The BBC website has a page today reporting that

Spectator columnist Rod Liddle has become the first blogger to be censured by the Press Complaints Commission.

Liddle was censured for a very good reason. He wrote, in December 2009, that

the overwhelming majority of street crime, knife crime, gun crime, robbery and crimes of sexual violence in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community.

But apparently that was not true. So the director of the Press Complaints Commission, the body which oversees UK newspapers, was right to say that

the PCC expects the same standards in newspaper and magazine blogs that it would expect in comment pieces that appear in print editions.

There is plenty of room for robust opinions, views and commentary, but statements of fact must still be substantiated if and when they are disputed.

And if substantiation isn’t possible, there should be proper correction by the newspaper or magazine in question.

Liddle responded that the PCC had

got it wrong … a blog is different because it has to be a conversation, otherwise there’s no point in having a blog.

So he seems to be claiming that it is OK to tell lies in a blog because it is “different” from a printed newspaper or magazine. But there can be no excuse for lying in this way, for deliberately deceiving readers whether of print or of websites. In this case the issue was compounded in that the effect and probable intent of this lie would have been to stir up negative feelings towards the African-Caribbean community in London.

As bloggers we don’t want censorship. But we do need to exercise restraint in writing only what is true and responsible – and in quickly correcting any errors we might make by mistake. If we fail to do this we are only inviting the authorities to take action against us. The Press Complaints Commission probably has no authority over ordinary bloggers not linked to newspapers or magazines. But we don’t want to encourage the government to extend its competence to cover everything on the Internet. So, as bloggers, let’s write responsibly.

I am pleased to tell you that, because of an upgrade by my hosting company, you can now optionally drop the www and access this blog with the shorter URL of http://gentlewisdom.org.uk/. This address will be automatically forwarded to http://www.gentlewisdom.org.uk/. You can change your bookmarks if you want to, but you don’t need to.

Over a year after the departure of another infamous W it is high time that these redundant three w’s are completely retired from Internet addresses. But they haven’t yet gone completely from mine.

Michael Barber of The Sacred Page, a Roman Catholic, in a thoughtful post about abortion regrets how on controversial issues

people have given up talking to each other in favor of talking at each other.

He closes the post with the following quotation which describes a better way,

the kind of charitable, intelligent conversation the Second Vatican Council called for:

Respect and love ought to be extended also to those who think or act differently than we do in social, political and even religious matters. In fact, the more deeply we come to understand their ways of thinking through such courtesy and love, the more easily will we be able to enter into dialogue with them.

This love and good will, to be sure, must in no way render us indifferent to truth and goodness. Indeed love itself impels the disciples of Christ to speak the saving truth to all men. But it is necessary to distinguish between error, which always merits repudiation, and the person in error, who never loses the dignity of being a person even when he is flawed by false or inadequate religious notions.(10) God alone is the judge and searcher of hearts, for that reason He forbids us to make judgments about the internal guilt of anyone.(11)

The teaching of Christ even requires that we forgive injuries,(12) and extends the law of love to include every enemy, according to the command of the New Law: “You have heard that it was said: Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thy enemy. But I say to you: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute and calumniate you (Matt. 5:43-44).

–Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, 28.

If Catholics and Christians seriously took these words to heart and put winning friends over simply winning debates in the abstract, the world would be in a much better place.

Indeed! I don’t endorse the male-centred language. But this is the kind of dialogue we need to see among Christians, and between Christians and others, here on the blogosphere and more widely in the world around us.

Yes! I made it into the Bibliobloggers Top 50 for February! I jumped to #35, with an Alexa rank of 1001510. This is up from #102 in January, as I reported here, with an Alexa rank of 2591564.

What made the difference? Well, no doubt some linking to popular blogs helped my cause, and being linked to by some of them probably helped even more. But more to the point is that for the first time in several months I have actually been blogging regularly, nearly every day in February (except Sundays when I usually take a deliberate break) with a total of 37 posts in the month.

In fact the number of visitors to this blog has increased in every one of the last nine weeks, from a low of 472 in Christmas week to 1518 in the last week of February. This is back to the levels of last October, before my wedding got in the way of my blogging. Of the 1518, 527 were visits to my blog home page. These figures exclude those who read my posts through RSS etc feeds, or on Facebook where they appear as notes.

Of course another reason for my increased rankings is that I deliberately chose some controversial subjects. In the first week of February I took on atheists (149 views in 27 days) and Roman Catholics (40 views in 26 days). In the second week I took on Calvinists about faith as a gift (81 views in 21 days) and made my first foray against Reform (106 views in 20 days). I started the third week by moving my attack on Reform up a notch by accusing them of hypocrisy (190 views in 14 days), followed by a first update on Michael Reid (54 views in 13 days) and a report of Benny Hinn’s divorce (56 views in 10 days). Then in the fourth week I scooped the blogosphere with the news that Michael Reid had lost his unfair dismissal claim (52 views in 7 days), and started a discussion on “husband of one wife” (71 views in 7 days) which is still continuing.

Meanwhile since 10th February I have been continuing my review series on Adrian Warnock’s book “Raised with Christ” (233 views between the 7 parts so far, probably just one more part to come).

The last few days of the month were quieter, partly because I was busy with other things. But it is also interesting that there is much less interest when I try to be conciliatory rather than controversial, as in this post (15 views in 5 days). Perhaps this is one reason why I tend to write rather controversially – although I try to do so not with hostility but with Christian love.

Will this increased activity and higher ratings continue in March? I have started the new month with another controversial post. But I don’t know if I have the energy to keep this up, or the continuing flow of new ideas – although most of my posts are quick reactions to what I read elsewhere. Also my real non-virtual life may be getting busier, which could put a brake on things.

So in March I may even make it into Alexa’s top million blogs, which I was just 1510 places outside in February. At least I think that’s what their numbers mean. Or maybe this blog will just start to gradually fade away again.

Can I honestly say that I don’t care about these ratings? I would like to – but then it is nice to be popular and to feel that people are taking seriously, or at least reading, what I write.

UPDATE: I apologise to Daniel Kirk for writing as if the assertion David Ker attributed to him was what he had actually written. I have edited the post and marked the changes.

I have only just discovered Storied Theology, the fairly new blog of my American namesake Daniel Kirk, not related to me, who is a New Testament professor at Fuller Theological Seminary in California. I first came across it when Doug linked to what Daniel wrote about Lent and the resurrection, which I commented on here.

Now I wasn’t at first very impressed by what Daniel wrote about theologically manipulated translations, also discussed especially as this was presented at Better Bibles Blog. Daniel doesn’t seem to In the BBB post David Ker makes it look as if Daniel doesn’t know his translation theory,  that there are many good reasons other than theological manipulation for a translation not being painfully literal. In fact from Daniel’s own post it is clear that he does know this. However Also, as I commented on BBB, Daniel doesn’t seem to have done his exegetical homework properly on the particular verse under discussion, and so hasn’t realised that a passive verb has a different meaning from an active one. So if renderings of this verse are not the same as KJV, that may just be because they are correcting an error in KJV.

But I like some of the other things Daniel writes. Just from the last day or so I can recommend Why Not Rather Be Wronged? and You Are What You Worship–Choose Your God Wisely. In the latter he outlines the results of secular research, which shows that

Contemplating a loving God strengthens portions of our brain … where empathy and reason reside. Contemplating a wrathful God empowers the limbic system, which is “filled with aggression and fear.”

So that is why religious fundamentalists, including Christian ones, so often come across as aggressive – and why that aggression is so often based on fear especially of less fundamentalist co-religionists. It is very sad when I see some of this same reaction from good conservative evangelical Christians, in their reactions to those who question their favourite doctrines or church practices.

David Ker has kindly awarded me a Lingy (otherwise known as a psychedelic hippo). He writes:

Gentle Wisdom» Blog Archive » Faith is not a gift – at least not in Ephesians 2:8: Peter on anaphoric references.

He could have omitted the “Gentle Wisdom» Blog Archive »” part, generated by WordPress (and if anyone knows how to suppress “Blog Archive »” please let me know.)

Was that post “on anaphoric references”? Maybe. But more important, Lingamish loves me!

I feel quite honoured that within the last two days this blog, Gentle Wisdom, has been linked to by each of the top three blogs in the January list of bibliobloggers of the month.

#3 in that list is Jeremy Thompson, who has now taken over the biblioblogger listing from the mythical N.T. Wrong, who is apparently now not only resurrected but also ascended to heaven! Jeremy links to Gentle Wisdom as one of the several hundred biblioblogs he lists. On my first appearance in the old list last September my ranking was #58, but it slipped to #91 in October, #125 in November, and #199 in Jeremy’s trial listing on 10th January. That slippage is hardly surprising given how little I have been blogging in the last few months. But I am glad to see some recovery since Gentle Wisdom started to resume normal service, to #102 in the latest listings, for January.Will it climb still higher, perhaps into the rarefied heights of the Top 50? We will see – but I’m not going to make special efforts to get there.

By the way, the biblioblogger logo disappeared from my sidebar because the site I was linking to for it disappeared. I could restore it if someone gives me a new URL.

#2 in the January biblioblogger list is John Loftus’ site Debunking Christianity. I must say I wonder why this site qualifies as a biblioblog – it seems to be more atheist propaganda than study of the Bible. But John did honour me in a post yesterday with a link to my post on Haiti and a long quotation from it. I plan to respond to that in a separate post here.

January’s #1 biblioblogger is Joel Watts, with his somewhat presumptuously named blog The Church of Jesus Christ. Joel has inherited the top spot following the demise of Jim West’s old blog. Jim, like N.T., has been resurrected, as Zwinglius Redivivus, but this new blog hasn’t found any place in Jeremy’s biblioblog list – although with over 300 posts in the last three weeks of January Jim does seem to be making a determined bid to regain his #1 spot. Or will he too ascend to heaven before he gets there?

Anyway, Joel has also linked to and quoted from my post on Haiti, which he calls “A truly wonderful post”. Thanks, Joel!

My Haiti post may have attracted only 42 readers so far (according to WordPress statistics, but this excludes those who read it from my blog front page or from RSS feeds), but I can’t complain when two of those readers are the top two bloggers in this field.

UPDATE: January’s #5 biblioblogger Glenn Peoples has also linked here in the last two days. That makes 4 of the top 5! I didn’t spot Glenn’s link at first because it is only in a comment on one of his own posts – I found it because John W. Loftus quotes the comment. Glenn, thanks to you as well for the link, and the positive comment.

Lorenza and I are safely home from Italy. In fact we have been for a week now. More about the trip later, perhaps. But it has taken that week to get back to a semblance of normal life, especially with things here being disrupted by snow and ice – which arrived, or returned, only after we did.

So I have no more good excuses not to blog. But I’m not sure if this blog will ever get back to normal service, of the kind my readers got used to before my wedding.. However, I am working on a post more like what I used to post, so watch this space!

With this post I have reached a milestone of 800 posts on this blog (the numbers in the URL are not a good guide). And I am marking it by going for Italy tomorrow morning. My beautiful bride and I will spend a month there, in her home town which is near Florence. I look forward to meeting more of her relatives and friends, and enjoying Italian hospitality over Christmas and the New Year.

We are going by car, and ferry across the English Channel. This takes two full days, about 900 miles of driving including crossing the Alps – at least u,nderneath them, through the St Gotthard tunnel in Switzerland. We are glad no snow is forecast for this weekend, and hoping the first weekend in January will also be clear.

We are taking my laptop and expect to have good Internet access. So you may not notice any slowdown in my blogging, from its already very slow rate of the last few months. I wonder if I will ever make it to 1000 posts? We will see.

I am getting married to my wonderful Lorenza on Saturday. This afternoon her mother and sister are arriving from Italy. So I expect to be too busy to blog for a bit, at least until the beginning of November. I will still be monitoring comments for the next few days, but perhaps not in the week after the wedding. When I’m back I hope to be able to post some photos.