The 2006 Weblog Awards have been announced. I had not heard of this award before, so I was unable to plan a big awards party where me and all my blogging buddies can get together, watch the awards being posted on the Internet, and comment on what all the winners are wearing.

The awards are given for categories: best liberal blog, best conservative blog, best new blog, best humor blog, etc. For specific fields, they have blog categories covering media, technology, sports, military, business, parenting, LGBT, and a host of others.

One thing that seems to me to be a glaring omission is the lack of any religious blogs. Now, I can hear their objections: “Religion is a very contentious field and we don’t want to upset people.” But politics certainly leads to as many arguments as religion, but they have several political blogs. And if they can have a LGBT category, it is unlikely that offending people is one of their concerns.

They could also object that they would have to choose one religion over another in making awards. But this is hardly the case. It could easily be divided by religion: best Jewish blog, best Christian blog, best (dare I say) Bible related blog, best Qur’an related blog, etc. This is how they handle politics, with one award for conservative, one for centrist, and one for liberal.

I would encourage people to write to the weblog award forums and ask that religious categories be included next year.  I have added a thread entitled “Why no religious blogs?”  If it generates enough comments, it could spur them to add religious categories.  I personally would like to have a way to find good blogs in religion and I suspect my readers would too. In addition, the omission of religious blogs is just one more instance of the marginalization of religion in the public square.

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