Blogs Give Voice to the Dissenters in the Flock

Online Critics Present Challenges and Opportunities for Traditional Religious Authorities

For as long as preachers have been engaging listeners, critics have been muttering nearby about the need for more enlightened leadership.

Now, thanks to blogs and other Internet postings, critics of every faith are getting a hearing far beyond the synagogue, church or mosque parking lot. Forced to listen, because others are, religious leaders are responding in ways that show how religious authority is shifting in the 21st century.

Bloggers well versed in Scripture and church rules are challenging official policies and winning followers of their own. Traditional authorities, meanwhile, are seeing problems and opportunities alike in the new milieu. How they respond depends to a large degree on what their respective theologies say about the value of voices from the proverbial peanut gallery.

"It's clear that religions that are more kind of 'open source' -- less authoritarian, less hierarchical, less preoccupied with controlling the codified material -- are doing better on the Internet," said Lorne L. Dawson, a sociologist who studies religion and the Internet at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario.

Elsewhere, he says, it's a heyday for naysayers.

"The critics, the ex-members . . . they are thriving online because this is giving them a voice so much more powerful than they would have ever had before. They would have had to publish books with small vanity presses or obscure presses, or seek a little newspaper attention."

Religious bloggers run the gamut of topics, but challenging their own authorities is shaping up to be a favorite:

· From his post at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Summerville, S.C., the Rev. Kendall Harmon uses his blog to show how the Episcopal Church U.S.A. strays, in his opinion, from scriptural mandates.

· Dozens of Mormon bloggers, who often publish anonymously, sound off on church policies as well as the right-leaning politics of many members.

· In the Diocese of Arlington, the Rev. Jim Tucker speculates in his blog about why Catholic bishops do not welcome disgruntled clerics from other denominations, a practice he describes as "an opportunity being terribly missed."

Denominational authorities do not always respond kindly to public airings of the religious family's conflicts.

Trustees of the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board initially sought to remove one of its members, Wade Burleson of Enid, Okla., after he discussed board deliberations on his blog. But other bloggers were outraged and would not let the controversy die.