Writing as Worship
Pope Leo's recent address to writers came at a providential time for me as I have been heavily meditating on how writing is an act of worship. In his speech, “To a Group of Writers…”, Pope Leo XIV posits that the human act of writing is an act of truth that concerns God for “in the midst of very human stories, God reveals himself” (1), and it is this revelation of God within stories that makes me believe the truth of the statement that writing is an act of worship.
In consideration of my own writing, I have wrestled with my own audacity in saying that my book, The Secrets that Spirits Keep, in all its grittiness and morbidities, could be considered an act of worship. I’m even at the point of being unable to declare myself as a "Christian" fiction writer as I attempt to identify my works with all the various genres. For some reason or another, the stories on my heart are full of gut-wrenching despair which some might even consider to be hopeless and of little value (I say this because I’ve thought it myself a few times).
Still, I believe The Secrets that Spirits Keep, and all subsequent books in my head—though they may have aspects of tragedy and are certainly full of sinners and their sins—are not too far gone so as not to be considered an act of worship. For though my heart contends with questions such as “How does this story point someone to God?” and “How am I worshiping God as I write?” these questions are proof enough for me to know I want God to be known.
Desperate as I am to ensure my writing is glorifying to God, I pray before every writing session. I pray as I navigate the publishing process. I pray as I write this blog post. I pray God uses my words to bring whoever is reading closer to Him. Even if the books I write are messy and ripe with the sickness of humanity’s sin, I pray my stories only serve to metaphorize what a life is like without God in it, what a soul could reap after it sows seeds in thorns.
So again, I claim writing can be worshipful even if the content isn't always necessarily about God. For instance in the essay “On Fairy Stories,” J. R. R. Tolkien’s proposes writing is an act of sub-creation. If we humans are made in the image of God, then we are made to replicate His behavior. In this case, He is Creator who creates, and we are sub-creators who sub-create; therefore, we as writers are acting in the image of God, exactly as He designed.
Tolkien further evidences this thought: “Art is the human process that produces…Secondary Belief” (2). If it is correct, as Tolkien postulates, that Art creates Belief, it is no wonder God created the world to be artfully beautiful so as to create a belief within us of His own existence. And thus, when we create Art and thereby create a Secondary Belief, we are acting in a God-like way and roundaboutly proving His existence to ourselves—and any other human who partakes in our sub-creations—during the creative process.
In the book The Bible and Poetry, Bible scholar Michael Edwards suggests that the Bible ought to be read the same way we read poetry, for “Poetry is in itself a way of thinking and of imagining the world” (3). It is clear to me that if God gave us a holy text brimming with poetic craft and that if He provided divine inspiration to those authors so as to have the richness of great literature, then Christian authors must also strive for that same divine excellence in their own acts of writing. As Robert Fitzgerald wrote about Flannery O’Connor’s writing craft, as Christian writers, we ought to “[rely] more on [our] technique than [our] piety” (4).
It should not be enough for a Christian writer to slap a story together with Christian values and call it good. We must follow the example of the greatness of God’s own writing. We must engage in deep study of how His Word is poetry that “attracts our attention to language and to the mystery of words, to their capacity to create, almost by themselves, networks of meaning, unexpected emotions, rhythms and a music for the ear and for the mouth that spreads through the entire body and all one’s being” (5). A Christian writer does not have to primarily write pious novels. In fact, it is good and excellent for a Christian writer to excel and practice the technique of writing, just the Bible itself is written artistically and with great literary care.
If a writer has written his or her sub-created world well—so much so that truth becomes poignant to the state of suspended disbelief—then “it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world” (6). And if that, then God be glorified.
In closing, an excerpt from Tolkien’s Mythopoeia which speaks for itself:
The heart of man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship one he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact.
man, sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with elves and goblins, though we dared to build
gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sow the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which were made. (7)
Footnotes:
Pope Leo XIV, “To a Group of Writers, on the Occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the ‘Libreria Editrice Vaticana’ (the Vatican Publishing House),” speech, June 24, 2026, The Holy See
J. R. R. Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories, PDF, accessed July 3, 2026, https://coolcalvary.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/on-fairy-stories1.pdf
Michael Edwards, The Bible and Poetry, trans. Stephen E. Lewis (New York: NYRB Classics, 2023), 5.
Flannery O'Connor, Good Things Out of Nazareth: The Uncollected Letters of Flannery O'Connor and Friends, ed. Benjamin B. Alexander (New York: Convergent, 2019), xvii.
Edwards, The Bible and Poetry, 7.
Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories.
J. R. R. Tolkien, Mythopoeia, PDF, accessed July 3, 2026, https://www.tolkien.ro/text/JRR%20Tolkien%20-%20Mythopoeia.pdf
