You’re completely right – the quiz was supposed to be a bit of harmless fun and was utterly inadequate for anything other than that. The one positive thing to come out of it was that some people have been prepared to recognise that they do actually have a lot in common with those who the would never normally consider interracting with.

I have received over 300 e-mails complaining about the quiz (ranging from genuine criticism to full blown personal abuse) and I don’t think I would ever have bothered with it if I’d have known what would happen.

Interesting thing was my two teenagers had a go at the quiz. They had a very quick introduction to Karl Barth and Jack Spong via Wikipedia. I remember having a go at reading Barth at their age (was required reading for applying for ministry training) and asking my minister what he thought of Barth. He said he’d never heard of Barth (with a th) but then told me he knew a bit of Barth (with a T).

Anyway it was a good conversation starter at home. Made me realise how important writers and speakers are in our theological development. In some ways it’s part of my motivation for blogging – being able to explore theology publicly.

To some extent these quizzes can be harmless fun; certainly I’m guilty of doing meaningless quizzes in magazines and newspapers.

However, the trend of postining results on EC-type blogs is very interesting. Have gotten the feeling people are sometimes using these quizzes as a form of self-discovery (or self-assurance) and to be frank, they are a pretty poor tool for that.

The kind of theological self-reflection you’ve described is a better way to go for sure and it really fits well with a narrative and biographic approach to theology.