Category: Warren Throckmorton

On Being Booted Off Patheos: Patheos Bloggers Speak Out

Patheos blogger Fred Clark (aka Slacktivist Fred) says I may have been “Throcked.” He offers this term to describe being fired to appease far-right donors and to warn others not to anger those donors.

Whatever the reason or reasons, some Patheos bloggers have bravely taken to their Patheos blogs to criticize the move to dismiss me from the platform.  This post serves as a summary of those posts.

Slacktivist

If it’s good enough for Andre Braugher, it’s good enough for me

Some excerpts:

Warren Throckmorton’s fine blog is no longer here on Patheos. He got booted off, with no coherent explanation. That was rude — rudely disrespectful toward someone whose long presence here has enormously enriched every conception of Patheos as a community or a conversation.

And it was a radical departure of the entire premise and ethos of Patheos as a platform for writers and bloggers from every imaginable religious perspective. It’s a violation of explicit and implicit promises made to everyone whose blog is hosted at this site. Not cool.

Two big points. One, Patheos didn’t treat me right. Two, what was good about Patheos is now in question.

In a previous post, Clark wondered why Patheos simply didn’t offer to move the blog to the Progressive Channel:

Patheos’ evangelical channel has changed its shape and tone quite a bit over the years since it first started with the strange duo of me and Scot McKnight. I fully understood when they booted me over to the “progressive Christian” channel — an awkward, we-need-to-call-this-somethingcategory that has since become a widely used term. But I can’t imagine a defensible notion of the “strategic objectives” for that channel that wouldn’t have room for Warren Throckmorton’s terrific blog.

Maybe the ever-shifting, perpetually negotiated boundaries of “evangelical” have reached a point where Doc Throck no longer fits into the now-Driscoll-friendly shape of that channel here at Patheos. OK, fine, then move him over to another channel. That was the whole idea of Patheos in the first place — there’s a channel for everyperspective, right? Not doing that just … smells bad.

Also too: It’s never a good sign when people start talking about “strategic objectives.”

Mercy Not Sacrifice: The Blog of Morgan Guyton

Early out of the gate was Morgan Guyton with this question:

Why Did Patheos Evangelical Push Out A Whistleblower Blog?

Some excerpts:

I’ve just been informed that the Patheos Evangelical channel has closed down the blog of evangelical whistleblower Warren Throckmorton, who was most renowned for his exposes on the plagiarism and abusive leadership of Mark Driscoll at the former Mars Hill Bible Church. Recently, Patheos Evangelical started hosting a blog for Mark Driscoll. It’s very hard not to see these events as interrelated.

They may be related. Driscoll is coming out with a new book and it could help him to get rid of all those Patheos links to his past difficulties with publishing and citations. However, I am not convinced. The material remains active on the web and my articles on The Daily Beast are more visible than the blog posts.

Guyton concludes:

There is nothing Christian about maneuvering in the shadows. Patheos Evangelical owes an explanation to all the bloggers in the Patheos community because these kinds of actions impact all of our credibility.

Preventing Grace with Anne Kennedy

One evangelical blogger mentioned the event without much comment. Anne Kennedy wrote:

Was curious and sad to see that Warren Throckmorton is no longer blogging at Patheos. You can read what he says here. He has moved all his content to a new cyber home if you want to bookmark his page.

UPDATE:

Anne added a post on May 30 with a more specific lament:

I do not pretend to be able to understand why Dr. Throckmorton does not meet “strategic purposes.” I didn’t know we had any. I was under the impression that we were all wandering around the internet every day, talking about faith, theology, politics, movies, books, food, culture, news, and whatever else happened by. Dr. Throckmorton is brilliant on the breaking news part. I have often been, I am sorry to say, jealous of his ability to dig out the news. Would that jealousy had compelled me to work harder. It is a great loss that he is no longer here. I don’t know how to make sense of it.

Other mentions

One occasional Anxious Bench writer had a lot to say although it was on his own blog. John Fea did three posts on the incident (here, here, and here).

I do know that many bloggers are discussing the issues involved (e.g., here) and are quite concerned about their futures at Patheos. They should be. I had no warning and was under the impression that my work was valued.

If you have written about this and don’t see your post here, please let me know.

Unfundamentalists

Former Patheos blogger Dan Wilkinson wrote a nice piece examining who owns Patheos. After examining those individuals, Wilkinson ends by writing:

Though Patheos continues to remain silent on the issue, it’s not hard to imagine why Dr. Throckmorton’s evangelical watchdog blog failed to meet the “expectations” of Patheos’ conservative Christian owners. Perhaps the only thing that’s surprising is that they let his blog last as long as it did.

 

 

Dear Patheos: What Expectations Did You Have?

In January 2017, evangelical bloggers at Patheos received an email from Patheos Evangelical Channel manager Barton Gingerich about changes coming to the site. BN Media had just purchased Patheos and planned to make changes to the writer’s agreement.

One change was the level of participation expected from bloggers. Tier 1 bloggers would be expected to write three times a week; tier 2 bloggers only had to post twice. Tier 1 bloggers would be paid slightly more.  In my email, Gingerich added this personal note to me:

Warren, due to your incredible frequency and important posts, you are a Tier 1 blogger.

In January 2017, my posts were “important.” By mid-2018, they didn’t fit the “strategic objectives” of the organization and my blog was completely removed from the site with only a day’s warning. In my view, my style or content had not changed during that time period. Since Patheos has not informed me, I don’t know what they think changed.

I feel this is important for me to say since Patheos Director of Content Phil Fox Rose sent an email to some bloggers yesterday implying that I knew their expectations “many months ago.” This email was sent to me by several Patheos bloggers:

As some of you know, Patheos decided to end its partnership with Warren Throckmorton. This was done after long and thoughtful consideration. The decision was not made based on a triggering event or post, and Mr. Throckmorton was advised of our expectations many months ago. This is not reflective of some change in policy. It was a specific case. This decision should not give any blogger reason to think their status is in question. We’re sorry the lack of details allows for speculation, but our commitment remains as always to be the place where conversation about faith is happening in the most robust and dynamic way. Nothing will change that. If you would like to discuss this further, please reach out to Ben, and I’m happy to talk too.

What were the expectations and how did I fail to meet them? Since I was not aware of any expectation relating to my blog (beyond the same agreement all other bloggers sign), I don’t know what Mr. Rose is talking about.

I suspect that current bloggers would like to know what the “expectations” are.

This isn’t a good way to treat people. I don’t need every detail about why they now don’t like my “important posts,” but I would like a rational explanation of the key factors that went into their business decision.

Dear Patheos: Which Topic Was the Last Straw?

I appreciate the support I am getting from readers today via email and social media. Twitter support has been especially strong with numerous readers asking Patheos.com why my blog was live one day and gone the next.

Thus far, no additional specific information has come to light. According to the information I received Monday from Patheos COO Jeremy McGee, my blog did not fit Patheos “strategic objectives.” Assuming that the diverse blogs remaining do fit the strategy, I am puzzled about what those objectives are.

Being a curious sort, I got to wondering what clues I might find by looking at my recent posts. Over the past two weeks, I posted the following articles at Patheos.

So which of those posts might have crossed a line?

Much of the interest on social media has focused on the fact that Mark Driscoll and Gospel for Asia CEO K.P. Yohannan are blogging at Patheos now while I am not. Apparently, the strategic objectives of Patheos include those fellows.

Ponder that.

UPDATE (8/1/18) – An earlier version of this article referred to a possible connection to BN Media and Joe Gregory. I learned today from Joe Gregory’s attorney that Gregory sold his interest in BN Media in 2013 and therefore has no involvement with BN Media. I regret the misinformation and apologize to Mr. Gregory for any problem this may have caused. I have corrected this post to reflect this new information.

The Blog at Patheos is “410 Gone”

I hope to have more to say about it soon but for now, I can report that I am blogging here now at wthrockmorton.com.  Patheos leadership informed me yesterday that my blog no longer fit their “strategic objectives.” Since I don’t know what those are, I can’t say how I didn’t fit them.

In any case, thanks to friend J.D. Smith, the blog was quickly migrated with the content to this ad free site. The downside is that I have been unable as yet to find out from Patheos how to get my comments moved along with the posts.

What a strange turn of events. Patheos was at the center of the Mars Hill Church and Gospel for Asia stories and now they host Mark Driscoll and K.P. Yohannan. All of the those Patheos links about Mars Hill and GFA are now erased. The content is here and archived elsewhere but admittedly, it will be harder to find.

 

Is Colorblind Theology Blind?

When we look at people, should we see color? One white pastor has called for a colorblind approach while promoting a video from a white nationalist website. Understandably, his advocacy for colorblind theology has been questioned.
Philadelphia pastor Eric Mason recently issued this call on Twitter:

From here, it gets really complicated.

His call was a reply to a conversation between the national co-director of Cru Inner City John Sather and James White, a pastor and prominent Christian apologist in the reformed tradition. Given the sprawling nature of Twitter conversations, I will not try to provide a blow by blow account, but what I can gather is that White and several who disagree with him have been sparring for several weeks over racial reconciliation in the church.
White defends what has been labeled “colorblind theology.” I can’t tell (and he hasn’t answered my efforts to contact him) if he coined the term or if one of his opponents did. By that, I think he means that we are all members of the human race. There is no need for whites to reconcile with African-Americans or any minority because Christ accomplished reconciliation on the cross. Any offense of my white ancestors against the ancestors of my black brothers and sisters are covered by the cross so there is nothing for me to do about it in the present. In response to various tweets and podcasts on this topic, pastor Mika Edmonson offered a rebuttal on Twitter which eventually led to Mason’s call for a council. Here is one of Edmonson’s tweets:

The Colorblind Plot Darkens

Like many Twitter controversies, some of the conflict is due to the compressed nature of the messages. Communicating in snippets with meandering threads makes it difficult to follow a line of thought from beginning to end. Nuance is possible but more difficult than a panel discussion or a series of articles.
However, what makes me question Mr. White’s sincerity is his promotion of a white nationalist YouTube account: EuropeanUnity565. It doesn’t take much digging to learn that this channel is a repository for white pride and neo-nazi music and protest videos. Here is a tweet where White takes YouTube to task for limiting a EiropeanUnity565 video on “cultural Marxism.”


He uses two tweets (here’s the other one) to criticize YouTube for declaring this content offensive. Should these tweets tell me a lot about Mr. White?
I asked White if he knew what EuropeanUnity565 stood for (no answer). Others did the same thing with no response. For instance:


Given his attention to Twitter, it is hard to imagine that he didn’t see these messages.
Colorblindness is one thing, but being blind to white nationalism is another. Could this be a signal that colorblind theology just makes you blind?

Civil Rights and White Privilege

In any case, colorblind theology, if I understand it correctly, may be problematic even if there are no deeper, darker attitudes.


I don’t know all of the practical implications of colorblind theology. Because he seems to minimize social categories of race, I asked White if he favored the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (no answer). I welcome any adherent of colorblind theology to engage me on this point. I wonder if those who consider racial categories to be psychological rather than theologically essential believe American law should allow discrimination.
In one of the podcasts I listened to, White referred to white privilege in a sarcastic manner. I don’t know for sure what he thinks about it, but I am sure it is a fact. My minority brothers and sisters have suffered in ways I will never experience in this country. If being colorblind leads to a denial of reality, then count me out. Indeed, any theology that leads one to be blind to white nationalism is one that is blind to more than color.