JANE'S STORY - 12/29/05

I have had negative experiences with two Christian forums, one of them a very large, very well-known online community and the other a smaller Baptist forum. Both of them have hurt sincere people and taught me the important lesson that faith in Christ does not necessarily make one a kind and compassionate person.

I found the large forum just a month or so after I became a Christian. I grew up in church but didn't pay much attention to my soul until a personal crisis forced me to. I turned to God for forgiveness of my sins and guidance for the present and future. I began attending church and studying the Bible at home but I wanted to be able to fellowship with other believers whenever I wanted to. I searched online for Christian message boards and struck gold: I found a huge and busy community with hundreds of members online at any given time. Impressed by the enormity of the site and the variety of topics, I joi ned in and was warmly welcomed.

I posted regularly at this site for several months. Something that began to bother after a while was the way troublemakers seemed to gravitate to the women's section. There weren't many of them, but every once in a while a male poster would wander into the area for women and start showing off his misogyny. This wouldn't have fazed me if the moderators had put a stop to it, but the intruders weren't given so much as a warning. One of these troublemakers started a topic in which he chastised the female members for aspiring to be anything but perfect little homemakers. He gave the same tired old argument that women are born followers who are too emotional to be anything but wives and mothers (he made it known that he was still a bachelor--no surprise there!). One woman responded with an intelligent and well worded argument that smashed his tirade to bits. Rather than admitting defeat and moving on, he answered her with another tongue-lashing, telling her that she was "unsubmissive" and that she needed a man to keep her in line. He closed his post with "God says that women are to obey men. Are you going to obey or aren't you?" A few more women joined in to defend their section of the board and asked this man if he didn't want to have a smart, brave wife who would be his equal. He proudly said, "No, I want a Stepford wife!" After several complaints to the moderators, a new rule was made that only women could post in the women's section and only men could post in the designated section for men.

I left that forum not long after that mess, but I'm glad I stayed long enough to read a post from a young woman who was confused and angry about so-called Christian men who fight so hard to keep women down. She said that she was disappointed with God because He created half of the human race to be servants and footstools of the other half. I recommended a book to her (Paul, Women & Wives by Craig S. Keener) and she seemed interested in reading it. It's my prayer that she and other women at that forum will wise up and stop listening to the foolishness that is being taught in God's name.

While still a member of that forum I began regularly visiting an online Baptist community. While not an enthusiastic poster, I spent many enjoyable hours reading the discussions. The good times came to an end when I realized that this forum was only hospitable to those who agreed 100% with the moderators. This community had a designated area for the old Calvinism-Arminianism debate and it didn't take much poking around to find out which side the moderators were on. "Pastor Larry" and the other mod for this section (I don't remember his name) came down very hard on anyone who believed that Christ died for all and offers salvation to all. Anyone who dared to suggest that God sincerely desires all to be saved was raked over the coals by Pastor Larry and his fellow man of the cloth. "You've already lost this debate!" they'd huff. "Why are you still posting about this? You're wasting forum space." Avowed Calvinists, however, were more than welcome to post the same things over and over again, and were frequently answered with a hearty "Amen!" from one if not both of the mods. A non-believer once came on board trying to make sense of it all, and was greeted by an arrogant member who told him, "If the plan of salvation does not make sense to you, it's because God has chosen to damn you. There's nothing you can do about it." The mods were silent on the matter and did not reprimand the member who lashed out at the man seeking answers. That was it for me and I left that awful place. I haven't been back since then and I hope it has either changed or been closed.

These days I hang out at ECA [Postmaster's note: Egalitarian Christian Alliance], mostly lurking and reading but occasionally posting. It's so good to have a place that encourages healthy discussion and loving fellowship, and I pray that the two forums I've written to you about will become kinder, gentler havens for tired souls.

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.