Christian Ghetto - Blogging A Partial Solution

A few years ago, Christian ghetto was a common term for the state of Christian books, music, radio and other media. Searching the web on google , the term is still being used, I just don't hear it (read it) in my normal wanderings. The term is complex and multifaceted, but one aspect of the concept is that Christians have attempted to create their own baptized versions of the worlds media and products in order to step out of the mainstream media. The criticism is that these baptized versions of media lack creative excellence. I think that some of that has changed. Personally, I think Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) has improved (i.e. identified or deveoped more creative excellence) but the book market has gone down hill by over emphasizing trendy books. Obviously romance is a Christian topic due to the inclusion of Song of Solomon in the scripture, but I don't believe that should give rise to the Christian romance novel industry in it's current form. The world wide web has at times had its own ghetto effect, lack of creative excellence. By and large Christians have emulated secular models. The web in its early days was full of home grown web pages which showed personal interests and personal creativity. Academic types produced quality pages to support their teaching function. Then someone got the idea that they should make money on the web and for me, that is when a vast ghetto was created. Instead of personal creativity being developed, broucherware became the norm. Selling something, anything, everything became so pervasive that it's strident tones blocked out all other voices on the web. Speaking of strident tone (webbing here) the other thing that shut down creativity was strident tones. A large number of those who continued to create web pages were those who used strident tones in their communications. With the advent of blogs, I see a new chapter for the web and for Christian use of the media. We have a new opportunity for excellence in communication. Blogs are really just content development and management systems, but they are text centric for the most part. The Christian message is verbal vice visual. While there is a place for Christian video, movies, etc..., the verbal media of blogs has tremendous potential for excellence in creative communication of the Christian message.

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