About a year ago, under the title Toward a Christianity of Common Sense, I published a 16-point articulation of a Christian theology that, to me, makes sense. I only (if carefully, with input on it from the best pastors, theologians, and Christian layperson I know) wrote it because I couldn’t find anything like it.
The response to the document was such that I felt a moral obligation to start at least some kind of online group, or collective, or something, where people could do whatever they wanted around it.
So I put out a little online call asking if anyone wanted to volunteer to help do anything like that. Web guru (and creator of this site) Dan Wilkinson came forward to design a superb forum for what by then we were calling ThruWay Christians; Leslie Marbach (who later suffered the terrible tragedy I wrote about in The Frost and Freedom of Death) volunteered to manage the forum (with the help of a superb crew of volunteer moderators); and Liza Salazar donated her considerable talents to designing the TWC logo you see above. (Since then Lisa has also designed four of my e-book covers).
And we were off!
The response to the forum was great!
But after awhile people sort of basically quit posting there. I have no idea why. The thing looked and functioned as well or better than any online forum I’ve seen. For about four months the response to it was superb—and then it just petered out.
Honestly, I didn’t care. I never visited the thing; my motto about ThruWay Christians has always been: “Whatever.” If it needs me to make it fly, I’m happy to let it crash. I’ve about as much interest in becoming a religious leader as I do in wearing a chicken suit and waving to passing cars outside a Chick-fil-A.
So then we shut the forum down. (Although it was so beautiful, and early on so many people left such amazing stuff there, that before taking it offline Dan, in his wisdom, saved the entire site. And I still own the domain thruwaychristians.com, so perhaps in the future … ?)
Anyway, to keep it all short: ThruWay Christians are now Unfundamentalist Christians. You can read a bit about the change here.
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