Kathryn's Story - 12/5/05

I used to post at Crosswalk.com several years ago. The fact that I am both a woman and (at the time) a pastor, while I didn't go out of my way to advertise the latter, made me a target. My willingness to defend my beliefs in biblical equality also made me a target. In the Women's folder especially, I received a whole lot of ad hominem comments which went unchallenged by the moderators. When I occasionally refuted them, however, I would get harrangued by the two female moderators in Women's.

At one point, I was threatened in public with being banned from the Women's forum by one of these moderators for my "tone." No specifics, no way of understanding what she meant, because I'd been very carefully factual and avoided ad hominem in my posts. So, I asked her for clarification. This brought Fritz Alberti, the community admin, into the picture. He took me to task for questioning a moderator in public. So I asked him to tell me what, specifically, was wrong with what and how I'd posted, so I'd avoid such hassles in the future.

Instead of responding to my question, he sent me a very threatening e-mail response that said, in essence, that the two moderators as well as some others, didn't like my mode of discourse. Well, that's about as helpful as nothing. I was threatened with being banned altogether if I didn't "learn to respect authority." I thanked Fritz for his response, but noted that since he had not answered my question, I had no way of knowing, despite asking several people, what I was doing wrong and therefore had no way to correct it. I said I would not pursue the matter further. This resulted in an unsolicited, very insulting message. At that point, I added Fritz's address to my spam filter and left the community.

I have visited Crosswalk.com as an unregistered reader occasionally since then. Unfortunately, I've only seen an escalation in Fritz's unreasonable, one-sided targeting of people who don't hold his extremely conservative views of the roles of women in church and home, birth control, homeschooling, politics, and anti-homosexuality. For the most part, even when such people break none of his 20+ Terms of Service rules, he silences them or they "disappear" altogether. I personally know of several he's banned for no reason other than that they stand up--respectfully, despite outrageous ad hominem from others--for their beliefs, which are well within Crosswalk's "Range of Beliefs" (or whatever they call it).

I believe Salem Communications, which owns Crosswalk, needs to either monitor Fritz very closely so that he is forced to obey his own rules, or replace him with someone willing to administer the community with a more christlike and FAR less dictatorial "tone." He's an appallingly bad witness for the gospel of Jesus Christ in the way he treats members of the community. Barring either of those remedies, Crosswalk needs to stop posting their TOS and their "Range of Beliefs" and be honest about being a community for "Conservative Evangelicals who Agree Substantially with Fritz Alberti's Opinions."

For too many Christians, Crosswalk is anything BUT "community," and certainly not a Christian one. Be warned: their only "Christians only" forum is blatantly labeled "For Conservative Evangelical Christians who accept the Terms of Service." If you accept the TOS but aren't considered conservative or evangelical enough to suit Fritz, you can figure out easily enough that you're not considered a Christian. Like so many other problems at CW, that huge dig at mainstream Christians is not up for discussion.

Why bother with CW? I believe in being light in the darkness, but that's one place where darkness is rigidly enforced. There are plenty of other communities where the Spirit of God is alive and well. I've found a very warm welcome at Crossandflame.com, even though they're deliberately an interfaith forum that welcomes non-Christians as well as non-evangelical Christians. And (gasp), they even welcome GLBT people! Funny, the Christians there manage to remain Christian. Perhaps their faith is strengthened, rather than threatened, by treating other people as they themselves would like to be treated.

Another forum community where I've been welcomed, though at times felt the "odd one out" for my mainstream beliefs, is "Egalitarian Christian Alliance" at equalitycentral.com. Honestly, GLBT and decidedly liberal Christians wouldn't probably feel the same kind of welcome I did. But believe me, even these people would receive far more courteous treatment and even-handed moderation than at Crosswalk.