On the theory that the recent IED has blown off all the FBF legs it is going to, I think it might be time to reflect on a prejudice that crept in during that discussion.

Several people made suggestive reference to the "www" and the blogs. There was the insinuation that our computers have turned political differences into something unique or something especially pernicious. This bias is pure poppycock. It is just the scuttling of roaches when the light comes on.

Our computers have not made us bad people; we are naturally bad people. We have always twittered, but now we can twitter while the blood still runs hot.

Anyone who thinks the writing on blogs is inferior has not read those church papers, those "pastoral letters", and those denominational magazines which were used to manage the flow of public sentiment. (I recall one national representative using the editorial page of a magazine to complain that he was picked up at the airport by people in sweat pants and sweat shirts. Not an especially great literary moment.) There was a time when an independent view had no place in the public imagination. It was just stomped out or edited away.

There was a time we trusted the "gatekeepers" and we believed the information we received through designated liars. Dan Rather made a similar condescending judgment about blogs. We didn't listen to him then either.

Anyone who has read an emergent blog knows that this is not a literate generation. Anyone who has read a fundamentalist blog can see that fundamentalists still take a dim view of thinking. Anyone who studied history enough to rifle through dead people's mail will know that blogs are not a sign of decline, they just expose the same human heart to a wider audience.

A wise person will wonder why it is unobjectionable for an FBFI or a Maranatha Baptist Bible College or a Northland International University to disseminate their novelties and superstitions on the web and not face criticism from the web. Blogs don't make criticism better or worse, they just make both kinds more accessible.

We should start thinking about how we do business. I don't think blogs are going to bring in an Augustan Age, but neither should they be dismissed as pulp fiction. Now what is said in Brevard, North Carolina, can be sitting in everyone's mailbox when he wakes up and be coming out of his printer while he brushes his teeth.

This is not something to be resentful of, it is something to be prudent about.