At every funeral I can remember, almost everyone is cordial and says nice things. I have heard that it isn’t always that way for everyone but that has been my experience. When they passed many years ago, I heard so many nice things about my parents that I never knew before. Over the years, I have thought I should say more nice things to people while they are alive because it is nice to hear when you can enjoy it. I don’t think I live up to that aspiration like I should.
Reading the reaction of others to the near death of my blog at Patheos has been a little like being able to attend my own funeral, except thankfully it is my blog’s funeral. Last week and yesterday, I posted links to bloggers who had nice things to say about me but less nice things to say about Patheos. In fact, they had questions which still require answers.
One blogger who almost always has nice things to say is Patheos blogger John Mark N. Reynolds. Today, he penned a kind and clever defense of my time at Patheos.
It is for all these reasons that Patheos and Patheos Evangelical needs Warren Throckmorton. He is a scholar with a light touch, but one who sees the absurdity of the powerful. He has the temerity to keep telling the truth until the truth, absurd in our particular era, makes you laugh. It is obvious now that someone like David Barton was a fraud, but Throckmorton recognized it first.
His targets? They are many, but his humor and good will are true, start to finish. He is right again and again and when he is wrong he is sorry.
I wasn’t first but I was and am persistent.
He continues:
If you have ever been disillusioned by an abuse of power, Warren Throckmorton understands. He knows it is absurdity to marry Jesus to power.
Yes, I think I do. No matter what the reason for the decision to 410 the blog, how it is being handled is an abuse of power. I know John Mark is speaking about other people I have written about, but he could also be writing about the instant case.
John Mark would like Patheos to bring me back. Now he is the one with the sense of humor. Maybe he could carry the mantle over there; at least until he tells the wrong truth.
Great!
Best-selling author and renowned pastor Mark Driscoll is on Patheos Evangelical!
Out with the OLD and boring, in with the YOUNG and vital!
In with the successful author – out with the old flop author of ONE book that nobody bought.
L O S E R out!
And honesty and integrity be damned.
Apparently, Austin (or whoever this guy/girl is who makes up multiple accounts to sing the same song over and over again) prefers his reading material to be plagiarized.
Pet trolls are a good sign you’re still touching a nerve here and there…
Yeah, but then you have to feed them and they make a mess all over the place. It’s not really worth it.
Gee Warren, how much of other people’s money have you squandered lately?
How much revenue did you lose when Patheos dropped you?
I thought your blog looked very natural and life-like myself.
Heck with Patheos. There’s always Patreon. I’d chip in to keep reading your stuff, even though you irritate me 23.5% of the time.
Lol, just 23.5%? I must work harder!
Thanks, I am considering Patreon among other options.
You do not irritate me, although there are times I do not agree with everything you say. Sometimes I wonder if guilt plays a role in some of the things that you write. If my understanding is correct, I have heard that before your current job, you once took people’s hard earned cash in exchange for a therapy that did not work. You are not the first former counselor I have seen do that.
At this point I would not condemn either of you. We humans make mistakes, the other guy lost his practice and office employing seven other counselors due to lawsuits regarding the now discredited “Satanic Ritual Abuse” therapy. He charged an arm and a leg for everything he did in that office in the 80’s and 90’s.
I am just glad that someone now cares about what is real and what is not in the Christian Industrial Complex. I appreciate it when someone challenges what I believe in an honest, intellectual, and logically sound fashion. I have changed my views substantially over the decades due to being challenged. I also try to be careful now not to over-correct. An example of that would be to discard an entire church movement or denomination just because their are some rotten eggs as leaders with bad practices going on inside of them. There is always some wheat in with the tares. To burn down the whole field just to get rid of the tares is overkill. I appreciate your willingness to fact-check Mars Hill, GFA and whatever else will present itself for scrutiny in the future.