'Thou shalt.... blog!'

The Evangelical Alliance will on Monday publish the new Ten Commandments of Blogging. Articles of Faith now brings you an exclusive preview. You can also read the news story on this, now up at Times Online and in tomorrow's paper. They are:

1.  You shall not put your blog before your integrity.
2.  You shall not make an idol of your blog.
3.  You shall not misuse your screen name by using your anonymity to sin.
4.  Remember the Sabbath day by taking one day off a week from your blog.
5.  Honour your fellow-bloggers above yourselves and do not give undue significance to their mistakes.
6.  You shall not murder someone else’s honour, reputation or feelings.
7.  You shall not use the web to commit or permit adultery in your mind.
8.  You shall not steal another person’s content.
9.  You shall not give false testimony against your fellow-blogger.
10.You shall not covet your neighbour's blog ranking.  Be content with your own content.

The commandments are partly the brainchild of the EA's church mission director Krish Kandiah, who pastors at the Cornerstone, a new plant in Thame, and has for a year been doing a Wordpress blog, What's Next? In his latest entry he writes about his newly-adopted daughter. He and his wife also have three older birth children.

The ten commandments for bloggers came out of a recent seminar, Godblogs, organised by the EA, designed to give Christian bloggers a chance to network and to debate their approach to blogging. Sadly I missed out on that, but Krish gave me a run-through afterwards on the telephone and we've met up on Facebook as well.

Krish says: 'I love the world of blogging but some times in haste we can all write things we might regret later. Sometimes blogging can take over your life, for example if you are posting at a time when your family might need your attention.'

After taking his laptop on holiday and sitting down to blog after watching the film Wall-E with his family, he realised he had become a bit obsessed, so he got out his Bible and looked for guidance on what to do next. He only took it up because the Bible told him so.

'St Paul in 1 Corithians talks about being a slave to the slave, free to the free, so I thought I would take that approach and be a blogger to the bloggers.' It was his attempt to understand a different culture, the culture of the young adult that he encountered weekly at the university exploratory courses in Christianity he runs.

Comments

[Esmari]

Ben Myers found 10 things wrong with EA's list of 10 commandments, so he rewrote it - starting with "Thou shalt not confuse thy blog with the Gospel."

A wise list, I thought:
http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2008/09/new-ten-commandments-for-bloggers.html

[krish kandiah]

Really like the social justice angle that Beth suggests.
will put that in the mix for the next incarnation of the commandments - many thanks.
krish

[j]

Started by thinking this was a spoof- but actually, reading the comments on Ruth's thread about what this blog is for, I would especially commend the following:

"5. Honour your fellow-bloggers above yourselves and do not give undue significance to their mistakes.
6. You shall not murder someone else’s honour, reputation or feelings".

Otherwise I'd agree that we have a beta version here, and would agree with those who would support more content about the ethical nature of what we are trying to consider and bit less about church orthodoxy - but of course I am bound to say that. It could become a useful ethical tool for promoting the mutually repectful and constructive blogging that we would all enjoy, I think.

[Esmari]

Amusing :-). And it gave me some food for thought. Thanks.

[krish kandiah]

Great to see that our tongue in cheek 10 commandments for bloggers is generating some discussion.

The idea came out of a recent day we had for bloggers and at the end of which we captured people's thoughts and circulated a draft document which others have contributed to. As you can imagine incorporating everyone's feedback was not possible but we did our best. In the end the Evangelical Alliance had to make the call on what went in and what didn't. That's why we put it out in our name rather than publicising the list of contributors.

As for the commandment
4. Remember the Sabbath day by taking one day off a week from your blog.

We were not intending to specify which day of the week people might take off - as Olive rightly mentions Sunday is a great day for many of us to blog - but perhaps we might take another day off instead.

We hope that offering these commandments to the blogging community encourages further reflection on how to relate the bible to our cultures. We are soon posting the commandments on the Evangelical Alliance Website - where we would love to have more feedback so that we can continue the process of making them more helpful and appropriate for the blogging world.
Looking forward to hearing more discussion.
Yours Sincerely
Krish Kandiah
Executive Director Churches in Mission, Evangelical Alliance

[Heresiarch]

Any blog that followed all these principles, or even half of them, would be a very dull read.

[Jeremy]

I was at the EA last week too, and I'm with Olive. This was basically a PR initiative by EA, using a roomful of bloggers to legitimise the exercise.

I agree, it is still far too churchy, isn't specific to blogging (number 7?), isn't nearly as tongue in cheek as I thought it was meant to be, and misses a great opportunity to make a statement about what Christian blogging could be. And it doesn't come close to Tim O'Reilly's genuinely wiki-refined Bloggers Code of Conduct:

http://blogging.wikia.com/wiki/Blogger's_Code_of_Conduct

[David Keen]

Are you allowed to schedule posts for your day off?

Most of this is pretty sensible, and would improve the blogosphere no end if it was followed.

It'd be nice to have some positive stuff as well though. These are all 'don't's

[cp36]

>>Young bloggers will only laugh at these rules and dismiss us as cranks.

What! I also thought it was suppose to be a joke too.

[Beth]

Where is the social conscience of these commandments? They are mainly about banning petty sins and behaviours amongst blog authors. An atheist with a blog dedicated to feeding the homeless could fail your commandments, whereas a Christian who blogged in support of state-sanctioned torture could pass with flying colours.

How about...

-- You shall use your blog to stand up for the oppressed and those without a voice.

-- You shall not promote prejudice or bigotry on your blog.

-- You shall not promote oppressive social regimes or practices on your blog.

-- You shall foster respect for God's creation in your posts.

-- You shall encourage respectful discussion amongst those who comment on your blog.

Some of these have half a chance of encouraging positive change, instead of just making blog authors paranoid about keeping the Sabbath... Which is on Saturday, by the way!

[Fr. Van Windsor]

"I was at the bloggers' meeting at the EA HQ ..."

Bloggers have meetings? Do they take their computers to talk with each other?

[Rick Beekman]

Olive Morgan;
You are Right. Jesus Healed people on the Sabbath and the Jewish religious leaders scorned him with "legalism". Resting on the Sabbith to me simply means not to be conducting buisness on the Sabbith.

Jesus overthrew the money changers in the temple.......

[Olive Morgan]

I am alarmed to read this posting, because I was at the bloggers' meeting at the EA HQ and the final 'Ten Commandments' that you publish here bear no resemblance to what we discussed nor take on
board the comments I was asked to give on a revised version emailed to us. I'm afraid this has been rushed out to the press with undue haste and I strongly feel that we should have been shown the final result of all our comments before publication. Sorry,Krish!

I'm sorry to say that I could not have agreed to this going out into the public press. As a local Media Publicity Director, I still feel that it is using too much 'church speak'- largely because of the attempt to tie this new code in with the OT Ten Commandments.Sadly, many of today's young bloggers are not familiar with the OT Ten Commandments and do not talk about the Sabbath or 'sin'. We don't even hear many sermons in church these days on 'sin'! Young bloggers will only laugh at these rules and dismiss us as cranks. An opportunity has been missed to show that we are on their wavelength.

Rick - I asked that,if the Ten Commandments were followed, #4 should be changed to 'Remember the
Sabbath day to keep it holy', adding that the best blogs that I know post 'The Hymn of the Day' or 'A Prayer for Today' on Sundays.
This new blogging commandment is like saying that no sermon should be preached on Sundays and no-one should care for the sick on Sundays. Jesus did not have such a strict view of what could be done on the Sabbath.

[Fred]

6. You shall not murder someone else's honour, reputation or feelings.

Yes, honour is very important to Pharisees and Evangelicals. To question another's self-righteousness is the ultimate sin among the pious hypocrites.

[Peter Carey]

Wow, have the Puritans taken over the UK again?

How about an Anglican via media?

(but, seriously, pretty good, and pretty funny...)

Peter Carey+
http://santospopsicles.blogspot.com/

[Andrew, Venezuela]

Fr. Van Windsor nipped me to the post with his own "Oh Dear!" ... which is exactly what I was thinking as I read through Ruth's latest article.

Whilst I fully understand the "ethical" questions posed by the EA's new "10 Commandments of Blogging", they may have innocently forgotten about what is commonly known as the "11th. Commandment", as used to paraphrase all the "DOs" and "DON'Ts" of the more traditional rendering of the "10 Commandments" version. Nº 11, of course, is "Thou shalt not be found out".....

Would the EA be able to come up with some guidance, therefore, as to a suitable new "11th. Commandment" for bloggers - in a modernised text - to suggest how or what we should all be expected to behave, do, say and/or think when the "XYZ machine" collapses because of an unexpected electricity outage or "malfunction", very particularly when some considerable "time and effort" has been expended in preparing a script or a text?.

It is obvious that some people prefer to hide behind "pseudonyms" when expressing derogatory comments about, and even personal attacks upon, others. That is the moment when the opportune intervention of "moderators" is so important. Just to eliminate any possible doubts, my second Christian name IS Andrew, and I DO happen to live in Venezuela.

In this modern age of cybernetics, perhaps terms such as "Oh Dear!", "Oh dearie me!" and "Oh dearie, dearie me!" could translucently be abbreviated to read as "OD", "ODM" and ODDM", as the case might be?.

Please continue writing your articles Ruth, their contents are really fascinating to read. I don't envy you your job, mind you !. Every best wish.

[Rick Beekman]

Ruth;

#4 Seems the hardest one to follow. I attend Church on Sunday; But may not be able to Post oN Monday because of Work..Thus Sunday posting. It takes a lot of restraint at times not to argue on and on with others. I found out a long time ago..Arguing gets blood pressure up and not worth arguing. We have a very diverse and intelligent group on here (Minus myself!). I have learned many things from various bloggers on here.

[Fr. Van Windsor]

7. You shall not use the web to commit or permit adultery in your mind.

Oh Dear! I guess 9 out of 10 ain't bad...