Comment policy

We value and depend on a large variety of voices. The work we do in the Christian Reformed Church justice ministries is intentionally shaped by many voices, through committee members, congregations, synodical recommendations, experts in the field, and ecumenical partnerships.

In order to steward ministry shares well, commenting isn’t available on Do Justice itself because we engage with comments in other spaces.

Unfortunately, as many websites have found, commenting sections tend to be dominated by a few voices and do not tend to bring out the best in people. Meaningful dialogue between diverse positions, regrettably, does not often happen in online commenting sections and managing online comment sections can take many hours every week of staff time, time that could be better spent having more productive dialogue offline or in other forums. That’s why pages like CBC, CNN, Reuters, Slate, etc have taken commenting off their pages. (You can read more about this move away from commenting here.) Several other CRC ministries (World Missions, Home Missions, Back to God) do not have commenting on their websites, but engage in commenting and dialogue in other spaces, as we do.

We want to hear from you! Here are a few ways you can dialogue with us about posts on Do Justice: 

• Comment on the article on the Do Justice Facebook page.
• Comment on the article on the Centre for Public Dialogue Facebook page (only for articles pertaining to Canada).
• Send us an email—We make every effort to respond carefully and in a timely manner to emails. do.justice@crcna.org
• Ask us to lead a discussion or facilitate a workshop in your community about the issue(s) in question in your community by emailing us at do.justice@crcna.org or publicdialogue@crcna.org.

When you do comment online, please respect our commenting guidelines. These guidelines are not exhaustive, but they're intended to help understand our approach to user-posted content. It all boils down to being polite, courteous, and Christ-like in the way we communicate online. These guidelines are the same as the CRC commenting policy used on The Network and The Banner. 

In our view, a good comment

• is directly related to the original post.
• is concise and easy to follow.
• is friendly and polite in tone and language, even when you strongly disagree.
• contributes something new and positive to the discussion.
• has clear authorship—that means using your real name.
• is truthful and avoids making or repeating false claims.

And avoids

• making derogatory remarks and/or personal comments about others.
• dominating the discussion.
• undermining the church or its ministries. Constructive criticism is welcome.
• posting under false pretenses—including for commercial gain.
• posting primarily to advertise or solicit funds.

All comments regarding public policy should refer only to the policy in question, and refrain from mentioning explicitly supporting or opposing* specific politicians or parties. Any comments judged to be of a partisan nature will be reviewed and/or removed.

If you see a comment on Facebook or The Network that you believe does not meet the standards listed here, please bring it to the attention of our moderators (do.justice@crcna.org). Moderators aren't perfect, but we try to make the best decisions we can for the good of the whole community. A moderator's decisions are final and comments may be removed without further explanation. Discussions about why a comment was or wasn't removed will be deemed off topic and removed.

If you have questions about these comment guidelines, don't hesitate to email us at do.justice@crcna.org

*This guideline comes from the Canada Revenue Agency guidelines on public policy dialogue and development: "A charity that provides a platform for the public to comment on and discuss issues (for example, a website or blog) must monitor these platforms, and remove messages that support or oppose a political party or candidate for public office. In such a case, a charity might choose to add a notice to its platform that messages that support or oppose a political party or candidate will be removed."