I've Got to Find a Reason

Northern Crown is hosting the seventh edition of the Virginia Blog Carnival this week.

Next week's host will be Sophistpundit, followed by River City Rapids on Halloween, The (not so) Daily Me on Election Eve (November 7), and Bearing Drift on November 14.

Meanwhile, in other blogging news, a conference for Christian bloggers was held last weekend in California. TechNewsWorld reported on October 17:

What would Jesus blog? That and other pressing questions drew 135 Christians to Southern California this weekend for a national conference billed as the first-ever for "God bloggers," a growing community of online writers who exchange information and analyze current events from a Christian perspective.

The three-day conference at Biola University marked an important benchmark for Christian bloggers, who have worked behind the scenes for years to spread the Gospel and infuse politics with religion.

Topics included God bloggers' relationship with the traditional church, their growing influence on mainstream politics and how to manage outsiders' perceptions.

I like some of the headlines generated by the conference. The News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington, tagged its story with "Jesus blogged. Well, he would’ve." (Actually, I think St. Paul would've blogged, but he would've blogged about Jesus. Sunday readings would begin something like this: "A Reading from the Email of St. Paul to the Thessalonians.") The Miami Herald called the same AP story "Christians make call: Blog all ye faithful." The most obvious, of course, was chosen by MSNBC and other news outlets: "What would Jesus blog?" (Are there bracelets bearing the initials WWJB?)

One of my favorite headlines, though, was "Would Martin Luther blog?" To that, I think the answer is clear: Blogging is the not-so-dramatic equivalent of nailing your theses to the church door, out there for everyone to see and (one hopes) to discuss and debate. But here is the more modest reply of that story's author, Rebecca Barnes:

I’m not sure anything that important can come of what amounts to little more than electronic conversation. (Love is action and truth, not just words—1 John 3:17.) But I did agree with the blogger, who also told The Associated Press that one positive outcome of Christian blogs is a wider view of the issues.

"There's a bigger world out there than gay marriage and abortion," said Joe Carter, author of evangelicaloutpost.com.

The SmartChristianBlog also pointed to the worth of some blogs over others by categorizing them as either conversation for conversation’s sake or purposeful change-the-world sorts of rants and raves. One thing’s for sure, if all you do is read and write blogs you’ll have no time left for anything else. The proliferation of these sites in recent months and years is simply amazing.

One thing is clear: There are blogger affinity groups for everyone. There are rings of gay bloggers, conservative bloggers, liberal bloggers, porn bloggers, Virginia bloggers, neo-Nazi bloggers, bloggers who enjoy gardening, bloggers who like Star Trek, bloggers who hate Star Trek, bloggers who deny they're bloggers ... the potential for permutation and growth is as near to infinity as the lifespan of a government program.