Every year or two, I ask readers to submit questions they want me to answer. That time has arrived once again. Any question. Any subject. Please leave your questions in the comment section or send them to me via email. I will try to answer them in the order received.
I look forward to reading and answering your questions.
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
In December 2021, Estevan Diaz, a youth pastor at Cascade Community Church in Cascade, Idaho, was accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl.
The Lewiston Tribune reported:
A youth pastor at the Cascade Community Church was arrested last week for felony sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl, according to Valley County court records.
Estevan Diaz, 45, was arrested Dec. 29 and charged with five counts of lewd conduct with a child younger than 16 and two counts of enticing a child through the internet, video image or other communication device.
Diaz was fired from his position at the church, Pastor Andy Wegener said.
“The church is shocked and grieved over what has happened, and we are working with all individuals who have been impacted to get them every resource available for healing,” Wegener said.The victim’s mother reported to the Valley County Sheriffs Office that there were more than 700 inappropriate texts between Diaz and her child, court records said.
Police questioned Diaz and uncovered seven incidents of sexual contact between Diaz and the victim in December, the records said.
….
Diaz had been a youth pastor at the church at 109 W. Pine St. in Cascade since July 2021.
In November 2022, Diaz pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
A former Cascade Community Church youth pastor has been convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for lewd conduct with a child under 16 years old, the Valley County Sheriff’s Office announced Tuesday.
45-year-old Estevan Diaz must serve five years minimum in a state prison before he is eligible for parole.
The sheriff’s office said Diaz was arrested in December 2021.
The prosecutor’s office said the victim was a 13-year-old girl, and Diaz was a pastor at the time the crime was committed.
Online court records indicate prosecutors initially charged him with five counts of lewd conduct and two counts of enticing children through the internet. In a plea agreement, prosecutors moved to dismiss the enticement counts and all but one of the lewd conduct counts.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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I came of age in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement. I attended an IFB college and pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years. I was taught and believed that the Bible was inspired, inerrant, and infallible — the very Words of God. One cardinal rule I lived by was this: The verses in the Bible only have one meaning; many applications, but only one meaning. This is standard Evangelical dogma. Never asked, however, is whether this claim is true. Is there really only one meaning for every book, passage, or verse in the Bible?
If this claim is true, wouldn’t every Evangelical believe the same thing? Wouldn’t every Evangelical read the Bible and come to the same conclusion? If, as Evangelicals allege, every believer has the Holy Spirit living inside of them as their teacher and guide, it stands to reason that every one of them would agree with one another about what a particular verse says and means. If the verses of the Bible only have one meaning, and the Holy Spirit teaches and guides every believer, why is it impossible to find two Evangelicals who believe this or that verse says the same thing?
Here’s the truth of the matter: the Bible has no inherent meaning. Two thousand years of Christian church history clearly show us that Christians have NEVER agreed on what the Bible says. Thousands of Christian sects are evidence that believers cannot agree on the “one meaning” the Bible allegedly has. Think, for a moment, about all the Christians who have commented on this site over the years — thousands of them. All of them appealed to the Bible to justify their claims, yet their “one meaning” differs from that of other believers. Bruce, you never were saved! Bruce, you were saved, but lost your salvation! Bruce, you are saved, but backslidden! Which is it? If the Bible only has one meaning, this means that at least two of these “one meaning” Bible-based Christians are wrong.
We determine the meaning of Bible verses. The Bible says whatever we say it says. Denominations and churches are, at a fundamental level, groups of people who agree on what this or that Bible verse says. I was a Calvinistic pastor for several years. Most of the people who were members of the churches I pastored were Calvinistic too. What bound us together as a people? Our beliefs about what this or that Bible verse said about things such as total depravity, unconditional election, limited or particular atonement/redemption, irresistible grace, and the perseverance/preservation of the saints. While there were certainly members who were not Calvinists or perhaps had issues with one or more of the five points of Calvinism, it was our commonly held understanding of certain verses of the Bible that held us together. We, collectively, decided what the Bible said, as does every sect, church, or Christian organization.
Just remember this post the next time a church, pastor, or apologist tells you that there is only “one meaning” to a verse or book of the Bible.
Let me conclude with several short video clips from Bible scholar Dan McClellan on the issue of whether the Bible has “inherent meaning.” I love Dan’s content. I wish Youtube and Dan had been around when I was a pastor. I learn new stuff about the Bible and Christianity every time I watch one of Dan’s videos. I know most of all that my pastors and professors either lied to me or were ignorant themselves.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.
Several years ago, an Evangelical man by the name of Roger Smoak left the following comment on Why I Hate Jesus, the most widely read (and misunderstood) post on this site:
I would be interested in knowing what Really happened? Was it your fibromalga that wasn’t healed? Was it your oldest daughter with cystic fibrosis? Was it your dad dying at an early age or you mom who committed suicide? Was it depression you faced when you quit believing and/or your wife (pastor’s child) had to choose between you and her faith? Was it all the material wealth you experienced during your pastoring where you saw pastors who appeared to worship money instead of God? If the “Western Jesus” has destroyed your belief why can’t you believe in the Jesus of the New Testament? Every day you preached did you question is this was all a farce? What happened when you finally turned agnostic and publicly proclaimed this? Were you pastoring a church? I guess just as you judge others I would like to hear from yourself, church members, family, or someone who could shed some true light on what really happened to you.
When I receive comments such as this — and I have received hundreds of them over the past thirteen years — the first thing I do is look at the site logs to see exactly what the commenter has read.
Take Roger, a South Carolinian. He read:
That’s it. Right next to the Why I Hate Jesus page is a page titled WHY? On this page is a plethora of posts that curious readers can read, and in doing so, find most of their questions about my journey from Evangelicalism to atheism answered. Evidently, Roger didn’t see this page or couldn’t be bothered to look at its content.
Evangelicals tend not to be very curious, that is, unless they are surfing YouPorn. Then they are quite interested in every aspect of female and male bodies. But actually reading about and investigating the life of an Evangelical pastor turned atheist? Nah, how much information does one need to judge a man the Bible says is a fool, a follower of Satan.
In 2015 post titled Curiosity, A Missing Evangelical Trait, I wrote:
Why is it that so many Evangelicals have no desire to be curious? Yes, I know many are, so don’t get your panties in a bunch if you are a curiouser-than-a-cat Evangelical, but many aren’t. I frequently get emails or blog comments from Evangelical Christians wanting to “help” me find my way to Jesus. Such people are certain that they possess the requisite knowledge and skill to win me to Jesus. They are sure that if they just befriend me, quote the right verses, soothe my hurts, or understand my pain, I will fall on my knees and fellate their God.
I was in the Christian church for fifty years. I was an Evangelical pastor for twenty-five of those years. I have a Bible college education. Surely they understand that I am not an atheist out of ignorance? Of course not, and here is where their lack of curiosity gets them in trouble. They often don’t know anything about me or this blog. Why? Because they did a Google/Bing/Yahoo search for _________________ and their search brought them to a single blog post of mine. (Or the past 90 days, 64,000+ first-time visitors have come to this site via a search engine — mostly Google.) These searchers read that one post and immediately conclude that I am a poor wayfaring waif in need of their peculiar flavor of Jesus.
When I get comments such as these, I go to the logs and see what pages they read. Usually, they have only read the pages their search brought them to. Their lack of curiosity (or laziness) is astounding, leading them to make wild judgments about me, and come to rash, ill-informed conclusions. If they would just read the About page and the WHY page they would be better informed about me and this blog. How hard can it be, right?
I suspect part of the reason Evangelicals are not, in general, known for their curiosity, is because they are one-hundred percent certain that they are absolutely right. In their minds, they worship the one, true God and this God lives inside of them. This God walks with them, talks with them, and tells them that they are his own. They have a supernatural book given to them by this supernatural God. This book contains all the answers about life they will ever need. Why should they read anything else?
When you are certain, there’s no need to think, reason, investigate, question, or doubt. When the triune God is on your team, no need to consider any other team. When your God/sect/church/pastor has declared that strawberry ice cream is the one true ice cream, no need to try Rocky Road, Mint Chocolate Chip, or any other flavor.
Simply put, Evangelicals feel no need to know anything else, when you already know all you need to know. God said it and that settled it. One true God, one true religious text, one way of salvation. The earth is 6,027 years old, created in six literal twenty-four-hour days. The Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible blueprint for Christ-honoring families, happy marriages, obedient children, and great sex. When the answer to every question is God, it’s not surprising to find that Evangelicals are not curious.
The good news is that more and more Evangelicals are discovering the curiosity that lies dormant beneath the surface of their lives. Once they make this discovery, they are on their way out of the closed-minded, senses-dulling prison of Evangelicalism. They will find that science can and does explain the world they live in. Science doesn’t have all the answers, but it is asking the right questions.
Still want/need to believe in a transcendent deity or some sort of spirituality? Once free of the heaven/hell, saved/lost, in/out, good/bad paradigm of Evangelicalism, people are free to wander at will. When the fear of hell and judgment are gone, they are free to experience those things that are meaningful to them. Once the question is no longer will you go to heaven when you die, the journey rather than the destination becomes what matters.
Curiosity may kill the cat, but trust me Evangelicals, it won’t kill you.
Now let me circle back around to Roger’s comment.
From the get-go, Roger says that he thinks I am lying or withholding information. He wants to know what REALLY happened to me. Well, shit, Roger, this blog is titled, The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser. This is a clue that says, HEY ROGER, THIS BLOG IS ABOUT THE LIFE OF EVANGELICAL PASTOR-TURNED-ATHEIST BRUCE GERENCSER!
Most readers would say that I am open, honest, and transparent about my past and present life. I have been willing to write about things that are painful and embarrassing to me. I have never wanted to paint a less-than-honest picture of my life. I watched too many preachers do just that back in my preaching days, and I see it going on still today. Sometimes, I want to scream to them, TELL THE FUCKING TRUTH! Alas, Evangelicalism is built on a foundation of truth avoidance; a culture that values name, reputation, and prestige more than honesty and truth.
Roger goes through a greatest hits list of reasons he thinks may be the reason I left the ministry and later left Christianity (grammar corrected for readability):
Let me call Roger’s statements the Seven Was-Its.
Was-It Number One: Was it your fibromyalgia that wasn’t healed?
I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 1996 — 12 years before I walked away from Christianity. During my career as a pastor, I battled chronic bronchitis, had bacterial pneumonia twice, had pleurisy several times, contracted mononucleosis — which almost killed me — and was treated for a plethora of joint and muscle problems. Not one time did I question God. I accepted being sick as God’s perfect plan for my life.
Was-It Number Two: Was it your oldest daughter with cystic fibrosis?
Actually, my oldest daughter has Down syndrome. When Bethany was born thirty-five years ago, my wife and I viewed her as a gift from God. We never questioned God blessing us with Bethany. Bethany having Down syndrome played no part in my deconversion.
Was-It Number Three: Was it your dad dying at an early age?
A curious reader would have found out that my dad and I weren’t close. We didn’t have an adversarial relationship, but we were definitely not close. I was outside the church raking leaves when Polly told me Dad was dead. We hugged, and I went back raking leaves. While I now miss my dad, his death played no part in my deconversion.
Two years ago, I had my DNA tested. I learned what I have long suspected — that Dad was not my biological father. I found that my father was a truck driver who lived in Chicago at the time. He likely met my seventeen-year-old mom while she was working at The Hub, a now-defunct truck stop in Bryan, Ohio. I have half-brothers and sisters in Michigan. Talk about messing up your ancestry tree.
Was-It Number Four: Was it your mom committing suicide?
Mom and I were close. Her suicide at age fifty-four deeply affected me. I so wish she were here today so she could play grandma to our grandchildren. (Please see Barbara.) That said, Mom’s death played no part in my loss of faith. My life with Mom certainly affected me in more ways than I can count, but not when it came to walking away from Christianity.
Was-It Number Five: Was it the depression you faced when you quit believing?
This one is almost funny. I have battled depression most of my adult life — from my early 20s. Thus, depression was the dark passenger of my life from the time I pastored my first church until today. The difference back then is that I buried my depression under a mountain of lies, prayers, and Bible verses. After I left Christianity, I sought out a secular psychologist to talk to. It was only then that I began to unwind the complexities and traumas of my life. I still battle depression today. It ain’t going away. My mental health goal is to keep from falling into the rabbit hole and having suicidal thoughts. Sometimes, I fail.
Was-It Number Six: Was it your wife — a pastor’s child — having to choose between you and her faith?
Now, this one is downright funny — and stupid. Yes, Polly is the daughter of a retired Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) pastor. Her parents attended the Newark Baptist Temple in Heath, Ohio for over four decades. They both died in recent years. That said, Polly has never had to make a choice between her “faith” and her husband of forty-six years. I never sensed that she struggled with choosing between me and God. Sure, we left Christianity together, but that’s where the similarities end. Each of us has our own reasons for deconverting. One thing is certain, if I ever said I was planning to re-enter the ministry or start attending an Evangelical church again, Polly would likely divorce me or kill me with one of her Lodge cast iron pans. Trust me on this one, my wife has zero interest in Christianity. In many ways, her feelings about the past are much stronger than mine. The only difference is that Polly doesn’t write about her feelings on a blog that is read by thousands of people.
Was-It Number Seven: Was it your lack of material wealth you experienced during your pastoring, especially when you saw pastors who appeared to worship money instead of God?
Seven strikes and you are out, Roger. For most of my ministry, I believed that living in poverty was God’s chosen path for me and my family. A good case can be made from the Bible that materialism and wealth are contrary to the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles. While I prayed for material blessing, I never questioned God’s provision. I worked my ass off, and let God take care of the details.
Roger goes on to ask, “if the ‘Western Jesus’ has destroyed your belief why can’t you believe in the Jesus of the New Testament?”
These are the kind of questions that make me want to scream. Roger evidently has never read a Christian history book. He thinks that his brand of Christianity is that of Jesus, the Apostles, and the first-century church, when it is, in fact, every bit as Westernized as mine was in my preaching days. In fact, I suspect if Roger had met me back in the day, he would have loved my preaching and teaching.
By not being curious, Roger misunderstands the chronology of my life. Roger writes:
Every day you preached did you question is this was all a farce? What happened when you finally turned agnostic and publicly proclaimed this? Were you pastoring a church?
I pastored my last church in 2003 and left the ministry in 2005 — three years before my deconversion in November 2008. I still did some preaching, but I no longer was interested in the dog-and-pony show called the ministry. In 2005 — as a last fling of sorts — I candidated at several Southern Baptist churches in West Virginia. It became clear to me that my heart was no longer in the ministry, and neither was Polly’s. We spent the next three years trying to find a church we could call home. (Please see But Our Church is DIFFERENT! for a list of the churches we visited.) In the end, we concluded, that despite the names above the doors, churches are all pretty much the same.
Roger concludes his comment by saying:
I guess just as you judge others, I would like to hear from yourself, church members, family, or someone who could shed some true light on what really happened to you.
This brings me around to the fact that Roger thinks I am lying about my past and present life. He wants to “judge” my life, and determine for himself the “real” reasons I left the ministry and later left Christianity. Roger would love to interrogate my wife and children or “someone” — whoever the hell that is — who would confirm the “real” reasons I am no longer an Evangelical pastor. Something tells me that Roger thinks he already knows the “truth” about my life. He just needs someone to authenticate and confirm his judgments.
I have decided to be brutally open and honest with Roger. I sincerely — in the name of Loki –want him to know the truth about me.
Roger, I never was a Christian. The joke is on the thousands of people I pastored. I was a deceiver, a false prophet, a destroyer of souls. I spent most of my adult life living a lie, pretending to be a follower of Jesus just so I could work 60-80 hours a week, earn $12,000 a year, live off of food stamps, drive $300 cars, and raise six children in a 12′ by 60′ foot mobile home. Instead of accepting secular employment that paid fabulously well, I chose the aforementioned lifestyle all because I wanted to be a wolf among sheep.
I know you really want to know about the sex stuff. You got me, Roger. I fathered several children with female congregants. I also had gay relationships with several deacons. Not only that, I also was a porn addict, frequented houses of prostitution, and attended all-male revues at the local strip club.
I spent five years teaching church children without pay at our Christian Academy. I taught them the Bible and the doctrines of historic Christianity. Why? I was a deceiver, an apostate.
Today, I am a crossdressing worshiper of Satan. Every Halloween, I sacrifice Christian infants to Lord Lucifer. I spend every waking hour trying to destroy God. I hate him, as I do all Christian churches and pastors.
This, I suspect, is more akin to Roger’s narrative of my life than reality. Why read, investigate, ask questions, and attempt to understand when you can read a couple of pages and render infallible, self-righteous judgment?
Let me leave Roger with a verse from the Bible he says he believes. Proverbs 18:13 says:
New International Version
To answer before listening– that is folly and shame.
New Living Translation
Spouting off before listening to the facts is both shameful and foolish.
English Standard Version
If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.
New American Standard Bible
He who gives an answer before he hears, It is folly and shame to him.
New King James Version
He who answers a matter before he hears it, It is folly and shame to him.
King James Bible
He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.
Christian Standard Bible
The one who gives an answer before he listens–this is foolishness and disgrace for him.
Contemporary English Version (my favorite)
It’s stupid and embarrassing to give an answer before you listen.
Good News Translation
Listen before you answer. If you don’t, you are being stupid and insulting.
Holman Christian Standard Bible
The one who gives an answer before he listens– this is foolishness and disgrace for him.
New American Standard 1977
He who gives an answer before he hears, It is folly and shame to him.
American Standard Version
He that giveth answer before he heareth, It is folly and shame unto him.
Douay-Rheims Bible
He that answereth before he heareth sheweth himself to be a fool, and worthy of confusion.
Thus saith the Lord.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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There’s been a lot of talk on mainstream news and social media about “white rural rage.” Supposedly, rural communities are hotbeds of racism, misogyny, violence, and rage. Supposedly, rural communities are awful places to live, populated with ill-bred, uneducated, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals. Rural people are hopeless and helpless, with wrong ideas about the world.
As I read these caricatures of me and my neighbors, I wonder if the people making them have actually talked to rural people? When I hear Chris Hayes and other talking heads on MSNBC say that my people don’t understand economics; that the economy is booming; that the macroeconomic numbers say that life is grand for rural folks, I want to scream. Again, I ask Hayes and his fellow liberals, “Have you actually talked to people you think are too dumb or too influenced by Trump to really understand what is going on?” I doubt it.
I will soon turn sixty-seven years old. I was born in the rural northwest Ohio community of Bryan. I have spent most of my life living in rural communities throughout northwest and southeast Ohio. I am 100 percent country — proudly so. There was a time when rural Ohio was decidedly blue. Democrats routinely won state and local elections. Those days are long gone, and have been years before the fascist Donald Trump arrived on the scene. So what’s changed?
There was a time when well-paying union jobs were common. Those days are gone. Scores of factories have closed their doors. Factories that once had thousands of employees, now have hundreds. Who is to blame for this? Not the workers. The blame rests solely at the feet of federal and state officials. International trade agreements signed first by Bill Clinton and continued by every president since then, have destroyed rural economies.
There was a time when rural downtowns were booming. Those days are gone, and have been since the late 1980s. Who is to blame? State and local politicians, who sold their souls to big box corporations and restaurant franchisees. Politicians handed out billions of dollars of tax abatements and free infrastructure improvements to these predatory corporations, all the while letting their downtowns and small businesses die.
There was a time when small family farms dotted the rural landscape. Those days are gone. Corporate farming and concentrated animal feeding operations (factory farms) dominate the scene, often polluting the air and fouling waterways. Who is to blame? Capitalistic-driven politicians who think “bigger is better.” Now farmers are forced to get bigger to survive, turning a blind eye to animal welfare and the destruction of soil.
There was a time when rural high school graduates went to college and returned to work in their home communities after graduation. Those days are gone. Now our children leave and don’t return. Why? A lack of well-paying jobs. My oldest son is an upper-level manager at a large local manufacturing concern. He has numerous employees with four-year degrees running machines for him. They left, got an education, and triumphantly returned home, thinking well-paying jobs awaited them. Instead, they make $15-20 an hour while trying to pay off $50,000-$100,000 or more in student loan debt. Their school guidance counselors sold them a bill of goods. Education is the door to prosperity, they were told, only to learn that their counselors, teachers, and parents lied to them.
Every aspect of rural life has changed. Wages are stagnant or in decline, but prices, across the board continue to increase — especially healthcare. Our only saving grace is that housing, food, and transportation costs are generally lower than in cities or urban areas. But even here, housing prices are increasing, making it harder for people to find affordable apartments and homes. Corporate healthcare companies have scooped up local hospitals and medical practices, driving up prices and making it harder for residents to get care. Poor people, in particular, face long wait times to get appointments with doctors who take Medicaid — if they can even find one. Need a dentist? Good luck with that. Not one dentist locally accepts Medicaid, forcing poor people to go to Toledo or Fort Wayne for care, often waiting months to see a dentist.
Rural people share some of the blame for what has happened to them. Slash and burn Republicans have repeatedly cut taxes, destroying local tax bases, yet rural residents continue to vote them into office. It infuriates me that so many of my neighbors vote against their own self-interest. Why don’t they vote for Democrats? Would you vote for people who routinely disparage you, talk down to you, and call you names? Democrats have lost all touch with rural America, and in doing so, ceded the rural communities, counties, and states to right-wing extremists.
Rural people are largely religious — Christian. Most of them don’t attend church on any given Sunday, but when asked they will affirm their love for God and the Bible. The current culture wars loom large in rural communities, and this helps fuel discontent (though not to the degree that MSNBC would have you believe). Instead of engaging rural folks on these issues, what do Democrats do? They largely ignore them or call them names.
Most of the blame for what has befallen rural Americans rests on the shoulders of local, state, and federal politicians. Laws and policies routinely cause harm, as money for school and infrastructure improvements dries up. If rural people feel forgotten, it is because they have been.
If Democrats ever hope to effect change in rural America, then they must come to where we live and talk to us. Senator Sherrod Brown is running for reelection. Great guy. I will vote for him in November. Yet, at a community meeting in support of Brown’s election on Friday, Sherrod will not be in attendance. Instead, his brother will speak on his behalf. That doesn’t cut it. I want to see the guy who wants my vote. Of course, Brown knows that he will likely only get 30-40 percent of the local vote. Why bother, right? If Democratic politicians don’t “bother,” they are, in effect, giving up, consigning us to more Republican rule. This is the kind of thinking, by the way, that lost Hillary Clinton the 2016 presidential election.
The reasons for the decline of rural America are complex and many. However, telling us that we are racist, misogynistic violent, rage-filled county hicks is not helpful, and it only fuels the disdain rural folks have for liberals, progressives, and city folks. It is doubtful that rural northwest Ohio will turn blue any time soon, but inroads can be made through honest interaction, debate, and discussion. At the very least, opposing sides will understand where the other is coming from.
Let me conclude this post with a letter to the editor written in 2017 by essayist and agrarian Wendell Berry (my favorite author):
To the Editors:
Since the 2016 election, urban liberals and Democrats have newly discovered “rural America,” which is to say our country itself beyond the cities and the suburbs and a few scenic vacation spots. To its new discoverers, this is an unknown land inhabited by “white blue-collar workers” whom the discoverers fear but know nothing about. And so they are turning to experts, who actually have visited rural America or who previously have heard of it, to lift the mystery from it.
One such expert is Nathaniel Rich, whose essay “Joan Didion in the Deep South” offers an explanation surpassingly simple: over “the last four decades,” while the enlightened citizens of “American cities with international airports” have thought things were getting better, the “southern frame of mind” has been “expanding across the Mason-Dixon line into the rest of rural America.” As Mr. Rich trusts his readers to agree, the “southern frame of mind” is racist, sexist, and nostalgic for the time when “the men concentrated on hunting and fishing and the women on ‘their cooking, their canning, their ‘prettifying.’…”
This is provincial, uninformed, and irresponsible. Mr. Rich, who disdains all prejudices except those that are proper and just, supplies no experience or observation of his own and no factual and statistical proofs. He rests his judgment solely upon the testimony of Joan Didion in her notes from a tour of “the Gulf South for a month in the summer of 1970.” Those notes contain portraits of southerners whom “readers today will recognize, with some dismay and even horror” because (as Mr. Rich seems vaguely to mean) southerners have not changed at all since 1970. The Didion testimony alone is entirely sufficient because she “saw her era more clearly than anyone else” and therefore “she was able to see the future.”
What is remarkable about Mr. Rich’s essay is that he attributes the southernization of rural America, and the consequent election of Mr. Trump, entirely to nostalgia “for a more orderly past,” without so much as a glance at the economic history of our actual country. The liberals and Democrats of our enlightened cities, as Mr. Rich rightly says, have paid little or no attention to rural America “for more than half a century.” But it has received plenty of attention from the conservatives and Republicans and their client corporations. Rural America is a colony, and its economy is a colonial economy.
The business of America has been largely and without apology the plundering of rural America, from which everything of value — minerals, timber, farm animals, farm crops, and “labor” — has been taken at the lowest possible price. As apparently none of the enlightened ones has seen in flying over or bypassing on the interstate highways, its too-large fields are toxic and eroding, its streams and rivers poisoned, its forests mangled, its towns dying or dead along with their locally owned small businesses, its children leaving after high school and not coming back. Too many of the children are not working at anything, too many are transfixed by the various screens, too many are on drugs, too many are dying.
In a New York Times Op-Ed, A. Hope Jahren writes: “Farm policy hasn’t come up even once during a presidential debate for the past 16 years.” But the problem goes back much farther than that. It goes back at least to Eisenhower’s secretary of agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson, who instructed American farmers to “get big or get out.” In effect that set the “farm policy” until now, and thus sealed the fate of the decent, small, independent livelihoods of rural America. To that brutally stated economic determinism I know that President Clinton gave his assent, calling it “inevitable,” and so apparently did Mrs. Clinton. The rural small owners sentenced to dispensability in the 1950s are the grandparents of the “blue-collar workers” of rural America who now feel themselves to be under the same sentence, and with reason.
It is true that racism, sexism, and nostalgia have counted significantly in the history of rural America until this moment. But to attribute the approximate victory of Mr. Trump only to those “southern” faults, and to locate them only in rural America, is a driblet of self-righteous ignorance.
Wendell Berry
Port Royal, Kentucky
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Jim asked:
Is a doctorate of theology of any value in the secular marketplace?
There are three types of religious institutions in the United States:
If you have a Th.D (doctor of theology) from a nationally accredited institution, your degree may have value in the secular workplace. The same goes for a Ph.D. from a religious institutions. If your credits can transfer to a state institution, your degree will likely have credibility in the workplace.
If you have a Th.D (doctor of theology) from a school accredited by a religious accrediting agency, it is less likely your degree will have value in the secular workplace. It is unlikely that your credits will transfer to a state institution. Some of these accrediting agencies are little more than storefronts or PO boxes. Others are more rigorous, so your mileage may vary.
If you have a Th.D (doctor of theology) from an unaccredited college, your degree will likely be worthless in the secular workplace. Your credits cannot be transferred to a state institution.
Some employers won’t care whether your degree is from an accredited institution. Your education is just a line on your resume. Where accreditation becomes a problem is when you seek employment that requires licensure. For example, you may have a teaching degree from Pensacola Christian College, but the degree is worthless when it comes to being licensed to teach in a public school. Unaccredited Christian college degrees only have value among like-minded people and religious institutions. This is a hard lesson for people with such degrees to learn. They wrongly think employers will treat them as they do prospective employees with degrees from state institutions. Four to six years of college, only to learn their degree is worthless outside of the church, unaccredited colleges, Christian schools, and parachurch organizations.
Sometimes, employers won’t care whether your degree is from an accredited institution. Ignorant of what these schools teach, employers wrongly think all degrees are the same. Other times, having a religious degree hurts your employment prospects. The prospective employer might view you as a Bible thumper or wonder what you studied for four years. You spent four years studying the Bible? How will that apply to you doing this job? I had one resume “expert” tell me that I should remove from my resume all of my church experience, saying employers may view this negatively. I looked at her and said, “That will leave a twenty-five-year hole in my resume! Should I just say I was in prison for twenty-five years?”
Many people, encouraged by their parents, churches, and pastors, enroll at Christian colleges when they are young. They trust that these adults have their best interests at heart — and they do, from a religious perspective. However, you have no idea where your life will take you over the next forty years of your work career. You might decide to leave the ministry and enter the secular workforce. You will quickly learn that your theology or religious education degree has little value in the real world.
Let me conclude this post by talking about pastors who claim they have doctorates. While some Evangelical pastors have earned doctorates, many of them have honorary degrees or degrees “earned” from diploma mills or unaccredited institutions. In the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement, almost all doctorates are honorary or from bogus institutions.
Please see IFB Doctorates: Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Everyone’s a Doctor for further information.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.
A reader asked on social media:
Why are you an advocate of the LGBTQ community?
I am an advocate of the LGBTQ community because I believe all Americans should have equal justice and protection under the law. That’s it. I expect and demand that LGBTQ people have the same rights as I do. And when they don’t, I advocate for change.
I don’t have to understand or agree with LGBTQ people (or Evangelical Christians) to insist that they have the same civil rights as I — a heterosexual man — have.
This is not a complicated issue for me. Granted, it helps that one of my sons is part of the LGBTQ community, but I was a supporter and defender long before he came out.
Please see:
Bruce, What was Your View on Homosexuality When You Were a Pastor?
What Evangelical Christianity Taught Me About Homosexuality
My Journey From Homophobia to a Supporter of LGBTQ People
Bruce, Were You Transphobic as an Evangelical Pastor?
Bruce, What was Your View on Homosexuality When You Were a Pastor?
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Connect with me on social media:
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.
Every year or two, I ask readers to submit questions they want me to answer. That time has arrived once again. Any question. Any subject. Please leave your questions in the comment section or send them to me via email. I will try to answer them in the order received.
I look forward to reading and answering your questions. Spelling, grammar, and structure corrected and edited for readability.
Revival “I Lie for Jesus Fires,” asked the following question:
I have noticed on more than one post here that you talk about whiskey and beer drinking.
Sadly, a lot of people raised in church, and who have truly accepted Jesus, sometimes get it in their head that they “missed out” on partying and drinking from their teens and 20s and will want to do it in their 50s and 60s — such is the case with my mother-in-law.
Did you betray Jesus because you wanted to drink alcohol and get drunk?
I was in my forties before I drank the Devil’s brew for the first time. As an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB), I was a teetotaler — as were my fellow church members. As an atheist and a humanist, I am free to drink alcohol any time I want. We have a well-stocked liquor cabinet and beer in the refrigerator. Typically, I drink whiskey, mixed drinks, or wine three or four times a month. Polly is primarily a beer and wine drinker. Neither of us has been drunk. I take narcotic pain meds, so I must limit my alcohol intake. Polly will drink a couple of beers and glasses of wine on the weekends, as will our oldest daughter Bethany.
My desire to drink alcohol played no part in my deconversion. That would be a silly reason to deconvert, wouldn’t it? Hey Jesus, I want my sins forgiven and I want to go to Heaven after I die, but I want to drink whiskey, beer, and wine more, so no thanks on salvation. Of course, the Bible does not condemn alcohol drinking. Jesus drank alcoholic wine, as did most people alive during his time. The Bible calls drunkenness a sin, but not social drinking.
Revival Fires asks if I am trying to live my youthful years now; if I am trying to do things I missed out on as a young adult. Christian Fundamentalism robbed me of many normal experiences, so, yes, I am trying to do some of the things that were forbidden years ago. I only wish I had a young man’s body. Alas, I make do with what I got. 🙂
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Connect with me on social media:
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.
Every year or two, I ask readers to submit questions they want me to answer. That time has arrived once again. Any question. Any subject. Please leave your questions in the comment section or send them to me via email. I will try to answer them in the order received.
I look forward to reading and answering your questions.
Revival “I Lie for Jesus” asked:
How much sleep is being lost that the babies are gonna live in Arizona? Baby killers having a fit.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I am not losing any sleep over Arizona banning abortion. Women’s lives and rights are in the balance, so there is no time for me to sleep. Instead, I am doing all I can to legalize abortion, not only in Arizona, but every state in the Union.
A baby is a fetus that can live outside of the womb on its own. When the egg and sperm unite, potential life is formed. This potential life grows from a zygote to a fetus to a baby. I support unrestricted abortion up until viability. Most abortions take place in the first trimester.
It is forced birthers who are having a fit. They know they have overplayed their hand, and now they must contend with pro-reproductive rights initiatives on state ballots. In every state where abortion has been on the ballot, reproductive rights initiatives won. I proudly helped legalize abortion in Ohio last year. If this makes me a “baby killer,” so be it.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
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The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
Dennis McCranie, a pastor at Lakeside Church in Eastman, Georgia, stands accused of sexual battery involving three children under the age of sixteen.
The GBI has arrested and charged Dennis McCranie, age 59, of Eastman, GA, with three counts of felony sexual battery. The GBI was requested to assist with this investigation by the Dodge County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday, March 28, 2024.
The preliminary investigation indicates on Sunday, March 24, 2024, McCranie intentionally had inappropriate physical contact with three children under the age of 16 years old.
On Wednesday, April 3, 2024, McCranie was arrested and booked into the Dodge County Law Enforcement Center.
Before McCranie worked in Dodge County, he was employed for more than 30 years with the Georgia Department of Corrections. In 2013, he was promoted to Deputy Warden of Security at Wilcox State Prison. McCranie was also a pastor at Lakeside Church in Eastman but “due to the seriousness of these allegations, he has been released of all duties and been asked to refrain from the church campus until further notice”, according to a spokesperson for the church.
Lakeside Church released the following statement:
As many of you may have heard, Dennis McCranie was taken into custody. He was arrested on charges of sexual battery. The charges that have been made against him involve alleged misconduct towards children and/or underage minors. Dennis served as volunteer associate here at Lakeside and due to the seriousness of these allegations he has been released of all duties and been asked to refrain from the church campus until further notice. While the leadership of Lakeside regards these allegations very seriously, we have not, nor will we, prejudge those involved in this matter. We have taken all appropriate steps to protect the vulnerable and traumatized to the greatest extent possible in a responsible, professional, and Biblical manner. We pray for all involved and ask everyone else to kindly do the same.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Connect with me on social media:
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
Bret Bymaster, a former youth pastor at The River Church Community in San Jose, California, stands accused of six felony counts of child sexual abuse.
The San Jose Spolightlight reports:
A prominent Silicon Valley leader and former pastor has been arrested and charged with six felony counts of child sex abuse, after being under investigation this year for allegations that surfaced about his time as a youth ministry leader at a popular South Bay church.
Brett Bymaster faces time behind bars for alleged lewd acts with a child who was as young as eight during his time at The River Church, according to charges by county prosecutors. He was arrested and booked at the Elmwood Correctional Facility on Thursday. His bond was set at $400,000, but at a Friday arraignment hearing, Judge Hector Ramon revoked his eligibility for bail at least until the next scheduled hearing on April 19, according to prosecutors. San José Spotlight first reported Bymaster’s alleged abuse in January.
Ramon ordered Bymaster not to contact the victim documented in the charges. He was also ordered not to contact another unnamed individual, according to the case’s prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Christopher Paynter.
Paynter said it’s too early to tell how much jail time Bymaster faces if found guilty of all charges. The trial date is a moving target.
“It’s an ongoing investigation,” Paynter told San José Spotlight.
Bymaster’s attorneys Renee Hessling and Dana Fite did not respond to requests for comment.
The arrest comes after a second investigation by The River Church in three years regarding Bymaster’s action, when five parishioner families say a 2021 probe led by church leaders failed to uncover the extent of his abuse and excluded one of the most serious claims — sexual abuse.
At the time, Bymaster denied the allegations in a statement to San José Spotlight.
“In recent months, we have discovered that there were profound flaws in the original pastoral inquiry process and in the denominational report (which was never released publicly but only summarized by senior leaders),” church families wrote in an open letter in January. “We now believe that the inquiry process and the senior leadership withheld crucial information about the nature and scope of the abuse.”
Bymaster, a recognizable figure in advocacy and political circles, was still listed as a founder and executive director of the Healing Grove Health Center, a clinic that serves low-income families, on its website as of Friday afternoon.
….
Bymaster served as a youth pastor and director at The River, nestled on Lincoln Avenue, for five years beginning in 2014. He quit after getting a critical job review in August 2019 based on complaints about his leadership from church families.
Yet two years later, youth from the congregation raised more significant concerns about Bymaster.
The church launched an internal inquiry in 2021 led by its own leader the Rev. Theresa Marks, according to an email sent in January from three top church leaders, including lead pastor Brad Wong.
Marks found that Bymaster was a “toxic leader who was spiritually abusive,” and encouraged church leaders to summarize her findings in a letter. The probe from Marks, which included interviews with 25 individuals, also questioned the church’s management of Bymaster.
“We take full responsibility for not doing the job of keeping our youth and youth volunteers safe in our youth ministry. We did not provide adequate oversight of the youth program or our former youth pastor,” church leaders wrote in an August 2021 letter.
But parents of the alleged victims say the letter swept damning details under the rug and questioned whether some of the incidents should’ve been categorized as sexual misconduct, harassment or abuse.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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