Some bloggers use their page as a clearance house for what others are saying – sort of like Matt Drudge does the news. So if you want to know what John MacArthur thinks about the Manhattan Declaration, you could go here. Such places allow you to keep tabs on the doings and whereabouts of certain evangelicals with star power.

Others use the blog to promote their own appearances, merchandise, and ideas published elsewhere. Of course, Oldlife promotes the views of its editors and sometimes reprints material first published in the Nicotine Theological Journal (a subscription would make a nice stocking stuffer, by the way). But we have resisted using this e-space to publicize current activities and duties. This is supposed to be a place to discuss what it means to be Reformed – not a vehicle to learn about the Muether or Hart family vacation plans.

All of this is a way of explaining the awkwardness of what follows: I have posted a piece over at Front Porch Republic on the Manhattan Declaration. Because some of the comments in recent weeks have asked for my impressions of the statement, this notice is a tad more understandable. And because the specter of J. Gresham Machen hovers over the keyboards of the NTJ’s editors, and because my study of Machen has clearly informed my take on the Declaration, mentioning that post here also makes sense. But self-promotion still feels odd.

And so to complete the circle, readers may also be interested to know that I will be dining today (dv) at lunch on hot pork sandwiches purchased at Reading Terminal Market while watching – I haven’t yet decided – either Barton Fink or Blood Simple. This is less a Thank-God-It’s-Friday moment than it is a reaction to the end of the semester at Temple University. Later today, my wife and I will be watching films from Temple’s city archives at the program of Secret Cinema, a wonderful cultural resource in Philadelphia. On Sunday, we will be worshiping with the saints a Calvary OPC, Glenside.

Question: Who cares? Answer: I do and my wife does sometimes. It’s hard to tell if our cats, Isabelle and Cordelia, even think.