Anonymous blogging an institution

Apparently determined to show the world of religious blogging that mainstream newspapers are irrelevant, the Florida Times-Union published a Sunday story which dwells heavily on a single, anonymously penned blog whose name and URL it haughtily refuses to publish.

We agree with Frink about the right of the author of FBC Jax Watchdog to anonymity.

Church governance and its abuses are our concern.

First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Fla., is a church whose executive pastor for education, Jim Smyrl, has declared the Catholic Church to be a cult and has abjured anyone who voted for a pro-abortion candidate to repent.

The blog mentions those two issues and raises a variety of other significant issues which, if false, are easily rebutted. Indeed, charges should be rebutted and corrected if and when errors are made. Accountability should, in our view, run both ways.

The blog's charges are often documented with audio recordings, copies of deeds and the like, very much the way a good online news article should be documented. Although the tone is far too strident to be confused with mainstream, professional, American journalism.

The third largest of the 43,000 churches in the Southern Baptist Convention is its principal concern - ample reason for an aggressive, frequently updated blog.

This blog and its peers will be of growing importance as more traditional publications continue their decline in resources and number.

Noncommercial blogs like FBC Jax Watchdog are sometimes our nation's best, current substitutes for (rapidly disappearing) aggressive, local, weekly newspapers, the best of which in their time held community institutions accountable to the communities they served.