Why Professors Should Blog

If anything has inspired, amused, and occasionally annoyed me at seminary, it is that so many professors are under the impression that their ideas can change the world. I've read countless articles and books implying that if people really believed what the author believed about (insert relevant theology/methodology/interpretation here) then the church would be saved, oppression ended, and the world redeemed.

Unfortunately, most of them have chosen a very clunky and cumbersome way to proclaim their message: books. The process of publishing a books (especially an aspiring PhD's student's first book) takes in the neighborhood of five to ten years, and its end result is often so expensive and esoteric that only academic libraries and other professors in the same field can afford to buy it. (And, if it gets really successful, then perhaps it gets foisted off on a few unsuspecting college/grad students as well!) Therefore, the reach of most academic books, (unless they are absolute dynamite) is extremely limited, measured in the tens of thousands, or perhaps even the hundreds of readers, rather in millions.

So I wonder, if professors care so much about their ideas, if they believe, that their ideas can change the world, then why not blog about them?

Blogs carry with them several sizable advantages over books:

1) They're cheap- anyone with a computer can write one, anyone with a computer can read one, without having to shell out $50-$150 for the privilege.

2) They're contemporary- if a burning issue comes up, then you can write about instantly, rather than having to wait 5-10 years to get a book published (at which point it is automatically outdated.)

3) Their success based on merit- If (and I admit, this is a big "if"), you engage with other blogs and post interesting, compelling material, then people will read your work. It doesn't require a PhD, a slick proposal, or connections with a publishing house to get your ideas out there.

4) Their potential audience is gigantic- An academic book reaches a very small subsection of the population (measured in the tens of thousands), a successful blog could reach millions.

Granted, there are some drawbacks. Blog posts don't lend themselves too long, complicated, interconnected arguments. However, with the advent of easy to make e-books, or even publishing on demand, it is still possible to disseminate more complex academic works to a wide audience. (In fact, blogging provides a built-in customer base for any would-be book author.)

Therefore, may I suggest to all the professors reading this post (of which I believe there might be one, who is already online here), if you truly care about disseminating your ideas, blog!

Liberal Tolerance Is A Lie

I was sitting in class this evening, and someone brought up a book that a lot of us were reading in a separate class, Purpose Driven Church. Immediately, almost everyone gasped in horror and disgust (someone even made the symbol of a cross at the book!) The passage in question, Rick Warren’s suggestion of starting worship with an upbeat song (never mind that most mainline churches do that) became the symbol of all that was wrong with evangelicalism- shallow, demanding only a one time commitment, and giving no impetus for long term discipleship. At the end of the conversation, the book symbolized everything wrong with all those big churches and those conservative pastors: it was “manipulative”, “shallow”, “boring”, and “irrelevant” for mainline ministry.

This was blatant, first class, shameless, theologically fundamentalist stereotyping. In the end, for many of my classmates, Rick Warren’s conservatism invalidated everything he said about pastoral leadership. Furthermore, their criticisms willfully ignored huge stretches of the book where Rick Warren talks about member’s rigorous discipleship training program (which would put most of our mainline churches to shame) or where he notes that his chapter on worship primarily refer to “seeker services”, which are geared exclusively for non-Christians, while members get a service with more depth later in the week.

I am not surprised by this episode, but I am disappointed. It’s a shame that my classmates, who have been lectured by liberal professors time and time again to “read a text in its entirety” and to “not prooftext”, have just willfully done exactly that.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time I’ve seen this happen at Drew. (And if you talk to any conservative student at my school, they can tell you stories about the times they’ve been stereotyped or even demonized by other students and professors.)

Oh well, so much for that much vaunted liberal tolerance.