the artist's way is super christian, actually

The Artist’s Way is often the first book recommended to spiritually-minded folks looking to rediscover inspiration or cure a bad case of writer’s block. It’s right there in the subtitle: “A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.” I can’t count the number of readers who have asked if I’ve done it, or if I’d recommend it.

The answer is no, and also no, because that “spiritual path” comes with a decidedly Christian worldview.

Obligatory note here that if you are a devout Christian, this post is probably not for you. Consider that the title of my first book is Heretic: A Queer Revolt Against Evangelicalism, Empire, and the Lies We Are Sold and proceed at your own risk.

Written by Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way was first published it in 1992. Thirty-four years later, TarcherPerigree (which is under PRH) continues to promote it as one of their flagship classics. The book is often categorized as self-help, which is to say that it’s practical nonfiction, the kind that comes with writing exercises (such as the one based on this newsletter that I’m writing for Hachette).

We can’t talk about The Artist’s Way’s 12-week program without citing that it basically cut-and-pastes Alcoholics Anonymous’s 12 steps.1 Cameron herself has been sober for more than four decades and modeled her creative writing program on AA; to wit, she calls her program “creative recovery.” And she speaks powerfully about how getting sober impacted her own relationship to creativity. But treating art-making like an addiction is a fraught foundation for allegedly universal creative advice — even before adding the religion.

I first found Cameron in middle school, not through The Artist’s Way but through one of many follow-ups she wrote called The Right to Write. It was at my local library, and while decidedly less programmatic than its predecessor, it still introduced me to some of her fundamental concepts, like morning pages, which have become so well known at this point that many know them outside of the The Artist’s Way altogether.2

As an evangelical teenager who wanted to write books, I loved Cameron’s work, because the way she talked about inspiration and God felt so familiar — and slotted so easily into my own worldview. She talked about creativity as a gift from God, about how we owed it to our Creator to use the gifts given. As a young woman in the Religious Right desperately trying to affirm that there was more in my future than marriage and children, Cameron’s work felt life-giving.

Before we get into the Christianity of it all, I want to quickly address the most common criticism of The Artist’s Way, which is rooted in the economic privilege that Cameron assumes in her reader. While I am generally remiss to bring up a woman writer’s romantic history, it feels important that Cameron was married to Martin Scorsese, whose glowing blurb still appears on the back cover. The marriage was over well before she wrote this book, but understanding her position in the early ‘90s as a rich, cishet white woman co-parenting with an ex who happened to be an industry titan makes her suggestions make a lot more sense. Readers hoping for an acknowledgment of how folks not in her social circles might find someone who will loan you their horse farm for a solo writing residency will be sorely disappointed.

Still. Cameron’s work has been inspirational for thousands of people. In criticizing the book, I don’t intend to diminish the inspiration or motivation that individuals have discretely found within it. My younger self found great encouragement in Cameron’s ideas, more broadly, and that kept me writing through many a dark night of the soul.

To that end, I also want to acknowledge that Cameron paved a path for publicly talking about the spiritual dimensions of creativity in secular spaces. The idea that creativity has a spiritual dimension was not new to her (or to the 20th century), but Cameron offered a framework that found ready acceptance in the contemporary literary and media establishment, and that matters.

Which brings us to the Christianity of it all: I’d argue that the clearly Christian worldview Cameron both assumes and relies on is what made The Artist’s Way so palatable to mainstream audiences in the first place. I don’t know what Cameron herself believes these days, but I do know that the way she articulates and frames divinity and human relationship to divinity in her work comes straight out of Christianity. Which is why spiritually-minded readers looking for a more expansive view of creativity and inspiration may feel stifled by The Artist’s Way, even if they can’t put their finger on why.

Cameron herself wouldn’t describe her work as Christian. She refers to a “god of creativity” who “seems to feel the same way” as Christ about certain things (2). The book’s margins are littered with inspirational quotes from various religious texts. But a writer should know better than anyone that a substitute in language does not a new worldview make.

Cameron lays out her ten basic principles that are the theoretical foundation of the work, principles which explicitly outline the decidedly Christian worldview of The Artist’s Way. By way of assessing the Christian undertones and framework, we’re going to take them one by one:

This one, I agree with and have no notes for. I think what sets humans apart from other species is the diversity of our creative expression.

Again, on the surface, I have no notes, save that “in-dwelling” is a word I most often hear used to describe the Holy Spirit, the third member of the three-in-one, one-in-three Christian trinity. (It is said that when a Christian accepts the gift of Christ’s sacrifice and salvation, the Holy Spirit becomes indwelling in them.)

Okay, now we pause. Who is this Creator? Cameron says it is vaguely a “god of creativity,” but then how have they put creativity “within” us? Earlier, Cameron writes that “those who speak in spiritual terms routinely refer to God as the creator,” but this is both vague and without citation or context. Who refers to God as the creator — the single creator, the only one? This is an idea rooted in monotheistic religions: the Jewish Yahweh, Muslim Allah, and Christian God (who both is and is not Yahweh). This is not the framework of creation in Hinduism or Buddhism or African Traditional Religions. Not of syncretic witches; not even of Wicca. Certainly not of atheists.

Earlier, Cameron suggests, “You are seeking to forge a creative alliance, artist-to-artist with the Great Creator.” On the surface, I don’t hate this; I often suggest that Creativity is a spirit (or many spirits) we collaborate with. However, the idea of an “artist-to-artist” alliance of equals is explicitly thwarted by this third basic principle, that human beings are creations who have a superior Creator. This is not an alliance or a pact or a collaboration — far from it.

The way this implicitly reeks of “go forth and multiply” hurts my soul, but I digress.

Yes, humans are all technically creations, since we grow from a tiny clump cells into living and breathing beings. But again, Cameron posits the underlying idea that we are the creations of a single creatOR who is extra, who is outside of us, who then deposits creativity into us — and that we are meant to continue creativity. Who means for us to do it? And why?

Ahh. There it is.

I am not as familiar with the Quran as I’d like to be, but I know that in the New Testament of the Christian Bible, eternal life and salvation as a “gift” we are given by God that we then owe him good behavior for. Underlying this principle is the idea of stewardship, that using the gift correctly and well is essential to receiving its full power. “Well done, good and faithful servant” is a verse from Matthew 25 often quoted by pastors about what they hope to be told at the pearly gates, but the line exists in the context of a parable where a master leaves his servants with gold, and one squanders it while one invests it and gets double the return. Good stewardship is godly; using a gift simply as you see fit is selfish and sinful.

See also 1st Peter 4:10, “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God's grace in its various forms” (NIV) and Colossions 3:23-24, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance” (NIV).

You cannot substitute a generalized agnostic “universe” for this principle and the ones following and still have it make sense. I also find the idea that creativity is something we owe to an outside force without having deliberately and intentionally made that promise/commitment/choice is… problematic, at best.

Here, Cameron actually demonizes self-will, which is to say agency and freedom of choice. “Self-will” is the Christian giveaway here, as it is a frequently used translation in English language Bibles when referencing sinful behavior. See 2nd Peter 2:10 “Presumptuous are they, selfwilled, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities” (KJV) and Titus 1:7 “For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God; not selfwilled, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre” (KJV).

The binary “you are either creating or you are refusing to create” leaves no room for burnout and mental illness, for sickness and fatigue, for the obligations of life that sometimes crowd out everything else. We live in a context, in a society, and creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Is it self-will if you’re working three jobs and don’t have time to write? Is it self-will if you’re in Minneapolis and your creative projects have been put to the side in the interest of helping your neighbors? Is it self-will if you have a newborn who is up all night, leaving you absolutely exhausted all day?

Many kinds of Christianity — certainly the individualist American pull yourself up by your bootstraps kind — would say yes, it is self-will and it is sinful and you should find a way to serve God regardless. Unfortunately, Cameron seems to suggest the same.

What in the ever loving fuck is “good orderly direction”?

I don’t disagree that if you explore creativity, at some point you will have one of those magical experiences where you lose your I, where you’re deep in flow, where something comes out of you and you’re like what the fuck, that wasn’t me!

But I do disagree that “God” is “good orderly direction,” or that “good orderly direction” is the point of a creative practice. First, I don’t think that creativity is inherently, in and of itself, moral. I also don’t think that spirits or deities ascribe to the same kind of morality humans do, if morality is a concept for them at all.

And much as it pains me to say it, much as I am a Saturn-ruled Capricorn eldest daughter who loves a routine, creativity — the process and exploration of — is the FURTHEST thing from “orderly” as we could possibly get. As for direction, it’s nice! but it’s not always available! and sometimes the best creative discoveries come when we throw the metaphorical compass out the window.

This is the kind of statement that doesn’t embrace creativity for its own sake, pleasure for its own sake, ART for its own sake. Things do not need to be “good” or “orderly” or have “direction” to be deeply emotionally and spiritually edifying.

Yes: if you open yourself to spirit or extra sensory experiences, change sure can happen.

But once again, there’s that framing of a “creator” who gives gifts and changes — and who is presented as being in a superior power dynamic with us that feels less like collaboration and more like “acknowledge/worship me and I give you this.”

I do like this. Cameron definitely influenced how I think about the relationship between vulnerability and creativity. And creativity is a muscle — the more you work it, the stronger it gets.

Whew boy. I remember first reading Cameron as a Christian teenager and having some issues with her language here, because the ideas that humans can access divinity on earth is decidedly not evangelical-friendly. There’s a prosperity gospel / New Age blend happening here, with this idea that being in relationship with a divine source can make you divine. And once again, this is not especially agency-centric for artists, nor is it especially in line with animistic traditions.

I do think we can have dreams from spirit or a divine source, absolutely. But the idea that the impulse to create inherently comes from the previously mentioned creator — no. I firmly reject that.

I am (obviously) not the biggest fan of Christianity, or The Artist’s Way. In particular, I am not a fan of worldviews that assume a supreme or superior creator to whom creation owes our thoughts and actions. I also see the intersection of fundamentalist, evangelical Protestant Christianity and America’s civic religion of (white supremacist) individualism and self-reliance in Cameron’s work. Yes, she tries to state that artists shouldn’t work alone, but there is no space afforded for how resources, access, and systemic discrimination may impact an artist’s experience. The assumption of economic privilege is tone deaf at best; it was in 1992 and it is in 2026. But in Cameron’s worldview and language, that lack of access, that new disability or chronic illness flare-up, that childcare falling through also becomes moralized with the weight of expectation and obligation.

Where is the space for rest, for input, for recovery, for people living different lives with different kinds of resources and access? There is a flattening of the artist’s experience. There is little room for nuance.

The Artist’s Way offers little help for spiritually-oriented artists who reject the binary, monotheistic creator-creation power dynamic. There isn’t a conception of how to creative engage in a poly-faith enspirited world of ancestors, deities, spirits of the land, spirits of the home, etc. There isn’t a recognition of how place can be haunted or enspirited, helpful or harmful; of how certain times of year might lend themselves more to certain kinds of creative work.

But I’m getting ahead of myself — more on that in my forthcoming work.

More books, more writers doing this kind of work. More faiths and religions and spiritual ideas represented. If there were more books like this in the world, if it was less Artist’s Way or bust, if major artists like Doechii didn’t have to rely on creativity books that were written before they were born, then the conversation would be different, and this particular book’s Christian worldview would have much lower stakes.

I was recently asked by someone on Instagram what books I would recommend instead of The Artist’s Way, and the list is at present unfortunately small. I think Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic and Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art both accomplish similar discussions and insights for spiritually-minded writers, without the Christian worldview of it all and in a much more expansive, less morally limited framing.

I also strive to strike that balance here at the newsletter, discussing the relationship between creativity and spirituality on a weekly basis, whether we’re talking about book altars or the bane of AI or creative discipline vs. creative devotion. And like I mentioned before, I’m working on a book based on the newsletter, Astrology for Artists, forthcoming from Hachette in spring 2027. In the meantime, you can subscribe to this newsletter for weekly missives on creativity and spirituality.

And as always, please keep it respectful!