Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Blogging

  • MBWR #131 and My Highlights

    The Methodist Blogs Weekly Roundup has been posted. Thanks to Allan Bevere for his hard work.

    I’m doing today what I wish I always had time to do, which is look at a bunch of the posts and pick out some of my own highlights. These don’t coincide with the “Best of the Methodist Blogosphere” that Allan hands out. Usually I latch onto them because they talk about something I’ve been interested in recently. Usually I read them and think about doing a links post. Today I’m going to turn intentions into actions.

    Well, thanks to Allan for giving me a list that wasn’t intimidatingly long. I always find wonderful posts in his list, but I rarely manage to give them due credit. I hope some of my readers will enjoy these posts.

  • Complegalitarian

    Wayne Leman, in a commendable effort to maintain a tighter focus on Better Bibles, has started a new group blog Complegalitarian, which he defines as “Adj. Pertaining to complementarianism and egalitarianism.” This would take the largest single topic not directly related to Bible translation off of the Better Bibles blog.

    As I read it, discussion of translations related to such issues would still be welcome at Better Bibles, but discussions of the broader related issues of theology and how egalitarianism or complementarianism works in practice would be left for the new blog.

    I think this could be an enjoyable new blogging option.

  • Interviews, Journalism, and Blogging

    I’m generally positive about the influence of blogging on the flow of information. I think it’s valuable both in terms of news and commentary and even in academic discussions. It provides a new possibility for minority ideas. It’s a good place to test ideas and to get comment on them without doing the full research that would result in an academic paper, for example.

    Blogging obviously has its limitations as well. Let the reader beware. A blog entry such as this only takes a few minutes, and you don’t have any substantial way to check how accurate it is. In general, the modern age has made information much more accessible, and has also made media in general more accessible. That means that the reader has more choices and has to exercise those choices, hopefully intelligently.

    Journalist Steven Levy, writing in Newsweek/MSNBC, is concerned about the retreat of some people from face to face interviews. A recent interviewer was turned down for phone interviews by several bloggers, who asked for e-mail interviews. When the journalist objected, these bloggers wrote about it on their popular blogs. I can’t help but get the feeling that a major part of the problem here was that the journalist was annoyed that he couldn’t keep the topic under his control.

    Even more, however, I believe that face to face interviews, much beloved by journalists, often are not the best way to get a good idea of what’s going on. There are so many topics that require much more serious examination of the facts and a much more thoughtful response. Face to face interviews, and to an even greater extent the confrontations so loved by television journalists have a tendency to get off-the-cuff remarks, and they favor the person who can turn a catchy phrase the fastest, not necessarily the one who actually has the most in-depth knowledge of the subject, or the best judgment.

    Levy concludes:

    We in the journalism tribe operate under the belief that when we ask people to talk to us we are not acting out of self-interest but a sense of duty to inform the population. It’s an article of our faith that when subjects speak to us, they are engaging in a grand participatory act where everyone benefits. But these lofty views don’t impress bloggers like Rosen. “You have to prove [you represent the public],” he says. Yes, we do. But every time we lose the priceless knowledge from those essential, real-time interviews, our stories are impoverished, to the detriment of our readers: you.

    Well, no, not exactly. We are not impoverished. Rather, we are enriched by the availability of new options. It takes a very tribal mindset (and Levy is right to invoke the phrase “journalism tribe”) to assume that the addition of new options and new ways for information to flow results in impoverishment.

  • Christian Carnival CLXX

    . . . has been posted at Brain Cramps for God. It has a nice theme, lots of good information and many interesting posts.

  • Christian Reconciliation Blog Carnival #4

    . . . has been posted at Pseudo-Polymath. Despite my delinquency in sending in posts, this is a carnival I want to support. It’s small now, but has some excellent material but I think it’s only going to get better. Besides, where can you find a better goal?

  • Methodist Blog Weekly Roundup 4/13/07

    . . . has been posted by Allan Bevere.

  • I’ve Been Memed!

    Laura has tagged me with the thinking blogger meme, and thus now I’m a

    . . . or rather I’m not the award; hopefully I’m a thinking blogger.

    I appreciate the compliment, and if Laura hadn’t tagged me first she would be on my own list. Interesting, annoying, challenging, uplifting, but always getting me thinking.

    So where do I go in the blogosphere when I want my thinking challenged. There are a number of group blogs, but I’m going to leave them off the list (Better Bibles, The Panda’s Thumb) and go for individual blogs where I go for gems of good and or creative thinking.

    Here’s my list:

    Dispatches from the Culture Wars. Ed was the first blogger I read, and he and I first met in the good old days when most online dialog was done on various fora.

    Pseudo-Polymath, who regularly challenges me.

    Bruce Alderman or It Seems to Me . . ., who manages to challenge with gentle good humor.

    Monastic Mumblings, whose take on spirituality is extremely refreshing.

    Speaker of Truth, where Peter Kirk has challenged me a fair number of times more than I have responded. Don’t worry, Peter. I’ve got those old posts to which I should have responded, and hopefully I’ll get to them before I reach the kingdom of heaven! (Good link here.)

    There are numerous blogs I regularly read and even respond to that are not on this list. I’m not sure I could explain just why one made it but not another, so we’ll just call it random.

    * * * * *

    Here are the rules:

    Congratulations, you won a thinking blogger award! (See the image above).

    Should you choose to participate, please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging. I thought it would be appropriate to include them with the meme.

    The participation rules are simple:

    1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
    2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
    3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).

  • Added John H Armstrong to my Blogroll

    Based on some links passed to me by a friend in e-mail, I’m adding John H Armstrong to my blogroll. (Note that this is the blogroll for this site, not the Moderate Christian Blogroll. There were three posts that led to this:

    • Trinity United Church of Christ: Obama’s Home Church
      This post looks at some of the criticisms of Barack Obama based on faith. I find it particularly helpful, because it is written by someone who is not inclined to be a political apologist for Obama, but is interested in the truth. I have been concerned with the attacks on Obama, which tend to make a lie out of the phrase “person of faith.” Many of those who claim to be looking for “people of faith” in government have come to reject Obama’s faith because it doesn’t look precisely like their own.
    • The Day the Christian Right Redefined the Meaning of “Christian”
      This discusses Dr. James Dobson’s comment that Fred Thompson was not a Christian. It makes some very good points. Again, the author comes from a more conservative viewpoint than mine, but that just gives him a greater right to comment on conservative issues. It’s an excellent post.
    • The Ecumenism I Promote
      This is just a plain good, short article on ecumenism and what it is, and should be, about.

    This all looks like good, thoughtful material that deserves reading and consideration. This one goes on my blogroll!

  • Christian Reconciliation Blog Carnival #3

    . . . has been posted, by yours truly, on the Pacesetters Bible School Newsletter site.

  • Philophronos Blogroll Growing

    Laura has a good post welcoming the latest member of the Philophronos Blogroll, Pen of the Wayfarer. I join in welcoming a new member, and I’d also like to remind readers what this idea is about.

    But first, it is not about hiding your light under a bushel, diminishing your witness, or glossing over what you truly believe. If you look at Laura’s blog and mine you’ll see that she supports the war in Iraq while I oppose it. We haven’t changed our minds, nor do we pretend to think that the other position has more merit than we used to. What Philophronos blogging calls for is that you express your opinions about the facts, and much less about people’s character. Of course there are times when it is appropriate to talk about character, but when you do, it should relate to evidence and not just innuendo.

    There is no Philophonos police force, who read your blog to decide whether you have lived up to some set of rules. Rather, this is something you take on yourself, and your readers get to judge whether you’re living up to your claim. I think there is an enormous amount that we can learn from one another, which is one reason that I read more conservative blogs each day than liberal ones. My moderation tilts a bit leftward, so I balance my reading a bit rightward. And no, I don’t expect that conservative readers will believe that I have given their views adequate attention even so, but that’s not the point. The point is that I do learn from people who disagree with me.

    So if you’re a Christian blogger, consider the Philophronos Blogroll.

    Note: The text Laura quotes, 1 Peter 3:15-16, is also the theme text for Consider Christianity Week, concerning which I will blog next. (See also Consider Christianity Week 2007 on the Pacesetters Bible School, Inc. web site.)