Southern Baptist Convention – have blogs made a difference?

What role did Southern Baptist blogs play in this years Convention held in Greensboro North Carolina earlier this week?

The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News, Time Magazine and other traditional media as well as Spero News and the official SBC in house publication Baptist Press and the Associated Baptist Press have mentioned the importance of the upsurge of grass roots voices through blogs.
Many Southern Baptist blogs in the largest protestant denomination are probably flying under the radar of traditional counting applications for blogs such as Technorati. 
The number of posts about the Southern Baptist Convention the past two months are small.

 

Two Southern Baptist Aggregators do not have some of the key blogs mentioned in traditional media reports lists. Blogdigger lists about 40  A hand coded aggregator lists about 57 with some repeats.

Some of the more contentious and better known SBC bloggers such as Phil Johnson of PyroManiac, Michael Spencer of Internet Monk and Justin Taylor of Between Two Worlds were not among the 10 thousand attending the annual convention convention, but have been online for awhile taking stands on various problems facing the SBC.
What is true is that Southern Baptist debates are moving off closed forums and into the more public medium of the give and take of weblogs. Sam Hodges is an excellent religion writer for the Dallas Morning News and he took at look at 7 SBC bloggers before the convention.

The bloggers’ rise coincides with the first seriously contested election for the SBC presidency in more than decade. Three candidates have announced, and more could emerge before next week’s annual gathering of delegates (“messengers,” Baptists call them) in Greensboro, N.C. “Not to be presumptuous, but I think we have helped shape the debate,” said Marty Duren, a Buford, Ga., pastor and blogger. “Issues that we began discussing as far back as last summer are now part of interviews with candidates.” Benjamin Cole, a 30-year-old pastor at Parkview Baptist Church in Arlington, is even more of a true believer. He calls Internet communication the “Gutenberg press of the new Reformation.”

A professor of communication from Calvin College may have overstated the importance of SBC blogs in the Dallas Morning News, but even denominational leaders are acknowledging the openness and available of the genre has begun to be noticed. Quentin Schultze  said:

 ”The good news is that blogging is getting more people interested in denominational processes and issues,” Dr. Schultze said. “The bad news is that denominationally oriented blogging tends to gravitate toward unkind language, unsupported accusations and nasty threats.”

Most pastors, he said, are as wary of generating controversy through blogs as they are of offending worshippers from the pulpit. For those relatively few willing to speak out – usually not part of the denominational leadership – blogs can be “almost like a kind of catharsis,” Dr. Schultze said.

He added that conservative Southern Baptist bloggers are, for the most part, civil and serious. They generally avoid what he considers the offensive practice of posting anonymously. What’s more, Dr. Schultze thinks Baptist bloggers are breaking ground.

“The SBC has become the first denomination to shift institutional politics significantly from letter-writing, phone calls and conventions to the public Internet. … Those who hold denominational power have got to be concerned.”

Not true, I would disagree with the professor on how much Baptists are breaking new ground. New ground for Southern Baptists, perhaps.:^) 
One only has to look at the history of faith blogs online to know other denominational bloggers have made impacts in their parishes, states and denominations in the US. However, the SBC may be the first tightly controlled denomination to have the voice of the younger leaders break through to strongly rooted management. I think there has been a fear of speaking up or out, and we’ll be seeing many more Baptists blogging their opinions before next years convention.

Leaders in the SBC such as Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has a column (a pseudo blog) over at a major commercial/media site called Crosswalk.com.

Frank Page, the new President of the 16.2 million member denomination credits a handful of blogs and bloggers for their willingness to break a long silence and begin discussion on a grass roots level.

Page said he was not certain of their influence but suspected it was “perhaps an inordinate amount of influence given the number” of weblogs devoted to SBC life. He predicted it would be a growing force or phenomenon in SBC life. While “a small amount of people” write on the blogs, Page pointed out that “leaders in the SBC do read those blogs to try to get a barometer of what certain subgroups are thinking or saying.”

The media darling bloggers of this years convention have most definitely been Wade Burleson of Grace and Truth to You and sbcoutpost.