On my previous post, I used to have a comment from someone named ‘drew’ containing text which I eventually realized was quoted from www.ucctruths.com , an ex-UCC-member website that purports to be exposing the dark side of the church.
Not surprisingly, the e-mail address ‘drew’ supplied was false, so I could not contact him to confront the fact that his exact words appeared on at least a dozen different websites. So, I deleted his post as spam.
Now, there’s a new post on ucctruths.com, where ‘drew’ often gets in the first comments on several posts (almost certainly the poster himself on another account):
Fair minded but boring
The Hartford Courant has another columnist piping in on the IRS investigation of the United Church of Christ and this site gets mentioned. I think this is a compliment, but I’m not sure:
Actually, the complaint was most likely filed by the guy who runs “UCC Truths,” an organization and website for lapsed UCCers, heretics who dissent from the church’s leadership and publish items such as “UCC Hierarchy Uses Neurosurgically Altered Monkeys to Make Cheap Sensible Shoes.” Actually, no, they don’t. UCC Truths is easily the most fair-minded and polite and boring apostate group in the history of religious dissent. It says on the website: “Any employee of the UCC national office or leaders of any of the UCC Conferences are welcome to submit their own commentary which will be posted, unedited, at the top of the site, at any time.” If Martin Luther had been a Congregationalist, he would have nailed the “95 Other Possible Ways of Looking at Things” to the church door in Wittenberg.
That’s actually pretty funny. Boring? Yes, but I really don’t know how I could make this stuff any more exciting.
And before anyone gets carried away, I didn’t file the complaint but this site has certainly been the most visable on raising the issue.
posted by UCCtruths, Sunday, March 02, 2008
Here’s the interesting part: Those little remarks at the end? False. According to a WHOIS:Domain Name: UCCTRUTHS.COM
Administrative Contact:
Hutchins, James w924c3ba58m@networksolutionsprivateregistration.com
ATTN: UCCTRUTHS.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA 20172-0447
570-708-8780
And according to this news story:
The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State — a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. — shares the concern of the IRS and said it has filed 11 complaints with the agency about electioneering by religious organizations since January 2007 — including one against a Las Vegas pastor who endorsed Obama from the pulpit.
It did not file the complaint against the UCC, however, Lynn said, because it didn’t find any violations when it looked into the matter last summer at the urging of James Hutchins, who runs the “UCCtruths” website that is critical of the UCC.
…
Hutchins posted news of the investigation on his website Wednesday and said he had received an anonymous copy of the complaint to the IRS with information redacted that identified the person who filed it.
Right. So the guy who initially pushed for an investigation “received an anonymous copy” of the complaint and posted news about it on his website.
Sorry, Jimmy boy. It’s pretty obvious that you filed the complaint, and the fact that you removed the name of the filer is pretty good evidence of that.
If not, why not post it again with the filer’s name intact?
Tags: Rants, Religion // 5 Comments »
