"God-Blogging" Conference Celebrates Online Spirituality

by Holly Lebowitz Rossi, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 10/12/2005

Blogs—shorthand for web-logs or online journals—have been growing in popularity among religiously minded people, particularly Christians. A conference this week at Biola University in La Mirada, Calif., will explore exactly what this phenomenon means to the future of communicating religion ideas.

The GodBlog Conference (October 13-15) is the first ever devoted exclusively to religion blogging, said Rae Lynn Rucker, media relations coordinator for Biola. At least 100 bloggers from across the country have registered to attend so far, she said.

Topics for religion bloggers include the personal, the political and the philosophical. Some writers focus on a Christian approach to family or parenting, some write about arts and entertainment, some write theological apologetics, and still others focus on political issues and current events. Bloggers attending the conference range from pastors to college students.

While the conference does not explicitly focus on helping bloggers parlay their work into books, one of the conference's sponsors is Multnomah Books, an evangelical Christian publishing house that publishes titles on current events and Christian living, as well adult fiction.

Among the conference speakers is Hugh Hewitt, author of Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation that's Changing Your World (Nelson Business, Jan. 2005). Hewitt, who maintains his own blog at http://www.hughhewitt.com, argues in his book that blogs level the playing field of ideas, allowing people to choose what messages they want to be exposed to. He goes on to argue that blogs may eventually overtake the book publishing industry.

Biola, an independent evangelical university that describes itself as "theologically conservative," is looking forward to breaking new ground in the conversation about Christian blogging, Rucker said.

"The goal of blogging is for Christians to be able to work together to see how they can create influence and impact in the world," she said, adding that a major purpose of the conference is to get bloggers to network with each other. Rucker said that if the conference is a success, it might become an annual event.