Blog Posting Faithfully

"For Christ's sake, stop!" declared the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Rev. Frank Page, pleading for civility in the Baptist blogosphere. Episcopalians and Anglicans duel incessantly over their faith and future in the Anglican Communion. Catholics focus on every topic from liturgy to law to spirituality.

These are faith bloggers — uncountable voices who contest, confess and consider religious beliefs, doctrines and denominational politics in their posts.

Although every faith has its bloggers, U.S. Christians may be among the most vociferous of the watchdogs, philosophers and ecclesiastical groupies.

This is from a USA Today article Bloggers Keep the Faith, Contentiously that covers the incendiary blogs from people of varying denominations. As to the opening quote, Southern Baptist leader Frank Page was vaulted to president of the denomination partly based on favorable blog coverage, but once on the job he discovered how negative they can be. He wrote in a column for Baptist Press,

Lost people are seeing the deep division and sometimes hatred that is flowing forth among churches and among those who are involved in convention discussions. For Christ's sake, stop!

I too have seen negative blog posts and much more negative comments, sometimes concerning people I love (like our Bishop) and I wonder what this has to do with Love God and loving our neighbors as ourselves.

I think that blogs are wonderfully democratic in that not only can everyone have one, you only get readers to the degree that people find it worth their time to drop in. So perhaps I am not so surprised that some people want to vent their spleen in a blog so much as I am dismayed that the blogs that post such anger remain popular.

I'll try to keep things more peacable in this corner of the kingdom. I hope that's fine with y'all. Toward that end I offer the following dumb joke from BeliefNet's Joke of the Day:

A minister, a priest and a rabbi went for a hike one day. It was very hot. They were sweating and exhausted when they came upon a small lake. Since it was fairly secluded, they took off all their clothes and jumped in the water.

Feeling refreshed, the trio decided to pick a few berries while enjoying their "freedom." As they were crossing an open area, who should come along but a group of ladies from town. Unable to get to their clothes in time, the minister and the priest covered their privates and the rabbi covered his face while they ran for cover.After the ladies had left and the men got their clothes back on, the minister and the priest asked the rabbi why he covered his face rather than his privates. The rabbi replied, "I don't know about you, but in MY congregation, it's my face they would recognize."