Author Guidelines

Authors should submit an electronic version of their article and a biographical note via the journal's online platform, using the 'Submissions' page. The name of the author should not appear on the article but should be entered online during the submission process together with contact details, affiliation(s), ORCID ID (if available), and other required information to process the submission.

It is essential that the following guidelines are observed. Contributions that are not presented in house style will be returned for revision.

General

Documents should be in UK English and be formatted using a standard sans serif typeface (such as Arial) with one and a half line spacing.
A title, short abstract of 50–150 words, and six ‘keywords’ must be supplied with your article.
All articles will be double-anonymously refereed and should normally be 5000–8000 words in length and no longer (including footnotes). Research Notes, typically of 3000 words, will also be considered and may be published at the Editor’s discretion. The following style guidelines apply to both Research Articles for peer review, and Research Notes. However, please also see our advice about choosing which to submit, and select whether the submission is a Research Article or Note when you submit your manuscript online.
Quoted matter, if more than 40 words long, should normally be indented, without quotation marks. Leave a line space above and below the indented material.
Quotations of up to 40 words should form part of the text, and should be indicated by single quotation marks. Double quotation marks should be used only for quotations within quotations. Note: when punctuation relates to the quoted words it goes inside the inverted commas; when it relates to the whole sentence, it goes outside. Punctuation should always follow in-text references in brackets.
In general, words and phrases in languages other than English should be italicised, both in main text and footnotes. All accents should be included. Words and phrases in languages which do not use the Latin alphabet (such as Greek, Hebrew, Russian, etc.) should be transliterated as well as given in the original. It is often appropriate to provide a translation or explanation at the first use of a technical term, including one derived from another language.
British English spellings should be used. This includes -ise endings (recognise, emphasise, organisation), not -ize.
Page references should be in the following form: pp. 92-98, pp. 153-79, pp. 198-207. Always use short hyphens without spacing.
Dates should be expressed, 1605-09, 1678-92, 1681-1704. Always use short hyphens without spacing.
After the peer review process and any changes which are needed there, authors of accepted articles and book reviews will also be asked to respond promptly to comments from the editors and copy-editors. Corrections should be confined to typographical errors or to specific questions raised by the editors. Revisions cannot be accepted at this stage.

Inclusive Language

Where a gender-inclusive alternative is possible, it should be used. For example, ‘humanity’ rather than ‘man’.
When personal pronouns are used to refer to groups or hypothetical individuals, all genders should generally be included. The use of singular 'they' is acceptable when appropriate. For example, instead of 'The Christian has to acknowledge his dependence on grace', it would be better to write 'their dependence', or use the plural, 'Christians have to acknowledge their dependence on grace'.
In the main text, refer to individuals by their current or most recently-known names and pronouns. In cases where someone has changed their name and/or pronouns, this can be noted in a footnote only if the information is needed in order to locate their publications or archive sources.
When referring to groups who are racialised or oppressed within a class or caste system, aim use the terms currently preferred by members of that group in your main text. Capitalisation of ‘Black’/’black’, ‘White’/’white’ and other terms have multiple meanings in different political contexts and we ask authors to be sensitive to this, making the issues explicit when they are relevant. The journal's standard practice is to refer to 'Global Majority countries' (or to be more specific and name particular nations) instead of 'the Third World'. Contested and historical terms can be used in quotations. In cases of doubt, a footnote explaining your choices is welcome. NB: the editorial team may advise that a content warning is needed in extreme circumstances.

Upper and Lower Case

In the case of 'church', use upper and lower case as follows:

Upper case for the whole Church
for a denomination, e.g. the Church of England
Lower case for the building
for the local church
as an adjective: church teaching
also: churchgoer but High Church
In the case of Meeting House, use upper and lower case as follows:

Upper case for a specific place, e.g. Bournville Meeting House
Lower case for the building, e.g. 'they gathered at the meeting house'.

In the case of the Scriptures, use upper and lower case as follows:

Upper case when it is a name e.g. Bible, Scripture, Qu’ran (and in this instance, always use this form and not ‘Koran’); but lower case when it is an adjective, e.g. biblical and scriptural
Gospel — when referring to a canonical book, e.g. the Gospel of Mark
gospel — when speaking in more general terms God, Christ, Kingdom of God, and the Cross, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, etc.

In general, use upper cases for definite articles or specific, named people, unless there is a clear reason not to do so.

Abbreviations

Use of full stops in abbreviations: when an abbreviation is formed by cutting a word short, a full stop must be used at the end; when an abbreviation is formed by the omission of internal letters, a full stop is not generally used. Thus: Rev., Prof., but St, Dr, JP, MP.
CE, BCE should be unpunctuated and set in small capitals.
Note the following abbreviations:

ed. (editor, edited by)
eds (editors, edited by)
trans. (translator, translated by)
transs (translators, translated by)
rev. (reviser, revised by)
edn (edition)
repr. (reprint)
vol./vols (volume/ volumes)

LSF is to be used when referring to the Library of the Society of Friends at Friends House, London, England. ‘Woodbrooke Library’ is the correct term for that collection.
Abbrievated titles of journals and other publications (such as QS, ODNB, OED, JFHS and DNB) should be italicised without full stops between letters.

Verbal Style and Spelling

Brackets within brackets should be square, e.g. G. H. Jones (‘The Decree of Yahweh’, VT 15 [1965], pp. 336-44). However, the major exceptions to this rule is that square brackets should be used to indicate text inserted into a quotation by the author, or to indicate an original publication date of a modern reprint, in square brackets, e.g. [sic], (1999) [1901].
Numerals are written out in full when they are ten or below, when they begin a sentence and when they are an exact hundred, thousand, million, etc. Numbers of centuries should always be written out in full: twenty first century; nineteenth century etc.
The words ‘per cent’ should be used rather than the percentage symbol.
Possessives. For possessives of proper names ending in an ‘s’ add a possessive apostrophe, e.g. Jones’ views.
Ellipses ( . . .): all quotations are in the nature of things an extract from a longer text, so ellipses should not be used simply to indicate that in the original text there are preceding and following words.
Use:

focussed, focussing
first, secondly, or first, second (but not firstly)
acknowledgment, judgment
analyse (not analyze)
‘E.g.’ and ‘i.e.’ are only permissible in the body of the text if they introduce a list or are within brackets. Likewise, please avoid ‘etc.’ unless it is in an footnote.

Do not use op. cit. and ibid. and idem.
Avoid ‘f.’ and ‘ff.’ and ‘et seq.’
Decades should be represented thus, 1950s, 1860s, without apostrophe.
Diagrams, tables, and charts should be all titled as Figures and numbered sequentially through the article. They should be uploaded as separate electronic files at the point of submission but their approximate location within the article should be clearly marked and highlighted, e.g. Figure 1 here.

Biblical References

Please observe the following abbreviations for books of the Bible:

Gen. Exod. Lev. Num. Deut. Josh. Judg. Ruth Sam. Kgs Chron. Ezra Neh. Est. Job Ps. (plural Pss.) Prov. Eccl. Song Isa. Jer. Lam. Ezek. Dan. Hos. Joel Amos Obad. Jon. Mic. Nah. Hab. Zeph. Hag. Zech. Mal.
Mt. Mk Lk. Jn Acts Rom. Cor. Gal. Eph. Phil. Col. Thess. Tim. Tit. Phlm. Heb. Jas. Pet. Jn Jude Rev.
Use Arabic numerals throughout: 2 Cor. not II Cor. Colons between chapter and verse numbers: Lk. 6:12 Hyphens to mark sequences of verses: Jn 10:12-14, 16 (N.B. the space after the comma).
Short hyphens for sequences extending beyond a single chapter: Mt. 6-9
Semicolons to divide distinct references to different chapters of the same book: John 6:15; 14:12 Semicolons to divide single references to separate books: Lk. 4:12; 2 Cor. 3:8
Biblical references may be placed in parentheses in the text - e.g. (Mt. 2:6-8) - or in the notes but please be consistent.

Referencing Styles

References should be made using footnotes.

Short title: when a book, a chapter or an article is referred to again using the footnote system, after its first occurrence, a short title form is used, e.g. Martyn, ‘Have we Found Elijah?’, p. 235.

The order of data for bibliographic entries for a book in a footnote is the following:

author(s), editor(s) (ed., eds) comma (with surname first, then initials only, with space between initials as below)
title (colon: subtitle in lower case) comma
in editor (names followed by (ed.) if there is an editor as well as an author) semicolon
translator (trans. followed by name and initials) semicolon
series comma
number in series semicolon
number of volumes (e.g. 2 vols.) semicolon
reprint status (repr.) comma
place of publication, [comma, US State using standard abbreviation (if USA)] colon
publisher comma
edition (e.g. 2nd edn, rev. edn) comma
date, [original publication date in brackets where required] full stop

Book and journal titles are in italics., eg:

Book: Gunton, C. E., The One, The Three and The Many, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edn, 1993. Please note articles from periodicals or titles of book chapters are printed within single quotation marks. Page numbers should always be included with a space after pp.
Chapter/article in a collected volume: Martyn, J. L., ‘Have we Found Elijah?’, in Hamerton-Kelly, R., and Scroggs, R., (eds), Jews, Greeks and Christians: cultures in late antiquity, trans. Smith, J.; Series in Jewish and Christian Relations, 21; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2nd edn, 1976, pp. 56-87.
Journal article: Barrett, L., ‘Theology as Grammar: regulative principles or paradigms and practices?’, Modern Theology 25 (1988), pp. 155-72.
Include the issue number of a journal within a volume, e.g. 25/2, only if page numbering is not consecutive within the volume.

The following conventions should also be observed:

For more than three authors or editors it is permissible to use et al only on the second mention of a reference in the footnotes, but it can be used as part of the in-text referencing system.
Multiple entries for an author should be arranged in chronological order. Second and subsequent entries for the same author should not repeat the author’s name but use five short hyphens followed by a comma.
Title and subtitle. Between the title and subtitle of a book there should be a colon, not a full stop (though occasionally a book has a more complicated title and a full stop is more appropriate). The sub-title should be in lower case.
More than one place of publication. When a publisher has more than one office, only the first stated or the head office should be given.
More than one publisher. Where a book has been published by more than one publisher, use the following style: Exeter: Paternoster Press; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

For web references, please include the ‘http://’ or 'https://' prefix where it is part of the address. Please date all web references in the style: 15 February 2023.