I guess that's why I should have joined the Discord...
This site looks fab.
This site looks fab.
I didnt know this had happened!
- Thread starter LeekSoup
- Start date
OP
OP
And an intro to me. My extimony, I guess.
I was raised a Christian mainly in the UK. My parents took me overseas when I was a kid and they were missionaries. I always related more to church than anything else as a teenager. The church I attended was a charismatic church and was into the "Toronto Blessing" back in the 90s.
I went to university to study theology. I didn't become a "professional Christian" but worked for a Christian charity for 6 and a half years. Bounced through a couple of churches and stuck with what would be my last one for over a decade. Did youth work, all kinds of service, was a regular Sunday morning preacher. I ran a Christian blog / website for 14 years and had a regular monthly slot on national Christian radio for a few years.
But eventually the "faith pool" drained and I realised the religion didn't work. I'm now cheerfully apostate although I prefer the label "extheist". I was hanging around on pantheos non-religious blogs as the faith pool finally gurgled its last dregs. Roll to Disbelieve was hugely helpful to me making sense of what was happening and taking the fear of apostasy away. It's been hugely helpful as I've become more confident in my extheism as well.
As a funny aside, I was worried about telling my wife I no longer believed. When I finally got the courage, she told me she had reached similar conclusions by a different means ahead of me and was waiting for me to catch her up. (She's the smart one!)
I was raised a Christian mainly in the UK. My parents took me overseas when I was a kid and they were missionaries. I always related more to church than anything else as a teenager. The church I attended was a charismatic church and was into the "Toronto Blessing" back in the 90s.
I went to university to study theology. I didn't become a "professional Christian" but worked for a Christian charity for 6 and a half years. Bounced through a couple of churches and stuck with what would be my last one for over a decade. Did youth work, all kinds of service, was a regular Sunday morning preacher. I ran a Christian blog / website for 14 years and had a regular monthly slot on national Christian radio for a few years.
But eventually the "faith pool" drained and I realised the religion didn't work. I'm now cheerfully apostate although I prefer the label "extheist". I was hanging around on pantheos non-religious blogs as the faith pool finally gurgled its last dregs. Roll to Disbelieve was hugely helpful to me making sense of what was happening and taking the fear of apostasy away. It's been hugely helpful as I've become more confident in my extheism as well.
As a funny aside, I was worried about telling my wife I no longer believed. When I finally got the courage, she told me she had reached similar conclusions by a different means ahead of me and was waiting for me to catch her up. (She's the smart one!)
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Yeah, the announcement was made first in the Discord server, back in early March (IIRC 2 March).
The Captain is technically not a blogger there (and she can't put links to her personal things like Patreon or social media in the end of the post, unlike in Patheos).
And putting links that incite off-topic things are discouraged in OnlySky. So we weren't sure how to drop the new site/forum there on OS.
Clancy is the one who usually drops a link. He was once reprimanded by another mod there when he first dropped a link to the Discord server, but he countered that his action reduced overall off-topic comments in OS, so he's no longer reprimanded.
The Captain is technically not a blogger there (and she can't put links to her personal things like Patreon or social media in the end of the post, unlike in Patheos).
And putting links that incite off-topic things are discouraged in OnlySky. So we weren't sure how to drop the new site/forum there on OS.
Clancy is the one who usually drops a link. He was once reprimanded by another mod there when he first dropped a link to the Discord server, but he countered that his action reduced overall off-topic comments in OS, so he's no longer reprimanded.
OP
OP
(And I think what finally killed my desire to make Christianity work - and I really, really wanted it to be true for a long time - was the realisation that evangelical Christianity had become a horrible thing in America and I was seeing the tendency in the UK. After Donald Trump was elected in 2016 a Christian I was connected with on Facebook posted that we had to love our Christian brothers and sisters even if we didn't agree with them. And I balked at that and thought "no, I don't want to share that label". So, yeah, Donald Trump was the final nail.)
Dubya's cult was one of the nails for me. Little could I have expected that a decade later fundagelicals would fall even lower for a president that was a million times worse at pandering to them.
Yeah, I'm a fucking asshole. I think the OnlySky moderation folks are "fractally wrong", and incompetent to boot. Jenna (formerly Jonny) Scaramanga wrote an article being transgender, but they didn't make him a moderator. So I approved some comments, even though I'm only supposed to handle RtD. No snotty email yet, but I'm ready.
I would definitely agree with OnlySky being run by incompetents.
I moderate Cas, and I'll slip in an approval or two for Jeana Jorgenson, ML Clark, Jenna Scaramanga, folks like that, especially if it's been outstanding for a business day. Never for Bob Seidensticker, Johnathon Pearce, Barry Duke, because I refuse to wade in that cess pit. If one of our former banees comments on Cas, I disable it without explanation, and flag it 'hate speech". Because I'm an asshole.
ETA: I reread this, and I am reminded why I used to work best with bosses who left me alone to do what I thought best.
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You spend 100% of your working time on your job. Your boss is spending far less of his time on your job - for obvious & good reasons. Bottom line : you know your job better than your boss.
I was once in the position where I knew my boss's job better than he did. When I was a Navy Chief I was assigned to a command and became the personnel officer because there was no officer to fill that job. I did the job for nine months until we got an officer who was on six-months limited duty because he was recovering from surgery. While the man could spell "personnel" that was about his total knowledge of the subject. I became the Personnel Chief. The officer kept trying to tell me what to do and wouldn't listen to me when I told him what had to be done. Finally after three or four weeks of him floundering around I went into his office, shut the door, and explained to him that I had proven that I could do his job since I'd done it for the better part of a year, he couldn't do my job because he had no clue about what I did. He decided to listen to me and let me teach him his job.
By the way, no pressure to join the Discord server or be active in it if you're not comfortable with it. Discord is mainly a chat app/platform and is different from threaded conversations like what RtD commentariat is used to.
The commentariat now has three outlets to hang out in: Discord, the blog, and this forum (yes, there's OnlySky but we all know how the commenting goes there, and most commentariat members don't really hang out there). Feel free to hang out wherever you feel comfortable in.
PS: I forgot to say that in the blog's Disqus, there's no nanny filter, certainly not like the one in Patheos and OS. Technically there is a default filter from Disqus, but the filtered words are slurs that moderators believe no one here would use anyway.
Yep! I figure we'll gravitate where we naturally feel most comfortable. Welcome, LeekSoup!! Was hoping you'd show up.
I like the forum best, then Discord, then the blog. I go to OpenSky to read the OP but then comment here or on Discord.