Cliques: They’re What’s Wrong With the Christian Blogosphere

There is a time for every­thing,
and a sea­son for every activ­ity under heaven: …
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance.

Eccle­si­astes 3:1, 4

Know­ing this, we are aware that there will be times when our hearts hurt and break. Each of us has expe­ri­enced that heart break in one form or another. Think­ing back on your life, what makes your heart break, and why?

There it is. The ele­phant in the room. I have decided that it is finally time to acknowl­edge, name, and dis­cuss it.

One dic­tio­nary defines a “clique” as “an exclu­sive cir­cle of peo­ple with a com­mon pur­pose,” while another describes it this way: “A group of peo­ple who are friendly with each other but exclude oth­ers.” The word in that sen­tence that trou­bles and inspires me to blog is “exclude.” As Chris­tians, we should never exclude other human beings from our pres­ence because they do not believe as we do. To exclude oth­ers is to be decid­edly un-Christlike.

Other blog­gers have invoked dif­fer­ent names to dis­cuss the issue, although not specif­i­cally in ref­er­ence to Chris­t­ian blogs. For instance, Jack of All Blogs wrote about a phe­nom­e­non that occurs when one lone voice stands out from a crowd of blog­gers who all line up on the same side of a par­tic­u­lar issue. He dubbed it the “blog­ging posse,” not­ing that blog­ging often becomes an activ­ity which is “polar­iz­ing and tends to tear com­mu­ni­ties apart. You’re forced to choose a side. Oth­er­wise, it’s ‘if you’re not with us, then you’re against us.’”

Back on Jan­u­ary 29, 2007, Rose observed:

[Blog­ging] has become some pop­u­lar­ity con­test and you are either with them or you’re the kid in school who never got a Valen­tine card when the rest of the class did. You’re the kid that never got invited to birth­day par­ties. You’re the loner try­ing hard to fit in.

I’m not in the in-crowd. Should I care? I’m grow­ing rather tired of try­ing to impress these blog­gers. I am who I am.

Life can be filled with dis­ap­point­ments if we always need to seek the approval of others.

The Inter­net is, in many ways, no dif­fer­ent than and an accu­rate reflec­tion of real life, espe­cially with regard to social com­mu­ni­ties and inter­ac­tions. That’s because the blo­gos­phere is pop­u­lated by real, live human beings who bring to their blog­ging activ­i­ties the same vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and flaws that char­ac­ter­ize their non-cyber per­son­al­i­ties and relationships.

It is human nature to want to feel a part of some­thing, fit in, be accepted. There is noth­ing inher­ently wrong with feel­ing com­fort­able and val­i­dated when in the com­pany, either in real or cyber life, of folks who look, think, act, and believe as you do.

It becomes a prob­lem, how­ever, when those are the only kind of peo­ple with whom you asso­ciate or wel­come to your site. I believe it rises to the level of a “sin” when you pur­pose­fully and hurt­fully ban or bar other blog­gers from par­tic­i­pat­ing in an event or activ­ity that you pro­mote as being open to all.

I can’t think of any­thing more bor­ing and lim­it­ing than spend­ing all of my time with peo­ple who are just like me because I want to hear, expe­ri­ence and, most impor­tantly, learn some­thing new each and every day. In order to grow, I need to hear dif­fer­ent view­points expressed by peo­ple with diver­gent backgrounds.

Here in cyber­space, I observe Chris­t­ian blog­gers — pri­mar­ily women — vis­it­ing and leav­ing com­ments on each oth­ers’ sites which fre­quently con­sist of lit­tle more than “me, too” or “great post.” When one writer expresses an opin­ion, it is com­mon to see a string of com­ments join­ing in agree­ment, but true debate is, in my expe­ri­ence, a rar­ity. Many of the Chris­t­ian blogs I visit employ com­ment mod­er­a­tion. When I encounter a blog where the host has decided not to allow com­ments to be dis­played until he/she has per­son­ally reviewed and approved them, I always find myself won­der­ing how many dis­sent­ing opin­ions have been oblit­er­ated because the com­menter did not espouse the Scrip­tural inter­pre­ta­tion favored by the host.

The Chris­t­ian “blog­ging posse,” char­ac­ter­ized by a real, but unspo­ken pol­icy of exclu­siv­ity is one of the things that makes my heart break.

There is a par­tic­u­lar meme in which I have par­tic­i­pated pretty reg­u­larly for a sig­nif­i­cant period of time. I even hosted it. When a call went out for hosts, I vol­un­teered to host on a reg­u­lar basis, but received no response from the admin­is­tra­tor. I let some time pass, dur­ing which I con­tin­ued to par­tic­i­pate. I inquired again and still did not receive a response. Finally, I decided to reach out one final time. At long last, I heard from the admin­is­tra­tor, who explained that she had expe­ri­enced email dif­fi­cul­ties. She assured me that she appre­ci­ated my will­ing­ness to host, I would be sched­uled to do so reg­u­larly, and pro­vided me with the upcom­ing dates that had been assigned to me.

How­ever, she also said this:

Now I also want to be clear that I have no prob­lem with you host­ing although I know that a cou­ple of oth­ers do. I actu­ally got quite a bit of resis­tance when you hosted last time but I stood my ground because their rea­sons why I shouldn’t let you host were, in my opin­ion, hyp­o­crit­i­cal and self-righteous and not very Christ-like.

To her credit, she did not reveal who voiced oppo­si­tion to my serv­ing as a host. But she also did not reveal the basis for their oppo­si­tion, which was not help­ful in allow­ing me to come to an under­stand­ing of the thought-processes of the anony­mous protesters.

What was most trou­bling about this devel­op­ment, how­ever, was the fact that none of the peo­ple who protested my par­tic­i­pa­tion voiced their feel­ings directly to me. Instead, I only found out about the behind-the-scenes tug-of-war well after it occurred.

Worse, just a few days later, the admin­is­tra­tor decided to trans­fer own­er­ship of the meme to another blog­ger. When I vis­ited the new online home of the meme, I was dis­ap­pointed — but not sur­prised — to find my name omit­ted from the list of reg­u­lar hosts. Nonethe­less, I con­tacted the new admin­is­tra­tor and advised that the prior admin­is­tra­tor had made a com­mit­ment to me that I would be a reg­u­lar host (which should have been hon­ored by the new admin­is­tra­tor, in my opin­ion), made her aware of dates upon which I was will­ing to serve, etc.

Her response con­sti­tutes what is com­monly known as a “brush off:”

Thank you for your help. At this point I have a good rota­tion group, and did have a pre­vi­ous one before you who said she’d do the [date]. I am try­ing to keep to maybe 6–8 host­esses as it seems more sim­ple to main­tain (as [name of prior admin­is­tra­tor] sug­gested too). I will keep you in mind and let you know.

The meme’s hosts and many of the par­tic­i­pants are, sadly, a clique. A club. “An exclu­sive cir­cle of peo­ple with a com­mon pur­pose.” “A group of peo­ple who are friendly with each other but exclude oth­ers.” To me, they are name­less and face­less, for the most part, because they have opted not to deal with me directly. For rea­sons known only to those who are mem­bers of the exclu­sive club in ques­tion, which they have cho­sen not to share with me, my mem­ber­ship appli­ca­tion has been rejected. They have decided that it is unnec­es­sary for them to com­ply with the Bible verse about which many of them have writ­ten and with which they espouse agreement:

If a fel­low believer hurts you, go and tell him — work it out between the two of you. If he lis­tens, you’ve made a friend. If he won’t lis­ten, take one or two oth­ers along so that the pres­ence of wit­nesses will keep things hon­est, and try again. If he still won’t lis­ten, tell the church. If he won’t lis­ten to the church, you’ll have to start over from scratch, con­front him with the need for repen­tance, and offer again God’s for­giv­ing love.

Matthew 18:15–17
The Message

Rose was right. Like her, “I’m not in the in-crowd.” Like her, I have spent the past cou­ple of weeks ask­ing myself, “Should I care?” I have con­cluded that the sit­u­a­tion is hurt­ful and heart-breaking because I enjoyed par­tic­i­pat­ing in the meme and looked for­ward to host­ing. But I’ll get over it because, also like her, “I am who I am.” I make no apolo­gies for who I am, what I believe, or the prin­ci­ples by which I live my life. And blog. I con­sider this just another life expe­ri­ence which pro­vides me an oppor­tu­nity to learn and grow in my faith.

I wrote recently about the fact that I have been strug­gling with depres­sion. This sit­u­a­tion, can­didly, briefly impeded my progress toward full-fledged, renewed health. How­ever, when I dis­cussed it with my doc­tor, she again reminded me that I should not be sur­prised. In the blo­gos­phere, as in real life, “You are the one who stands up and says what so many other peo­ple won’t say,” she explained. “It is why so many peo­ple find you delight­ful and refresh­ing, while a cer­tain seg­ment of peo­ple despise you, as they do any­one who speaks the truth as they under­stand it. It is your des­tiny, your path. Your job is to decide whether it is worth it to change or if you can embrace and love your­self the way you are, know­ing the con­se­quences.” It is an ongo­ing — life­long, so far, and per­ma­nently, I sus­pect — process.

On the Hori­zon was born out of my frus­tra­tion with the insti­tu­tional church, its patri­ar­chal struc­ture, and oppres­sion of many dif­fer­ent groups of peo­ple, pri­mar­ily women. Although I spent many years as a mem­ber of and par­tic­i­pant in orga­nized reli­gion, I was never in the church’s “in-crowd” nor have I ever expected to be part of or win the pop­u­lar­ity con­test that char­ac­ter­izes the Chris­t­ian blo­gos­phere and, more par­tic­u­larly, the female con­tin­gent of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian bloggers.

I wel­come all per­sons to this site. I wel­come all opin­ions. I have never and will never bar or ban any­one from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the dia­logue here no mat­ter what view­point is being espoused so long as it is voiced respect­fully, accord­ing dig­nity to those who have a dif­fer­ent out­look. I invite dis­sen­sion and spir­ited dis­course because it chal­lenges me to think about what I believe, why I believe it, and how best to con­vey my opin­ions and viewpoints.

I find cliques despi­ca­ble and un-Christlike — in real and cyber life — because I have been neg­a­tively impacted by cliques and “group-think” in real life on more occa­sions than I care to remem­ber. That’s why I will never delib­er­ately be part of a clique in either my real or on-line life and found myself com­pelled by the Holy Spirit to write about the topic in order to illu­mi­nate the prob­lem and, hope­fully, inspire oth­ers to acknowl­edge and con­front online cliques when they encounter and are affected by them.

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