I have to confess that I’m not nearly as excited about this announcement as some other bloggers-who-often-address-biblical-and-related-studies (no links here, so as not to offend anyone by leaving them out) seem to be:

I’m very pleased to announce, after discussions with Jim West that the Society of Biblical Literature and Bibliobloggers have become affiliated. We look forward to partnering at our North American and international meetings every year.

This partnership will make possible the fostering of biblical scholarship and communication among members of both groups. The affiliation will enable Bibliobloggers to meet and hold sessions in conjunction with the SBL meetings.

Individual bibliobloggers who are members of the Society of Biblical Literature and who wish to identify themselves as affiliates of SBL may post the affiliation on their blog.

I want to thank Jim and his colleagues for their efforts. This is a partnership long overdue, and it’s great to see it come to fruition.

At the risk of making myself quite unpopular, please allow me to tell you why I don’t like this development. Lest I be misunderstood: I happen to like the SBL quite a lot, and I’m working on a partnership with the SBL on a project unrelated to blogging. I’ve been an SBL member for years, and I think I’ve presented a paper at every SBL Annual Meeting I’ve attended since 1994. You will not find any anti-SBL sentiment here. It’s just that the whole “affiliate” business has some implications that make me uneasy.

1. First and foremost, the announcement implies that “Bibliobloggers” (note the capital B, though I acknowledge the inconsistent use of capitalization in the announcement) form an organized group with Jim West as authorized spokesperson. Please note that the “affiliate” language is the same language SBL uses to describe the Academy of Homiletics, the Adventist Society for Religious Studies, the Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars, the Karl Barth Society of North America, the Association for Case Teaching, the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, and so on. Heretofore, the word “bibliobloggers” has never implied an organization, but has simply been a convenient label by which one might categorize the typical content of a particular blogger’s posts. I know of no organization called “Bibliobloggers.” Certainly I have never read the charter of such an organization, applied for membership in such an organization, or voted for officers in such an organization.

2. The whole idea of constituting “Bibliobloggers” as an official group threatens to enshrine the perpetual “who’s in, who’s out” nonsense as a permanent feature of discourse within the group of bloggers who happen to blog frequently about academic biblical studies. Witness the recent flare-up of the perennial “Where are the female bibliobloggers?” question. Can’t we just blog about what we enjoy discussing without trying to define group boundaries (even if in/out status is self-selecting)?

3. A few enthusiasts have opined that the SBL badge raises the “academic respectability” of blogging, but I must question this opinion. Does anyone truly believe that adding the “Biblioblog/SBL Affiliate” badge to your blog will lead your school’s Rank, Tenure, and Promotion Committee (or whatever it’s called at your place) to esteem your blog posts more highly? Application of the badge carries no actual implication of or requirement for quality control; the only requirement is that you identify yourself as a “biblioblogger” and pay membership dues to the SBL. Anybody can do that with a little outlay of cash. Unless, of course, you wish to submit arbitration of who’s a biblioblogger and who’s not to an organization board—with regard to which, see items 1 and 2 above. Barring such a board, there’s no reason why any old crackpot couldn’t pay SBL dues and paste the badge up on their own blog. Do you really think that a “status” equally available to Fred Phelps and Steven Anderson as to you increases academic respectability? (Has the SBL even thought through this point, I wonder?)

4. Aside from the alleged stamp of academic respectability (addressed in item 3), the only other benefit that I can see from “Bibliobloggers” becoming an SBL affiliate is the ability for “Biblobloggers” to organize sessions at the SBL Annual Meeting. Other than socializing, I cannot imagine what bloggers can accomplish better when gathered in an SBL meeting room than when sitting in front of their individual keyboards, typing away at interesting posts or making comments on other bloggers’ interesting posts. Call me alarmist if you wish, but I see here the threat of ghettoization. Seriously, what sorts of papers will “Bibliobloggers” present to one another? Will we have Bob Cargill present a paper on archaeology and the media? By no means—Bob should present that paper in the Archaeological Excavations and Discoveries section. Shall I present some research on paintings of the flood narrative? No! That belongs in the Bible and Visual Art or the Bible in Ancient and Modern Media. Do I want to go to a “Bibliobloggers” meeting to hear John Anderson talk about the trickster God in the Jacob narratives? Of course not! I want to hear that in the Pentateuch section! Shall we then all get together and talk about blogging? Never mind the narcissism inherent in such a topic; why not try to conduct such a discussion in the Computer Assisted Research Section? This is especially important for younger bloggers seeking academic respectability—especially the respect of their local tenure committees. Get your work in front of a broader audience. But my concern isn’t just about tenure issues for younger faculty. As a blogger, I can easily share my thoughts with the community of other bloggers and blog-readers any time I wish. I don’t need to wait for a twenty-five minute slot at an annual meeting. Better still, I can receive immediate and ongoing feedback from people interested in my work by posting my inchoate ideas on the blog. Seriously, if you exclude socializing with other scholars (and the annual blogger meet-up dinner, usually organized in grand fashion by the aforementioned Jim West—and many thanks to him for doing so—facilitates socializing quite nicely) and browsing through the exhibit hall, blogs potentially do a much better job than academic conferences of disseminating ideas for review and comment. The only advantage that you get from a conference presentation is a different audience—but you lose that advantage if you present your work to a gathering of “Bibliobloggers.”

I suppose that’s enough of a rant for today. If I go on, I will start repeating myself. For my part, I am happy to be an unorganized, independent (but friendly, and socially connected), blogger who happens to write most often on topics related to biblical studies.