After a lot of consideration, the forum administrators have decided that sadly it’s time to wind things up here as Facebook is an easier & cheaper platform (it costs time & money to run this forum—both of which has been generously volunteered for the past 8.5 years). There are now many Christian Universalist FB groups but the largest/longest running evangelical one is Evangelical Universalism (Invitation & Debate).
However, as we believe there is valuable content on this forum, we are going to leave it online as read-only for a few months to allow members to collect and curate. For example, the administrators are planning to try to export/reformat the “Featured” section onto another website (possibly Blogger).
From the first of March onwards the forum will be read-only and also won’t be accepting any new members.
On behalf of the Administrators & Moderators, I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to this forum over the years!
Oh well. I wonder what will happen to that big list of names Sobornost and others compiled? Maybe someone else can improve it and add many more names and details
We plan to migrate a lot of stuff to a free platform, and the list is high on the list.
Depending on how things go, the site ID will simply shift over to the new platform, which won’t be a forum (probably). The new platform will NOT be Facebook; it’ll be something like Wordpress or Blogger. More like what “Rethinking Hell” has been doing.
This is partly because the hosting service for this forum will be ceasing to support BBCode, which will necessitate us moving as much of everything we can to another platform anyway. (They’ll gladly charge a premium fee to help with that, of course. We decided to decline that offer.)
Once we have things up and running on the new site, we’ll either post a link there so whoever wants can jump over, or (ideally) we’ll switch the new site’s id over to this one. Typing in www.evangelicaluniversalist.com, or clicking a bookmark on your browser set to that (but NOT with the /forum extension) will just take you to the new site one morning. Around Easter we hope, for thematic purposes.
Members won’t be able to just post new threads to socialize, however (or probably not since that requires a forum engine), so that’s the reason for noting FB groups are available.
I should add that, while this is the plan, it will be a masssssssively huge task even to only get the technical/reference things moved over. It won’t be an easy task to even IDENTIFY all the tech/ref things (and not all of THEM will be moved over; none of my purely trinitarian works will go for example). Many many many of the 101 thousand posts of the 6500 threads will not be moved over.
And the plan might largely fail for other reasons. Consequently, the safest thing is to treat the forum as going down permanently and, if you (whoever is reading this) have things you posted or that others have posted that you want to ensure are privately archived, you should be taking the opportunity to do that now. Because giant supertanker-loads of things will be permanently gone otherwise.
Well, strictly speaking FB is for posting “hot or not” college girl selfies in Boston. (That’s how it started anyway. )
It’s okay for social interaction and news sharing, so it could (theoretically) take up the slack for that part of the forum. The technical/reference things will go somewhere else.
I tried FB for a short while and found it to be pretty worthless and time-consuming; no going back to it for me.
Dang, I’m gonna miss this place. I thought of it like ‘Cheers’ without the beer. We had our personal barstools, we had our Cliffs Clavinss and our Norm!!!s and Frasiers’ - it was a place to get out of the ECT ‘rain’, belly up to the bar and see some old familiar faces, and some new ones too.
Golly! I wonder what Cheers character - I best Identify with Actually, I’m more akin to Hawkeye, in the TV series MASH.
But while I like to clown around (it’s liking the historical Christian, Holy Fool’s tradition and the Coyote, Native American character)…I am very serious, regarding theology, philosophy and science. And hanging out here, has helped shaped and crystallized my worldview.
I’ll probably not get to the Facebook group. But I’ll continue to:
Be active on social media
Continue growing in theology and philosophy
Continue to perfect my writing style
Continue with the languages of Latin American…the popular languages of Europe…and the strange world of Chinese Mandarin
Continue to work with homeopathy, Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine and spiritual healing
Some nice, fun folks here. We should have a going away song?
This has been a great asset to my journey into, around, over, under and sometimes through the concept of Hell. Thanks. I can’t hide on Facebook though so I’ll miss this place.
Facebook? My impression of Facebook is that it is for teenagers talking about nothing and soccer moms setting-up play-dates for their children.
Perhaps my impression is wrong. I’ll have to look at the Facebook group.
I’m on FB and i’m up to 1,700 friends but it’s because i have a business and it allows me to get inexpensive publicity. Most of the discussions on my page are either political or funny posts or misc posts.
Yes, the lack of anonymity is awkward. However, it is possible to make a false name account with a different email address and set all settings to private, just so as to participate in a group anonymously.
Glad you both brought this up. It was something I almost created a post on a few months ago. Figure I might as well add my two cents on the matter.
Why do you need anonymity? In my experience, when someone doesn’t use their real name, it both causes potential deception and the user themselves to act in a way with no real consequences to their reputation. Such people, I have to wonder, are probably living a double life. With exception to death threats, I can’t see a reason a Christian would need to hide behind a handle or false name.
The downsides I see when someone decides to obscure who they really are:
Allows them to act in an extreme immature way with no real consequences. People will say rude things that they would never say in person to someone else.
Typically will cause more trollish behavior.
I typically only truly respect people that use their real names when it comes to serious topics. I am sorry if this offends, but it is the way I have felt for a very long time. If you can’t be honest with who you are, then why should I take you seriously? You can post something rude and mean, then create a new account and do it all over again. Now, just because I don’t respect it, doesn’t mean others won’t. And, who cares if Gabe Grinstead respects you or not? Probably won’t lose any sleep over it, or rather, you shouldn’t. But it is more for me to to ascertain the worth of someone’s posting or opinion. Do they have courage to actually post this so others that know them might see? Or are they unsure of themselves on the matter and are just fishing for other opinions before they decide? I see it as fence sitting, so to speak.
People use fake names for good reasons - sometimes. It could be they attend a church, have friends and relatives, etc. - who are not universalists. And they don’t want folks to criticize, belittle them, etc.
I started out using my real name. Then I noticed most folks had pseudonyms. Then I said I should get in the groove. I couldn’t find that many Holy Fools and P-Zombies, to hang out with - on social media. Here I can introduce everyone, to Holy Fool, Zombie and P-Zombie culture. Like they say: When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
Actually, the move to a Facebook or LinkedIn group (or Yahoo group), is a good idea. You don’t need to worry about technical issues, like:
The server being down
Someone hacking the system
A now software release needs installing
Etc.
And you probably don’t need to pay for hosting. The downside is you are constricted by any FaceBook, Yahoo or LinkedIn rules and regulations. But that normally, should not be an issue.
I guess I just did not know that this forum was that expensive. JP is the only remaining mod as far as I can tell - where are the others?
Like I said, FB is not for me, I’ll have to find another Forum - any suggestions?
We decided to decline that offer.)
)
Actually, I’m more akin to Hawkeye, in the TV series MASH. 