Selection Guidelines

sdg.church exists to glorify God by pointing people to Jesus Christ. The biographies are not a celebrity hall of fame or an encyclopedia of every admirable religious person. They are a curated cloud of witnesses: signposts to Christ through stories of grace, repentance, weakness, suffering, courage, failure, forgiveness, and changed lives.

Our hope is that readers would not stop at admiring a featured person, but would ask: Who is this Christ who receives, forgives, changes, sustains, and uses sinners like this?

The site is written from a conservative, Reformed Protestant perspective. The name Soli Deo Gloria deliberately places the project within the Reformation tradition, with Scripture as God's authoritative Word and salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

We are not narrowly denominational, and we do not mean to imply that conservative Reformed Christianity is the only form of true Christianity. This is our editorial lens, not the boundary of Christ's kingdom. We may include Baptists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Methodists, Pentecostals, non-denominational evangelicals, persecuted believers from older global traditions, and others where there is credible gospel clarity. But because this site has an evangelistic purpose, we do make theological and editorial judgments. Clarity about the gospel matters.

The site should not imply that Christianity is only for people whose lives are already tidy, successful, respectable, or put together. That would be false to the gospel and discouraging to readers who know their own weakness.

We want stories that show conversion, not polish; repentance, not perfection; weakness sustained by grace; costly obedience amid suffering or failure; and visible fruit over time without pretending saints are sinless heroes.

A strong biography should make Christ look sufficient, not make the featured person look self-sufficient.

The central question is: Does this person's life, words, and testimony help point readers to the saving work of Jesus Christ?

• Public profession of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
• Clear testimony of conversion, repentance, or trust in Christ.
• Writings, hymns, sermons, interviews, letters, or recorded statements that articulate gospel faith.
• Sustained fruit over time.
• Costly faithfulness, including martyrdom or persecution.

We prefer primary sources where possible. The strongest evidence is usually a person's own words and the observable fruit of a life lived before God.

To preserve both gospel clarity and discoverability, we distinguish between featured biographies and contextual profiles. A featured biography presents a person as a clear evangelistic witness. A contextual profile may discuss a historically, culturally, or search-relevant person without presenting that person as an uncomplicated model of gospel clarity.

This lets us talk about figures such as famous Catholics, artists, athletes, writers, political leaders, or cultural touchpoints in a way that readers and search engines can actually find. Absence cannot teach. A careful contextual page can explain what is admirable, what is concerning, where the person's beliefs differ from biblical Protestant Christianity, and why Christ's finished work matters.

Mention is not the same as endorsement. Contextual critique is not a final judgment on someone's soul. The point is to meet readers where they are searching and point them toward Christ.

Non-inclusion is not a declaration that a person is not saved. It is not a final judgment on their sincerity, their soul, or everything God may have done in their life.

Non-inclusion simply means one or more of the following:

• we do not believe they fit this site's editorial purpose;
• we do not have enough clear evidence to present them as an evangelistic example;
• their public witness may create more confusion than clarity;
• or their theology, affiliation, public legacy, or unresolved scandal makes them unwise to feature.

God knows his own. We are making editorial decisions for a public evangelistic project, not pretending to sit on the throne of final judgment.

We do not want to present Christian traditions as a simplistic list of believers and unbelievers. A more faithful public frame is shared Christian claims and decisive gospel differences.

For example, Roman Catholicism and evangelical Protestant Christianity share claims about the Trinity, the incarnation, Christ's death and resurrection, Scripture as sacred text, ancient creeds, baptism, prayer, worship, and moral seriousness. The decisive disagreements concern final authority, justification, assurance, sacramental mediation, Mary and the saints, papal claims, and the nature of the church.

That approach lets us speak warmly and accurately while still explaining why the Reformation mattered.

Pre-Reformation Christians are evaluated differently because they lived before the later Protestant/Roman Catholic divide. We treat early and medieval Christians as part of the broad historical Christian inheritance while still evaluating their doctrine, life, and witness honestly.

For post-Reformation Roman Catholics, we use a stricter public-site standard. Official Roman Catholic teaching, especially as articulated at Trent, contradicts the Reformation doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Because this site is evangelistic, we do not want to confuse unbelievers or immature believers about Rome or the gospel.

Therefore, when a post-Reformation public figure is a practicing Roman Catholic, publicly endorses the Roman Catholic Church, or is publicly identified with Rome in a way that would confuse the site's witness, we ordinarily do not include them.

This is not a claim that no Roman Catholic can be saved. It is an editorial decision about clarity, witness, and the purpose of this site.

That clarity should make us more loving, not less. We want to speak warmly and patiently to Catholic readers, family members, coworkers, and friends. Many sincerely revere Jesus and carry deep family, cultural, and communal loyalties. But love requires clarity: assurance before God must rest in Christ's finished work, not in Christ plus sacramental merit, penance, Marian intercession, or the authority of Rome. The invitation is to come directly to Christ and receive the free grace promised in the gospel.

Coptic and Oriental Orthodox Christians are not automatically handled the same way as post-Reformation Roman Catholics. Their traditions differ from Reformed Protestant theology on important matters, including authority, sacraments, priesthood, tradition, and aspects of salvation theology. Those differences should not be hidden.

At the same time, many Coptic Christians have confessed Christ under intense pressure, including martyrdom. That public confession before men is not a small thing. We may include Coptic and other persecuted non-Protestant Christians case by case when their testimony clearly points to Christ, especially where suffering or martyrdom is central to the witness.

When we include such figures, we should give context rather than pretending all theological differences disappear.

Living figures require a higher bar because their story is still being written. We avoid using a fresh profession, baptism, or crisis conversion as immediate public validation, especially where unresolved scandal or controversy would make the person the story instead of Christ.

The list is curated and revisable. We may remove or reclassify a person when new information emerges, when our standards become clearer, or when we conclude that an inclusion creates more confusion than clarity. When we remove someone, we aim to explain the decision as an editorial judgment, not as a condemnation of the person's soul.

We aim to be:

• charitable, refusing to write people off casually;
• clear, refusing to blur the gospel for the sake of a larger roster;
• honest, acknowledging complexity, weakness, sin, and historical context;
• courageous, standing by editorial decisions once they are made carefully;
• Christ-centered, ensuring every story points beyond the person to Jesus.