What would Jesus blog?

An article from Jacksonville Florida about how blogs fan the flames in church disputes.

While the Internet spread the outreach of the Chabad movement, it was also instrumental in the ongoing split within the Episcopal Church.

The schism began to pick up speed after an openly gay priest was elected bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. Since then, three dioceses and thousands of theologically conservative Episcopalians have left the denomination and aligned themselves with like-minded Anglican groups in the United States and around the world.

"A slew of liberal bloggers and a slew of conservative bloggers" have helped galvanize the opinion and action that has caused the split, said David Virtue, founder of Virtue Online, a news site critical of the Episcopal Church.

While some of them are clergy, most of the bloggers are lay people who are "kicking and screaming" about the issues dividing the denomination.

"This is all coming from the bottom up, not the top down," he said.

While it's good that blogs and other Web-based technologies have given lay people a voice, it's also spawned an unfortunate trend in anonymous carping - on both sides of the issue, Virtue said.

"People want to be able to smack someone without ever being discovered who they are."

'People are the problem'

http://www.jacksonville.com/lifestyles/values_and_religion/2008-12-07/what_would_jesus_blog