c. 2006 Religion News Service

KALAMAZOO, Mich. _ Earlier this year, Stephen Gibson did a podcast interview with retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong about what the firebrand Spong sees as the mythological aspects of Christianity.

The next week, Gibson _ a Kalamazoo media-company owner, author and podcaster _ spoke to a former member of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church about religious cults and the danger of religious ideas gone awry.

Subsequent interviews included Stanley Krippner, an expert in parapsychology, and Brooks Jackson, a former CNN reporter who is now the director of Annenberg Political Fact Check, an organization that seeks to debunk some of the claims made by political, faith-based and other groups.

Gibson’s interviews, which can be downloaded for free onto personal music players or computers, are part of his Internet-based Truth-Driven Thinking program that challenges the authority and teachings of such established institutions as the mainstream Christian church.

He is among a growing number of critics who have turned to cutting-edge technology to pass their message to a broad, Web-savvy audience.

Thanks to blogs and other online postings, critics such as Gibson are getting a hearing far beyond a small group of their neighbors or friends. Sending their thoughts into the wireless universe, they are re-examining the truths that are espoused _ and often go unchallenged _ by mainstream power structures.

“It is about ideas and dialogue,” Gibson said of his podcasts, which are only one of the offerings available at his Web site,www.truthdriventhinking.com.

“I have parted ways with traditional beliefs and have moved outside of Christianity, which is a big deal for me,” said Gibson, a former active member of the United Methodist Church.

“I am promoting intellectual honesty. I think of using science and reason as the most efficient ways to create the greater good for the greatest number of people.”

In the realm of religion, bloggers who are well-versed in Scripture, know church rules and offer poignant personal testimonies are challenging official policies and winning followers of their own.

“Faith-related blogging is rising in popularity. Some writers seem to be doing it to witness to their faith, but more of them are beginning to do it as a kind of personal religious diary, reflecting on their faith and what it means to them as they go through the various experiences of doubt and faith,” said Quentin J. Schultze, a communications professor at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Also, said Schultze, there is an “amazing trend toward faith-based cultural and social criticism, with at least tens of thousands of largely Christian bloggers commenting on everything from worship trends to contemporary movies and TV programs.”

All in all, Schultze said, he thinks faith-related blogging “is a good thing as long as the writers hold themselves accountable for what they say and how they say it.”

For the unfamiliar, blogs are personal diaries, reflections or opinion pieces written by people and then posted on Web sites. Podcasts are essentially broadcasts over the Internet that run the gamut from recorded music to strictly individual musings to interviews and free programming provided by people such as Gibson.

Most podcasts have a Web site, which also can include blogs.

Gibson’s weekly podcasts, which began in February, can be taken directly from his Web site at any time, at no cost, he said.

“This is a whole new way of creating a free exchange of ideas,” Gibson said. “Content delivery has to be multimedia these days. People want to learn about the world in whatever ways they want, whenever they want.”

The Internet program began after Gibson published the book “Truth-Driven Thinking: An Examination of Human Emotion and Its Impact on Everyday Life.” His first podcasts were audio excerpts from his book, which he describes as an outgrowth of his skeptical mind trying to determine the truth of such things as the historical accuracy of the traditional view of the life and ministry of Christ.

He has read widely and interviewed a range of people in an attempt to discover exactly what the data say about Christ. His conclusion so far is that there may be more myth than fact in biblical accounts of Christ, he said.

“I have worked my way to a new belief set through a few years of aggressive pondering, reading and study,” he said. “I now consider myself an atheistic agnostic.”

His journey, he said, has taken him from viewing many issues as black and white to instead seeing “millions of shades of gray about what is true.”

In his podcasts and blogs, as well as in his book, he tries to challenge people to open themselves to the possibility that what they have been taught _ on issues ranging from the environment to medical care, economics and religion _ is false.

“I want to share my discovery that a lot of what I had believed is not supported by the evidence,” he said.

(Chris Meehan writes for The Kalamazoo Gazette in Kalamazoo, Mich.)

KRE/PH END MEEHAN

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