O, Blog All Ye Faithful
The invaluable Raw Story (some blogs, and they know who they are, wouldn’t look half so prescient without it, or have so much pre-digested copy to cut and paste from) links to a surprisingly even-handed, well-researched and interesting USA Today article about libel law and blogging. Defintely worth reading. One case of many that’re mentioned intrigued me:
Ligonier Ministries, a religious broadcaster and publisher in Lake Mary, Fla., has taken the unusual step of asking a judge to pre-emptively silence a blogger to try to prevent him from criticizing the ministries. Judges historically have refused to place such limits on traditional publishers.
So as you do, I had a little google. And lo, a whole can of worms came forth… and particularly slimy, wriggly ones at that, considering these are supposed to be the ‘moral’ people. The blogger, Vance Tribe, has issues with the financial management of Ligonier Ministries.
His criticisms are not only managerial, but spiritual and theological, and he’s been unafraid of saying so on his blog. Ligonier Ministries is a massive moneymaking publishing affair largely exempt from tax and public scrutiny and it appears that in this instance, as they always do, the leeches have battened onto the credulous faithful. There’s defrocked priests, nepotism, hypocrisy and greed, and bad behaviour by the bucketful if you don’t mind wading through the sanctimony. Juicy.
It’s a interesting story, and doubly so for bloggers, because this religious business is trying for prior restraint to stop blog criticism before it even happens. That has implications for many bloggers if it’s successful. If they can do it, so can other churches, and a lot of churches have a lot to hide.
What encourages me about the affair (one that’s familiar to any reader of Elmer Gantry or Trollope) is that by following some of the links at Vance’s blog, it becomes clear that his story’s merely the tip of a gigantic iceberg of criticism of the corporate churches and their trading arms by their own members and that there are many other disgruntled religious bloggers out there.
Now I consider myself an atheist (an agnostic when facing surgery) but I hope I can respect that other people have devout faith. Faith is not church. A church is a social and physical construct, a bureacracy for the collection of funds to maintain itself and its associated social activities and status- it has little to do with belief and is all about administration and self-survival.
It’s the social aspect, the community, that binds so many to their churches. In an uncertain world it’s a comforting structure to cling to, a ready-made way of life, a comfortable, safe nest. Certainty, niceness, security. All those nasty bad people are outside. But that isn’t faith. Faith you can practice anywhere, a megachurch is not required. I don’t recall the New Testament saying “Wherever two or three thousand are gathered together in my name…”
Maybe more religious people are beginning to realise that they are continually being preyed upon by crooks and sociopaths who have turned their spiritual lives into just another moneymaking opportunity, faith as toilet tissue or canned ravioli, with all the boardroom politics, backstabbing and corporate dirty dealings that that implies. They could think of it as a shareholders revolt.
I also hope that after they’ve sorted out their churches they’ll actually think about what it is they actually believe and what Jesus actually said – and see that there is no bearded sky-fairy, there’s just us.
I’d also like world peace, a new intestine, puppies and kittens, and a shiny new kitchen sometime before the next millennium, but I’m not going to get them.
Read more: Internet, Blogging, Bloggers, Law, Defamation, Libel, Megachurches, Religion, Money, US Christianity
