Torrey Honors, a great books program, we all work for is running the second GodBlog convention in August.
We are hoping to impact the new media for the Cause of Christ and bring some serious reflection to the business of Christian blogging.
Now a fine fellow Dr. S.M. Hutchens has written a post accusing the name “Godblog” of being blasphemous.
Seriously. Our great books program is turned into a sort of California hippie hang out with a Jesus-is-my-best-friend approach . . . despite the fact that our web site (easily available) attacks the very things Hutchens fears.
Hutchens has confused appropriation of terms and aggressive cultural engagment with blasphemy.
That seems a bit hard and suggests more a tea-and-biscuits conservative approach than I am used to from Touchstone, my favorite magazine bar none. (”Really,” she sniffed, “all those loud and scruffy young people are disturbing the splendid quiet of our Eucharist.”) Godblog is a term coined by critics and friends of religious blogging. For all I know the motivation may have been the very disrespect and crudeness feared by Hutchens.
However, the term “Christian” itself was just this sort of pop pagan shorthand for the followers of the Nazarene. Christians did what the Godbloggers hope to do and took over the term for themselves. They sanctified the impiety of secular language making the sneer “little Christ” a term of honor. Surely we can do the same with the phrase Godblog with a little help from our normal friends, if they are not too delicate for the task? Of course, there is always the danger of crudity in cultural engagement, but the Fathers took that risk and we are willing to do so too.
It is amusing that this post charging blasphemy to those of us involved in GodBlog and attributing lots of other social attitudes having nothing to do with our actual beliefs came out on the day my breviary said was the traditional Western feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius. . . who in their own day were sniffed at for using the language of the people to try to communicate the Divine.
Does Hutchens find the term “Christian” blasphemous? How far will he let his own magazine go in getting the Word to the people?
I have written for Touchstone and serve on an advisory board for a fine new project of that ministry, Salvo. Salvo uses the Holy Cross on which our Lord suffered in a cunning graphic that looks, well, not unlike a target. It is full of clever marketing to make its traditional Christian message understandable. Does Hutchens find this blasphemous?
I attend a church that uses the Prayer Book essentially unchanged. I love noble language (even if I cannot write it), but today’s crudity and insult can be transformed to better work. Ask Shakespeare.
I would have hoped Hutchens would have checked us out more closely before sniffing. However, the danger of blogs, giving immediate writing power before time for reflection, is one of the very dangers that will be discussed (Socratically!) at Godblog. Hutchens is a great guy and I bet wrote before reading too deeply. . . Lord Jesus Christ son of God have mercy on me a sinner!
I would like to offer Huchens a free registration to check us out. He can give a lecture for Torrey and let us know if he finds us the sort of place that would take target practice at the Mona Lisa (which a group of forty of us visited this year without harming). I will even serve him tea and sniff with him at the decay of all things dignified.