Saturday, December 1, 2007

Religio-blogging Catches Newspaper's Eye

On Tuesday, USA Today featured a look at Christian blogging in the Life section of the paper. The article highlights blogging activity for Southern Baptists, Catholics, and Episcopalians. Overall, the article is neutral on reporting the hot topics among each denomination, though of course, the clashing in cyberspace is what gets printed. Frank Page, SBC President, is quoted twice for exclaiming "For Christ's sake, stop!" in referring to the heated disagreements over SBC matters.

Page fretted in a Baptist Press column that battling bloggers frighten off
"lost souls and new believers." He wrote, "Lost people are seeing the deep
division and sometimes hatred that is flowing froth among churches and among those who are involved in convention discussions. For Christ's sake, stop!"
The article similarly points out vociferous disagreement over the gay issue among Episcopalians and the larger Anglican church. It runs aground when it comes to Catholics, as it seems the author couldn't find anything more controversial than the Pope's decision about accessibility of the Catholic mass.

My curiosity is piqued. Why quote Frank Page thus? Why point out the war of words occurring in cyberspace to the largely uninterested public? I think the media is again doing what it does best when it handles the religious sector in any way, and that is to mess up the story or make one out of nothing. It seems to be playing the latter this time. Whatever.

But, a few people are getting their 15 minutes out of this. Two bloggers in each denomination have mentions as representatives of the fray. They are:

Southern Baptist
1. Ben Cole -- SBCOutpost.com, baptistblog.wordpress.com
2. Wes Kenney -- weskenney.net, SBCToday.com

Catholic
1. John Zuhlsdorf
2. Rocco Palmo

Episcopal
1. David Virtue
2. Louie Crew

1 comment:

Great Commission Unity said...

Nice post. We can't control what the media chooses to print or focus on, but we can definitely control our words and actions. Oh, that our utmost goal would be to honor God and reflect the love of Christ before a world that desperately needs to see a difference. It's to our shame that we feed the media frenzy with needless bickering, backbiting, and back stabbing. Where is the Christ that we follow?