Creation, Conference & Conversations: 2019 in Review

Ever since 2014, I’ve written an end-of-year blog post that details which of our webpages received the most traffic that year. Earlier in 2019, we did a major audit of the more than 2000 different pieces and pages on BioLogos, and weeded out the ones that had very little ongoing traffic. Unfortunately for my end-of-year posts, they didn’t make the cut (isn’t anyone interested in looking back to see what the most viewed blog posts on our website were for 2016??). So I can’t point you back to review the last few years of top articles like I normally do at the beginning of this post. But I am continuing the tradition!

2019 was a big year with the website migration, the conference, and the debut of the Language of God podcast! I’m going to report on three types of content on our site: Common Questions, Articles, and Podcast Episodes, and you can find a chronological archive of all types of content posted this year on our Resources Page.

Without further ado, here are the lists for 2019:

Top Common Questions: What are people asking?

The Common Questions get the most traffic, and much of that is from organic Google searches. We created two new ones this year, so you’ll have to make sure to check those out.

We utilized our team of experts to create two new Common Questions for 2019:

• Is animal suffering part of God’s “good” creation?
• Why should Christians care for creation?

The top 3 most viewed Common Question pages for 2019 are:

• How could humans have evolved and still be in the image of God?
• How should we interpret the Genesis Flood account?
• What created God?

Top viewed articles for 2019: What’s popular from this year?

The popularity of articles posted in 2019 is affected by when they were posted—none of the top 10 for 2019 came from after September. So the calendar privileges some content for these kinds of surveys…

• Deborah Haarsma: What would Life Beyond Earth Mean for Christians? (July 31)
• Kelli Swan: Genetic Testing and the Christian Faith: Navigating the Tension Responsibly (February 27)
• Christy Hemphill: Dragons and Dinosaurs: The Surprising Link between Folklore and Fossils (June 12)
• Jim Stump: Bad Objections to Evolution (August 19)
• Kendra Terpstra: The Evolution of a Homeschooling Mom (August 16)
• Ryan Bebej: Biological Death: Part of God’s “Good” Creation (June 5)
• Jim Stump: What should we think of DNA experiments and developments? (September 11)
• Stephen Freeland: Origins of Life: The Questions are Big, and the Answers Complex (March 11)
• James Ungureanu: Rethinking the Historical Conflict between Science and Religion (March 8)
• Jim Stump: Rachel Held Evans (1981-2019): Asking Questions of Our Faith (May 6)

Top Podcast Episodes: What are people listening to?

Our podcast, Language of God, was new this year. We featured 26 episodes with a wide range of diversity of opinions and perspectives. We hope you find one that you enjoy. These were some of the ones others have enjoyed.

• Francis Collins | Finding a New Story
• Adam & Eve
• John Walton | More Than History
• Peter Enns | God is Not a Helicopter Parent
• John Ortberg | Sacred Habits
• Krista Tippett | Life Together
• Rick Potts | A Long Becoming
• Fossils | A Window to God’s Creation

Top 10 Pre-2019 Articles: What’s still intriguing people?

Lastly, there are quite a few articles in our archive that continue to get very strong ongoing readership, often because they have been linked in places elsewhere on the internet.

• Richard Middleton: What is the Relationship between Creation Accounts in Genesis 1 and 2? (January 3, 2018)
• Pete Enns: The Firmament of Genesis 1 is Solid but that’s not the Point (January 14, 2010)
• Pete Enns: Genesis 1 and a Babylonian Creation Story (May 18, 2010)
• Tremper Longman: 5 Common Arguments Against the Bible (and How to Respond to Them) (October 1, 2018)
• The Barna Group: Six Reasons Young Christians Leave Church (September 27, 2011)
• Tim Keller: Creation, Evolution and Christian Laypeople (February 23, 2012)
• Jim Stump: Long Life Spans in Genesis (January 26, 2014)
• Stephen Moshier, et.al.: Flood Geology and the Grand Canyon: What Does the Evidence Really Say? (June 29, 2016)
• Jim Stump: 10 Misconceptions about Evolution (September 28, 2015)
• Ted Davis: The Evolution of Darwin’s Religious Faith (November 3, 2016)