The preparations for the new issue of our journal Spes Christiana are in their final stages. I believe it will once again contain a number of high quality articles about issues that will be of interest to most Adventist scholars in the fields of theology and related disciplines. And from data provided by our web-editor I may conclude that the book review section is rather popular. Of course, I hope that the quality of our journal will be maintained or even further increased and that the number of readers will also grow. Steps are taken to ensure that our journal is not only indexed in the SDA Periodical Index and Google Scholar, but in the future also in the Adventist Digital Library and the ATLA Religion Database. This will help to make the articles more accessible and to see them more frequently quoted in other academic publications.
But a journal does not come about by spontaneous generation. To guarantee its regular publication a constant flow of articles and of book reviews is needed. Ideally, the contributions come from authors who are connected with all Adventist institutions with theological faculties, spread over Europe. This is still far from reality, and therefore I launch an earnest appeal to keep Spes Christiana in mind in your academic work. No doubt many of our various theological staffs have been involved in projects that could result in a worthy publications. Perhaps quite a few have invested a lot of time in academic papers which they have read during a symposium or professional convention. If the results thereof have not yet been published, this work could perhaps be converted into an article in an upcoming issue of our journal.
If you are in doubt whether a particular topic and/or approach would be suitable for the journal, please contact Reinder Bruinsma (reinder@bruinsmas.com), and when you have a particular book in mind for a review, please contact Kerstin Maiwald, who is the book review editor (kerstin.maiwald@thh-friedensau.de). If it concerns a subject about which I know little or nothing (and there are many such domains), I will make sure to get the right kind of advice. We are still in need of a number of manuscripts for the spring issue of 2022. The sooner these arrive the better, but not much later than early February, as the peer review process also tends to take a fair amount of time. (And—by the way—we are always looking for qualified peer reviewers with the expertise required for evaluation a particular topic.)
Working on Spes Christiana must be a combined effort and I need your help in the coordinating role that I fulfil as the General Editor.
I fervently hope that this appeal will result in the submission of a range of manuscripts. I hope to hear from many of you.
Blessings and warm greetings,
Reinder Bruinsma, General Editor