Letting the Genie Out of the Blog

Interesting follow-up article on the election of Rev. Frank Page as president of the Southern Baptist Convention last week ... particularly the influence of religious blogs in that revolution among the Southern Baptists. Rev. Wade Burleson of Enid, Okla., is particularly cited as influential. Here's his blog, if you want to check him out.

From the N&O article comes this insight into how the blogosphere has uncorked the access to information that religious hierarchies would rather keep from their people:

"Many of those blogs that routinely write about faith are giving religious leaders heartburn. 'The old ways of ordering church life are breaking down,' said Bill Leonard, the dean of the divinity school at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem. Few people read denominational newspapers, Leonard said, and church leaders are no longer able to shape the message the way they did in the past."

Which is why Republican legislative initiatives to control or limit or censor or regulate the Internet should raise the small hairs on the napes of all our necks, religious or not.