Greetings!

Since April 2004, I've been writing the Religion blog for OregonLive, the online version of the Portland Oregonian. (Archives at the link only go back to 2007; here's a link to the old site.) I'm one of many citizen bloggers that OregonLive hosts, meaning I'm not a professional journalist. I'm starting this blog for several reasons: One, I have other interests that I never get to post on over there, such as space science. Two, I feel obligated to post on current events that have to do with religion at OregonLive, even those I have no interest in. So here, I'll just post whatever I want whenever I want. Three, I don't really think of the religion blog as my blog, but as a blog I happen to write. I expect to have a greater sense of ownership here.

I've tended to steer away from controversial subjects, but I expect to be a little freer with my opinions over here (i.e. I'll probably be more obnoxious). Having said this, however, I suspect some of my reasons for avoiding controversy will transfer to this blog as well. My biggest motive is that I want to present as disarming a picture of Christianity as possible to those who aren't Christians, and so I want to remove stumbling blocks, not add to them. For many people, Christianity isn't a live option, and I want to open it up to those in the marketplace for worldviews. This is important to me because it's where I came from: when I first started looking at Christianity in my mid-20s, I thought it was the intellectual equivalent of believing that the earth is flat. It was a great shock to me to discover that many of the world's top scientists, philosophers, and intellectuals in general are Christians.

I will probably cross-post items on both blogs, and repost items here that I've posted before at OregonLive. On those occasions, I'll include a link and a statement at the top or bottom of the post indicating such. Reposted items might be rewritten; I don't know if that violates some Internet rule, but if it does it shouldn't. I'm the author of the original and I'm linking to the original version anyway, so it's not like I'm trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes. I don't see how it would be different from an author writing an updated edition of a book.