Furs For Christ

Furs For Christ, formerly known as Furrs Fur Christ (also known as FFC), is a small community geared toward Christian furries and anthropomorphic artists.

History
Furrs Fur Christ was created by Razi, who hosted the site herself starting in 2005. FFC slowly and steadily grew in membership, briefly hosting an art gallery.

In October 2011, FFC moved to a new domain, FursForChrist.com, with a new name, forum, and image gallery as well as social networking capabilities. During the move, some of the moderators and leadership were shuffled, with the existing forum remaining open as an archive until the present date. The new forum was plagued with issues during the upgrade due to various technical limitations imposed by the social software. A second move was then planned, to more stable software. In February 2012, administrators Razi, Aidyn, Firekeeper, and Eagle's Flight stepped down from their posts, with Ian the Gecko, Sleet, and Hunter the Dog taking their places. About 2 months later, the new administration went ahead with the second move, wiping the previous forum and replacing it with one that is powered by phpBB3.

In time, Razi reliquinshed control of FFC entirely, passing hosting duties on to the new administration. The forums were down for a significant period while all the data was migrated to a new server, and as of August 2013 reappeared and are up and running smoothly again.

As of early 2019, the forum is thriving with 379 total members and over 35,000 forum posts. However, given the forums' outdated format, a large majority of the forums' members have migrated over to a Furs For Christ Telegram chat. After a brief downtime, the forums returned in April 2021 with a completely new infrastructure.

Stated goals
FFC's original mandate was a forum where followers of Christ who also appreciate anthropomorphic art can relate to one another and discuss relevant issues. It also housed a small, clean anthropomorphic art gallery which was not limited to religious art and welcomed deep, non-Christian, or non-anthropomorphic material as well.

FFC is meant to be a warm and welcoming place. Though it is a forum aimed specifically at Christians, it accepts non-Christian members warmly (even one of the global mods identifies as agnostic), and does not discriminate against any Christian denominations, different world religions, or agnosticism/atheism. And though it is a forum aimed specifically at furries, it has also in the past had many non-furry members. Anybody who is interested in Christian and/or furry topics is welcome to come and be a part of the community, provided they follow the rules and live in "peaceful" coexistence.

It is the current administration's policy that FFC is NOT an online church, and its admins/mods are NOT spiritual leaders. Neither does FFC have any official creeds or doctrines. Admins and mods are there to keep the peace and take care of the occasional site-specific issue; they simply claim to be brothers and sisters in Christ.

Activism
FFC members attended Rocky Mountain Fur Con and Anthrocon 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and RMFC again in 2013. Their activities included Bible studies, attending panels, official Sunday worship services, and sharing their faith with other furries.

Controversy

 * In July 2007, FFC was ranked #3 on Cracked.com's WTF?!: The 8 Strangest Communities on the Web list, above Second Life at #5. This prompted a flood of unregistered guests and some new registrations; as a result, the administrators closed off most of the site to non-members and created a membership application to help weed out spammers and trolls.


 * In October 21, 2007, Something Awful featured FFC in its Weekend Web article . The article includes screenshots of the site along with sarcastic comments about the contents of the screenshots. This led to another flurry of guests viewing the site, some of whom spammed the membership applications section.


 * On and off throughout the existence of the site, its members have struggled with how to address the issue of homosexuality in the fandom. In the past, FFC took a hard-line stance against homosexuality, condemning it as sin. At the present time, many of its members and admins/mods are openly LGBTQ or strong LGBTQ allies. ALL viewpoints are welcome on the forum, no matter how unpopular, as long as members remain respectful and follow the forum rules in expressing them. FFC strives to be a safe space for both LGBTQ members and anti-gay Christians.


 * Members of the associated Telegram chat continue to have multiple interpersonal disputes, one of which involved the departure of multiple chat admins. At the present time, however, a majority of the forum admins remain in charge of the chat.