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February 03, 2005
"Christian Blogosphere" = Christian Ghetto
Messy Christian's recent post "Christian factions in the blogosphere" has caused some interesting discussion/debate not only in the comments on her blog but also from fellow God-bloggers BeneDiction and Reverend Mike. The issue: Pros and cons of Christian blog aggregators, how Christians segment themselves within the blogosphere, and does it cause division/disunity?
[Uncle Sam's Cabin gives the whole history of this. Apparently it all goes back to this WorldMag post re: the Zondervan/Rolling Stone magazine ad flap. Bizarre ...]
All of this is definitely a good discussion to have—amongst Christians. But I have to ask: How many of us (on our blogs) are intentionally communicating and relating with normal people (i.e. non-Christians)? So much of our energy (myself included in this, certainly) is spent in our Christian ghettos, debating the same theological/ecclesiological issues that Christians have been debating for centuries.
I don't mean to cast a despairing look upon any of the fine projects that have been started to organized and encourage Christians in the blogosphere. (I'm interested in and supportive of sites like Blogs4God, et al.) These are all fine things. I just hope that more and more Christian bloggers will get a vision for Internet evangelism—in all its forms—even if it simply means opening up our hearts and lives to the non-Christian bloggers in our own communities (through a Weblogger MeetUp group, etc.).
I don't mean to accuse any of my fellow Christian bloggers of being closed off from relationships with non-Christians. But I do want to encourage all of us to ask ourselves (with apologies to Switchfoot): "If we're adding to the noise, turn off this blog ..."
[Thanks to Andrew for reminding me—in his recent post "Survey says: churches still don't get it"—to be thinking e-vangelistically.]
[Jordon Cooper's been talking about the Christian ghetto online for a while, I guess. Hat tip to Blogs4God for the link.]
[Final Thought: Is this post completely ironic, since most of my readers are undoubtedly Christians, and even the tone of my post is directed at Christians, the very thing I'm trying to draw attention to and confront as, well, not the most fruitful thing to be doing? OK my head hurts ...]
Posted by Steve K. at February 3, 2005 08:15 PM
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