Anonymous comments...

Apologies for the loss of my blogging mojo of late... can't explain it. Must be the warm weather here in England...

Is there ever a case for making commenting anonymously on blogs/discussion boards and the like?

I admit, I have done it once or twice. But, as a rule, I think it is something a Christian person would not do. I think I am committed to the view that words attach to persons, and detached from them they lose their truth - or, at least, the reader of those words loses the opportunity to evaluate the truth of the words by the character and actions of the writer. Words are of their nature personal, and by anonymity become depersonalised, and unanswerable - a status no human word should really have.

The same would hold for writing anonymous letters: what is the case for ever writing one? What circumstances would justify it? How does anonymity transform it as a speech-act?

The counter argument would be that anonymous comment allows the vulnerable and the fearful to have a voice where they might not have. But even so, I would call these exceptional circumstances.