Year-End Blog Statistics: Who’s Out There

It’s nearly the end of the year, and I’m still wondering about carrying on this weblog. I don’t really “blog,” of course. Real bloggers write several times a day, in short bits, about lots of different things. This blog is more like a column that I self-publish once or twice a week. So who cares?

I’ve published 152 entries since I started a couple of years ago. Over this past year, the trend of visits has been upward, to an average of 5000-5500 visits per month. Is that a lot? It isn’t much compared to very popular Christian scholarly bloggers such as Scot McKnight or Ben Witherington, I’m sure. But I’m gratified by the quality of readers evident in some of the comments and by the e-mails acquaintances old and new sometimes send me. Thanks for each one, friends!

The ratio of comments to posts is about 10:1, but commenting varies wildly in quality and quantity depending on the post. I like to think that most of my readers mostly agree with me most of the time, and thus merely nod their heads sagely at the end of a column and move on without commenting. I realize there are other ways of construing the statistics on this matter, but hey, that’s what I like to think, okay?

I look forward to this new year and to blogging some more. I’ve got a few hot topics in the bin yet that I hope will interest you, too. Subscribe (directions can be found via the Pages on the top right of the main page) if that will convenience your reading. Send along a link to friends who might enjoy this sort of writing. (Most readers apparently are North American, not surprisingly. But it’s been great to see readers popping up consistently in the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Korea–and sometimes also in farflung places in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. I’d be glad for more comments from those countries to help me understand issues from these other points of view.)

If you would like to see particular subjects addressed here, please let me know. And please do comment: A great deal of the reward of this non-lucrative venture is interaction, so interact, you lurkers!

Christmas Movies: Recommendations?

Our gang watched Scrooged last night, one of the two best renditions of A Christmas Carol ever filmed, the other being the Alistair Sim classic. Scrooged is quite dated—younger viewers won’t get the irony of the casting of Buddy Hackett (has-been), Jamie Farr (famous for precisely one TV role, in M*A*S*H), and John Houseman (ubiquitous at the time, but long gone). And the “Solid Gold Dancers” will make no sense at all, but they did then, sort of. There are a few bits of crude humour (Bill Murray insists on a clause in every contract that each of his movies has some gratuitous swearing and sniggering—no, just kidding), but not as many as you might think. In all, however, it is a pretty powerful, awfully hilarious rendition of this mostly secular fable of redemption. Murray pulls it off convincingly, and has a superb supporting cast to play off. Alfre Woodard in her “Bob Cratchit” role is luminous as always, and Carol Kane’s Christmas fairy is one of the funniest characters in all Christmas moviedom. I know I’ll catch hell for recommending a movie that has some wicked bits in it, but this one is really good.

A Christmas Story has entered the pantheon of Christmas classics. All I’ll say about it here is that (a) Darren McGavin is a distant relative of mine; (b) my sons think that his character is modeled on me, especially his mild, temperate disposition; and (c) Kari and I were among the 237 people who actually went to see this movie when it was first released in theatres. We’re glad our initial judgment—that it is touchingly nostalgic and surprisingly witty—has been shared by more and more people each year.

Finally, the “Santa Clause” movies. Number Three is a startlingly disappointing sequel. But the first two are a pleasure of the imagination and the funny bone. Tim Allen plays a surprisingly believable Santa Claus (good actors are scary people: would you actually want Tim Allen to be Santa Claus?), the costumes are splendid (the best use of red and green in any movie ever), and the family dynamics sit-com-ish but charming nonetheless.

Some of you will be dismayed that a theologian has recommended three movies that have almost no Christian content. Fair enough. What are your favourites and why?

When Is a Conservative (Evangelical) Not a Conservative?

(I know I just wrote I have to sign off until the New Year, but I just can’t help myself this morning…)

Over the last several decades, many North American evangelicals have had to fight hard to be understood as not necessarily politically conservative just because they were theologically conservative. I remember a prominent Canadian evangelical leader telling reporters that evangelicals were aligning with right-wing politics because they were “conservative.” But that was to connect two quite different categories: There is no logical connection between conservative Christian faith and conservative contemporary politics.

A couple of American presidential elections ago, journalists were shocked—shocked!—to find some evangelicals who were voting Democratic. Jim Wallis had a brief moment in the sun as Exhibit A, although if journalists had paid attention to black evangelicals, they wouldn’t have been so surprised at evangelicals aligning with Democratic politics.

The “conservative/liberal” labeling is more complicated still, however.

Merry Yule, Y’all

My family and I are about to move from Vancouver to North Vancouver, a move of about seven minutes’ drive across the Second Narrows Bridge. Not a big move, but a move, which means the alteration and, in many cases, disconnection and reconnection of the many systems in which we all are enmeshed in North America: bank and credit card accounts, utilities, insurance agencies, and so on, and so on.

Among the interruptions we’ll be experiencing is the loss of Internet access possibly until Christmas. So I’ll almost certainly have to leave off posting until then.

Until next time, then, may God grant you a blessed Advent season and happy Christmas–all twelve days of it! And, to do it right, which is to say, to do it informedly, buy and read the excellent books by my excellent friend, Gerry Bowler–Ph.D., King’s College, London, and expert in all things Christmassy.

The Ethics of Filmmaking: A New Course at Regent College Next Summer



Here’s some early notice of the course I’ll be co-teaching next summer at Regent’s pretty fabulous Summer School. Now, if you’re inclined to stop reading at the words “summer school,” please read on.

Regent’s summer school is not “remedial” for those who failed the regular courses (!), nor is it generally the grind associated with many summer schools. (I’ve taught a few of those courses, too, but not at Regent!)

Instead, Regent’s very popular summer school (which runs in two sections: spring and summer, from May to August) is more like “summer camp for grown-ups” and is comprised mainly of one- and two-week courses for just two or three hours a day. Those who sign up for credit have 45 days to go home, do the reading and assignments, and then mail it all in. Those who audit pay less (!) and don’t do the homework at all!

In between the courses there are noonhour concerts, evening public lectures, salmon barbecues on Vancouver beaches, architectual tours, and more. Bring the family and spend your vacation blessing mind, body, and spirit. Check it out here.

Now, this blog entry is about the course I’m going to be doing with my friend Ralph Winter. It’s just one week, so we will have to cover a lot of ground in a short time, but I think it’ll be a blast. It’s simply called “The Ethics of Filmmaking” and it will cover how money, sex, power, and ideology affect commercial filmmaking, with particular reference to Hollywood but to other other film centres (such as Vancouver itself) and, indeed, to other media as well.