I’m happy to announce a new addition to the Philophronos blogroll. Rosemary at The Pen of the Wayfarer has joined, so drop by and check out her blog and welcome her.
I have to say, trying to live up to the standards we set in creating this group has been a considerable challenge to me. I have failed several times, and had to apologize. But overall, putting myself under this obligation has made me tone down quite a lot of my writing even before I post, which has been good both for my writing and my thinking. For example, in Democrats Attempting Bribery To Stop War I didn’t have to hold back my thoughts about the Democratic Party’s latest attempt to stop the war. But I did have to delete some harsh sentences about Nancy Pelosi regarding her character and morals before I hit Publish. It’s enough to criticize actions or note the results of actions – there’s no need to try to beat someone down personally, and I’m a better person – and a better witness for Christ – for not doing it.
Here’s the original post explaining Philophronos Blogging. If you’re interested in joining, comment or email me at laura@pursuingholiness.com.
[Update: Henry Neufeld of Threads from Henry's Web, and cofounder of the Philophronos Blogging group also posted to welcome Rose aboard, and remind readers what Philophronos Blogging is and is not:
There is no Philophonos police force, who read your blog to decide whether you have lived up to some set of rules. Rather, this is something you take on yourself, and your readers get to judge whether you’re living up to your claim. I think there is an enormous amount that we can learn from one another ...
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The internet, as much as I enjoy it, has helped lower the level of political discourse because it is far easier to type something directed at a stranger that you’d never dream of saying to the face of someone with whom you’re acquainted. It even affects the Christian blogosphere. I’m not alone in occasionally wanting “to not just debate the point, but to crush [someone's] argument into oblivion.” I also know that feeling is not consistent with 1 Peter 3:15-16:
But dedicate your lives to Christ as Lord. Always be ready to defend your confidence in God when anyone asks you to explain it. However, make your defense with gentleness and respect. Keep your conscience clear. Then those who treat the good Christian life you live with contempt will feel ashamed that they have ridiculed you.
If we are called to make our defense of our faith with gentleness and respect, how much more should we do so with respect to minor issues like the politics of our nation or any of the temporary governments of this world? Those things may feel quite important right now, but in the light of eternity, our perspective on them will be very different. By and large I think Christians do an excellent job of keeping debate civil, and that is why I’m joining Henry Neufeld, a liberal blogger (Threads from Henry’s Web) to make a rather bold challenge that we’re calling Philophronos Blogging.
philóphrōn: to think, have a mindset. Friendly, courteous, benign (1Peter 3:8). Deriv.: philophrónōs (G5390), in a friendly or kind manner.
Philophronos is defined by Louw-Nida in their Dictionary of the New Testament According to Semantic Domains as “pertaining to friendly concern and kindness toward someone.”
Christian bloggers should purposefully express our political beliefs with gentleness and respect, with the intention of setting the example for non-Christians. We’re not all going to agree. We don’t need to agree. But we can debate the issues in such a way that the debate glorifies God and points people to Christ. We’re challenging Christian bloggers who write about politics to write at least one post a week until the election – and hopefully after it – that adheres to the following guidelines.
- Consistent with 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 and Ephesians 4:15
- Assume goodwill and good intentions for our political opponents
- Wherever possible list supporting reasons why they have good intentions
- Negative statements are not personal and are factual
- If negative statements are conclusions, the facts that led to the conclusion are referenced
- Negative statements support the argument and are not gratuitous
Imagine what the political tone in the country would be like if all political debate adhered to those guidelines! Again, we believe most Christian bloggers are already doing these things, but we’re challenging the Christian blogosphere to do so in a more purposeful way, on the “pay it forward” concept that if we start this, others may just join in. We can have edifying and productive political discourse. Let’s work on blogging friendly - practice Philophronos Blogging!
If you would like to join us, you’ll be added to the blogroll and aggregator. But if you just want to let us know that you’re blogging Philophronos without joining, trackback to this post or the one at Henry’s. To join, post a comment on here or at Henry’s.
UPDATE:
Here is the code for the blogroll –
If you want to display the blogroll without taking up a lot of your sidebar, you might try using this code – it will limit the height and add a scrollbar to the side of the blogroll –
Here is the aggregator. After trying a different service, I decided on just using the Favorites feature in Technorati, because it offers several options. You can just read posts on the Favorites page, or you can add them to your side bar via an RSS feed as I have done here, with Christian Favorites and Political Favorites.
To join, you may display either the blogroll, an RSS feed, or a Technorati widget.
FWIW, while you know that I disagree with you about the war in general, I dislike this type of political tactic in all its manifestations. As I see it, the problem for the Democratic party in 2004 was that they didn’t have a plan for the war; they were just going to do what Bush was doing, only less. They continue not to have a positive plan as far as I can tell.
Unlike pacifist opponents to the war, I believe force will have to be applied yet in the future, and was properly applied in Afghanistan, where I am beginning to think we should have applied a bit more. My question for candidates will be not simply what is their position on Iraq, but on what basis will they choose to use force? Further, can they set out a coherent set of objectives and then go after those objectives?
I’m not liking what I’m seeing thus far. (OK, long comment–sorry!)
You’re a class act, Henry. This bribery is definitely a bad development for everyone if it works – and in all fairness, it’s been working on a much smaller scale for decades, regardless of which party has held power. It’s shocking now because it’s being done so openly. The fact that Republicans haven’t publicly decried it, and the press hasn’t flooded the airwaves with it, proves that they’re all corrupt. It will probably continue unless we can somehow manage to send a whole army of Mr. Smiths to Washington. Are you at all interested in posting about the posse comitatus and insurrection act developments? I’d dearly love to see that story get more play on both sides of the aisle, even if it means a big black eye for Republicans. I understand why they did it – it will enable the Feds to do more in emergencies without partisan squabbles like what happened after Katrina – but they were dead wrong, and they knew it or they wouldn’t have sneaked it in the way they did.
I also agree with you about Afghanistan, for whatever that’s worth.
Hmm! Another agreement. I have the NYT article bookmarked for me to blog about.
I don’t know how it looked from over there, but it seemed to me that a great deal of trouble was caused by the government preventing people from acting. A lot of local officials in Mississippi at least seem to have gotten a great deal done by working around FEMA, which seemed pretty clueless.
Katrina was pretty easy on us here in Pensacola. We got only tropical storm force winds, but we were directly in line for Ivan and then Dennis. Oddly enough, the only damage we personally took was in Katrina and was one branch through a window–that hardly counts! Dennis brought down a tree between the house and my office, about 6 inches either way and we would have had major damage. As it was, it didn’t even dent the porch.
Disaster relief shouldn’t be a partisan issue, IMV. Politicians and bureaucrats don’t seem wired to deal with disasters. They need a mindset change more than they need new powers.
IAC, I ramble again, and will blog about the article you mentioned.
From my view, it was largely a, um, spitting contest between Blanco and Bush. Blanco’s aides were openly managing her PR – debating whether or not she should wear or not wear a baseball cap was just one stomach churning example – while dead bodies still floated down the streets. They didn’t want to give Bush (and Darth Rove) any kind of PR victory, and they were quite open about putting their partisanship above their constituents and made some really atrocious errors in judgement. One example was the way they restricted the Red Cross from helping people to “encourage them” to leave the city. There’s plenty of blame to spread around, don’t get me wrong – but it’s infuriating that the press piled on Bush and gave our local pols and the Corps a free pass for their incompetence, corruption and malfeasance.
I’m looking forward to your post.