{"id":751,"date":"2007-01-18T14:06:12","date_gmt":"2007-01-18T19:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=751"},"modified":"2007-03-02T15:35:37","modified_gmt":"2007-03-02T20:35:37","slug":"what-makes-a-good-religious-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=751","title":{"rendered":"What makes a good religious blog?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, I&#8217;ve been thinking about writing some critical reviews of other religious blogs. But what makes for a good religious blog? Below, I&#8217;ve listed some of the criteria I use for judging religious blogs (of course, no one blog will meet all these criteria).<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d love to know what criteria you use to judge the quality of religious blogs, or of blogs in general &#8212; leave your criteria in the comments.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Good writing<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>Well-crafted prose or verse<\/li>\n<li>Distinctive voice<\/li>\n<li>Aimed at a recognizable audience<\/li>\n<li>Worthy subject matter [added per Jess&#8217;s suggestion in comments]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<li>Good blogging practices<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>Posts that appear with some regularity (daily, three times a week, weekly; but at least weekly)<\/li>\n<li>Comments enabled and responded to; nasty comments and comment spam removed in a timely fashion<\/li>\n<li>Posts corrected and\/or updated as needed<\/li>\n<li>Adherence to some style book, including consistent style for hyperlinks<\/li>\n<li>Social networking in the form of some connection to other blogs<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<li>Significant content about the faith tradition, including for example (examples are for my faith tradition):<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>Exploration of the distinctively Unitarian and Universalist theological traditions, and\/or<\/li>\n<li>Exploration of the Unitarian and Universalist historical traditions, and\/or<\/li>\n<li>A willingness to engage in defining boundaries of the tradition, and\/or<\/li>\n<li>Serious, frank, thoughtful discussion of contemporary issues facing Unitarian Universalism<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<li>A focus on lived religion, including for example:<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>Reflections on what it means to live life as a Unitarian Universalist (or insert other religious tradition), and\/or<\/li>\n<li>Connecting events from everyday life with spiritual or religious concerns (at least sometimes), and\/or<\/li>\n<li>Discussions of politics and social action, <em>if discussed from a religious perspective<\/em>, and <em>with a clear distinction<\/em> made between, e.g., liberal religion and liberal politics<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<li>An openness to those from other faith traditions<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>A majority of the writing is not aimed at &#8220;insiders&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><em>All<\/em> acronyms explained in every post; technical language explained frequently<\/li>\n<li>Significant religious content or discussion that is not specific to the faith tradition<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, I&#8217;ve been thinking about writing some critical reviews of other religious blogs. But what makes for a good religious blog? Below, I&#8217;ve listed some of the criteria I use for judging religious blogs (of course, no one blog will meet all these criteria). I&#8217;d love to know what criteria you use to judge the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-blogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}