Guilty Pleasure Theologians – Fun with Twitter

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Some young whippersnappers in the theoblogosphere have been making really good use of Twitter and other social media engines to drive reader engagement on their blogs through things like polls. That looked like fun. So I went on Twitter and found the button to make a poll and, well, proceeded to make a nuisance out of myself.

Blame whomsoever thou willst, but I decided to do a set of three polls to identify which theologians people out there are reading but on the down-low. Furtively. With a sense of shame. Having to wash their hands after turning ever page. You get the idea. Why? Because apparently asking “Who’s your favorite theologian out of these four” just wasn’t going to cut it for my sleep-deprived and caffeine-driven mind.

In any case, the results are collected below with some…let us say…brief commentary.



I'm not shocked by the winner of the above poll. I fully expected Tillich to win. As long, that is, as enough sufficiently wide-read voters materialized. But Barth at a close second?!?!?! Granted, the Center for Barth Studies twitter feed promoted voting for Barth - I'm not sure why. But still. I would have expected Bultmann to come in higher on this. At least, that is, before David Congdon started shifting reception of Bultmann with his insightful and commanding scholarship.



Now, the results for the above poll *did* shock me a bit. Jenson?!?! Really?!?! Jenson is your guilty pleasure theology read?!?! *boggles*



The third and final poll above had the most resounding results, and I am rather gratified by them. Hauerwas is certainly an important thinker, and someone who should be read. But I disagree with Hauerwas enough (and it is a fair bit...) that I'm glad people feel a little dirty while reading him.

Well, I think I've offended enough people for one day. There may be more polls in the future. Someone suggested doing a March Madness style tournament. I can't say that the idea failed to appeal to me. Stay tuned! We'll be back to our usual dry, serious, academic theology programming on Wednesday.

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