Blogs Give Voice to the Dissenters in the Flock

In March, the board backed down, rescinding the request to remove Burleson. But the board approved a rule barring trustees from publicly criticizing actions of the missions agency.

"It is a controversy about the kind of practices and procedures that will characterize Southern Baptist denominational actions in the future," states a blog entry from Tom Ascol, executive director of the Founders Ministries, a Southern Baptist reform movement. "Will selected doctrinal concerns . . . be elevated to points of importance such that those who disagree with denominational powerbrokers are not allowed opportunities of service in the SBC?"

Bloggers are stirring the pot in other denominations as well.

Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, the archbishop of Boston, pledged last year to open the diocese's financial books for public inspection after a Web-based campaign among disgruntled laity raised the specter of the Massachusetts legislature making such disclosure a legal requirement.

Dissidents are finding the Internet enables them to bypass religious authorities altogether in a way that was virtually impossible just 15 years ago.

Followers of Bahai pioneered such circumvention in the mid-1990s, when spirited discussions about official policies and projects occurred in an arena that authorities could not regulate what was said -- the independent Web-based project called Talisman.

Similarly, Irshad Manji, a Muslim, is now bypassing her faith's leaders. She is offering her book, "The Trouble With Islam," as a download from her Web site available in Urdu, Persian or Arabic. More than 30,000 readers have downloaded it, she says.

The Web has at times not encouraged dialogue among believers, particularly at the official sites of religious organizations, said Brenda E. Brasher, a scholar at Aberdeen University in Scotland who studies how religion is experienced online.

She said several sites originally allowed visitors to meet and mix with one another, but they have since clamped down.

Example: "Ship of Fools," a Web-based worship simulation launched in 2004 with help from the United Methodist Church. For dialogue and group dissent, believers apparently need to log off and take their bodies to a place where religious authority is confined to a mere human being.

"Digital religion is a religion of yes and no," Brasher said in an e-mail. ". . . In real life, religion is more nuanced, more messy."