Right Online Austin: Politics and Christianity
Religion & Liberty Online

Right Online Austin: Politics and Christianity

By almost any measure, the first Right Online conference, as part of the Defending the American Dream summit in Austin, TX, has to be judged a success.

The organizers of the event weren’t sure quite what to expect. How many bloggers and new media folks would attend? On the first day the summit organizers had to rely on special support given by the hotel because initially there were not enough lunches available…there were so many more people in attendance than they had expected or even hoped.

Later in September a second Right Online summit will happen in New Jersey, followed by a national summit in Washington, DC on October 10-11.

In a key way the conservative movement is behind the curve, both in comparison with the progressive political movement and the Christian blogging community, but better late than never. While this year’s summits are the first of their kind and scope amongst political conservatism, last year the Acton Institute was a sponsor of GodblogCon, a conference for Christian bloggers and new media professionals and hobbyists. This year we’ll be supporting the fourth annual GodblogCon to be held in Las Vegas, NV on September 20-21.

The Acton Institute is an important bridge between these oft-overlapping constituencies. It’s our hope that through greater involvement with the conservative movement we can bring the importance of religious and moral formation to the forefront of that discussion, and that through our engagement with the Godbloggers we can broaden the influence and profile of religious new media. (Here’s a brief flashback from last year’s GodblogCon that gets at how these two phenomena intersect: “Giuliani and the Godbloggers.”)

As is so often the case, politics gets plenty of mainstream press coverage, while religion gets short shrift. Perhaps we can start to change that from both sides, showing how religion is an important aspect of responsible and comprehensive political coverage, and how religion itself is worthy of more and better press attention. Here’s a sample of old media coverage of this first Right Online summit:

Jordan J. Ballor

Jordan J. Ballor (Dr. theol., University of Zurich; Ph.D., Calvin Theological Seminary) is director of research at the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy, an initiative of the First Liberty Institute. He has previously held research positions at the Acton Institute and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and has authored multiple books, including a forthcoming introduction to the public theology of Abraham Kuyper. Working with Lexham Press, he served as a general editor for the 12 volume Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology series, and his research can be found in publications including Journal of Markets & Morality, Journal of Religion, Scottish Journal of Theology, Reformation & Renaissance Review, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Faith & Economics, and Calvin Theological Journal. He is also associate director of the Junius Institute for Digital Reformation Research at Calvin Theological Seminary and the Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity & Politics at Calvin University.