{"id":1937,"date":"2011-08-30T20:43:15","date_gmt":"2011-08-31T04:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2011\/08\/30\/when-is-a-link-not-a-link\/"},"modified":"2011-08-30T20:43:15","modified_gmt":"2011-08-31T04:43:15","slug":"when-is-a-link-not-a-link","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2011\/08\/30\/when-is-a-link-not-a-link\/","title":{"rendered":"when is a link not a link?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend of mine posted an article to which I objected. I objected privately, so I\u2019m not going to post a link. We had a brief and I think courteous exchange of views. But the whole discussion gets me thinking about the whole paradigm shift that the new media is. That is, I think we are still getting used to the internet (or, as one of my hockey bloggers calls it, \u201cthe AlGore\u201d).<\/p>\n

It is common practice in the blogosphere to link to other blogs or articles online. This is part of the \u2018netiquette\u2019 of blogging, especially when you are writing a contrary opinion. The link provides context, your readers can go to your online \u2018opponent\u2019 to see what they said in context in order to decide whether they will agree with you or him or neither.<\/p>\n

It is also common practice to link to news items of interest with a brief comment suggesting why the link was interesting to you.<\/p>\n

I have occasionally linked to Christianity Today<\/em> when I see articles of interest there, or when I wish to take issue with something said there. Some of my fellow fundamentalists have commented when I have done that without much of a disclaimer. I guess I don\u2019t think a disclaimer is all that necessary when I am critiquing an article. It is pretty clear that I am not agreeing!  (Does anyone think I am ambiguous when I disagree?) And I don\u2019t think a disclaimer is always necessary when I am just passing along a link to say: look at this, it\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n

But what if I was writing an article listing a whole host of sites as \u201cgood resources for church planting\u201d or \u201cgood resources for spiritual growth\u201d or \u201cgood resources for theology\u201d?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Suppose in writing such an article I listed exclusively evangelical sources with virtually no disclaimers of any kind. And suppose I wrote fairly positive mini-reviews of these sites, implying that these fellows are good brothers doing good work. Suppose that I wrote in a different post a generic disclaimer to my readers that \u201cI don\u2019t endorse everything I link to.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think I have a fairly well-known fundamentalist reputation. Ben Wright tells me I represent the fundamentalist wing of fundamentalism. (Thanks, Ben, I guess!) So if I were to write an article full of positive comments about the usual evangelical suspects with no disclaimers in that article itself\u2026 what would you think?<\/p>\n

Would you wonder if my position had changed? Would you consider my \u2018fundamentalist reputation\u2019 maybe not as hard-line as you had earlier thought?<\/p>\n

Fundamentalists are agreed that the way we are careful about fellowship is especially in the area of ministry cooperation \u2013 shared platforms, cooperative ministry opportunities and the like. We are apparently not so clearly agreed about internet endorsements.<\/p>\n

The argument could be made that we will use books by evangelicals (or even others further \u2018left\u2019) in our seminaries without much of a disclaimer and a recommendation on the internet is very similar. And we see books by evangelicals in some of our Christian bookstores (like those at our Fundamentalist colleges).<\/p>\n

So my question is this: when is a link not a link? When is it an endorsement? Or when is it perceived as an endorsement?<\/p>\n

With the turmoil in fundamentalism over the apparent love affair many \u2018young fundamentalists\u2019 have with all things Calvin and all things evangelical, should we pause before we make what appear to be endorsements of popular evangelical ministries? What do we communicate when we make such links? Does the internet change our view of Christian cooperation? Is it limited only to active\/physical cooperation in some kind of joint endeavour? Or can we give tacit approval to evangelicalism by the links we make?<\/p>\n

A while back, I had a much longer blogroll in my side-bar. Some of the sites I listed were friends who weren\u2019t necessarily so fundamentalist anymore. I still have a couple of links to blogs that are definitely not fundamentalist but are particularly interesting to me. But I did purge a lot of the links I used to have. I decided I didn\u2019t want to promote them anymore \u2013 even though some of them were personal friends.<\/p>\n

So what do you think? Am I merely a paranoid fundamentalist? (Keith, we already know that you will say \u2018yes\u2019.) Or is there some cause for caution and concern in the kinds of things we endorse?<\/p>\n

\"don_sig2\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend of mine posted an article to which I objected. I objected privately, so I\u2019m not going to post a link. We had a brief and I think courteous exchange of views. But the whole discussion gets me thinking about the whole paradigm shift that the new media is. That is, I think we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[30,105,37,44],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-vf","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}