My comment was rash and I should have been more patient before posting that. I apologize. I was unaware of a few things:

1) that you were the only one approving comments - I was pretty sure you weren’t the one who approved the comments, so it was in no way directed at you.
2) that once one comment is approved, so are all others

Otherwise I would not have said what I said.

However, some posts/comments on YAR have bugged me in the past…oh I’d say year…and I’ve held my tongue quite often. I figured that most folks had admin access and someone thought all these comments were totally appropriate for what we do on YAR. I guess I let John’s flurry of wackiness get the better of me this time.

Again, I apologize personally to you, Tim, and to any others who may have been offended.

Sorry about that. The way the Wordpress settings are set up is that only the first coment by a user needs to be approved by an administrator. Once they have had one comment approved, the can post more comments without them being held for moderation. In this case, John’s first comments seemed harmless enough, but then they devolved considerably over the holidays while I wasn’t checking the blog daily.

I must say I’m a bit disappointed that you wouldn’t be surprised if we became a “frontier for relativism and wild assertions.” Since the other administrators left two years ago, I’ve been left with the sole admin responsible for approving comments held for moderation and other troll curbing tasks. It’s a daily responsibility I’d really prefer to share. If you’d like to help out, please let me know.

I’ve left John’s comment on this post so that your comment makes sense, but if you would prefer to have it removed completely, let me know. I’ve also removed a number of his more obnoxious comments that were in the moderation queue and all of his future comments will be held for moderation.

Sincerely,
Tim

Unless YAR has devolved into a frontier for relativism and wild assertions, which, quite frankly, wouldn’t surprise me.

For all the talk about building “safe spaces” here, a comment that jokes about Mennonite martyrdom, that says that it is a lie to state the Christianity is the truth, and maligns an otherwise diverse (within the Christian community) publishing house - I certainly don’t feel like this is a safe space.

It also promotes the conceit that Christianity is the only source of “truth” and the world; and consequently that ALL other Faith Traditions are wrong and therefore the work of “satan” or the “devil”.

Plus I would strongly recommend to get out your crucifix and garlic too (for self protection) when anyone prattles on about the “baptism of blood”.

Thanks for noticing that…man that’s funny. I made the edit just now.

The baptism of blood in the suffering church is an interesting one, and I think you can find biblical warrant for it (perhaps when I get time I will). However, I sometimes wonder if, when applied on the ground, if this tends toward a sort of antagonisms toward “the world” that are the marks of the separatist fundamentalism in many elements of the Mennonite Church.

I for one am not a separatist - this is where I break with Dirk Phillips and Menno - I do believe that the church is a community of sinners redeemed and being sanctified, not a “pure” church in the sense that all who are gathered within the church are keeping up with the morality Joneses.

the baptism of blog,generally referring to martyrdom

So that’s what’s been going on here for the last 3 years…

But seriously, I’ve only recently heard this term “baptism of blood” as analogous baptism by fire and baptism by water. I can’t say I’m familiar with it enough yet to mach much comment. That said, I do resonate with the idea of baptism of the community as a whole, rather then just an individual.