At the AAR this past weekend, Beatrice Marovich hosted a discussion about the decline of theology. Eventually, this evolved into a discussion of the decline of theology blogging, which was where many of us had cut our teeth intellectually — and, of course, where many of us met in the first place. I have been processing this conversation over the past few days and wanted to write down some thoughts for posterity, as someone who was (if I may boast of such an august position) pretty central to the enterprise of theology blogging at its height.

The first question to ask is why theology blogging took off in the mid to late 2000s. I believe that part of the reason is simply that theology as a field has many intrinsic properties that dispose it to a relatively open-ended, undisciplined discussion like the blogosphere. Above all, theology is inherently interdisciplinary, combining conceptual analysis, literary interpretation, historical and political reflection, cultural criticism — basically everything that any humanities discipline does is done in theology. People in theology were therefore ready to be part of the widest possible range of conversations in the humanities blogosphere, and people in my immediate intellectual circle were in fact closely engaged with bloggers in literary studies, philosophy, political theory, and many other fields.

There are other factors more particular to that historical moment. To put it bluntly, it was the Bush years. This meant that religion was an unavoidable topic. That was the heyday of political theology (in the “real,” Schmittian sense, not the broader sense of “politically engaged theology”) and of the Paul and philosophy trend — meaning that other intellectuals were ready to take theologians seriously as interlocutors in a way they might not have been in the 90s. By the same token, the fact that the evangelicals seemed to be so clearly in the ascendant in the 2000s produced many opportunities for alienation and disillusionment among intellectually curious and passionate young adults, in a way that would have been less potent when evangelicals could present themselves as a threatened subculture in the 90s.

From both directions, then, it was a perfect storm. And for a few years, things were very intellectually intense and exciting. But the vibe started to shift already as I was finishing up grad school. Part of it was a degree of attrition — people got jobs and got busy, or didn’t get jobs and dropped out. The impact of the Financial Crisis was especially damaging in the latter respect, and in cutting off the pipeline of younger participants. And of course there was social media, which cannibalized the entire internet. A big part of blogging culture were the comment threads, which fell virtually silent as people decided they preferred to comment on social media rather than on the post itself. For a time, I would exhort such people to comment on the blog if they wanted to join the conversation, and they inevitably dismissed the idea — or (since they tended to be left-leaning social media users) claimed that I was somehow violating the principles of social justice by suggesting that someone should comment in a space where they felt potentially “unsafe.” My reaction to such remarks, then and now, was: “Bullshit.” And in retrospect we can see how damaging it has been to shift all public discourse onto algorithmically-driven, profit-seeking platforms — which now even actively discourage the use of links that would take one outside the corporately-curated experience.

There were also factors specific to academic and particularly theology blogging. I am thinking here of the tendency toward institutionalization. Specialist journals, centers, and even departments started putting up blogs, which competed for everyone’s free writing time even as they squelched the free-wheeling fun of the blogosphere. Even among bloggers themselves, there were attempts to create quasi-institutions in the form of group blogs (like Long Sunday or The Valve in circles adjacent to me). Obviously this is somewhat hypocritical of me to criticize, since The Weblog and An und für sich were always group blogs. But they were also very clearly my personal blog, not an impersonal institution. Since I knew that few had the same writing stamina, my strategy was to provide the audience for whenever a friend or intellectual comrade wanted to put something out there. (In retrospect, I worry that my dominance might have dissuaded some potential contributors, but that’s a different problem than impersonal institutionality.)

In the theology blogging space, there were two attempted institutionalizations that I believe were particularly damaging. The first was Syndicate Theology, which stole the idea of doing book events on major new publications in theology (a stock in trade of The Weblog and An und für sich at their height) and sucked the life out of it by overproducing them. I know that saying “stole” may come across as loaded language, but I heard reliable reports that the creators of Syndicate had our practice specifically in mind when they developed the site. They did not consult with me in any way, nor did they solicit me to participate or offer to do an event on any of my books — all of which points to a guilty conscience in my opinion. I’m happy to burn that bridge publicly now, because of course virtually no one reads the site. Just like Borders, they put their independent competitors out of business before overextending themselves.

The other problematic institutionalization was the blog attached to the journal Political Theology. Reportedly they were forced to do the blog by the corporate owner of the journal, but even within that context they proceeded in an unethical way. In the early stages, they repeatedly attempted to “poach” writers from my blog — though, again, never me. Later on, they started apparently publishing anything anyone sent them, leading to some pretty embarrassing posts. Ultimately they put out something so egregious — accusing leftists of supporting jihad — that some friends and I, concerned with how the low quality of the blog and the offensiveness of that post might reflect on the field, requested that it be taken down. The editors were so stubbornly defensive that we were forced to publish an open letter on the issue. Along the way, they had offered that we could write a rebuttal piece for the blog or even take over some of the editorial duties — both insulting offers in context. I joked at the time that I would take over as their blog editor only if I would be allowed to shut it down altogether.

Obviously I still have some bitterness on the last two points, but as I said, this was a huge part of my life — and honestly, a lot of the institutionalization attempts seemed to involve stealing my ideas or poaching young academics I had supported, while cutting me out personally. Whatever may be the case with my own personal grudges, though, what is certain is that the atmosphere became much more cynical and careerist, which again militated against the fun, free-wheeling atmosphere of blogging. Blog posts became a chore, a CV line, a way of doing a favor that one might be able to cash in later — not a forum for community-building or intellectual exploration. If Twitter and Facebook were what killed off the blogosphere, maybe what made people less resistant to the change was that blogging had already become too much like LinkedIn.

In the best spirit of the classical age of blogging, I have been open and vulnerable to you, probably to an inappropriate and self-undermining degree. Please reciprocate in the same spirit by submitting any comments, questions, reminiscences, apologies, points of rebuttal, or cease-and-desist letters in the comment form below rather than grousing on social media about it.

“Have you seen this?,” a friend recently messaged me. She was referring to this article on awkwardness, which hit some points familiar to readers of my 2010 book on the same topic. The author does cite me, and judging from a quick Google Books search, she does so even more in the full book, of which the article is a précis. And yet, one does feel “some kind of way,” as they say, especially since the title is identical (simply Awkwardness) and the subtitle is even in a very similar style (A Theory vs. my An Essay).

My friend felt defensive on my behalf, as did several other people with whom I shared the article. And yet my own mind wandered back to two awkward occasions, many years ago. One centered around a story published in the late lamented The Awl entitled “I Can Awkward.” Awkwardly, I cannot find it right now [though commenter Matthew Bertucci helpfully shares a Wayback Machine link], but the basic point was that maybe we should not be so scared of awkwardness because it could be empowering. Yikes! Sitting in my living room stewing, feeling that I had perhaps enjoyed fewer writing and career opportunities than I deserved, I talked myself into the idea that this article had somehow deprived me of something by not citing my work. I wrote to the editors, who were more gracious than they strictly had to be and who pointed out that academic and journalistic standards are different. There was no reason to believe the author had read and ripped off my book. There was also no reason to believe that it would have made any difference to my life if he had cited it. In the end, I just wound up making a fool of myself in front of a couple of the coolest people ever to internet.

And who woulda thought? It figures — a couple years later someone emailed me about Awkwardness (my book, not the more recent one). They were concerned that I may have ripped off the author of this 2007 book, whose existence I had indeed noted but which I did not read, because it appeared to be a memoir rather than a theory of awkwardness. Lo and behold, my ideas about awkwardness arguably echoed those of this author, a coincidence I could only explain by noting that sometimes when people address a similar topic, they come to similar conclusions. (I still have not read the book, because I have this bizarre sense that doing so would somehow represent a concession to my accuser.)

So for those keeping score, here are the three books under discussion:

1. Awkward: A Detour (2007), by Mary Capello
2. Awkwardness: An Essay (2010), by Adam Kotsko
3. Awkwardness: A Theory (2024), by Alexandra Plakias

I note that I have not used the name of any other author before this listing, and the author of “I Can Awkward” remains unnamed even now. [UPDATE: Based on the Wayback Machine link above, it turns out his name is Matthew Wollin. I cannot find any evidence that his Awl piece catapulted him to the greatness that I should have enjoyed.] Similarly, I do not recall the name of the DePaul philosophy student who, in the course of a drunken conversation, stumbled upon the same joke connecting Heidegger to awkwardness that I had been honing for months — prompting me to stake my claim by finally putting together a book proposal.

It’s as though the idea is simply in the air, floating around, and all of us are always already too late to claim as our own. Writing a para-academic book, I didn’t feel I needed to do my due diligence of first reading everything potentially related to my idea — though of course I was also offended when someone treated me equally neglectfully. As for Plakias, it was doubtless strange to stumble across my oddball little text on ancient pop culture examples, and I’m glad she followed genre constraints nonetheless. Hopefully she will handle it gracefully when, some time in the next 5-15 years, someone else inevitably comes along and writes a book entitled Awkwardness with a two-word subtitle that puts forward the idea — perhaps not so creative after all — that awkwardness could be a positive thing if we attend to it in a certain way.