Indulgences, MSM Bias and Evangelical Patriarchy

I’ve been reading Hugh Hewitt’s Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That’s Changing Your World, which compares blogging to the Gutenberg printing press, the evils of cultural elite punditry of left-wing bias to the evils of Catholic indulgences, the undoing of the Main-Stream Media to the undoing of the medieval Catholic Church. Just as Luther was able to challenge the stranglehold the Catholic Church had on interpreting what was Biblical truth, so also blog writers were able to break down the old 20th century information monopoly of the left-leaning news networks and newspapers. The message of a little-known nobody named Martin Luther managed to flood past the highly controlled religious information mechanisms (Latin, monk copying, approval procedures) via the many cheap little pamphlets he published thanks to movable type, and of course translating and publishing the Bible into the vernacular. Likewise, blog swarms (thousands of non-edited blog writers telling the unvarnished truth the cultural elites were trying to hide/avoid/slant/fog up) brought down Senator Trent Lott (majority leader) in 2002, Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd (leaders) at the New York Times in 2003, John Kerry (around his Vietnam experience stories) in August, 2004, and Dan Rather (his forged documents) in September, 2004. Of course movable type has had a number of centuries to develop its effects, and networked electronic information technologies have only just got off the ground.

Democratizing the Bible led eventually to some democratizing of the church, which made it possible for democracy to come to civil politics. Hierarchies (gatherings of power), though, resist efforts to circumvent their strength and constantly regrow or gather power in related areas or in new forms. Democracy is the only effective answer to power grabbers, and gives the common man/woman hope for their own freedom — freedom from the arbitrary and capricious controls of the elites who think they know better than anyone else.

Patriarchy in the church is another limit on individual freedom that must go. All believers are priests who do not need intermediaries (or husbands) to pray, to seek God’s will, or to find their Christian way in the world. I predict that the blogosphere will swarm this topic, too, eventually, and that the evil of it will become as plain to Christians as is the subject of racism.