January 07, 2025

244. How Did Speculative Faith Lead to the Lorehaven Mission?

1 hour

Happy New Year! As we launch this podcast’s 2025 season, we look back at a website with a legacy that predates Lorehaven. Way back in 2006, several Christian fantasy creators started a team “blog” called Speculative Faith. Let’s look back on that project that led to thousands of great articles from dozens of creators, and then later grew into the Lorehaven mission and this podcast.

Episode sponsors

Enclave Publishing: Memoria by J. J. Fischer

Garden of Mysteries: A Dragon Slayer Bible Story by Laurie Christine

Sunrise Publishing: Squire of Truth by Jill Williamson

Mission update

New at Lorehaven: the upgraded Lorehaven Book Search page!

Subscribe free to get updates and join the Lorehaven Guild.

We’re breaking from reviews and book quests, returning in early spring.

This was the original Speculative Faith site header from 2006 to 2009.

1. 2006: the creation of Speculative Faith

Speculative Faith started nearly 20 years ago with five Christian creators:

Carol Collett

Bryan Davis, later author of many dozens of fantastical novels

Rebecca LuElla Miller, who stayed with the site the entire time!

Mirtika Schultz, who wrote the very first post

Stuart Stockton, who hosted the site and later wrote Starfire

Stephen did not join until that October. Naturally, this was his first post:

Nine Marks Of Widescreen Stories: Part 1

That’s right—a takeoff on the Reformed group’s “nine marks” concept

Here’s the reborn Speculative Faith logo and motto from 2015.

2. 2010: the rebirth of Speculative Faith

Stephen got married, then a year later, went to work salvaging the site

The original blog was neglected and buried under spam comments

Now the site got its own name, SpeculativeFaith.com, and a new life

Open discussion

Stephen and original founder Rebecca LuElla Miller anchored the site

Many dozens of writers contributed hundreds of articles over the years

Guest writers included names you may now, before they were cool:

Jill Williamson, several articles at the original site, March-May 2009

Andrew Peterson, Please Stop Writing Fantasy Novels, July 2011

Chuck Black, The Power Of Christian Fiction, Nov. 2012

Rebecca P. Minor, later the founder of Realm Makers, July 2012

Morgan L. Busse, several articles starting in 2012

Nadine Brandes, Should We Be Reading Books To Escape Reality?, Dec. 2014

3. 2025: the legacy of Speculative Faith

SpecFaith led Stephen to experiment with more reviews and the Library.

The site also led to more-polished featured articles by guest writers.

Inspired by SpecFaith, Stephen and (then) Ben Wolf launched Lorehaven.

That began as a magazine, but shifted in 2020 to curated online content.

This combined the strengths of volunteerism and more polished work.

Today, all Speculative Faith content lives as a subsection of Lorehaven.

As of New Year’s Eve, all those great articles show in Lorehaven searches!

So do the many reviews, some of which may be adapted for Lorehaven.

Com station