{"id":583,"date":"2006-07-31T15:48:43","date_gmt":"2006-07-31T19:48:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=583"},"modified":"2006-08-20T20:43:32","modified_gmt":"2006-08-21T00:43:32","slug":"blogging-and-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=583","title":{"rendered":"Blogging and religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Way back on July 9, 2006, the Washington Post<\/em> ran an article on ministers who write blogs, “Cyber-Savvy Pastors Blog When the Spirit Moves Them” by Megan Greenwell [link<\/a>; and thanks World of Your Making<\/a> for the link]. Some of the ministers Greenwell interviewed use blogs for evangelism and at least one uses a blog for personal reflection — but for me, the most interesting reflection on ministerial blogging was this…<\/p>\n

The Rev. Jan Edmiston, pastor of Fairlington Presbyterian Church in Alexandria, said … the blogging phenomenon is part of a larger shift in the way religion is practiced — although she is unsure what form that change might take. She now devotes every other Monday to “monastery day,” when she sits in a coffee shop reflecting on the state of the church and expressing her thoughts on her blog, “A Church for Starving Artists<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

“I’m doing the things you would do in a monastery except with a cup of coffee and my laptop,” she said. “It’s completely spiritually energizing in ways a lot of people wouldn’t think possible. I think the church is going through a transformation similar to the Reformation, and blogging helps me work through where I fit into that.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now that’s an interesting new spiritual practice:– blogging in a coffee shop. Just as Edmiston calls her practice “monastic,” I think this is less a story of technology changing the way we do things, than it is a story of people finding and creating new ways to pursue spiritual growth and exploration. And as Edmiston says, it’s all very spiritually energizing — which doesn’t mean I have the faintest idea of what form this new change in religion will take.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Way back on July 9, 2006, the Washington Post ran an article on ministers who write blogs, “Cyber-Savvy Pastors Blog When the Spirit Moves Them” by Megan Greenwell [link; and thanks World of Your Making for the link]. Some of the ministers Greenwell interviewed use blogs for evangelism and at least one uses a blog […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech-and-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}