Reader Jen Fields writes: “Where are you? Mother Teresa questioned her faith, another hypocritical gay Republican has been outted and yet another Islamic cartoon is creating a stir. Don’t you have a grad student who can cover the summer sabbatical season? Because sure, I can get my snarky commentary on religion in the news elsewhere, but I prefer yours. Please return soon.”

Just for you, Jen, we’re back. Or, at least I am. The Revealer‘s grad student slaves have moved on to greener pastures — Kathryn Joyce is now working for Newsweek. Kate Hawley is freelancing religion stories for Chicago papers. And Nicole Greenfield is busy finishing her masters degree. And now I’m fresh out of students — I’ve quit teaching to write full time. Mark Oppenheimer, author of Knocking on Heaven’s Door: American Religion in the Age of Counterculture, will be teaching my course on writing about religion in the NYU Journalism Department’s graduate program this fall. Let’s hope he directs some young brilliance this way.

In the meantime, though, I’m searching for more seasoned brilliance. A year and a half ago, I put out a call for contributing editors for The Revealer and received so many responses that I couldn’t read them all, nor reply to all the worthy candidates, and in the end, I scrapped the idea. But in the coming year, I’ll be working hard as a regular contributor for Rolling Stone, shepherding one book through press, handing in another, and proposing yet a third. I just won’t be the Revealer I once was. And it’s not just a matter of time — when I started this site back in 2003, I was, essentially, an outsider to religion journalism, co-author of one obscure book, distant from magazine circles. I didn’t mind throwing punches, and yes, I was snarky, and more, endlessly fascinated by the narratives constructed by popular media to represent religion.

Things have changed: I’ve too many debts to other writers now to be a brawler, and, yes, I’ve a better understanding of how hard it is to produce even bad work, and when a major media outlet churns out a truly awful story about religion, I just don’t have enough love in me to offer any comment deeper than “what horseshit.”

In the coming year, I’ll be taking The Revealer in other directions — concentrating more on understanding what makes the good stuff good, interviewing writers, drawing in more of the academic work journalists who deal with religion can benefit from. But that doesn’t mean The Revealer will lose its fangs. Rather, it’ll be new mouths doing the biting.

How about you? Are you a biter? Are you fascinated by the ways media narratives about religion recycle cliches, spread misinformation, dumb down debate? Do you keep reading anyway? Are you unafraid to call trash trash? Maybe you should write for The Revealer.

Here’s what the new Revealers will need: wit, precision, and thick skin. And: experience writing for popular publication. Actual religion journalism experience or relevant scholarship preferred. Basic knowledge about major religions required, some knowledge of theories of religion preferred, knowledge of foreign media a plus.

Contributing editors will write at least two short blog items a week and preferably many more. They’ll also occasionally write longer pieces — reviews, interviews, essays. They’ll edit and post their work themselves.

Interested? Don’t bother with that “send a letter to the editor” button below. Write me directly at jshin dot tov at gmail dot com.

But don’t bother if: You want to write primarily about your own religion or lack thereof; you think religion can be explained with terms like true and false; you believe religion must include belief; you’re a fan of Sam Harris or Rick Warren; you’re too sweet; you’re too cruel; you care passionately about the fate of the American newspaper. Such sentiments don’t make you a bad person, of course but they will make you a bad fit for The Revealer. We’re not trying to disprove religion or prove that “true” religion is peaceful or “fix” mainstream media’s religion problem. You should know what we’re trying to do: It ought to go without saying that you’re a Revealer reader, and equally obvious, I hope, that you don’t need to agree with everything you read here to write here.

There’s no pay for any of us, and no, you won’t be working for New York University (much less the Pew Charitable Trust — we spent that money a long time ago), and the audience isn’t huge — 50,000 a month at top speed. But they’re a clever bunch. Among our subscribers are thousands of working journalists, editors, producers, and scholars from institutions large and small.

Write for The Revealer and tell ’em what for.