Persona non grata at CiF Belief

It appears that I have committed an unforgivable sin.

As a result of recommending that commenters should boycott Andrew Brown's blog for a week to express displeasure at his unwillingness to adhere in his own above-the-line behaviour to the standards that he expected of the rest of us below the line, I have been told that no more articles from me will be commissioned or accepted, and the article on personal experiences of God (which I know some of you have been awaiting for some time) will not be published on CiF Belief even though it was commissioned and accepted.

The thread was O come all ye faithless, in which (in the opinion of several) Andrew made rather a prat of himself trying to ban WoollyMindedLiberal from attending the CiF Believers get-together in London on August 8th. The offending comment was as follows:

I've met Andrew, he bought me dinner last November prior to my first ATL article, and he is perfectly amicable face-to-face. I'm just a bit disappointed that his recent online behaviour hasn't come up to the standards he has been saying he expects of others. We can get banned for it - but we can't ban that behaviour in him. Or can we?

There is a very simple and effective way in which you can show your displeasure. For the next week, decline to make any comment on any of AB's blog articles (apart from this one) and decline even to view the page (this will affect page hits and therefore ad revenue). Click Recommend on this comment if you're prepared to do that.

If this comment happens to get deleted by the mods, I've kept a copy and will put it up on my blog instead.

But this was just the latest in a series of actions from Andrew that displayed a sense of double-standards between what is acceptable above-the-line and below-the-line, and for that matter what is acceptable amongst theist as opposed to atheist authors. At the time, Andrew seemed to view the matter somewhat lightheartedly. An hour or so later he posted saying

I would just like to say that I have clicked recommend on JW's most recent post.

But it seems that this was just for show, and in fact he regarded the matter very seriously. He has my email address and phone number. It's a pity he couldn't have contacted me to get it sorted at the time.

Andrew is of course perfectly entitled to decide who he will commission articles from, and perfectly entitled to decide not to take any more from me. I'm rather surprised and disappointed though that he chose to leave it three weeks before making any mention of this to me, and initially to lie about the reasons the personal experiences article would not be published, saying it hadn't been commissioned. He only offered this new reason in an email after I sent him the correspondence in which the commission was clearly stated and raised the issue with Matt Seaton (overall CiF editor).

So that's where things stand. To an extent, I have no reason to complain. I stated in a later comment that the purpose of the boycott was to show "that actions have consequences", so I can hardly whinge when my own actions have consequences other than those I would prefer. I would have been happy to contribute to the success of CiF Belief by politely stating an atheist viewpoint on issues both above and below the line. But it seems that is not going to happen.

I don't feel inclined to continue contributing to CiF in the present circumstances. I hope to write plenty more and put it up here instead. I hope that those of you who have enjoyed my articles on CiF Belief will continue to read me here and comment.