League of Reformed Bloggers

Important Update for Blogger Users - see 6c below.

This is the "official" announcement launching the "League of Reformed Bloggers."  This is a news aggregator and blogroll featuring bloggers who write from the perspective of a Reformed worldview. 

This is being co-hosted and moderated by yours truly and Tim Challies at Challies.com.

Our desire is to provide a place where those who write and read blogs can find biblical, theological, cultural and social issues addressed from the richness of the Reformed theological tradition.  If you have a blog and would like to be a part of this, here are some guidelines for membership.

1. Embracing the Five Sola’s of the Reformation:

Sola Scriptura – Scripture Alone
Sola Fides – Faith Alone
Sola Gratia – Grace Alone
Solus Christus – Christ Alone
Soli Deo Gloria – For the Glory of God Alone

An explanation of these slogans can be found in the Cambridge Declaration from the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

2. Agreement with one or more of the standard Reformed Confessions.

Westminster Confession and Shorter and Larger Catechisms
London Baptist Confession
Heidelberg Catechism
Belgic Confession
Canons of Dordt.

* Note – in saying that you agree with one or more of these, this does not mean that you must agree with every particular expression in a confessional statement, just that you agree with the system of doctrine in the statement.  We’re not trying to create some type of presbytery or governing body with a bunch of hoops to jump through. If you tell us you are in agreement with one of the Reformed confessions, we’ll take your word for it. 

All of the above confessions, except one, can be found at the Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics on the document page.  The only one missing is the London Baptist Confession (sorry about that - the CRTA site is obviously run by a Presbyterian), so for the Baptists among us you can check out the London Confession at this site.

3. For those from Anglican or Lutheran traditions.

Technically, those who follow the Continental Reformers or are from the Westminster Tradition will distinguish the Reformed Tradition from the Anglican and Lutheran traditions.  However, we recognize that many in both traditions accept the five sola’s as their own and would be in agreement with the high view of God’s sovereignty that is embodied in the Reformed confessions.  So, if you are Anglican or Lutheran, and hold to either the 39 Articles or the Book of Concord, as well as embracing a high view of God’s sovereignty and the five sola’s you are welcome.

4. Civil Discourse

This is not a requirement, but we would ask that all who join the League of Reformed Bloggers practice civility in their interactions with others.  We’ll leave it up to you to define what civility is or is not.  As most of us know, discussions in the blogosphere can get a little heated from time to time, so it would be nice if we could keep things something like winsome and cordial.  Of course we want to foster vigorous and spirited debate, after all that’s what Reformed folks do best.  No one is going to be policing things, but let’s just try to keep things free of vitriol.  May we be so bold as to recommend the following posts and articles for guidance.

G. K. Chesterton’s Advice to Christian Bloggers – Jollyblogger

Some thoughts on Godly disputation, or "How to Have a Christ-like Argument." – Jollyblogger

On Controversy – John Newton

How to Deal with Those Who Differ from Us – Roger Nicole

5. Write about whatever you want.

In saying that this is a Reformed blog aggregator we aren’t looking for academics and scholars who will do nothing but give defenses of the standard Reformed positions.  Basically if you consider yourself to be reformed and have a blog that’s great with us. You may have a blog that deals with politics, culture, relationships or something else for which you don’t mention “Reformed theology” very often, if ever.  That’s ok – you don’t have to change your blogging habits to be a part of this.  We just want folks who treat a wide variety of topics and are guided and informed by a Biblical, Reformed Worldview.

6. How to join

a. Read over the above stuff, particularly #'s 1-3.  If you affirm the five solas and are in agreement with one or more of the confessional documents then you qualify.  Just contact us and let us know you qualify and promise to play nice and we'll add you to the list.

b. The easiest way to join will be by leaving a comment to this post.  Read Also, Tim Challies is putting the identical post on his blog and so you can leave a comment on his blog if you choose.  Or you can e-mail myself or Tim.

c. We need your xml or rss feed to add you to the aggregator, so include that in the comment or e-mail.  From what I understand, blogger doesn't have a built in xml or rss feed so if you are on blogger you will need to get one of those feeds.  Also, at this time we aren't able to take an atom feed.  Without an xml or rss feed we can add you to the blogroll but you won't show up in the aggregator.

Important update for Blogger users in particular. I've gotten a few requests to add folks using a feedburner feed and the server doesn't take that.  Your feeds needs to end in something like index.rdf or index.xml. I was also able to add a Wordpress user today whose feed ended in "wp-rss2.php"  Sorry about the hassle but the server.com server seems to be a tad picky on what it will take.

Update - we have now moved the League of Reformed Bloggers to a server that will accomodate atom feeds, so you can now send an rss, xml or atom feed to be included in the aggregator.

d. We would appreciate it if you would put a link to the "Leauge of Reformed Bloggers" aggregator and blogroll on your blog.  This is not a requirement, but it would help publicize it.  The aggregator can be found here. The aggregator has the blogrolling script for you to use, but I think the script is messed up.  So, if you want to add the blogroll to your site, here is the correct script.

< script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="http://rpc.blogrolling.com/display.php?r=065c20af722e797a8e41943551c39f5d">

There is a space between the "<" and the words "script language" in the above.  You'll need to remove the space to make it work

Also, we're going to try to make the aggregator site look a little more attractive in the next few days so if you come back soon and see that it looks different don't worry, it's the same site - we're just trying to make it a thing of beauty.

And, a big thanks goes to the indomitable Adrian Warnock who set this thing up and gave us the kick in the pants that got it rolling.