I just checked out again the Biblioblog top 50—the 50 biblical studies-related blogs that had the most hits in the past month. That includes a pretty big bunch of blogs, nearly 600 from across the theological (and even atheistical) spectrum.
So why are there comparatively few conservative evangelical blogs among the top 50? Justin Taylor and Andy Naselli—and even Al Mohler—are nowhere to be found. No Tim Challies. No Trevin Wax. No Rod Decker. No Carl Trueman. The blogs I’ve just listed are all part of the site’s database (with the exception of the last, probably because people who blog using incomprehensible British pseudonymous personalities are disqualified), but they didn’t make the top 50 at any time in 2012.
The August, 2012 top 50 was actually topped by the “Debunking Christianity” blog. And most of the other blogs on the November, 2012 list, from what I can tell, are theologically liberal. Some are Jewish. One is an unchurched Christian of some strange sort. I don’t read any of them. Not one. (I used to read Evangelical Textual Criticism and Euangelion, but no more. And Euangelion is evangelical but too far left, too academically dry, and too iconoclastic for my tastes. καὶ τὰ λοιπά is interesting, but I had to take it out of my feeds for time reasons.)
I am genuinely curious about the failure of evangelicals to show up on—much less dominate—the list; I was pretty surprised by it. I thought mainline Protestantism was dying, that evangelicalism was far more vital and large. So why are blogs that push mainline views more popular than evangelical blogs?
- Is it possible that there is a greater number of evangelical bloggers and that they therefore tend to drive down each other’s stats by spreading out the overall readership too thinly?
- Is it that evangelicals are fooling themselves about their influence and actually constitute a minority of self-proclaimed Christians in the English-speaking world? (Is it, indeed, that hit counts include the whole globe and not just the U.S.?)
- Is it that a lot of left-wing evangelicals are paying attention to liberal blogs because that’s the direction they’re headed?
- Is it that the top 50’s hit counts are influenced by links from culturally mainstream sites like the Huffington Post—people who pay no attention to evangelicals?
- Does this have something to do with a North Korean plot? (Just kidding, just kidding! It would have to be Iranian.)
What do you think?
P.S. And why do so many top blogs have such horrendous graphic design?