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Revenge of the bloggers
Several Christian bloggers took issue with the initial entry of Weblog in Print, Christianity Today's effort to put the spirit of blogging on paper. No big surprise there: as the column noted, the blogging community likes nothing more than critiquing articles about blogging. The main critique of the column was that it didn't mention this or that blog.

Let's try to remedy that by recommending a few Christian weblogs that are just getting started. Get in on the ground floor; say you were there when it all began; be a charter subscriber. The first, The Paris Project, includes a heaping dose of cat entries, but those uninterested in feline exploits will keep coming back for the writer: Jenell Williams Paris, associate professor of anthropology at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota, author of the books Urban Disciples and Birth Control for Christians, and author of two Christianity Today articles. As one might expect from her past writings, a number of Paris's postings are on sex. "I'm looking for a way of life, a quality of dialogue, and an intimacy of relationship in the church that can help us live together with sexuality as an acknowledged part of our lives," she wrote in one post.

I also think that we won't all agree—we can't just start an educational campaign to tell everyone what's what. We need a strong grounding in orthodoxy and a strong engagement with community … and then we need to just live with each other, honestly talking and respectfully disagreeing, and being part of each other's decision-making, even in the most intimate parts of life. And when people make sexual choices that have bad consequences, we need to share our own similar stories and remind ourselves that God's grace is sufficient for us all.

Paris's blog isn't all about sex, of course, but one imagines that the subject matter may draw in more readers than updates on her cat's digestive tract.

Another CT writer, Bob Smietana, is the voice of god-of-small-things, whose blog is broadly on religion news. His first entry was picked up by the new religion megablog The Revealer, since it contained a light criticism of the NYU-sponsored site. More recent posts have focused on a homeless man who froze to death and media coverage of The Body (a religious sect Smietana wrote about for CT). Smietana writes that he sees the sect's members "not [as] 'nut cases,' not cold blooded cultists, but as people who have suffered the greatest loss of all—the death of their children. And they have to live with that the rest of their lives. May God have mercy on them."

If Smietana's nascent efforts at critiquing religion reporting interest you, be sure to make GetReligion.org one of your most prominent bookmarks. It's the work of two men, one of whom CT readers will be very familiar: associate editor Douglas LeBlanc. The other voice is that of syndicated religion columnist Terry Mattingly, and it's amazing that he hasn't been publicly blogging for years. The main focus is on news reports that miss or misconstrue the religious dimension to the story. "Our main goal here is to raise questions about the religion coverage in the mainstream press," Mattingly recently summarized.

Weblog doesn't know about Mattingly, but LeBlanc does have a wonderful cat named Spot. Still, don't expect many Spot updates on GetReligion—this is a blog with a focus and a mission (and, reportedly, funding). May these sites and many others like them gain in readership and influence, and may their authors grow in wisdom and understanding.

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February (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48