My former blog, speculationsandsuch, had a lengthy tenure. I blogged there on and off for over five years. But I think it’s time for a fresh start. I am embarassed by the naivete of some of what I wrote there as well by some of the controversies I stirred up with it.
By far my longest stint away from blogging has occurred in the past year. I have not written on speculationsandsuch since January. Partially, this is because I was extremely busy last year. But it’s also partially because I’ve had conversations in the past year with academic friends who have told me that blogging draws too much time away from academic writing and that it’s therefore not a justifiable use of time. In the past few weeks, however, I’ve heard more than one critique of that position. First, in the Hispanic Theological Initiative conference that I just attended at Princeton Theological Seminary, Uli Guthrie mentioned that the publishing industry is changing rapidly as a result of decreasing profits and online publishing capabilities. That means that academics will have to begin exploring alternative venues for publication and that the process of obtaining tenure will have to be reformed. Moreover, scholars will need to publicize their work to a greater degree in order to convince publishers to take on their work. That doesn’t necessarily mean blogging, but blogging is one way to attract an audience for one’s work.
Secondly, yesterday I had coffee with Prof. Dault, a recent graduate of Vanderbilt’s Graduate Department of Religion, who is an avid blogger. I probed him with questions about the process of writing, and he told me that he writes approximately four to five hours a day. Not all of this is academic writing. Some of it is for pleasure. But the idea is to sort of ‘prime the pump’ everyday so that one’s skills do not become rusty. So there’s yet another reason to get back on the horse.
So I’ll begin writing here with a high degree of frequency. The themes will not be unlike speculationsandsuch. Undoubtedly, it will be slanted toward history – history of theology, law, politics, culture – since that’s what I spend my time studying these days. But from time to time I’ll talk about life and about the things that concern me about our culture and the contemporary church. I hope that you’ll join me and make this blog a conversation rather than a monologue.
Great! I’m looking forward to this new forum and keeping up with your thoughts. Best of luck on the new blog!
I’m sorry you felt the need to kill the old blog. I think watching the evolution of a writer is one of the great things about a blog. However, I am glad you are back at the wheel.
Thomas+