Dr. Andrew Jackson issues a plea to god-bloggers to do four things:
1. Stop placing ministers and theologians (he names US preachers) over Jesus Christ.
2. Stop making super heros out of these personalities with the reminder that some sow, some water and some reap.
I’d add, stop paying attention to bloggers that are attempting to be super heros -content and tone are what makes a blog good, not hits, not tech skills, not misplaced effort, not denominations, not education, not political beliefs.
3. Keep things in historical perspective.
4. Blog to mend and build, not to tear down and divide.
I admire his idealism. I’ve lost count of the number of bloggers and posts I’ve seen expressing the same sentiments. Blogging by it’s very nature is idealistic and idealists inhabit this medium.
There are times the blogosphere is more fractious than others, and with the bombings in London and Egypt this is one of those times.
Jackson is organizing the GodBlogCon to be held in California in the fall.
It is an event with US speakers that can economically afford to get themselves there, he has political bloggers speaking; and I’ve wondered if they will place party first. It will remain to be seen. Hopefully there will be a fair number of diverse bloggers attending that will speak to the rest of us.
Unlike the first faith blog seminar, this one is christian only.
There are bloggers attempting to be leaders in the subdivision of god-blogs and blogging being what it is, that may well be part of the difficulty. All studies done show god-blogs aren’t even on the radar screen of the 80+ million blogs and I think part of what he is saying has something to do with that.
As much as the god-blogosphere has matured, the demographics haven’t really changed much and it is going to take even more time to help people communicate gracefully outside the groups (country, gender, church) they know.
His blog Smart Christian, is part of a group of 10 that were initially encouraged to reach out to more than a small group. That is barely possible because of different styles interests and personalities.
Lately, with the exception of one or two of the 10 hand picked blogs by the owner (as one example) that hasn’t been the case.
People in the UK have been mocked and ridiculed and American superiority has been put forth at cost to other Christians who live in other countries.
That on top of the interior debates degenerating into flaming around culture wars in the US, makes Jackson’s fourth point important.
There is an effort within emergent blogs to keep new theological debates from degenerating into flame wars.
Blogdom of God efforts to enclude Catholics have been far less successful than individual bloggers who continue to do as the owner pleads - reaching out one by one, establishing respect and dialogue. Top down does not work well in blogging.
Grand ideas and even conventions cannot do what we can do day to day as bloggers, as we reach out to others with encouragement.
Idealism tempered with reality, kindness, grace and mature behavior is a powerful draw.
His post is worth a read, it is not self focused and may help you determine applicable points in your blogging and blog relationships.
Part of blogging to mend and build can be done by seeking out blogs/bloggers that don’t demand attention at the cost of the whole.
The spirit of those bloggers far outweigh the difficulties Dr. Jackson outlines.
Branch out and blog on!
How to branch out
Blogging opens the world to us. It is a form of world wide travel.
1) Like a certain blogger?
Go through their blogroll and find new great blogs.
Take some time to leap blog.
2) Step outside your country. Try reading blogs from other places and put yourself in their cultural shoes.
3) Use resources you might not normally use. Try reading news outlets from other countries, or contribute to ecumenical citizen journalism sites such as Spero News.
4) Try reading blogs that analyse news such as The Revealer or Get Religion.
5) Step outside your faith group. Are you Baptist? Then how about reading a few Catholic blogs? Have you looked at the Jewish section of Beliefnet for example, or the Buddhist section?
6) Read humour sites such as Ship-of-Fools or The Lark. Being able to laugh at our commonalities and differences does a great deal to ease tension, fear and uncertainity.
7) Use different link lists like Who Links Who or Eatonweb.
Pray. All the technical whiz bang doo-dad toys like RSS are fun, but nothing beats sitting quietly for a moment or two and praying for a blogger or reader.
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Good stuff Bd - especially (8).
Yes, thanks for this. Good thoughts.
Yes, Dr. Jackson’s suggestions certainly sound idealistic. While yours, Bene, are tempered with the more realistic perspective of a veteran blogger. While you mention that “idealists inhabit this medium,” a fair number of cynics and snarky critics do as well. I’m not sure where I fall — somewhere between the idealist and the cynic, I suppose.
Blog on,
AC
B ~
I’m curious at what lies behind the note that GodBlogCon speakers will be those who can “economically afford to get themselves there”? It seems a deliberate note, but I can’t quite see the point at which you’re aiming. Isn’t it the case that no matter where a con is held, it will be attended by those who can financially handle attendance? Just curious.
On another note, the idealism is always refreshing to see (as watching people take joy in simple things always brings me a smile), but I am definitely cynical about blogging. About its usefulness for its users. About its potential for uniting the church. About the quality of the writing. About the quality of faith held by those who represent the name of Christ online. After five years of this, I’ve seen more bad than good come from it - which is not to say that good doesn’t come from it, but give thousands of people anonymity and an absence of editorial control and you have a big unhelpful mess on your hands. The blogdom is apocryphal at best. It’s essentially The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Love always,
The Dane
**I’m curious at what lies behind the note that GodBlogCon speakers will be those who can “economically afford to get themselves there”? It seems a deliberate note, but I can’t quite see the point at which you’re aiming. Isn’t it the case that no matter where a con is held, it will be attended by those who can financially handle attendance?**
Good point.
I did state the obvious.
If Pew and Ipso research is true and the majority of key or “A list” bloggers are in a higher economic bracket, then it’s merely a realistic - albeit - redundant statement.
1) Organizers of conventions tend to be in upper income brackets. ie: BlogCon. They also have the flex time to be there.
2) There are 80 million or so blogs in computerland. The poorest of us are far better off than most of the world, but I suspect the average god-blogger might be quite surprised at how poor some of it’s community are.
3)This convention is about US bloggers. That’s life and that’s this conventions reality.
It is being held for a piece of the world-wide church.
4) My educated guess is that many of the attendees will be there because they really want the experience and many will sacrifice financially to do so (ie: students)
5) It is so far beyond the ability of most of us to be able to attend that on one hand I think what I’ve seen so far in the planning is pragmatic.
Here’s my idealism exerting itself - that if there is another faith based event (like BlogCon’s or this) no matter where it is held, it won’t be perceived/executed as a regional blog meet-up.
5) I’ll be interested in reading blogs of attendees, far more than speakers. The attendees are the most important part of an event as far as I’m concerned.
If the UK or Australia or Canada (any english speaking country) organized a god-blog convention, I would hope (even go out of my way to strongly suggest:^) that the international community is addressed and included.
So yes, I stated the obvious - lousy writing skills on my part. No hidden agenda, just poor skills.
Andrew:
I remember you saying I was idealistic a few years ago.
I had a mixed reaction because I respect you so much. Idealism can be tempered over time, I personally want it to become enthusiam (en theos - God breathed)
I still have moments that are like Christmas for a kid.:^)
I genuinely enjoy blogging, the fun and the people outweighs cynicism, but not always weariness with some of the foolishness that tends to repeat itself. Hopefully part of gaining experience is setting realistic boundaries.
I’ll stop if cynicism gets the best of me. That’s unlikely to happen any time soon if I can remain thankful for the opportunities this medium has provided.
My first request is that Dr. Jackson stop making requests to all people who blog about their faith. The best you can do is let people have their say and link to anybody you favor or find interesting. Ecumenicism is not necessarily a lock-step, and well founded criticism remains well founded, where ever it is published.
From the Cynic’s Dictionary:
A cynic is an idealist whose rose-colored glasses have been smashed - thereby immediately improving his vision.
I would love to attend the godblogcon and California is my birth state - but travel and other costs keep going up. When I went to bloggercon a few years back it was humbling to realize just how international the phenomenon was.
The internet is a tool - and how it gets used is up to the tool users.
I’m a Catholic blogger, I’ve been blogging for 2 1/2 years now, and my blogroll keeps growing. Most of them are also Catholic and in North America, but I also have Orthodox, Evangelical, Calvinist, and even one Mormon blogger on the roll. I have a Francophone blog from Brussels and I am open to including others if they meet my personal and arbitrary criteria. I also have a fair number of medblogs (now, there is another interesting subculture). I don’t read everyone daily but I try to read them as I can. I tried using an RSS feed but it actually interfered with what works best for me which is seemingly random rounds of the many blogs out there.
It can be difficult to find a balance between the blog-life and life in real-time here and now. One thing that is wonderful about the blogging community is the rapidity with which networks can develop. This happened in other ways in the earlier days of the internet (Usenet groups, Compuserve and AOL forums, ListServs of various ilk) but I think that the blogs and the email listservs will come to be the dominant forms of community building.
If only we could just stop taking ourselves so deadly seriously and getting into these little troll-baiting and snarkiness contests, though. I get more than a little exasperated by some of what happens in the comments boxes of a few blogs that I otherwise love and respect.
Oh - I also think that it is important in the quest for ecumenism and unity not to fall prey to indifferentism. The differences that divide us are not petty and they are not unimportant - but they are in the end less important than those factors on which we can agree - and I think it is also important that we learn when it is time to agree to disagree on some doctrinal point in order to take action on some moral or political point on which we agree. I think it was Benjamin Franklin who said “We must all hang together, or we shall assuredly all hang separately”. E pluribus unum is more than a phrase on a coin.
On another note - Bene, I have been reading about a commenter on the CBC who called for government regulation of religions, including applying the standards of non-discrimination to (for example) force Catholics to perform marriages that would be against canon law, or ‘ordain’ women, or the like. I haven’t seen any commentary yet from the other Canadian bloggers that I read, and the USA bloggers are all citing the same newservice article. What do you know about this?
Do you mean this guest on CBC One?
http://www.cbc.ca/insite/COMMENTARY/2005/7/18.html
I did have a look. I did a couple of quick searches.
He’s quite entitled to his opinion, and perfectly free to express it as one of 31 million Canadians with access to the CBC; but that’s all it is, an opinion piece, and not anywhere close to mainstream.
I think it’s parody.
A guest commentator on CBC? Yawn.
I see it’s on 20 blogs, some bordering so far right they’re ready to tip over.
And at the risk of sounding mean, he’s a retired engineer from RMC. All ducks in a row sort. I don’t know anyone of my fellow citizens who would take this gentleman seriously.
To be honest Alicia, a quick search showed that Lifesite and World Net Daily ran with it. The headlines are deceptive, and well, lame. And wrong.
Again I don’t want to sound mean, but the blogs that posted were US and think a guest commentary is ‘CBC opinion.’ Let alone a tongue in cheek one.
Ferguson’s opinion is a none story.
Go to Technorati and put in Bob Ferguson CBC.
US blogs, that don’t know the difference between our public and private broadcasting system.
What else is new?
Gp to Google News. Other than a mention in a broader Vancouver Sun piece no respectable Canadian outlet takes it for anything more than what it is.
I could post an explanation for my US friends, but what’s the point?