Sunday, January 9, 2011

Worse than Cybersquatting

Earlier this week I commented upon the fact that Founders Ministries is unethically cybersquatting the domain southernbaptistconvention.org. The post generated a lively discussion in the comment thread and apparently generated a good bit of interest. It was one of the few posts on this blog that have drawn upon my background in computer work. That's by design, since this is not primarily a blog about computing.

The length and intensity of the comment thread was not by my design. The fact of the lengthy discussion after the post does give the appearance that I find the matter terribly important, which is really not the case. I was surprised that my post made the splash that it did. I had pretty much checked out of blogging (and my status remains pretty much checked out of blogging), and I didn't know anybody was still reading me.

Integrity is important. Paying attention to small unethical items is worthwhile. But there are things far more important. In my way of seeing things, it is far less important that Founders Ministries is using the domain name southernbaptistconvention.org when they are actually not the Southern Baptist Convention, than it is important that teeming masses of churches are using the name "Baptist Church" on their signs and letterhead when they are actually not, in any meaningful way, Baptist churches.

3 comments:

Doug Hibbard said...

This problem is probably second only to those that use the name "Church" and have no interest in what the Lord Jesus Christ says. Good point.

And probably most of us just still have you in our RSS readers, so we check out what you say if you ever say anything.

Malcolm Yarnell said...

Well, Dr. Barber, you have piqued my interest.

Anonymous said...

What is a Baptist church in your view?