BDW Quoted In Blogs Become Baptist Battleground

Blogs Become Baptist Battlegrounds by Rob Marus of ABP is the second of two articles published today that quote The Big Daddy Weave. Marus quotes Ben Cole and I throughout the article. Check out a few snippets below:

WASHINGTON (ABP)—One classic joke about Baptists is that wherever two or three are gathered, there are four opinions among them. The same can be said of bloggers, and Baptists seem to have taken to blogs with particular gusto, on both the institutional and individual levels. But as a democratically governed and notoriously fractious bunch, blogging Baptists also seem to have put a new virtual twist on the time-honored tradition of contentious business meetings.

And here's me:

“Historically, we Baptists have been dissenters,” said Aaron Weaver, a graduate student at Baylor University who operates the the Big Daddy Weave blog. “The blog is merely a new medium … Baptists use to dissent when dissent is necessary. In some ways, blogs are a form of congregationalism.”

And me again:

“The format of the blogosphere disallows coercion tactics that have been employed in the past by dictatorial church leaders,” he said. “The blog medium serves as a safe haven for those who feel that public dissent is their only option.”

Both Cole and Weaver agreed blogs can lend themselves to nastiness. But, they warned, don’t throw the baby out with the proverbial bath water.

The medium is neutral

“Blogs are not inherently bad,” Weaver said. “Negative and destructive blogs are a reflection of the blogger—not the blogosphere. I suppose anonymity can lead to people being dishonest. But if honesty is an issue, it is an issue of character and not the medium of blogging itself.”

Marus concludes his article with a most excellent quote from Ben Cole:

“Quite frankly, those who lament the ‘unhealthy’ and ‘un-Christian’ character of blogging must have been ridiculously blind or purposefully naïve for the last 400 years of Baptist bickering,” he said. “That some of the current SBC leadership weep and wail over blogging, and gather round like huddled martyrs, and yet they were the selfsame provocateurs of the fundamentalist juggernaut would be laughable if it wasn’t so pathetic.” Cole concluded: “Would Christ blog about the malfeasance run amok in Baptist life? Probably not. Neither would he sit quietly and cover the backsides of the worst denominational offenders, as some of our convention trustees seem content to do.”