"the thread suffered an involuntary and forcible separation from another thread"

I too have undergone this experience. Subjecting this praxis of separation to a hermeneutic of suspicion, I concluded that our host seeks to distance himself and his posts from lines of reasoning that either (a) don’t address his central concerns or (b) present challenges to his theories that he either cannot or will not confront. Our host is elaborating a distinctive theology, and it seems that he’s trying to persuade everyone on OST that his is the only right theory, shunting dissenters to side posts where they languish through inattention.

More recently I’ve begun entertaining an alternative hypothesis. What if, as blog host for the spirit of emergence, he’s serving as midwife for the proliferation of multiple theologies, each a total and self-contained system, each incommensurable with all the others? Instead of forcing a convergence on one version of Christianity, he’s trying to facilitate a divergence into multiple Christianities. So, when he splits off a comment and turns it into a separate post, he’s encouraging the writer (and fellow travelers) to elaborate his/her theory on its own terms, without having to defend it or to assert its superiority to alternative theories (such as his own). Perhaps it’s the immanent work of the Holy Ghost in the present age to let a thousand theological flowers bloom; then in the fulness of time it may become possible to judge them by their fruit.