Watchdog Celebrates His Fifth Birthday, Still Alive and Well!!

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Hello Readers! I hope all of you are doing well, I hope you all had a great summer! Here in Florida it has been the absolute wettest summer I can remember in 30 years of living here - but it was a very wonderful summer with the kids home. We met some very wonderful new friends, and had a great time in activities with family and friends.

It has been great to take a break from blogging, having posted only two articles in the last month. I have begun working on another project that I hope to announce very soon, and the time away from blogging has helped me get this project underway.

The Watchdog is now five years old. It was five years ago that the FBC Jax Watchdog site began. I started this blog because I cared about my church, and I cared about THE church. I hate what has happened to modern day evangelicalism: the nutty fundamentalism, the money- and marketing-hungry pastors that have taken over mega churches and damaged the faith of so many Christians. I am proud of what this blog has accomplished in shining a light on misbehaving pastors and churches - a few months ago this blog passed the 2 million page view mark, and traffic is still very strong after 733 blog posts and hundreds of audio and video clips the past five years.

People ask me from time to time if my faith has survived the past five years of blogging and the two legal battles and the ugliness my family has experienced. Some people assume that my views expressed here, my criticism of pastors and churches is an indication that I'm no longer a Christian - some even assume that I'm an atheist or some anti-Christian heathen trying to drive people away from their faith. This couldn't be further from the truth. Over the past five years I have been on a spiritual journey of sorts, having to acknowledge the flaws in some of my own religious views that I once held as a fundamentalist Christian, but still holding on to my faith in God. It has been a journey that has been incredibly liberating.

I have met with and talked with so many people that have been on a similar journey out of fundamentalism, and they can relate to what I'm talking about. I'm going to share here in the next blog posts some of these things I've learned in this journey - concentrating on the teachings in fundamentalism that are dangerous because of how they ultimately damage people's Christian faith.

When a person is confronted with the reality that much of what they've been taught by their "man of God" is not true, or not biblical and even some being self-serving nonsense and fairy tales - a crisis of faith can occur. For instance we know that over 50% of young people who leave home and attend college and get away from the fundamentalism in their home church jettison their faith. The fundamentalist pastors and parents will wail and moan that it is the worldy influence, the evil college professors, or they blame it on the lack of faith of the young person - or blame it on a recalcitrant blog that criticizes pastors.

But really, the ones to blame are those who are teaching nonsense in the church, not those who choose to expose it on a blog or website. So in the next few blog posts I'm going to discuss what some of this nonsense is that is causing so many people to feel that they do have to leave their church, and what causes even young people to question the validity of the religious teachings they have received growing up.

So now that fall is here, and the kids are back in school, the Watchdog will be back at work.

Stay tuned!