{"id":1193,"date":"2005-06-01T21:13:56","date_gmt":"2005-06-02T01:13:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2005\/06\/01\/the-god-bloggers\/"},"modified":"2005-06-01T21:13:56","modified_gmt":"2005-06-02T01:13:56","slug":"the-god-bloggers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2005\/06\/01\/the-god-bloggers\/","title":{"rendered":"The God-bloggers"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Public Radio has this new show, with Christopher Lydon as host, called “Open Source<\/a>.” 
\nIt’s an attempt to bring radio talk (the intelligent kind) together
\nwith blogging, and it combines its topics, it seems, with their
\npresence on the Internet.<\/p>\n

Tonight’s show was on God-blogging, with Jeff Sharlet of The Revealer<\/a>, Gordon Atkinson of Real Live Preacher<\/a>, and Sarah Dylan Breuer<\/a>.  They all had intelligent and insightful things to say.<\/p>\n

(I don’t read RLP too often any more, which may be too bad.  I
\nonce had what I can only describe as a mystical experience, just a tiny
\nfraction of what the great mystics like Julian or Teresa seem to
\ndescribe.  But on reading one of his stories, I had a brief few
\nmoments where I understood, and I gasped.  My molecules <\/span>got
\nit for a small piece of time.  God was very big and very small,
\nall around and right in front of me, overpowering and still as
\nnight.  I’ve had a similar experience at a U2 concert [don’t
\nlaugh, it’s true] though not as intense.)<\/p>\n

Jeff is one of the smartest people out there right now, besides a
\ncouple of sociologists that I know;  he has an intuitive grasp of
\nwhat the contours of a religious sensibility feel like.  On
\ntonight’s show, Jeff spoke lots about how the Internet is a sort of
\n“protestant” place for religion, in that it offers the God-bloggers a
\nplace to be, to talk, to worship, to do religion where they don’t have
\na mediating authority.<\/p>\n

Jeff’s partly right, but I think he dates this tendency altogether too
\nlate.  The tendency to individualize the religious experience
\nexists in all religions, whether hierarchical or
\nhyper-individualized.  And it takes two different forms, because
\nit’s about the rejection of the world (a la Max Weber): one can either
\nbecome a protestant, seeking to make the world over for God, or one can
\nwithdraw from the world, seeking to experience God within one’s
\nself.  <\/p>\n

I think most of the god-bloggers out there, especially in St. Blog’s
\nparish (the conservative Roman Catholic bloggers), are these
\nprotestants.  They sense a calling to what they do, a vocation, as
\nit were.  The protestant god-blogger sees him or her self as God’s
\nagent, put here to do God’s work.  S\/he (and in the RC
\nblogosphere, it’s pretty she-heavy, ironically) engages in a mighty
\ncall to rally the true to the standard of orthodoxy, whether the
\ncontent is orthodox or heterodox.  These bloggers are the majority
\nof the god-bloggers.  They seek to transform the world, or at
\nleast to figure out who is in the community of the redeemed.  And
\nI’ve noted this taking place whether the blogger is Christian or
\nnot–the Western mindset, based as it is in the protestant worldview,
\nis might hard to escape.  These people are the agents of God, the
\nHigher Power, the Buddha, or whatever.  Americans, especially,
\nlike to save people with whatever they were saved by, be it Jesus or
\nKrishna.<\/p>\n

But what’s interesting is how much we don’t see of the mystic
\nwithdraw-ers.  These are the people who seek not to be the agent
\n(especially in the full, legal sense of that word) of God, but God’s
\nvessel.  They empty themselves out.  “The creature must be
\nsilent so God can speak.”  Now, I’m not talking about necessarily
\nseeing blogging of documentation of mystical experience. 
\n(Although, it seems to me that there’s a place for that.  Blaise Pascal did it in one way<\/a>,
\nand I’m surprised we don’t see more like that on the Internet.) 
\nBut it seems reasonable that people might use the Internet just as they
\nhave used drugs, self-abnegation and asceticism, and “automatic”
\nwriting as means of emptying self and filling up with God.  I
\nwould be hard pressed to think of any of these sorts of mystical
\nexperiences of or through the Internet.  God’s agents outnumber
\nGod’s vessels in the electronic ether.<\/p>\n

Here, in no particular order or logic, are some interesting and fun God-blogs.
\nPhilocrites<\/a>
\nMichael Povey<\/a>
\nU2 Sermons Blog<\/a>
\nSalty Vicar<\/a>
\nBaptized Pagan<\/a>
\nAKMA<\/a>
\nHugo Schwyzer<\/a>

\nKilling the Buddha<\/a><\/p>\n

Anybody got any well-written Jewish, Muslim, or Buddhist blogs?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Public Radio has this new show, with Christopher Lydon as host, called “Open Source.”  It’s an attempt to bring radio talk (the intelligent kind) together with blogging, and it combines its topics, it seems, with their presence on the Internet. Tonight’s show was on God-blogging, with Jeff Sharlet of The Revealer, Gordon Atkinson of Real […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rayleejun"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-jf","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}