On Faith

Something else kinda interesting I came across recently (now that my brain is automatically on the lookout for good electronic writing):

The Washington Post and Newsweek have together set up a blog called On Faith which-- you guessed it-- is about religion and spirituality. The format of this blog is a little unusual: the Post solicits well-known and well-respected figures in the world of religion-- their first writer was none other than Desmond Tutu—to write short pieces about some aspect of religion or spirituality. Anyone can comment on a post.

Now, I think it’s great to get famous, important, spiritual people to participate in a blog. But it seems to me that On Faith isn’t a true blog, because the authors of each post never respond to the comments that people make about their post. And honestly, I can’t blame them. The comments fall into four categories: 1) angry pro-Christianity tirades, 2) angry atheist tirades, 3) people trying to reconcile/ calm both sides down, and 4) people actually responding to the content of the post (these constitute maybe 1/5 of the comments.)

There’s a deep and somewhat disconcerting disconnect between the thoughtfulness of the posts and the anger and self-righteousness of many of the comments. I guess there are just some subjects that it’s harder to have a respectful, illuminating conversation about than others. Unfortunately, the anonymity and lack of responsibility associated with the internet do not lend themselves to respectful conversations. But I found it weird that people could (and did) just mouth off to Tutu and the other respected figures who wrote posts (although the posts didn’t read like blog posts, but like short essays.) Even if I were shielded by the internet, I think I’d still feel some sense of respect for honored public figures. But I guess since the authors don’t respond to comments (or at least I haven’t seen any responses from them), it’s not really like insulting someone-- it’s more like insulting a brick wall.