code format: <span class="dropcap">T</span> (for an article starting with a “T”)
• The bottom of the document should contain the following italicized text: Featured Image: ; Source: Wikimedia Commons, PD-Old-100. Please do not provide your own images.

Author Profile Materials

• Include the following with submissions: Headshot (.jpg only, 700 pixels wide minimum) and a one- to three-sentence biographical byline (the byline may hyperlink affiliations and publications).