Stephanie Fisher tracked Jim West down at Petros Baptist Church, doing what he does best – blogging I mean. Hell, as long as he dropped his stuff about gays and climate and so forth, I’d go to his church. There’s even a long list of his sermons for one to hear.
3 January, 2010
Jim West found!
Posted by stalinsmoustache under blogs | Tags: Jim West, Petros Baptist Church |[28] Comments
3 January, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Not to toot my own horn… but well why not? I pointed this out yesterday (http://thechurchofjesuschrist.us/2010/01/where-in-the-world-is-jim-west/#comment-17639 ). Do I get a prize?
3 January, 2010 at 10:22 pm
Best not to let us know what you’re doing with your horn, Q, but yes, honour to whom honour is due. A prize? How about leading a delegation to Jim’s church?
3 January, 2010 at 10:26 pm
Actually, I have a suspicion that it was not John Loftus and co who sent Jim packing – as they like to claim – but the shock of the biblioblog dinner at SBL. He suddenly thought, holy fuck, am I like all of those!
4 January, 2010 at 12:47 am
i would love to have you visit any time, ro.
actually i wasn’t driven off. but whatever helps loony loftus feel better about his weird self.
(and it’s not like the church site is new…. been there for ages as you can tell from the archives).
4 January, 2010 at 2:25 am
Jim have fun in your seclusion. When you come out from your cloister you need to answer the charges of Dr. Avalos right here along some others, that you:
A. are deceptive about your credentials;
B. make fun of suicides;
C. is homophobic;
D. censors respectable comments from your blog just because you disagree?
E: calls all atheists, not just me, crazy loons not worth talking to (which either doe or does not apply to Jim Linville)
4 January, 2010 at 10:16 am
Hey – what happened to your grammar in points C,D, E? (Says he feeling pedantic)
4 January, 2010 at 3:50 am
Hi John,
All of your charges against Jim are accurate except for (E). Jim does not hold all atheists in equal contempt. He has demonstrated warm reception to scholars like Gerd Ludemann, Philip Davies, and others on his blogs.
4 January, 2010 at 3:55 am
E is true as well. See here.
4 January, 2010 at 4:35 am
It’s a bit like you John. You see, people who don’t ‘know’ you, as you said to me, don’t understand that you’re not really attacking all Christians even though you address your attacks at ‘you Christians’. Same with Jim: people who don’t ‘know’ Jim, don’t understand that he’s not really addressing his attacks to all atheists even though it appears that way. I think you’re both wrong to do so. It is misleading and offensive to those who don’t know you, and don’t understand when you’re trying to be funny.
I saw the series of quotations. I wasn’t impressed. And in a sense I’m less impressed with your attacks against ‘Christians’, only because I don’t want to be associated with those tactics. I am much much less likely to take offence and much much more likely to regret being the cause of offence when it isn’t deserved.
There are plenty of decent critical minded independent good Christians, and the same with atheists. Jim knows that too.
4 January, 2010 at 5:06 am
Stephanie, see my comment below Loren’s last comment.
As you know I sometimes respond in kind to attacks like Jim’s just as you might sometimes respond to attacks on your women by chauvinists. THAT is the parallel I should think you would recognize it as a valid one.
As I told you my target audience is conservatives. In fact it says so in my banner. I say if the shoe fits wear it. If not ignore it. There is no one shoe fits all sizes when it comes the Christians. I do not paint with broad strokes about all Christians and I do not paint with a fire hose against religion either.
James McGrath knows me and has been reading and responding to my Blog for years. I know that people who might first visit my Blog may think ill of me, especially if they happen to run across one post where I blast someone like Joel Watts who claimed I am not a true Biblioblogger. I can’t help that. There is a cumulative case for the decent way I conduct myself and the respectful way I treat others and the insightful things I say that make my blog a very popular one among both Christians and skeptics. That is all the evidence I need to rebut what you may think of me.
I agree that there are plenty of decent critical minded independent good Christians, and the same with atheists. (Oh, did you just say this?) I am one of them. The evidence points in this direction.
I hope you consider this evidence as you continue to read what I write.
If not, then, that’s not my problem. No matter what I do or say there will be many people who misunderstand me since my goal is to debunk conservative Christianity. The alternative would be to abandon my goal which won’t happen.
Cheer.
4 January, 2010 at 5:11 am
Just in case a word makes any difference, the sentence above should read:
As you know I sometimes respond in kind to attacks like Jim’s just as you might sometimes respond to attacks on women by chauvinists.
deleted is the word “your”
4 January, 2010 at 6:06 am
I know who your target audience is John, I thought that was clear in my comment and you’ve just conceded again that people who don’t know you will be offended, so you’ve missed my point. How well do you know Jim? Plenty of atheists have been reading and responding to Jim’s blog for years.
I still think you’re both wrong. Why should either of you expect everyone to be fully informed with your work and everything about you? You both have a public profile and you have a responsibility to define your targets in order not to isolate the wrong people. I’ve read some of your work and I worry about public profile.
(otherwise, how are you going to make a difference?
You want to attract more people to your cause, not repel them)
And for the record, I ignore attacks on women by chauvinists but if I considered it worth responding to, I would respond with reason not ridicule. I don’t personally come across it in my ‘culture’ and in my home country I had a female Prime Minister, Leader of the House and Governor General. It exists in fundamentalist flavours of religion and I have responded to it academically with argument and support when writing about fundamentalist forms of Christianity (specifically Destiny Church) and fundamentalist Islam.
4 January, 2010 at 4:37 am
Ah… Well, I suppose there are two explanations for the discrepancy. (1) Jim was caught up in the heat of polemic and didn’t mean entirely what he said in the place you reference (think of the fiery rhetoric used by prophets, apostles — hell, a lot of us today). (2) Jim is a slimeball who does actually hold all atheists in contempt while ingratiating himself with some of them for self-serving reasons (to fit in with academics, to rhetorically align himself with their minimalist positions, whatever).
In the interest of goodwill, I’m willing to suppose the former.
4 January, 2010 at 4:50 am
Keep in mind Loren, Jim was exegeting a passage in the Bible. So now he either rejects that exegesis or he was treating Holy Scripture cavalierly. I would think someone who believes the Bible would not treat God’s word that way, don’t you?
But he can always choose one of the other horns of this particular dilemma and fess up, now can’t he?
4 January, 2010 at 4:51 am
I’m not sure it’s necessary to continue the nasty name references, eg loony loftus, and mr moustache, and although I’m absolutely certain Roland couldn’t possibly take offence ever(I’m not so sure about John), that’s not the point. It’s just rude. Why be rude?
I really like what I’ve seen of Jim’s original pastoral blog. It is lovely warm and caring. I wouldn’t mind him coming back with that, plus support and promotion of scholarship, including the pastoral blog’s light ‘prune humour’, which more honestly seems to reflect the dear Jim I met in person.
4 January, 2010 at 5:09 am
FTR: I had no intention of creating any offense by using “Mr. Moustache.”
4 January, 2010 at 5:28 am
hey again ro- just so you can pass along word to loren- he’s completely wrong in his notion that i’ll blog again. as i’ve told you privately, it’s just become boring. so no, dont imagine loren or anyone else to be correct in this matter.
as to the personal attacks, i’ve not cared in for ages what avalos thought nor chris heard nor ed cook nor that loftus creature. none of them, you see, matter.
but i will continue to drop in on you, ro. because you are interesting.
4 January, 2010 at 6:40 am
Everybody matters Jim. You’re a pastor.
4 January, 2010 at 10:14 am
I love getting up the morning, which is the future for most of you (so I can tell you what’s coming) and seeing what has been happening during my beauty sleep.
First of all, thanks for the thumbs up, Jim. If I’m over your way, I will drop into your church! For what it’s worth, it looks like the community for which my father spent his whole life searching. And I can understand how something like blogging can become a drag.
Second, looks like Stephanie agrees at some level!
Third, I guess it would have been inevitable for Rev. Loftus to pick the thread here. There is a strange disconnect when I read Loftus’s comments. It boils down to assuming that everyone works in the same way in which he does, so motives are attributed, assumptions made, words twisted. And while there is a clear demarcation between good and evil, at the same time the posts have a curious mix of ad hominem and argument. All of which is done with a deathly absence of humour (except at the expense of others) and a weird absence of the complexity and messiness of life. I find it a strange universe that is light years from my own.
4 January, 2010 at 10:26 am
what level? I thought I disagreed with everything.
4 January, 2010 at 10:30 am
That he’s sweet and the church blog site has some appeal
4 January, 2010 at 10:35 am
absolutely.
but also hopefully that there are some marks which should not be stepped over.
4 January, 2010 at 10:15 am
I have to doubt that Jim thought “holy fuck”
Even at his most obstreperous he was always a bit sensitive to swearing.
But have you noticed the picture on the site – it makes it look like only couples and families are welcome.
4 January, 2010 at 10:17 am
I wonder how the site is doing in the Alexa ratings. And, hey, ‘family’ is an elastic term.
4 January, 2010 at 11:16 am
As Jim didn’t say to his gay pussies
4 January, 2010 at 3:35 pm
Jim has gay pussies? I thought he didn’t like cats, happy or otherwise. Why the heck don’ t I ever get these darn memos?
4 January, 2010 at 4:43 pm
There are many things about Jim that we don’t know yet.
4 January, 2010 at 4:44 pm
Actually that would mean they’re Australian pussies – http://stalinsmoustache.wordpress.com/2010/01/03/gay-was-first-coined-in-australia/