How to Write About Your Faith (Without Sounding Preachy)

I spent many years working as an editor and writer for a Christian magazine publishing company. A big part of my job entailed reading article submissions and advance copies of books by Christian authors. Many of these works were well-intended memoir-type pieces in which the writer would share their miraculous experience of finding God and getting saved, and then laying out a formula for how you, the reader, should get saved too. 

Unfortunately, far too many missed the mark. They'd use Christianese—words and phrases that aren't common for most people, unless you're part of the evangelical subculture—and their memoir writing would end up sounding more like a three-point sermon instead of a stunning spiritual story that left the reader wanting more of whatever the author had experienced.

I was never sure who these writers thought their audience was, but it wasn't people I knew. My rejection pile for faith-related writing was pretty big.

Writing About Your Faith

So how do you write about your faith without sounding preachy? Spirituality is a deeply personal, individual aspect of our lives, and sharing it in a way that feels authentic and essential to your memoir takes special care.

I've been writing a memoir that focuses primarily on my childhood. In it, I write about my earliest awareness of God. Here's an example of how I write about my faith:

Eden at the End of the Driveway

I lay at the end of the driveway, face-down, hanging my head over the curb watching lines of ants marching back and forth with crumbs of food that look like boulders.

I imagine these ants like Egyptians in ancient days in my six-year-old mind, shouldering massive rocks and other materials to build pyramids or some kind of ant world.

Are they making sounds that ants recognize and can hear but I can’t? Who’s directing them, and why do they all follow? What role do the ants play in the world?

If they went away, would it matter? Would the world notice? Would something bigger fall apart because their small part was no longer happening? I could squish them with my thumb right then and there. Would it matter? Do small things matter?

I don’t know how long I’ve been laying here. I’m so caught up in wondering about these ants and the way they work together following some kind of invisible order. Questions float out of me like silent, honest prayers. I am lost in this world at the end of our driveway completely unaware of myself, lying prostrate on the cool cement under the shade of the arched elm trees that line our street like a cathedral.

In the quiet of my daydreaming, I feel my questions being heard. Imperceptibly, I am with someone, and I know it’s God. He’s stretched out next to me watching the ants march by and waiting to see if I’ll talk with him, the same way a new friend might approach me on the playground.

We watch the ants together, and he wonders at them with me. We both know he’s the one who made the ants, and yet he’s marveling at them too.

I can’t see his face, but I can feel his smile on me. He likes my little-girl wonder as much as he delights in his own handiwork with the ants as if us enjoying his creation together is mostly the point of the ants. Like he’s saying, “Yes, the ants could be squished, and nothing really would change because of it. But aren’t they great to watch and enjoy?”

As we watch the ants, I feel his pleasure at all he has created, including me. I feel his desire to share it with me and his delight in my enjoyment of it all. Unaware of myself, I feel oneness with God—a wholeness—like there is nothing wrong or lacking in me or the world.

I slowly pull myself up from the driveway. The distance from the street to our back door seems far. Reluctantly, I walk toward our house, tucking my Eden moment away like paper dolls in a box, somewhere safe where no one else can find them.

What's Your First Spiritual Memory?

This is my earliest memory of meeting God. My first awareness of my spiritual self, though I wouldn't have used this word at the time. It's the faith that formed in me when I was very young and which remains to this day.

How about you? Can you remember the details of your earliest spiritual discovery? See if you can capture them from the point of view you were at the time of the discovery. By stepping back into your memories and letting yourself re-experience the details with all of your senses and through your young self's eyes, you draw the reader in, and your writing comes alive.

Try it for yourself: Write about your earliest spiritual memory as if you're the age when the incident occurred. If you were a child in your memory, put your adult brain on pause while you write and let yourself experience the moment like a child again.

There are many ways to write about your faith, and the tone and voice you use will vary depending on your personal perspective. Do you see the difference though in writing about your faith from your lived experience rather than from your intellectual beliefs about faith?

In memoir writing, we capture our experiences and trust that the reader will glean their own insights. We rely on resonance more than reasoning to bring people along on our journey. And if we're successful in getting the reader caught up in our own spiritual experience, they may be better able to get in touch with their own.