An announcement below the jump about the future of this blog, in the very short term, and beyond:

As longtime readers may recall, I took a job at the Templeton Foundation in January in part to help create and run a new web magazine, Big Questions Online, which we intend to be a thoughtful forum for the presentation and discussion of ideas related to science, religion, economics and morality, and the dynamic interaction of all those areas. Well, we’re getting close to the BQO launch, which means that this Beliefnet blog is drawing to a close. I’m not ending my blogging by any means, only shifting it to BQO. I’m really excited about the line-up we’ve got for BQO, and I really hope all of you will follow me there, not only for the continuation of this blog, but also to meet some other bloggers and writers. I’m incredibly privileged to be in a position now of being able to commission essays that I’d want to read and link to anyway, because I think the ideas — whether I agree with the point of view of the writer or not (and I don’t always) — are well worth considering and discussing.
The comments policy at BQO, including on the blogs, will be more restrictive than what you see here. Commenters will have to register, and comments will go into moderation before appearing. This is not done to make your lives miserable, but rather to help us on the small BQO staff manage the site better — and to keep the threads civil. I can’t tell you how much time I’ve had to spend over these last for years on this blog monitoring the comments threads, and deleting the problematic posts. Because I can’t always be as vigilant as I’d like, some things that ought not to have gotten through did. That shouldn’t be a problem on the new site. You will still be able to comment anonymously, and of course there’s no way we can know if the information you provide to us when you register is truthful. That’s not the point. The point is to be able to identify which commenter is behaving as a troll, and to ban him or her effectively — something I’ve never been able to do here. I wish we didn’t have to be so restrictive, but we really don’t have much choice, I’m afraid.
Anyway, while I’m not exactly sure which date we’ll soft-launch BQO, that day rapidly approaches. I am not too far from the 1,000th post on the Rod Dreher blog, which began in January, the successor to Crunchy Con. For sentimental reasons, I want to cross the 1,000 line before saying goodbye to my Beliefnet friends. But I’ll need to post a lot to make that goal. So, please keep checking in here over the weekend and, well, from now until the end, because I’m going to have more new posts than usual up. I foresee being somewhat more sober on my new blog — less snark and indulgence of my pop-culture weaknesses — so I may need to get all my ya-yas out in these last days.