Blogs Give Voice to the Dissenters in the Flock
Online Critics Present Challenges and Opportunities for Traditional Religious Authorities

By G. Jeffrey MacDonald
Religion News Service
Saturday, April 29, 2006

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.

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."