The election of the Rev. Frank Page as president of the Southern Baptist Convention last week may have been historic in one key way: It marked the first time that a major religious group opted for an upstart candidate on the strength of a technological innovation -- the blog.

Blogs, or personal Web logs, have been around for awhile. But the popularity of faith-based blogs is challenging the way religious institutions function and leveling the field between clergy and laity.

Blogs give ordinary people a pulpit and make clergy one of a crowd.

Nowhere was this more obvious than in the weeks leading up to the Southern Baptist Convention, held last week at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex. In recent years, the convention of the nation's largest Protestant denomination has offered up unchallenged candidates for the presidency.

But this year, many Southern Baptists were unhappy with the endorsed candidate, the Rev. Ronnie Floyd of Springdale, Ark. The bloggers among them got online and vented. By the time delegates -- called "messengers"-- arrived in Greensboro, they were ready to give challenger Page their vote. It's impossible to say how many of the messengers actually read any of the blog entries. But there was no question the bloggers created a buzz.

"It's the ultimate exercise of free speech," said Tony Cartledge, the editor of the Biblical Recorder, the state Baptist newspaper, and a blogger himself. "It's out there for the world to read."

The Rev. Wade Burleson of Enid, Okla., led the blogging charge. He has found in blogs an effective tool for grassroots organizing. Increasingly, he is being joined by others.

"In the past, if you disagreed they squashed you," Burleson said, speaking of the Southern Baptist leadership. "They can't do that anymore."

There are at least 45 million bloggers, according to the San Francisco-based blog search engine Technorati.com. It's unknown how many of those write about religion, but over the past 30 days, an average of 5,000 posts a day contained the word "religion."

Many of those blogs that routinely write about faith are giving religious leaders heartburn.

"The old ways of ordering church life are breaking down," said Bill Leonard, the dean of the divinity school at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem. Few people read denominational newspapers, Leonard said, and church leaders are no longer able to shape the message the way they did in the past.

No secrets

Blogs have not only had an impact on denominations that are governed by democratic principles, such as the Southern Baptist Convention, they are also influencing more hierarchical religious groups.

Roman Catholics, for example, don't expect their blogs to topple the pope or change the structure of the church. But that hasn't stopped them from weighing in on church matters large and small.

"Catholics feel they have a right to a voice," said Rocco Palmo, a Philadelphia-based church watcher, whose blog, Whispers in the Loggia, tries to scoop the Vatican news machine.

Palmo's blog spiked in readership in May 2005 when he correctly identified Pope Benedict XVI's choice of San Francisco Archbishop William Levada to the post of enforcer of church doctrine. In November, he was the first to get an English translation of the Vatican directive banning gay priests from seminaries.

Today, his blog is widely read in Rome. Palmo gets up at 6 a.m. -- noon, Rome time -- to check announcements on the Vatican Web site, and is often the first to opine about them for American readers.

Indeed, the presence of blogs makes it more difficult for denominations to keep things from their members.

"The church has operated with a high degree of secrecy," said Bishop William Willimon of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church, speaking generally of churches. "That's really hard to pull off with blogs. If you know the secret, you can throw it out in cyberspace and everybody knows it."

Just sharing

Of course, not all blogs challenge religious organizations. Most bloggers just want a soapbox.

"It gives me a chance to express myself," said the Rev. Jonathan Marlowe, a United Methodist minister in Rowan County who writes a blog called "The Ivy Bush."

"I feel better after I get some things off my chest," Marlowe said.

One thing is clear. Blogs are not going away. Not only Christians are getting in the act. All faiths are involved.

When Marcie Cohen Ferris, a professor of American studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, came out with her book on Southern Jewish cooking, "Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South," she started a blog too. Jewish women have been particularly active on the blogsphere. The Velveteen Rabbi and Jewesses with Attitude are examples.

"I can't see it diminishing," said Burleson of Oklahoma. "I see it only expanding."