Hostile Christian Bloggers

I've been rather disturbed these past few months with the hostility expressed by Christians towards others on their own blogs as well as in the comments they leave on others' blogs. Kevin often says I shouldn't take it too seriously as those bloggers may well just be kids or lonely, isolated individuals without any friends, for all we know! Steve Hayes makes the point on the Emerging Africa site that these kinds of people don't represent anyone except themselves.

In this post, Steve refers specifically to the blog Discerning the World, where the writers say rather malicious and unfair things about the Amahoro conference. Kevin has often been on the receiving end of hostile and cruel comments by Christians on his blog, and has recently been singled out in a rather hurtful post by the writer of the blog Beautiful Redemption, which Kevin writes about here. I also wrote a response to Heather, which I'll paste here verbatim:

Dear Heather and all the other people who have commented here. I appreciate the way everyone has engaged so passionately on this blog. The danger with blogging is that we don't see each other face-to-face and as a result we sometimes speak in a way that we wouldn't were we to be, say, sitting together over coffee. The post referred to here about the Potter and the Clay were written by my husband out of a long and difficult journey that we and others shared over some ten or more years. It has been a very precious and heartfelt journey and I respect Kevin so much for his integrity on this journey even though he hasn't reached the same decision I have (which is to follow Christ). I have also admired the way Kevin has always spoken with such gentleness and respect to Christians and people that believe differently from himself on his blog. Unfortunately others have not been as gracious towards him. I encourage us as Christians to be more gracious, more loving, more kind, more good, and more gentle in our blogging. Sometimes we get so caught up in the truth that we forget to speak it in love. Blessings and love to you all.

I should probably just let all this go. Discussing these things on our blogs gives these bloggers and their blogs only more attention and perhaps fuels what should really just be encouraged to die down. Yet I also feel that there needs to be a certain level of accountability in this kind of shared public space. I would certainly intervene if Christians were to call out hostile things to Kevin or other unbelieving friends of mine on the street, and similarly feel I need to intervene when this happens on the web. What do you think? What should our response to this kind of behaviour by Christians on-line be? Beyond my frustration with such behaviour I would really like to practice what I preach and live out love even, or most especially, in these situations.