So far, four thousand posts have been published on Ichabod. There are about 8,000 unique readers and 330,000 pages read per year. Bogging is fun and brings me a lot of new information daily. I appreciate the contacts from laity, pastors, and theological students.
I find it convenient to follow a lot of Lutheran activity by using the Lutheran News service, which I link on the left - I should say Far Left. Originally the site had a section for Ichabod. Now it does not. However, it does pick up all the Ichabod posts, plus Norman Teigen's, and various other samplings. Blog reading reminds me of library research in the old days. I would target certain works I really wanted, but I also wandered through sections simply to find new material. I heard Stan Hauerwas explaining the same method to someone.
Now I blog-hop.
I have noticed blogs that linked Ichabod at first and stopped. I do not mind, because Google picks up my posts instantly. If I stop to add some references to a post, I often find that the first site listed on Google is my latest one, from a minute before. Art also gets picked up as quickly.
The only thing that bothers me about the un-linking is the attitude behind it, if I can guess motivation. Some worry about reactions from the Lutheran apostates, and the apostates do punish people. The ELCA Wannabees, Shrinkers, and papalists brag openly about their own associations - see Church and Change, Jesus First, and the Missourians sinuflecting toward Rome.
More importantly, why be so timid? The Word makes us bold. Fear is not the opposite of courage but of faith. The more we trust God's Word, the less fear we have. I do not link sites because I agree with them, but because Lutherans need to be up to date about what is happening.
Paul McCain, MDiv, has an amusing post on the Joint Declaration on Justification. That is where ELCA did its own genuflecting to Rome, providing an amalgamation of justification by faith and justification by works.
However, I do not see how McCain can complain. The UOJ position he defends is exactly the same as ELCA's crypto-Universalism.
UOJ teaches everyone is forgiven without faith.
ELCA teaches that everyone is already forgiven. Both teach that their almost identical position is the truth Gospel. ELCA took doctrinal error, similar to McCain's, and combined it with Rome's error.
McCain, like the famous Senator in Arizona, is good at tagging along after trends, so he is currently on the Roman worship bandwagon, which will certainly carry many more to the papacy and Eastern Orthodoxy. (Cf. McCain pal Fenton - EO.)
ELCA and UOJ are demonstrably wrong, but try to tell that to people who parade around with their Confessions without knowing them, without ever standing up for them when it counts.
