What Hath Marla Wrought?
October 9, 2005
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Blogging, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Community, Counterculture, In the News, Relevance Functions : Trackback,
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Okay, so Marla Swoffer over at Always Thirsty posts her Retro vs. Metro analysis of the factions that comprise the Christian blogosphere. Controversial? Well, she may have topped even my myths of homeschooling and blogging might be a waste of time posts. Then she reopens a past swipe I took at some of the Retro folks, trying to drain further blood out of the blogging leviathan that is Tim Challies.
I think she's nuts in attempting this comparison, but I'm listed as a co-conspirator; to save my blogging life I must comment below. My preferences are backgrounded in cerulean blue. Where there is no highlighting at all on either side, there is no preference or I simply want to stay out of a minefield. If both sides are highlighted, then I think a dichotomy is impossible.
| RETRO | METRO |
|---|---|
| Rural or Small Town | Urban or Suburban |
| Challies | iMonk |
| ESTJ | INFP |
| Left-Brained | Right-Brained |
| Conservative | Liberal |
| Calvinist | Arminian |
| Quiver Full | Family Planning |
| Prose | Poetry |
| C.S. Lewis: Mere Christianity | C.S. Lewis: Chronicles of Narnia |
| Homeschool | Public School |
| Pyromaniac | Tall Skinny Kiwi |
| Think | Feel |
| Sola Scriptura | God Revealed in Many Ways |
| Apologetics | Testimony |
| Puritans | Mystics |
| God the Father | Jesus |
| Isolate | Integrate |
| Past | Future |
| Gifts of the Spirit: NO | Gifts of the Spirit: YES |
| Words | Pictures |
| Criminal Justice | Social Justice |
| Proverbs | Psalms |
| Amy's Humble Musings | (vacancy) |
| Historic Reformation | New Reformation |
| Older | Younger |
| Patriotic | Global |
| Women: Traditional | Women: Egalitarian |
| Rant | Brood |
| Do | Dream |
| Reformed | Emergent |
| Theologically Correct | Relationally Relevant |
| Psychology: NO | Psychology: YES |
| The Thinklings | The Boar's Head Tavern |
| ESV | The Message |
| Certain | Open |
| Catholics: NO | Catholics: YES |
| Sermon | Conversation |
| Truth | Love |
| Hymns | Modern Music |
| Craftsmanship | Technology |
| Literal | Metaphorical |
| Harry Potter - NO | Harry Potter - YES |
| PC | Mac |
I don't want to get dragged into the battles on birth control, don't ascribe entirely to either the Calvinist or Arminian points of view, and have been over the schooling issues recently. My pick out of the Trinity? C'mon! Plus Marla forgot the Holy Spirit in that mix, so that makes the whole enterprise suspect. Justice has to cut all ways, but I'm burned out on justice issues, so I'm not commenting. Both the Reformed side and Emergent side have some blinders on, and the whole idea of pitting theology versus relationship is a moot one
Concerning my non-committal ways on a few blogs, both Tim Challies and Michael Spencer have linked to Cerulean Sanctum a couple times in the last ten days, so I don't bite the hands that expose this blog to more readers. Between the two, I probably come down somewhere in the middle. Phil versus Andrew? I've never gotten much from the Kiwi, and I read the Pyro more for the good writing and snark appeal than the apologetics, so those two are a wash for me.
There were a lot of false distinctions; on many of those I highlighted both sides. I think the distinction between Sola Scriptura versus God Revealed in Many Ways is a truly poor one, since I believe that they aren't in opposition. That may leave some readers scratching their heads, but I have no problem with my position even when those on both sides would contend it's impossible to believe both are equally true.
Anyway, that's where I stand. I can do no more.
Now what blog empire wants to strike back?
Posts
Comments
There’s two kinds of people in this world…
People who divide people into two groups and people who don’t.
(ha!)
Actually, this is just another Christrian (mis)appropriation of a secular ad campaign - in this case, a political one (http://www.retrovsmetro.org/retrovsmetro/) But as long as she sends more traffic to the BHT as a result, who am I to complain? ;-}
I’m just thankful you came down on the right side of the PC-Mac issue. : )
Dan, I’m impressed that you tabled your response
…but I’m miffed at your commenters who obviously didn’t read through the whole post since I reiterated numerous times the very thing they accuse me of—that my point was to demonstrate the fallacy of the Reformed vs. Emergent war while highlighting some differences in temperament. It’s okay. I’m used to people not “getting” me 
And I think this whole “don’t people in boxes” thing is a cliche and smacks of “thou doth protest”, but I shall rant about that another time…
(I wish I had known how to make a graph instead but my HTML isn’t that advanced, nor would my 8 month-old and three year-old allow me the luxury of building such an elaborate demographical chart.)
Dan,
The only thing I noticed in my 30 second perusal of the html is that your blog software is inserting BR tags in your table tags. You might consider removing all line breaks in your table syntax - and possibly adding a “valign=top” attribute to the table.
Not sure if that will help.
Bill,
Got it solved.
I originally searched for the term “table” in Blogger’s help and got nothing. But on a lark I Googled it instead and it found within Blogger’s help the answer: The entire table has to be on one line in Blogger. No nice formatting to make it look good! So I stuck the table in Word and stripped all the carriage returns, pasted the one line table back in and Voila!
Thanks for the help! Why Blogger doesn’t like a tidy table is beyond me. And why their search feature can’t locate certain words within their Help, but Google can, is another weird one.
Looking at the screwball table, well, all I can say is when the dementors come by, I just shout “It is ridiculous!”
I don’t know where I fall on this…it’s kind of confusing, but hey, aren’t we all at some time or another?
I’ve been in this “war,” and if Marla’s point is to show the fallacy of it, and the uneeded controversy, then GO MARLA!!!
I did something similar when I posted on Rick Warren. 176 comments later, I know war is uneeded between Christians.
As one of the youngest teen bloggers who actually writes real posts (and has been on national radio!), I think that we need to quit arguing. I mean, discussion is great! But when it comes down to whether or not you’re saved…well, that’s too far.
The Retro :-P.
Agent Tim
I’m scratching my head over the whole thing. I don’t understand Marla’s point in doing this.
iMonk is metro? The guy doesn’t even like tattoos or piercings. A Calvinist by any other name … and he and Pyro run hand in hand on most issues.
I like Marla, but I think only those in the reformed Christian bloghetto would care about this.