So, ChristianForums. It’s this site I spent a lot of time at for a bit over four and a half years.
It proudly claims to be the largest Christian forum in the world. It is certainly one of the largest forums primarily aimed at Christians.
Throughout the history of CF, there have been things done which were questionable. Recently the forum’s owner, Erwin Loh, handed control over the forum’s policy to a group of “ordained” people. Well, sort of. One of them’s a Catholic Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion (EMHC), which means he’s allowed to hand people blessed wafers; it is not any kind of ordination. One of them runs a tiny little church with very unusual doctrine. One is apparently some variety of Baptist. One is in the Salvation Army.
Well, the thing is, someone sent me a copy of a thread in which the Baptist was gossipping about whether or not my spouse had sex reassignment surgery – and I saw him publically pretending ignorance of the question a day or so after that.
Now, it’s not that this is new. It’s that this is just part of a long, long, series of events, most of which have been cleverly hidden or kept secret, that make me feel that it’s about time that the truth come out about ChristianForums.
As time allows, I’ll be passing on some of the stories. Now, by “stories”, I don’t just mean things someone told me; in many cases, I mean things where I have copies of the discussion, multiple witnesses, and so on.
Because the fact is, the site’s been handed to people some of whom are big on claiming a moral high ground that they haven’t even looked at, and I think that’s hurting a lot of innocents who come to the site thinking they’ve found a place for Christians to hang out.
We have it all. Someone getting fired and accused of sexual harassment based on the claims of someone who was mad at him for not reacting positively to her nudie pictures. Gossip, systematic abuses, and open lies. Staff ordered to tell lies to keep other staff from finding out what happened. Claims of divine authority.
It’s all crazy, and it’s all happening right here on the internet.
A lot of people have asked why I spent so much time trying to fix the problems of CF. The answer is, Christianity has a long tradition of believing in redemption. We’re supposed to get involved, to care, and to try to redeem things if they can be redeemed. That’s why people don’t always just go elsewhere when they aren’t happy; because they think it’s worth fixing. In its prime, ChristianForums was, really, better than many of the competing forums. Unlike nearly every other Christian site out there, CF tried to make room for Catholics [b]and[/b] Protestants, and in general, to welcome anyone who could accept at least most of the Nicene Creed.
Anyway, it’ll take time to come up with some of the material, but rest assured, there’s plenty of it.
Comments [archived]
From: seebs_lawyer
Date: 2006-11-08 22:17:14 -0600
You gonna get an RSS feed for this saga?
shnort
From: monkeywrench
Date: 2006-11-09 08:55:51 -0600
tuning in
From: tubby
Date: 2007-02-07 19:02:20 -0600
Really? You have to actually BE a Christian before you can live the Christian life, Peter.
From: GEN
Date: 2007-02-17 22:43:37 -0600
i have to wonder how many of the posters making snide remarks and hurling insults about you are really just edwin’s stooges. bravo to you peter for exposing the hypocrisy and wickedness of christianforums.com, and God bless you.