Ronald J. Sider has a good essay at Beliefnet, in which he laments the fundamental(ist?) disconnect between the preaching and the practice among evangelicals in the US.

* Sabbath Prayer
http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006715.php

* Put aside faith-based blogging as advocacy, that just dumbs it down to politics by other means.

* Defining it is pointless, wastes valuable time. People know it when they see it.

* The Christian vs. non-Christian discussion is unproductive, ditto GodBlog Con unless it can be used to illustrate or illuminate deeper structural trends in faith-based blog communities generally.

* What if we talked about faith-based blogging as a vahicle for sharing and strengthening peoples’ religious experiences? As something that strengthened the religious community in religion, and communicated the reality of its values. For instance, Winds runs “Good News Saturdays” – and this Saturday includes a Sabbath prayer in addition to a story from Sufi Islam and other good news items.

* Which would then spin off into a second, related question re: witnessing – not in just in the conventional prosletyzation sense, but more like Francis of Assisi’s “there is no sense walking to preach unless our walking is also our preaching.” Faith-based blogging means your readers get a window into your daily practice of the faith and guidance by its lights, not just what you say about it. That opens up totally different opportunities, but it can also be intimidating for the blogger.

My 2 cents.

I consider it Good News that blogging has opened new ways for us to share information and create a dialogue and debate over important issues. So I encourage you ALL to participate in BlogNashville next…

Staci’s

The biggest difficulty in “faith-based blogging,” I think, and also in leading discussions with non-Christians, is the fact that what you and I mean by the word “faith” is fundamentally different from what the average American means by faith. (Some of your commenters looked like they were starting that idea but it didn’t seem to take root in the discussion.) I’d say that most people who would think of themselves as “faith-based” are what I’d call “Truth-oriented,” while Americans in general are “Therapy-oriented,” and between the two there is a great gulf fixed…at least where communication is concerned.

IMHO: if you want to understand why apparently nice people can be so intolerant over religion — including people who seem constantly to be talking about the importance of tolerance (but who can’t say the word “fundamentalist” without sneering) — then you have to understand the role dominant metaphors play in religion. There are seven critical points you must grasp.

(1) Whenever someone thinks about religion, he thinks of religion in terms drawn from a particular dominant metaphor. That metaphor makes it possible for him to think about religion meaningfully, but it also puts limits on his religious thought. It is also from that metaphor that he draws — without even thinking about it — his assumptions about what a person ought to feel about various situations in which religion is involved; when it comes to religion, all his motivations and emotions are drawn from the metaphor, not from religious beliefs standing on their own.

(2) Very, very few people have consciously chosen which metaphor they are going to use — in fact, very few people are aware that they are using any metaphor at all. It’s rarely the case that people have looked at the different metaphors available, weighed the choices, and chosen the one they think is most appropriate. The vast majority of the time people are conditioned by their upbringing (by all the complex human relationships and formative experiences that we subsume under the word “culture”) to use a particular dominant metaphor to make sense of religion. Furthermore, when they do become aware that there is a difference, somewhat more often than not they automatically assume that their own culture’s metaphor is the “right” one.

(3) Therefore most people assume, without thinking about it, that everybody else who talks about religion is working from the same metaphor they are, and they draw conclusions about other people’s motivations and emotions by trying to figure out what motivations or emotions would cause those actions or opinions to be generated from their own metaphorical framework.

(4) Two people who are using exactly the same words, but working from different fundamental metaphors, can mean radically different things — but if they don’t realize they are working from different metaphors, they usually think they understand what the other person is saying, and pass judgment accordingly on the other person’s opinions and/or character.

(5) Historically there seem to be four dominant metaphor-families that people have used to think about religion:

(a) Religion as superstition/opiate/poison.

(b) Religion as family/culture/clan membership/sense of belonging.

(c) Religion as therapy/tool/hobby/emotional pragmatism.

(d) Religion as truth/science/medicine.

I need names for these other than just the letters; so purely for the sake of having names I’ll refer to them as “Superstition,” “Family,” “Therapy,” and “Truth.”

(6) The predominant metaphor in modern Kazakh society (a particular interest of mine) is what I’m calling “Family.” The predominant metaphor in modern American society is “Therapy.” However, there is a very significant subculture of American society (which used to be the dominant culture and is extremely displeased at having now been relegated to minority status) for which the dominant metaphor of religion is “Truth.” And then much of the American Jewish subculture, and especially the more Orthodox variants of Judaism, come from a passionate attachment to metaphor “Family.” Finally, there is a small but vocal element that sees religion as “Superstition.”

(7) Most of the bitterness, hatred and intolerance in American society comes not from a disagreement on specific religious doctrines such as whether or not there is a hell that all infidels (from whichever perspective) will wind up in, but from a fundamental disagreement on whether religion ought to be thought of in terms of “Therapy” or in terms of “Truth.” And since this is not recognized as the fundamental issue — in fact it’s hardly recognized as an issue at all — all of the talking and arguing and mutual recrimination do absolutely nothing to move us toward any sort of reconciliation, since practically all of the sound and fury manages to miss the point entirely.

Now that’s the SHORT version [grinning]…seriously, I’m really just trying to work this out. There’s a lot more of my trying to give examples of what I’m talking about at http://redneckperil.blogspot.com/2005/04/defusing-religious-conflict.html (sorry to self-advertise there).

In your case I’d say that a sizable percentage of what you say will be heard by a bunch of people who (a) mean by the words “truth,” “faith,” “belief,” “tolerance,” “open-mindedness,” etc. something very different from what you or I would mean, but who (b) don’t realize that and (c) will assume that you mean what they would mean. At the very outset of the discussion, you might consider making explicit the fact that a “faith-based blogger” who believes that her faith is objectively, factually true the way science is true, is likely to have a different tone to her blog than is a “faith-based blogger” for whom her faith is something that “works for her” but might not work for somebody else. But maybe it’s just that I think that’s interesting because I’m working through that idea at the moment.

Sorry I ran on so long.

Kenny

P.S. You’re an excellent example of a Truth-based, faith-based blogger. Andrew Sullivan is an excellent example of a Therapy-based, faith-(but-in-a-quite-different-sense)-based blogger. For all of the talk Andrew has done about the new Pope, really most of his difficulty with the Pope comes down to the fact that the Pope is ineluctably Truth-oriented and Andrew is Therapy-oriented. Evangelical Christians mostly like the new Pope, because evangelical Christians are mostly Truth-oriented.

P.P.S. Hey, how about adding a “Preview” capability on these comments?

I think what someone said about games relates to your question. To the effect that we don’t need very many Christian games, that is games for Christians by Christians. What we need are games that show the Christian viewpoint in a pleasing light to non-Christians. Thats one pov.

You have two sets of blogs. One for preaching to the choir, and the other for everyone else, and I’m not sure how much of either there should be. How about more, of both.

So
1)How do you edify?
2)How do you convince?
a)By Christian apologetic blogs &
b)Something like what Insty does where grace charms the reader to entertain new thoughts?

Eric

Best of luck next week.

If you’re still on the fence about going, you’re rapidly running out of time to decide, as there are only 53 spots still open as…

A lot of Christian blogs are written for other Christians. Some aren’t. I expect it’s the same for other faith bloggers. I know of one muslim blogger who blogs for a wider audience than just other muslims on Islamic topics and current events.

Also – and you’ll know why I’m saying this I think – do they want to reach an international readership or just a US one? If international – why?
If just US – why?
Those questions lead to interesting thoughts about what the internet opens access to.
Love in Him,
Catez

The Food For Thought dinners are a way to continue discussions raised during sessions earlier in the day in a more informal, personal setting. All dinners will begin at 8pm on Saturday. All tables will be reserved under the name…

Your points are valid. However, I read Dodo’s post a bit differently, based on the context set by the second sentence.

He said:

===
Faith-based bloggers are bloggers who have a moral compass.

Ask the members of your audience to identify the moral compass that they use to determine right from wrong.
===

I read it as “everyone has a moral compass, including faith based bloggers, what is your compass?” (Not that faith-based bloggers have a corner on moral compasses).

And it’s a great question.

Eric.

Lately, when most conservative Christians refer to faith-based anything, they are referring to their faith….not all faiths. They do not consider other faiths and faith traditions to be…valid, I guess. (Not sure valid is the correct word, but it’s close enough.)