Having only been here a few years myself, I don’t know who is missing from the older times. I can think of a couple that I have had the pleasure of conversing with and have learned from on these threads.
I am not amused as much as I am amazed at the hatred some exhibit and the need to ridicule us. It is not limited to FR as I have seen it in many other places where religion is discussed.
For full disclosure, I’ve only been here a few months and only lurked about nine months before joining.
I’m not the expert on free republic, but I’m basing my judgments on reading older threads and seeing that many of the posters on them are gone now.
Hey Dear Heart,
I’ve been around FR from near the beginning.
The RC’s from the earliest days
castigated the Proddys with intense and enormous haughtiness, demeaning labels, hostility, arrogance, !!!DEMANDINGNESS!!!!, ruthlessness, venom, . . . etc. etc. etc.
ad nauseum.
They did so in posts, in thread titles with dripping condescension, venom, bitterness, anger, hate etc. etc. etc.
And that without a Proddy appearing yet to say much of anyhing in some cases. In most cases the RC hostilities, belittling, hostility etc. was
THE SUBSTRATED that they operated from continually. Sometimes it was blazing fire red IN PRODDYS FACES and sometimes it was nasty quips around the edges. But it was virtually always there.
THEN, HORROR OF HORRORS, some of us Proddys began to stand up for ourselves with just as emotionally intense a wording etc.
THAT was !!!intolerable!!!.
How dare Proddys stand up and be counted on the FR Vatican Ishtar-Mary Goddess outpost/division with anything close to the RC’s emotional intensities. What upstarts! HOW DARE THEY!
Sheesh.
Guess what . . . we don’t believe layers and tons of the RC hogwash. Not our reality.
And if y’all are going to INSIST on the UNDIVINE RIGHT of PRISSY PAPAL HAUGHTINESS—then it’s only reasonable to expect some of that emotionality to land back in your own faces.
If you want to see where it started, look in your evidently shattered mirrors.
I’ve been quite happy for many months to avoid such threads. However, when the RC haughtiness and demeaning castigations of Proddys reaches a certain level, you can bet I’m going to stand with the Proddys and let the lurkers know that we have just as much Biblical right etc. to be just as emotionally intense as all the RC cliques combined.
I’d prefer to ignore such threads still.
If y’all want sweetness and light from the Proddys, sow that.
When you guys make the statement that yours is the one, true, church that Jesus built the statement is worthy of reproof, rebuke and exortation...And the reproof, rebuke and exortation we present from the 'book' you claim you wrote, and the 'book' you seem to have so little respect for, you call hatred and ridicule...
To be expected, I guess...No one likes to their ox gored, especially when it God doing the goring...
2Ti 4:2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.