I’m angry, disappointed, frustrated and bewildered by Whoever It Is Who Now Owns Patheos’ decision to pull the plug on what was once the Atheist Channel. It was an ill-conceived, self-destructive, damaging move for this platform, and doesn’t portend anything good.
But I’m also glad it happened.
Yonat Shimron offered a good summary of this last month: “What happened to the nonbelief channel at Patheos?”
The subhed/nut of that story: “Bloggers were advised they could stay at Patheos so long as they stop writing negative or critical posts on religion or politics and instead focus on how to live a good life within their own worldview. They left.”
There’s no way to read such concern about atheists’ “politics” that doesn’t also reject Baptist “politics.” And it’s hard to understand what a “focus on how to live a good life within their own worldview” means for anyone whose “worldview” entails anything more than a vague, flaccid, individualistic, compartmentalized-into-irrelevance, perpetual bystanderism. Ugh.
From Shimron’s RNS report:
Visitors to Patheos, the multifaith media platform that hosts commentary from writers in many of the world’s religions, may have noticed some changes lately.
Its nonreligious channel has become an empty hulk, bereft of most of the familiar names that once occupied the space, including its most popular blogger, Hemant Mehta, the “Friendly Atheist.”
Mehta and 14 other nonreligious bloggers, along with the channel manager, have decamped to a new site, OnlySky Media …
The changes come amid new surveys showing the number of people who are religiously unaffiliated has exploded in recent years, rising to 29% of the U.S. population, up from 19% in 2011. These “nones,” a catchall for a host of groups, including atheists, agnostics, humanists and just plain secularists, have established multiple service and advocacy organizations to serve this growing segment of the population. But there is no media platform solely dedicated to those who are not part of traditional religions.
Efforts to reach Patheos’ management team were unsuccessful, but the departing bloggers and their channel manager, Dale McGowan, said that about a year ago, Patheos decided to change its editorial direction. Bloggers were advised they could stay at Patheos so long as they stopped writing negative or critical posts on religion or politics and instead focused on how to live a good life within their own worldview.
“The writing on the wall was that unless you’re prepared to say nice things about religion you need to find a new outlet,” said Mehta, who has written for Patheos since 2011.*
Style points to Hemant there for the biblical allusion.
Anyway, as I said, while this is all Bad News for Patheos, I’m also glad it happened because OnlySky is Good News for readers. Not only is it the new home of some of my favorite former neighbors from here like the Friendly Atheist and Captain Cassidy, but it’s introduced me to loads of new, interesting voices. Here’s just a sampling of Good Stuff that’s come from my new OnlySky RSS feed**:
- Adam Lee, “The stories we retell tend to come true“
- Jack Bowen, “In defense of fair-weather fans“
- Andrew Hall’s “Scientific horoscopes” (a terrific link-roundup format)
- Erin Louis, “How my Catholic mother saved me from purity culture“
- Nathan Timmel, “The weird alchemy of friendship“
I’m grateful to Whoever It Is Who Now Owns Patheos for opting to shoot themselves in the foot and thereby allow me to encounter all of these writers.
Granted, OnlySky also hosts a handful of Funhouse-Mirror-Josh-McDowell-type bloggers and that kind of debate-me apologetics is not my cup of tea (or my cup of Russell’s teapot). But the posts above and the kind of always-interesting stuff I’ve long valued from Hemant Mehta are far more typical of what you’ll find on OnlySky.
Patheos’ loss is readers’ gain.
See also: “The Story of OnlySky: Six stories by our creative team that capture our mission and vision.”
* That was the year the site’s then-owners really pivoted to blogging, securing a foursome of blogs they saw as the tent poles of that new effort. With Hemant’s exit, following the earlier departures of Scot McKnight and the Anchoress, only one of those 2011 additions is still here. That guy has got to be wondering about his future here.
** Yeah, that’s right, an RSS feed. I’m old. And RSS feeds are cool. I’m not saying they’re the only alternative to the soulless, corporatized tour buses that have Zucked all the life out of the web over the past decade or so, but they’re still one such alternative.
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