Pulpit and Politics wins in 2010 Canadian Blog Awards

By Dennis Gruending

My Pulpit and Politics blog placed second in the Politics category of the 2010 Canadian Blog Awards. Winners are based entirely on the number of votes they receive from readers, so thanks to everyone who took the time to cast a ballot. You can find the list of winners in all categories by clicking here.

I began to publish Pulpit and Politics almost three years ago, in November 2007. I wrote this in my first post on November 9th of that year: “I plan with this blog to explore the growing influence that religion is having upon politics and society in Canada and elsewhere. This relationship is not merely a topic of interest but rather it has an effect upon the lives of millions of people.”

I have posted 85 pieces in these 36 months and written 95,000 words, enough to fill a modestly sized book. I passed a milestone a few weeks ago when my blog received “hit” number 100,000. That means that Pulpit and Politics has been visited 100,000 times. Of those hits, 27,000 have been what is called “unique” – in other words the blog has been visited by 27,000 different individuals. This is perhaps a modest number of visitors when compared to some of the megablogs out there but significant nonetheless.

I have had posts to the blog’s Comment section from many of you and I thank you for them. Please keep them coming. My blog postings eliciting the greatest number of comments were two that I wrote on Canada’s gun registry, and another on an event called The Cry, which is organized by a religiously conservative youth group and staged on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. I was surprised that interest in those events appeared greater than in other pieces I have written about Canada’s war in Afghanistan or the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi to name just two. There was also keen interest in a piece that I wrote about the positions being taken on the issues by Canadian churches in the 2008 federal election. I also received numerous comments in response to another posting about the questions I would ask if I were the journalist moderating the televised leaders’ debate in that 2008 same campaign.

It has all been great fun and I am committed to continuing with the blog. Researching for it gives a focus to much of my reading and for many of the events that I attend in the community — in Ottawa, the world comes to you if you are patient enough to wait for it. And I now find that when traveling abroad I am constantly observing people and events with blog future postings in mind.

So, thanks for reading and for your comments. Stay tuned for my next post, an analysis of a book written by American writer Mark Juergensmeyer. It is called Religious Challenges to the Secular State, from Christian Militias to al Qaeda, a topic that has implications for us in Canada as well.