Lunch is over, and the second panel discussion—focusing on “bridging the political divide” in God-blogging—is about to begin. Joe Carter is moderating. Thus far, politics has not cropped up too much at the conference, so it’ll be interesting to see where this discussion goes. The discussion is opening with the question of the apparent lack of political diversity in the God-blogosphere—there’s a predominance of right-leaning bloggers in Christian blogging circles. Is political diversity something to be consciously pursued?
My digital camera just ran out of batteries, so I can’t grace you with a photo of the panel discussion participants. I did manage to get a few shots of Biola’s beautiful campus, however, including this one of me (loaded down with laptop and other assorted equipment) dwarfed by a very large painting of Jesus:
Pretty cool, eh?
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October 28, 2006 at 10:49
This is beautiful and so amazing never seen any thing like this before except in alantic city where jesus is in the sand. This is truely wonderful. How god gave someone this gift to do this we need more love and art like this.
October 28, 2006 at 13:34
Your thoughts on political diversity reminded me of a topic that used to come up regularly on many political blogs I read. A (male) blogger would inevitably ask why there weren’t any women bloggers. Of course, this would infuriate all the women bloggers I read, because the male blogger (who overwhelmingly linked to and read other male bloggers) simply assumed that if he wasn’t aware of female bloggers, they didn’t exist. Likewise, there are many, many Christian bloggers who don’t toe the GOP line; perhaps the participants at GodBlogCon just haven’t looked hard enough.
October 30, 2006 at 01:52
Kim,
John Mark Reynolds of Biola opened by saying how hard they tried to get some politically liberal Christians for the conference. Some of the ones they found didn’t want to be the “only” liberal there, so they refused to come. Others were upset that a Christian conference asked people to attend only if they agreed with the Nicean Creed. It wasn’t that those people disagreed with it, but that they were offended on behalf of their Buddhist (or other religion) friends, so they refused to come.
After trying for a few months to get liberals, the organizers finally gave up.
Andy,
Great photo! You can see two shadows to the left of Jesus’ head. Those (including Jesus) represent the Trinity. Pretty cool, all right.
October 30, 2006 at 12:29
Kim: good points. As Skype Puppy notes, the political imbalance was addressed—they tried to seek out some non-conservative Christian bloggers for the plenary sessions, but for various reasons it didn’t work out. It may be understandable, but it’s nevertheless unfortunate, as I suspect that the conservative tilt of many of the plenary speakers discouraged more than a few left-leaning bloggers from attending. I am glad they made an effort to welcome non-conservative bloggers this year, but I hope that before the next conference they’ll do some thinking about how they can make the conference more attractive to bloggers of varying political stripes.
Skype Puppy: thanks for the explanation! I hadn’t noticed the shadows, but that makes sense. It’s a beautiful painting.
November 2, 2006 at 14:00
I’m a first time blogger. Was a member of the Can. Parl. for 19 years. Some observations re: the discussion on pol. diversity. 1) Pol. campaigns are designed to polarize voters (citizens) otherwise you don’t get decisions. 2)you probably can’t engage an opponent in a forum if the identified “sponsor” is seen as rude, argumentative and self-righteous. Best get to know them between campaigns and become at least tentataive friends. 3)We must respectfully learn to make a difference on an issue between the diagnosis and the solution. 4) Finally, we must acknowledge that we are all sinners and capable of being wrong.