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Tag: Independent Fundamentalist Baptist

Dear Jesus

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jesus
Painting by Jessie Kohn

Updated and corrected, March 5, 2025

Dear Jesus,

I’m almost sixty-eight years old, and there has never been a moment when you were not in my life.

Mom and Dad talked about you before I was born, deciding to have me baptized by an Episcopal priest. They wanted me to grow up with good morals and love you, so they decided putting water on my forehead and having a priest recite religious words over me was the way to ensure my moral Christian future.

A few weeks after my birth, Mom and Dad gathered with family members to have me baptized at the Episcopal Church in Bryan, Ohio. I was later told it was quite an affair, but I don’t remember anything about the day. Years later, I found my baptismal certificate. Signed by the priest, it declared I was a Christian.

Jesus, how could I have been a Christian at age four weeks? How did putting water on my head make me a follower of you? I don’t understand, but according to the certificate, I was now part of my tribe’s religion: Protestant Christianity.

I turned five in 1962. Mom and Dad decided to move 2,300 miles to San Diego, California, believing that success and prosperity awaited them.

After getting settled, Mom and Dad said we need to find a new church to attend. Their shopping took them to a growing Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregation, Scott Memorial Baptist Church, pastored by Tim LaHaye. It was here that I learned that my tribe had a new religion: Fundamentalist Baptist Christianity.

I quickly learned that our previous religion worshiped a false God, and my baptism didn’t make me a Christian at all. If I wanted to be a True Christian®, I had to come forward to the front of the church, kneel at the altar, and pray a certain prayer. If I did these things, I would then be a Christian — forever. And so I did. This sure pleased Mom and Dad.

Later, I was baptized again, but the preacher didn’t sprinkle water on my forehead. That would not do, I was told. True Baptism® required me to be submerged in a tank of water. And so, one Sunday, I joined a line of people waiting to be baptized. I was excited, yet scared. Soon, it came time for me to be dunked. The preacher put his left hand behind my head and raised his right hand towards Heaven. He asked, “Bruce, do you confess before God and man that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior?” With a halting child’s voice, I replied, “Yes.” And with that, the preacher, with a hanky in his right hand, put his hand over my nose, dunked me in the water, and quickly lifted me up. I heard both the preacher and the congregation say, “Amen!”

Jesus, the Bible says that the angels in Heaven rejoice when a sinner gets saved. Do you remember the day I got saved? Do you remember hearing the angels in Heaven say, “Praise be to the Lamb that was slain! Bruce Gerencser is now a child of God. Glory be, another soul snatched from the hands of Satan?”

After a few years in California, Mom and Dad discovered that there was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and our family was just as poor in the Golden State as they were in the dreary flat lands of rural northwest Ohio. And so we moved, a process that happened over and over to me throughout the next decade — eight different schools.

As I became more aware and observant of my environment, I noticed that Mom and Dad had changed. Mom, in particular, was quite animated and agitated over American social unrest caused by hippies, niggers (a word routinely used by my parents), and the war in Vietnam against the evil forces of communism. Mom and Dad took us to a new church, First Baptist Church in Bryan, Ohio — an IFB church pastored by Jack Bennett. We attended church twice on Sunday and Wednesday evening.

I attended Bryan schools for two years. Not long after I started fourth grade, Mom and Dad decided it was time to move yet again. This time, we moved to a brand-new tri-level home on Route 30 outside of Lima, Ohio. It was there that I started playing basketball and baseball — sports I would continue to play competitively for the next twenty or so years. It was also there that I began to see that something was very wrong with Mom. At the time, I didn’t understand what was going on with her. All I knew is that she could be “Mom” one day and a raging lunatic the next.

I was told by my pastors, Jesus, that you know and see everything. Just in case you were busy one day and missed what went on or were on vacation, let me share a few stories about what happened while we lived in Lima.

One night, Mom was upstairs, and I heard her screaming. I mean SCREAMING! She was having one of her “fits.” I decided to see if there was anything I could do to help her — that’s what the oldest child does. As I walked towards Mom’s bedroom, I saw her grabbing shoes and other things and violently throwing them down the hallway. This was the first time I remember being afraid . . .

One day, I got off the school bus and quickly ran down the gravel drive to our home. I always had to be the first one in the door. As I walked into the kitchen, I noticed that Mom was lying on the floor unconscious in a pool of blood. She had slit her wrists. I quickly ran to the next-door neighbor’s house and asked her to help. She summoned an ambulance, and Mom’s life was saved.

Mom would try again, and again to kill herself: slitting her wrists, overdosing on prescription medication, driving in front of a truck. At the age of fifty-four, she succeeded. One Sunday morning, Mom went into the bathroom, pointed a Ruger .357 at her heart, and pulled the trigger. She quickly slumped to the floor and was dead in minutes. Yet, she never stopped believing in you, Jesus. No matter what happened, Mom held on to her tribe’s God.

Halfway through my fifth-grade year, Mom and Dad moved to Farmer, Ohio. I attended Farmer Elementary School for the fifth and sixth grades. One day, I was home from school sick, and Mom’s brother-in-law stopped by. He didn’t know I was in my bedroom. After he left, Mom came to my room crying, saying, “I have been raped. I need you to call the police.” I was twelve. We didn’t have a phone, so I ran to the neighbor’s house to call the police, but my Christian neighbor wouldn’t let me use her phone.. There would be no call to the police on this day. Do you remember this day, Jesus? Where were you? I thought you were all-powerful? Why didn’t you do anything?

From Farmer, we moved to  Deshler, Ohio for my seventh-grade year of school. Then Mom and Dad moved us to Findlay, Ohio. By then, my parent’s fifteen year marriage was in shambles. Dad never seemed to be home, and Mom continued to have wild, manic mood swings. Shortly before the end of ninth grade, Dad matter-of-factly informed me that they were getting a divorce. “We don’t love each other anymore,” Dad said. And with that, he turned and walked away, leaving me to wallow in my pain. That’s how Dad always treated me. I can’t remember a time when he embraced me or said, “I love you.” I would learn years later that “Dad” was not my biological father; that my real father was a truck driver Mom met at age seventeen while working at The Hub — a local truck stop. I wonder, Jesus, was this why he kept me at arm’s length emotionally?

After moving to Findlay, Mom and Dad joined Trinity Baptist Church — a fast-growing IFB congregation pastored by Gene Millioni. After Mom and Dad divorced, they stopped attending church. Both of them quickly remarried. Dad married a nineteen-year-old girl with a baby, and Mom married her first cousin — a recent Texas prison parolee. So much upheaval and turmoil, Jesus. Where were you when all of this was going on? I know, I know, you were there in spirit, but you had more important things to do than loving and caring for a vulnerable, hurting teenager.

Mom and Dad may have stopped going to church, but I didn’t. By then, I had a lot of friends and started dating, so there was no way I would miss church. Besides, attending church got me away from home, a place where Dad’s new and improved wife made it clear I wasn’t welcome.

One fall weeknight, I sat in church with my friends listening to Evangelist Al Lacy. I was fifteen. As is the custom in IFB churches, Lacy prayed at the end of his sermon, asking, “with every head bowed, and every eye closed, is there anyone here who is not saved and would like me to pray for them?” I had been feeling under “conviction” during the sermon. I thought, “maybe I’m not saved?” So, I raised my hand. Lacy prayed for those of us who had raised our hands and then had everyone stand. As the congregation sang Just as I am, Lacy said, “if you raised your hand, I want you to step out of your seat and come to the altar. Someone will meet you there and show you how you can know Jesus as your Lord and Savior.” Much to the surprise of my friends, I haltingly stepped out from my seat and walked to the front. I was met by Ray Salisbury — a church deacon. Ray had me kneel as he took me through a set of Bible verses called the Roman’s Road. After quizzing me on what I had read, Ray asked me if I wanted to be saved. I said, “yes,” and then Ray said, “pray this prayer after me: Dear Lord Jesus, I know I am a sinner, and I know you died on the cross for my sins. Right now, I ask you to forgive me of my sins and come into my heart and save me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.” After I prayed the prayer, Ray said, “AMEN!” “Did you really believe what you prayed?” I replied, “yes.” “Then you are now a child of God, a born-again Christian.”

The next Sunday, I was baptized, and the Sunday after that, I went forward again, letting the church know that you, Jesus, were calling me to preach. I was all in after that. For the next thirty-five years, Jesus, I lived and breathed you. You were my life, the sum of my existence.

At the age of nineteen, I enrolled in classes at Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan. It was here I received training to become a proper IFB pastor, and it was here I met the love of my life, a beautiful dark-haired preacher’s daughter named Polly. We married during the summer between our sophomore and junior years. We were so excited about our new life, thrilled to be preparing to work in God’s vineyard. We planned to graduate, go to a small community to start a new IFB church, buy a white two-story house with a white picket fence, and have two children: Jason and Bethany, and live happily ever after. However, Jesus, you had different plans for us. Do you remember what happened to us? Surely you do, right? Friends and teachers told us that you were testing us! Polly was six months pregnant by early spring, and I was laid off from my machine shop job. We were destitute, yet, the college dean told us, “Jesus wants you to trust him and stay in college.” No offer of financial help was forthcoming, and we finally had to move out of our apartment. With my tail between my legs, I packed up our meager belongings and returned to Bryan, Ohio. I had failed your test, Jesus. I still remember what one of my friends told me, “If you leave now, God will NEVER use you!”

What did he know? After moving, I quickly secured secular employment at ARO and began working at a local IFB church. For the next twenty-five years, I pastored Evangelical churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Jesus, you were my constant companion, my lover, friend, and confidante. I sure loved you, and I believed you loved me too. We were BFFs, right?  Sometimes, I wondered if you really loved me as much as I loved you. Our love affair was virtual in nature. We never met face-to-face, but I believed in my heart of hearts you were the very reason for my existence. When I doubted this, I attributed my doubts to Satan or me not praying hard enough or reading the Bible enough. I never thought for one moment, Jesus, that you might be a figment of my imagination, a lie taught to me by my parents and pastors. I was a true believer. That is, until I wasn’t.

At age fifty, I finally realized, Jesus, that you were a myth, the main character of a 2,000-year-old fictional story. I concluded that all those times when I wondered where you were, were in fact, true. I couldn’t find you because you were dead. You had died almost 2,000 years before. The Bible told me about your death, but I believed that you were resurrected from the dead. I feel so silly now. Dead people don’t come back to life. Your resurrection from the dead was just a campfire story, and I had foolishly believed it. I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on myself. Everyone I knew believed the same story. All of us believed that the miracles attributed to you, Jesus, really happened; that you were a virgin-born God-man; that you ascended to Heaven to prepare a mansion for us to live in after we die.

It all seems so silly now, Jesus, but I really did believe in you. Fifty years, Jesus. The prime of my life, I gave to you, only to find out that you were a lie. Yet, here I am today, and you are still “with” me. My parents, pastors, and professors did a good job of indoctrinating me. You are very much “real” to me, even though you lie buried somewhere on a Judean hillside. Try as I might, I can’t get you out of my mind. I have come to accept that you will never leave me.

You should know, Jesus — well, you can’t know, you are dead — that I spend my days helping people get away from you. What did you say, Jesus? I can’t hear you. I can hear the voices of Christians condemning me as a heretic, blasphemer, tool of Satan, and hater of God. I can hear them praying for my death or threatening me with eternal damnation in the Lake of Fire. Their voices are loud and clear, but your voice, Jesus? Silence.

Always silent, Jesus. Why is that?

If you ever want to talk to me, you know where I live. Show up at my door, Jesus, and that will be a miracle I can believe in. Better yet, if you can help the Cincinnati Bengals win the Super Bowl, that would be awesome!

If you can’t help my football team win a few games, Jesus, what good are you? It’s not like I am asking you to feed the hungry, heal the sick, or put an end to violence and war. That would require you to give a shit, Jesus, and if there’s one thing I have learned over the past sixty-eight years, it is this: you don’t give a shit about what happens on earth. We, humans, are on our own, and that’s fine with me.

A Sinner Saved by Reason,

signature

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.

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.

Dear Evangelicals, You Are Wasting Your Time and Money Sending Me Books and Tracts

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eternal life

Think of all the people currently living on Earth—approximately eight billion people. Most of them subscribe to some sort of religion, worshipping any one or more of the deities humans have worshipped throughout history. I, too, was born into a devoutly religious family. From the time I was a preschooler to age fifty, I devoted my life to and worshipped the Evangelical God—especially from the age of fifteen forward. At fifteen, I had an experience that is common among Evangelicals. Most of the churches I attended/pastored were Baptist congregations. Making a personal decision to get “saved” was essential to becoming a Christian and church member. While Baptists raised in the church typically make salvation decisions as children, most have subsequent experiences during their teen years. I trace my Christian faith back to an Al Lacy revival meeting in 1972. My parents had divorced earlier that year, and while my parents/siblings stopped attending church, I immersed myself in the machinations of Trinity Baptist Church, attending services every time the doors were open. Trinity provided me with a loving home and a family, and amid my troubled life, the Holy Spirit came to the pew I was sitting on that fall night, convicted me of my sin, and brought me to saving faith in Jesus. From that moment forward, I was a born-again Christian — sins forgiven, Heaven bound, praise Jesus!

Two weeks later, I stood before the church and confessed that God was calling me to be a preacher. In the fall of 1976, four years after getting saved, I enrolled for classes at Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan — a school known for training Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) pastors. While at Midwestern, I met the love of my life. Marriage and an unplanned pregnancy interrupted my college plans. After three years at Midwestern, my partner, Polly, and I packed our meager belongings into a small U-haul trailer and the backseat of a white 1969 Chevrolet Impala, and moved to Bryan, Ohio — the place of my birth, five miles from where we live today.

Several weeks after we moved to Bryan, I was asked by Jay Stuckey, pastor of Montpelier Baptist Church, to be his assistant — an unpaid position focused on improving/expanding the church’s bus ministry and evangelization efforts. We left Montpelier Baptist after seven months, moving to Newark, Ohio — the home of Polly’s parents. After spending two and a half years working with Polly’s father at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Buckeye Lake, I struck out on my own, starting a new Baptist church in Somerset. I would later pastor churches in San Antonio, Texas, Alvordton, Ohio, West Unity, Ohio, and Clare, Michigan. All told, I spent 20,000 hours reading and studying the Bible, preaching over 4,000 sermons, and winning hundreds of people to Christ.

While I would never say that I know everything there is to know about the Bible, I am conversant in all things Bible — especially from a Protestant/Evangelical perspective. I find it amusing when Evangelicals assume that my “problem” is that I don’t understand the Bible; that if I just read certain Bible verses and books or listened to the sermons of this or that preacher, I would see the light and return to the one true faith. And when I say I have already done those things, I am oft accused of lying or being disingenuous. In other words “If you don’t agree with me, you are a liar.”

Evangelicals generally believe that understanding the Bible requires God, the Holy Spirit, living inside of you as your teacher and guide. Without the indwelling of the Spirit, you cannot understand the Bible. Thus, whatever knowledge I may have had as a college-trained Baptist preacher, I am now ignorant of what the Bible teaches; I’m every bit as ignorant as someone who has never, ever read or studied the Bible/Christianity. In no other setting except Evangelicalism does such thinking carry any weight. I know what I know. Just because I am no longer a Christian doesn’t mean I am ignorant about the Bible.

you are loved tract

I frequently receive books, tracts, and other printed/recorded Evangelical material from people who are certain that if I just listened to or read what they sent me I would immediately fall on my knees, repent of my sins, and come to or return to (depending on their soteriological beliefs) saving faith. Yesterday, I received a tract in the mail from a local Southern Baptist. No church/individual name was printed on the tract, but the sender wrote “you are loved” with a smiley face on the back of the tract.

The tract was typical of such evangelistic tools. Published by the North American Mission Board (NAMB), the tract presented a shallow, superficial, truncated gospel that, according to the author of the tract, would save me from my sins and guarantee me a home in Heaven after I die. At the back of the tract was a form for me to sign if I prayed the sinner’s prayer, letting the person/church who sent me the tract know that they could put another notch on their gospel six shooters — another sinner “killed” by the Southern Baptist perversion of the Christian gospel.

Several months ago, I received a short book published by an Evangelical preacher named Peter C. English. English wanted to educate me about where I could find the inerrant, infallible Word of God; that there was one English language Bible that was direct from the mouth of God. I am sure some of you are thinking, “King James-only, right?” Yep, but not just KJVO alone. English believes a particular King James translation is THE Word of God — “the Pure Cambridge Version of the King James Bible.” According to the Pure Cambridge website, this Bible is:

By the term Pure Cambridge Text, I refer to a perfect King James Bible as it was printed between the end of WWI and until 1985, but is now being printed by Church Bible Publishers. If you were to look at the English Bible on a pulpit in heaven, it would match exactly. Every word, every letter, every punctuation mark, every verse marking, every italicization, and every subscript and title would be exactly what God the Father thinks of when he considers the English Bible.

the romans road

I also had a member of First Baptist Church in Bryan, Ohio recently drop a tract on my doorstep. Titled “The Romans Road,” the tract presents yet another shallow, superficial, truncated gospel, one sure to save me if I would just “believe.” Here’s the thing, I used to attend First Baptist in the 1970s. I am well known to the church, so it is unlikely that the person leaving the tract didn’t know who I was. I watched the woman on our RING doorbell camera as she knocked on the door, and not getting an answer, tried to stick the tract in the space between the door and frame. Unable to do so, she huffed and sighed, dropping the track on the stoop in front of the door. Off she went, thinking her littering did its job — saving the notorious atheist Bruce Gerencser.

What do these evangelizers hope to accomplish with their books and tracts? Surely they can’t think that I will be won over to their side by reading second-grade religious material? Not going to happen. I know all I need to know about God/Bible/Christianity. I can’t imagine a theological or philosophical argument I would find persuasive. Maybe, but it’s been many years since I have heard an original, compelling argument for Christianity. All I seem to get from Evangelicals are the same worn-out arguments I have heard my entire life.

To Evangelicals, I say, please don’t waste your time sending me books, pamphlets and tracts. They are not helpful, and I see them as nothing more than reminders of how shallow Evangelical theology really is. You might think that the Holy Spirit will use the words on the printed page to prick my conscience, but, so far, the score is Bruce — 1,000,000 Holy Spirit– 0. You might want to think of more effective ways to evangelize Evangelical-preachers-turned-atheists.

How about you? When was the last time you heard a compelling argument for God from an Evangelical apologist? Please share your experiences in the comment section.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.

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.

Black Collar Crime: IFB Pastor Tony Shaw Convicted of Sexual Assault, Faces More Charges

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pastor tony shaw

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 2020, Tony Shaw, pastor of Ruby Valley Baptist Church in Sheridan, Montana, was accused of sexually assaulting a teen church girl. Ruby Valley is an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregation.

The Montana Standard reported:

Authorities say a pastor at Ruby Valley Baptist Church in Sheridan had inappropriate contact with a 14-year-old girl in the basement of the church.

They arrested Tony Aaron Shaw, 55, on a felony complaint of sexual assault on Tuesday and he was taken to the Gallatin County jail, where he later posted $75,000 bond and was released.

Shaw, contacted by telephone, told The Montana Standard on Thursday that the allegation “had to do with how someone perceived something” and was false.

“It was nothing,” he said.

….

According to the complaint, someone performing work at the church witnessed Shaw having inappropriate contact with the girl in the basement of the church. Sheriff’s officials say they had received a prior sexual assault complaint involving Shaw.

On January 16, 2025, a jury found Shaw guilty of sexual assault.

Cowboy State Daily reports:

A small-town Montana church pastor was convicted last week of sexually assaulting a child and has been accused of another. He used the self-defense “karate lessons” he taught to get close enough to abuse his victims, court documents say.

In small Rocky Mountain towns like Sheridan, Montana, neighbors notice things. They share stories. They share concerns. 

That’s what happened at around 8:50 p.m. on a night in May 2020 when Madison County Sheriff’s Deputy Leah Cox was on patrol in the town.

According to court documents, she was approached by someone with a disturbing story. It involved a local pastor at Ruby Valley Baptist Church, and it was upsetting enough that this person insisted on remaining anonymous.

The anonymous source said a close family friend had witnessed what appeared to be a sexual assault at the church. The incident, according to this witness, allegedly took place in the church basement April 28, 2020. 

The tip triggered an investigation and led to charges against Pastor Tony Aaron Shaw. Nearly four years later on Jan. 16 in Montana’s Fifth Judicial District Court in Virginia City, a jury found Shaw guilty of sexual assault against a female underage child.

Following his conviction, Shaw was ordered to have no unsupervised contact with minors.

He now awaits a second trial because in the course of the investigation, another alleged sexual assault case involving a minor came to light. 

In both cases, Shaw allegedly used similar tactics so he could have physical contact with his victims. 

According to court documents, Shaw would offer his victims lessons in self-defense as he proceeded to assault them. 

After Cox received the tip from a concerned resident in Sheridan, she contacted the man who reportedly witnessed the assault in the Ruby Valley Baptist Church basement. 

On April 28, 2020, Edward Bradshaw was working on a siding project for the church. He needed to use the restroom in the basement, and on his way there he witnessed something disturbing. 

In court documents, Bradshaw recalled being startled and exclaiming, “Ah ha” at the sight of Pastor Shaw laying on top of a minor child on the basement floor. 

Shaw was wearing sweatpants, and when he stood up as Bradshaw passed him on the way to the bathroom, it became clear to Bradshaw that Shaw was sexually aroused. 

“The Defendant stood up and had a visible erection,” according to Bradshaw’s testimony to the Madison County Sheriff’s Office. 

Asked if he was certain Shaw had an erection, Bradshaw stated, “There is no doubt about it. It sickened me to see what happened.” 

Cox asked Bradshaw how the young victim reacted to the situation. 

Cox later reported, “Bradshaw paused and said, ‘Helpless, helpless, I guess would be the word.’”

Bradshaw continued, stating Shaw and this person, “Are together all the time.”Bradshaw also recalled witnessing another incident when he saw the victim running down the middle of the southbound lane of U.S. Highway 287 with “a terrified look on her face” and “looking over her shoulder.”

The investigative report noted Bradshaw’s comment that victim “never smiles.” 

Bradshaw further explained that Shaw makes the girl “walk behind him like a dog,” and that she wears the same clothes every day. 

When asked if this could be an innocent misunderstanding, Bradshaw stated, “You don’t wrestle with (a child), men don’t do that shit. That ain’t right.’”

Bradshaw went on to describe Shaw as “a very manipulative person. Bradshaw explained how all of the defendant’s kids and the defendant’s wife are scared to death of him.

“Bradshaw stated that Shaw never lets the girls go anywhere by themselves except to Walter’s, a local grocery store located on Main Street in Sheridan, directly east of the Defendant’s residence, and then back home.”

Bradshaw added that, “I know what I saw. I know what I saw.”

Based on Bradshaw’s testimony, on May 12, 2020, Deputy Cox applied for and was granted an arrest warrant for Shaw. Soon thereafter, Deputy Cox notified Child Protective Services (CPS) about the case. 

The next day around 11:30 a.m., several officers from the Madison County Sheriff’s Office arrested Shaw at his home.

When officers explained the situation, Shaw reportedly told the officers that this all must be because Shaw had disciplined the victim. 

Shaw was transported to the Gallatin County Detention Center in Bozeman. 

Initial charges filed in Montana’s Fifth Judicial District Court, Madison County, included sexual abuse of children and endangering the welfare of children. 

Three days after Shaw’s arrest, investigators interviewed the victim seen in the church basement with Shaw. She initially denied any sexual abuse, but did recall being forced by Shaw to watch videos featuring naked women. This allegedly happened in the pastor’s study at the church. 

As court records later indicated, the victim revised her testimony with entries into her journal. 

Journal entries included in court documents show the girl stating, “I’m sorry I haven’t been telling the truth about (what happened)! Tony has been touching me! I just didn’t want to be moved AGAIN, but now the more I think about it, I feel sick. I feel like a stupid dork. I haven’t told you. I’m so sorry.”

From there, many more details came to light through the girl’s testimony. She said the alleged abuse started when she was 12. 

….

During the course of the investigation and trial, it came out that Shaw feigned teaching the victim self-defense as an excuse for him to have sexual contact with her. Shaw allegedly instructed her to hit him in the genitals. 

“It’s weird,” the victim said in a pre-trial interview. 

When the victim told Shaw to stop touching and kissing her, he reportedly told her, “I’m sorry, I can’t control it.”

Now, while he awaits sentencing, Shaw faces another charge. This one stems from alleged sexual assaults on a minor in 2015 and 2016, when Shaw said he wanted to teach a 13-year-old alleged victim karate, according to court documents.

While purportedly instructing her in self-defense, the alleged victim said Shaw, “Would touch her to demonstrate moves, but would grab her inappropriately when he did so.”

In one instance, when Shaw allegedly touched her vagina over her clothes while “showing her how to do a roundhouse kick,” this caused her to freeze, according to court documents. 

Later, the alleged victim told a school counselor about Shaw’s inappropriate touching, and now Shaw faces a new trial in May.  

As for where things stand with Shaw’s Jan. 16 sexual assault conviction, Madison County Attorney David Buchler said, “We are waiting for a presentence investigation report. Sentencing will be set once that has been completed.”

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.

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.

Bruce, If You Were Still an Evangelical Preacher, Would You Have Voted for and Supported Donald Trump?

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i have a question

A reader recently asked:

I was wondering, Bruce, if you had still been an evangelical these past 10 horrible years, do you think you would have supported Trump?

Evangelicalism is somewhat of a big tent, encompassing people who are rigid Fundamentalists, such as those found in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement, liberal/progressives, such as those found in the emerging/emergent/red letter movements, and everything in between. I was born into, raised, and educated in IFB churches. I was as right-wing as you could be. I maintained this worldview until I was thirty years old.

Every preacher enters the ministry with a borrowed theology and worldview — that of his parents, family, tribe, church, and college. This is normal. Sadly, many Evangelical preachers never move beyond this point, believing the same things at sixty as they did at age twenty-five. In fact, these preachers pride themselves in not changing their beliefs, thinking they got everything right from the start. In my case, my beliefs slowly, gradually, at times imperceptibly, changed, usually moving to the left towards more tolerant, inclusive, nuanced beliefs. To those on the right of me, I was becoming a liberal. For those on the left, I was still too Fundamentalist for them.

I was a flag-waving Republican through and through. Vote for a Democrat? Never. (Though I did vote for Jimmy Carter in 1976, believing him to be an Evangelical Christian.) For the next twenty years, I voted Republican. As my beliefs continued to evolve, I slowly embraced progressivism, liberalism, socialism, and pacifism — though I was still Evangelical theologically. The United States’ immoral wars in the Middle East and the incessant warmongering by Republicans (and to a large degree Democrats too) challenged my continued support of the Republican Party. I voted Democrat for the first time in 2000, as I have every general election thereafter.

In 1998, President Bill Clinton faced impeachment over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. I preached several sermons about Clinton’s lack of moral and ethical values, saying, that I could never, ever vote for such an immoral man. While I knew that no politician was a pillar of virtue and morality, I had, in my mind, a line that couldn’t be crossed if a candidate wanted my vote. I concluded that it would be better not to vote than to lend my support to candidates lacking basic moral character.

Fast forward to 2016 and the messianic arrival of Republican Donald Trump. By then I was an atheist and a humanist. I saw no possible way that I could vote for Trump and still sleep at night. Had I still been an Evangelical preacher, I do not doubt that my viewpoint would have been the same. Donald Trump is a jingoistic, bigoted, misogynistic narcissist and bully; a man lacking any sort of moral and ethical foundation; a man who only cares about money, power, and influence. Trump doesn’t care one wit about me, my family, and our needs.

If I were still an Evangelical, I still wouldn’t have voted for Trump. I probably would have either voted third party or not cast a vote at all. Trump is unfit for office, an ugly, vicious, small-dicked little man who cares nothing for anyone but the uber-wealthy and his bottom line. I could not and would not, in any circumstance, vote for Trump, no more than I could have voted for Bill Clinton decades ago.

The 2024 election finally taught me that the American political system is irreparably broken; and that it is time for a total overhaul of how we do elections. The system cannot be fixed, it must be burnt to the ground. We have reached a point where it is evident, at least to me, that both political parties are rotten to the core — a fact that became crystal clear to me when, in 2016, the Democratic National Committee deliberately manipulated the primary process to keep Bernie Sanders from becoming the party’s general election candidate. While I remain a Democratic Party executive committee member for Defiance County, I am not certain how much longer I plan to be so. I see no signs of life among Democrats, just a lot of finger-pointing and blame as they try to explain how Trump won another election. Sometimes, the only answer is to start over.

Twenty-five-year-old Pastor Bruce likely would have voted for Trump, mainly due to his “pro-life” stance on abortion. Those days of being a single-issue voter are long gone. Trump isn’t actually pro-life. He knows he needs Evangelicals to vote for him if he expects to win. So he tells them what they want to hear, hitting all the red meat, hot-button culture war issues. As far as I can tell, Trump has no moral or ethical values, Yet, it seems Evangelicals no longer care about morality. All that matters is political power and advancing their theocratic agenda (as we are seeing with Project 2025).

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.

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.

A Gerencser Family Christmas

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(The grandchildren in this photo are now in middle school and high school.)

For many of us, Christmas is a wonderful time of year. For the Gerencser family, our two granddaughters who are away at college come home, Nana bakes cookies, makes fudge, and all sorts of delicious things sure to fatten your waistline, presents are bought for sixteen grandchildren, all in preparation for Christmas at our home. Dinner will be prepared — this year, we are eating Italian — and at the appointed time, everyone will gather in our home — twenty-six people, in all — to eat and open presents. Complaints will be heard from our children, saying our house is too small for such a large gathering, and Grandpa will say, as he has for years, “As long as we are alive, we are having Christmas here. End of discussion.”

Our home will be filled with jokes and laughter from aunts and uncles, fueled by wine and beer, as our grandchildren impatiently wait for Uncle Josiah to give them a present. “One at a time,” he sternly tells them, as he searches for a gift for each child. Our out-of-high-school grandchildren will receive cash, and those nine through eighteen will open gifts they picked out for themselves when they went shopping with Nana. Except for Levi, our oldest grandson — his gift falls to me. Those Nana takes shopping are all girls. Grandpa wisely stays away from all that estrogen. For the younger grandchildren, we buy them gifts off submitted lists, usually from Amazon or other online retailers. Typically, our children will give Polly and me gifts. Usually, we receive gift cards to restaurants, though one year we received four tires for our automobile. Thanks are exchanged, hugs are given, tissue paper and bags recovered to use for the umpteenth Christmas, and just like that, our family Christmas is over.

For the Gerencsers, Christmas is all about family. But that wasn’t always the case. In the 1980s, I decided that Christmas was a pagan holiday. So, we stopped celebrating Christmas. No tree, no decorations, no gifts. I determined — note the singular pronoun, Polly never agreed with me on Christmas, but as the patriarch of the family, my word was law — that we would spend Christmas day serving the poor, hungry, and homeless. A worthy ambition to be sure, but we could have done both if my extreme religious views hadn’t gotten in the way.

Eventually, I saw the error of my way, and, over time, Christmas returned to our home. I determined we could keep Christ in Christmas while humbly participating in American consumerism. These days, our family Christmas celebration is mostly secular, though Christmas hymns can be heard playing in the background. While the Gerencsers are a thoroughly secularized family, some of our children will attend religious services. We are not hostile towards religion. Each to their own is the motto we all live by. Gone are the days when Polly’s Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) parents tried to cajole us into attending a Christmas Eve service at their church. (Both of Polly’s parents are dead.) I still remember shortly after we deconverted Mom pushing us to go to church with her — a forty-five-minute service not even church members wanted to attend. We declined. Instead, we went to midnight mass with our Catholic son and daughter-in-law. Boy, was Mom upset with us. We wouldn’t to church with her, but we went to a cult instead. The mass, by the way, was a wonderful experience. We no longer believed the Christmas message, but the music, ceremony, and homily were inspirational, even to two unbelievers.

These days, Polly and I have concluded that Christmas is whatever you want it to be. For us, Jesus isn’t the reason for the season; family, food, and good times are what make our Christmas’s so wonderful.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.

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.

Update:Black Collar Crime: IFB Pastor Robert Jaynes Jr. Has Sentence Commuted by President Biden

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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.

Robert Jaynes Jr., pastor of Irvington Bible Baptist Church in Irvington, Indiana was sentenced last week to eleven and a half years in prison on charges ” related to the manufacture of more than 10 tons of synthetic drugs”  The Indy Star reports:

Once, pastor Robert Jaynes Jr. was a man of many words, shown in videos giving thundering sermons to his small flock at the fundamentalist Irvington Bible Baptist Church.

But it was different last week in federal court, where Judge Rodney W. Sippel sentenced Jaynes on charges related to the manufacture of more than 10 tons of synthetic drugs.

“If there’s anything you’d like to say, now’s the time,” Sippel said.

Later, Jaynes did chime in to say it was hard to have the country he loves as a courtroom adversary: USA vs. Jaynes, a case in which he pleaded guilty to two charges.

Over three hours at the sentencing hearing, a much deeper portrait than previously known emerged of a pastor who made drugs at a volume the judge called “staggering” while luring several members of his church into the scheme, even putting his mother in jeopardy of arrest.

Jaynes was the first to be sentenced out of 23 people charged in a national conspiracy, an operation that included his wife, brother-in-law, two now-former sheriff’s deputies and an Indianapolis Public Schools teacher.

From April 2011 to October 2013, prosecutors said, Jaynes sold more than 500,000 packages of synthetic marijuana, or “spice,” in a form ready for retail sale. Over a period of nine months in 2013, Jaynes grossed $2.6 million in sales.

The total income, prosecutors said, was higher but couldn’t be quantified easily.

Judge Sippel stressed the impact Jaynes had on victims whose “lives were disrupted, destroyed, altered.”

While not directly linked to Jaynes, synthetic drug use caused a rise in emergency calls to the Indiana Poison Center. Officials at the center told IndyStar that reports involving synthetic cannabinoids spiked in 2011 and 2012, and two deaths in 2014 were attributed to such drugs.

“The quantity here is staggering,” the judge said of Jaynes’ operation, “so that means the number of people who could come tell us that story is incomprehensible.”

Spice, selling under brands such as Pirates’ Booty, is smoked like marijuana and meant to mimic its effects. Its production, however, isn’t usually precise, meaning the amount of the active ingredient in a package can vary wildly.

One of the charges to which Jaynes pleaded guilty involved mislabeling the drugs, typically sold at mom-and-pop gas stations, head shops and tobacco stores. The drugs are sometimes labeled as “potpourri” or as incense.

Jaynes started in the business by packaging synthetic drugs made by Doug Sloan, with whom Jaynes had worked in the mortgage business, and eventually moved into distributing the finished product to retail outlets.

Jaynes’ lawyer said he got involved with synthetic drugs after filing for bankruptcy and as his son was about to undergo open-heart surgery.

Public records show that Jaynes filed for bankruptcy in 2006. He claimed a monthly income that year of just $528 from his work as a pastor and self-employed courier. That was a dramatic drop from the $91,000 he claimed to have earned.

….

Prosecutors portrayed Jaynes as a brazen criminal undeterred by the threat of prosecution, even after police shut down manufacturing facilities operated by Sloan and his brother, Greg Sloan, and others in the St. Louis area in 2012.

“At that point anybody would say, ‘What am I dealing with? What am I doing?’” prosecutor James Delworth said. “But instead he goes the opposite way and he becomes the largest supplier for Greg Sloan. You’ve got this continuation and growth even after law enforcement steps in.”

Prosecutors read text messages from 2012 recovered from Greg Sloan’s phone to emphasize just how aggressive Jaynes was.

“Hi Greg. This is Rob,” one text from Jaynes said. “Just wanted to check in and see if you guys needed me yet.  I’m still ready to go. I’m broke and trying to find work. If you needed me to come over there and sell my crew to the guys you work with, I’d be glad to. I’d do whatever you thought necessary in order to get work for me and my guys.”

Being broke seemed a dubious claim, prosecutors said. Tax records from the previous two years showed that Tight 30 Entertainment — the company prosecutors said Jaynes used to launder money — had sales of more than $4.5 million. During that time, Jaynes reported personal taxable income of more than $850,000.

Greg Sloan, who has pleaded guilty, soon found even more work for Jaynes, selling to a man in Oklahoma City later in 2012. Jaynes texted Sloan: “That’s great. I’ll take as much as I can get. Maybe if I prove myself with these guys, your guys might decide to give me a shot, too. I’m ready to roll.”

Greg Sloan replied: “These are my guys. Robert Jaynes, I seriously thank you. You are one of the most gracious and kind men I’ve ever met.”

For protection, Jaynes turned to church members Jason and Teresa Woods, a married couple who at the time served as Hendricks County Sheriff’s deputies.  A criminal investigator for the Internal Revenue Service testified that people in Jaynes’ organization knew Jason and Teresa Woods as “the fixers.”

“If anybody got in trouble, that’s who they were supposed to call, if they got stopped by law enforcement,” the IRS investigator said.

When Jaynes moved his operation from New Ross, Indiana, to a home in New Palestine, Jason Woods provided an escort.

“He was out of uniform, but showed up in his squad car,” the IRS investigator. “He met the truck down the street and followed it on two different occasions that day as an escort behind the vehicle to protect it, so nobody could, possibly, could pull the vehicle over during the transportation of all the synthetic drug products in the back of the vehicle.”

Jason and Teresa Woods were initially arrested in December 2014 on charges in Boone County stemming from an investigation into the spice ring. They were suspended from their law enforcement jobs and later fired.

You can read the Indy Star’s in-depth investigation of Jaynes and his drug empire here.

In 2024, President Joe Biden commuted Jaynes’s sentence.

The Indianapolis Star reports:

President Joe Biden has commuted the sentence of a former Indianapolis pastor who was sentenced to 11 1/2 years in prison for running a multimillion-dollar spice ring.

Robert Jaynes Jr. is one of nearly 1,500 people whose sentences were commuted last week as part of what the White House has described as the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history.

….

Jaynes, a former pastor at the fundamentalist Irvington Bible Baptist Church, was charged for manufacturing more than 10 tons of synthetic marijuana, also known as “spice” or “K2.” Jaynes, who pleaded guilty in 2016, had lured several members of his church into the scheme to manufacture drugs at a volume that a federal judge called “staggering.”

….

From April 2011 to October 2013, Jaynes sold more than 500,000 packages of spice, prosecutors said. He grossed $2.6 million in sales over a period of nine months in 2013.

Jaynes, who founded the Irvington Bible Baptist Church in 1998, remains in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons as of Monday. A spokesman said Jaynes was transferred on May 4, 2022, to community confinement overseen by the Detroit Residential Reentry Management office. This means Jaynes is either in a residential reentry center or in home confinement.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.

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.

Bruce, Are Your Wife and Children Atheists?

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gerencser children 2023

Republished. Edited, corrected, and expanded.

Bob asks:

I had been wondering about this question and since you touched on it in this blog I wanted to ask, and it is about your wife’s stand on Christianity in general and her standing today for herself.

You mention that she walked away from church when you did. So my questions are:

Has she turned towards atheism as well? If she did, was it at the same time as you or later on?

If she did turn away from Christianity, how much of an influence were you with her denying her faith in Christ?

If she has become an atheist, doesn’t it seem odd that two completely committed Christians in the same family like this would just walk away and become atheists? I can see one, but I think the odds of two would be very high. I’m thinking this only because of the depth of commitments people make to their Christian faith. Walk away from church? Yes. But both turn to atheism?

These questions are only being asked if she has become an atheist.

Also, where do your kids stand with Christianity at this point?

Typically, I don’t answer questions about what my partner and children believe about God/Jesus/Christianity/Atheism. This blog is simply one man with a story to tell — and that’s me. Where the lives of my family intersect with telling my story, I am comfortable writing about them. However, when it comes to what they specifically believe and how they live out those beliefs, I leave it to Polly and our children to tell their own stories. (The same applies to our older grandchildren.) And the same goes for me too when they are asked about or confronted over something I have said or written. My family has been accosted at work, college, and while shopping by Christian zealots demanding that they answer for something I have written on this blog or for the local newspaper. Typically, my family tells such people that they don’t answer for me, and the best way to get their questions answered is to contact me directly.

That said, I would like to answer Bob’s questions briefly.

Yes, Polly and I walked away from Christianity together. This should come as no surprise since Polly and I have been doing virtually everything together for the past forty-eight years. We not only love one another, we also really like each other, 98.9 percent of the time, anyway (inside joke).

We have been married for more than forty-six years. I can count on two hands the days we have been apart. While each of us has hobbies and the like that the other isn’t interested in, for the most part, we have shared interests. Polly is my best friend. Why would I want to spend time with anyone else? Our marriage certainly isn’t perfect. Stick around for a fight and you’ll think we really don’t like each other. 🙂 However, disagreements quickly come and go, and then we sit down, eat dinner, drink a glass of wine, and watch whatever TV show is our favorite. The Bible says to not let the sun go down on your wrath, and we have practiced this maxim for almost five decades.

Thus, when we began to seriously question the central claims of Christianity, we spent countless hours talking about our beliefs and the Bible. I would read passages from books and we would discuss what I had read. While I certainly read a lot more books than Polly did — which has, until recent years, always been the case — she did a good bit of reading herself.

Our discussions were honest, open, and forthright. No demands were made of the other. Neither of us, at first, knew exactly where we were headed. We knew we were done with organized Christianity, but the future remained volatile and uncertain.

A week or so after we left the Ney United Methodist Church, we gathered our children together to talk with them about where we were in life. Remember, our six children were raised in a devout Evangelical Christian home. Their father and mother had been in the ministry their entire lives. Their father was the only pastor they had ever known. When we told our children that we were leaving Christianity, they were aghast over what that meant. I had been the family patriarch. Our children never had the freedom to decide whether or not to go to church. It was expected. Now they were being told that there were no expectations; that they were free to go to church, not go to church, worship God, not worship God, etc. In other words, I cut my children loose from their ties to their patriarchal father (though our three oldest sons had already begun to move away from the control I had over their lives).

I must admit that those first few months after this meeting were difficult, as our children tried to imagine life for their parents post-Jesus. Seventeen years later, everyone has gone their own way spiritually, and there’s little contention over matters of religion or lack thereof.

In early 2009, I sent out the widely circulated letter, Dear Family, Friends, and Former Parishioners. Here’s what I wrote:

Dear Family, Friends, and Former Parishioners,

I have come to a place in life where I can no longer put off writing this letter. I have dreaded this day because I know what is likely to follow after certain people receive it. I have decided I can’t control how others will react to this letter, so it is far more important to clear the air and make sure everyone knows the facts about Bruce Gerencser.

I won’t bore you with a long, drawn out history of my life. I am sure each of you has an opinion about how I have lived my life and the decisions I have made. I also have an opinion about how I have lived my life and decisions I made. I am my own worst critic.

Religion, in particular Baptist Evangelical and Fundamentalist religion, has been the essence of my life, from my youth up. My being is so intertwined with religion that the two are quite inseparable. My life has been shaped and molded by religion and religion touches virtually every fiber of my being.

I spent most of my adult life pastoring churches, preaching, and being involved in religious work to some degree or another. I pastored thousands of people over the years, preached thousands of sermons, and participated in, and led, thousands of worship services.

To say that the church was my life would be an understatement.  As I have come to see, the Church was actually my mistress, and my adulterous affair with her was at the expense of my wife, children, and my own self-worth.

Today, I am publicly announcing that the affair is over. My wife and children have known this for a long time, but now everyone will know.

The church robbed me of so much of my life and I have no intention of allowing her to have one more moment of my time. Life is too short. I am dying. We all are. I don’t want to waste what is left of my life chasing after things I now see to be vain and empty.

I have always been known as a reader, a student of the Bible. I have read thousands of books in my lifetime and the knowledge gained from my reading and studies have led me to some conclusions about religion, particularly the Fundamentalist, Evangelical religion that played such a prominent part in my life.

I can no longer wholeheartedly embrace the doctrines of the Evangelical, Fundamentalist faith. Particularly, I do not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture nor do I accept as fact the common Evangelical belief of the inspiration of Scripture.

Coming to this conclusion has forced me to reevaluate many of the doctrines I have held as true over these many years. I have concluded that I have been misinformed, poorly taught, and sometimes lied to. I can no longer accept as true many of the doctrines I once believed.

I point the finger of blame at no one. I sincerely believed and taught the things that I did and many of the men who taught me were honorable teachers. I don’t blame those who have influenced me over the years, nor do I blame the authors of the many books I have read. Simply, it is what it is.

I have no time to invest in the blame game. I am where I am today for any number of reasons and I must embrace where I am and move forward.

In moving forward, I have stopped attending church. I have not attended a church service since November of 2008. I have no interest of desire in attending any church on a regular basis. This does not mean I will never attend a church service again, but it does mean, for NOW, I have no intention of attending church services.

I pastored for the last time in 2003. Almost six years have passed by. I have no intentions of ever pastoring again. When people ask me about this I tell them I am retired. With the health problems that I have it is quite easy to make an excuse for not pastoring, but the fact is I don’t want to pastor.

People continue to ask me “what do you believe?” Rather than inquiring about how my life is, the quality of that life, etc., they reduce my life to what I believe. Life becomes nothing more than a set of religious constructs. A good life becomes believing the right things.

I can tell you this…I believe God is…and that is the sum of my confession of faith.

A precursor to my religious views changing was a seismic shift in my political views. My political views were so entangled with Fundamentalist beliefs that when my political views began to shift, my Fundamentalist beliefs began to unravel.

I can better describe my political and social views than I can my religious ones. I am a committed progressive, liberal Democrat, with the emphasis being on the progressive and liberal. My evolving views on women, abortion, homosexuality, war, socialism, social justice, and the environment have led me to the progressive, liberal viewpoint.

I know some of you are sure to ask, what does your wife think of all of this? Quite surprisingly, she is in agreement with me on many of these things. Not all of them, but close enough that I can still see her standing here. Polly is no theologian, She is not trained in theology as I am. She loves to read fiction. I was able to get her to read Bart Ehrman’s book Misquoting Jesus and she found the book to be quite an eye opener.

Polly is free to be whomever and whatever she wishes. If she wants to start attending the local Fundamentalist Baptist church she is free to do so, and even has my blessing. For now, she doesn’t.  She may never believe as I believe, but in my new way of thinking that is OK. I really don’t care what others think. Are you happy? Are you at peace? Are you living a good, productive life? Do you enjoy life? Yes, to these questions is good enough for me.

I have six children, three of whom are out on their own. For many years I was the spiritual patriarch of the family. Everyone looked to me for the answers. I feel somewhat burdened over my children. I feel as if I have left them out on their own with no protection. But, I know they have good minds and can think and reason for themselves. Whatever they decide about God, religion, politics, or American League baseball is fine with me.

All I ask of my wife and children is that they allow me the freedom to be myself, that they allow me to journey on in peace and love. Of course, I still love a rousing discussion about religion, the Bible, politics, etc. I want my family to know that they can talk to me about these things, and anything else for that matter, any time they wish.

Opinions are welcome. Debate is good. All done? Let’s go to the tavern and have a round on me. Life is about the journey, and I want my wife and children to be a part of my journey and I want to be a part of theirs.

One of the reasons for writing this letter is to put an end to the rumors and gossip about me. Did you know Bruce is/or is not_____________? Did you know Bruce believes____________? Did you know Bruce is a universalist, agnostic, atheist, liberal ___________?

For you who have been friends or former parishioners I apologize to you if my change has unsettled you, or has caused you to question your own faith. That was never my intent.

The question is, what now?

Family and friends are not sure what to do with me.

I am still Bruce. I am still married. I am still your father, father in-law, grandfather, brother, uncle, nephew, cousin, and son-in-law. I would expect you to love me as I am and treat me with respect.

Here is what I don’t want from you:

Attempts to show me the error of my way. Fact is, I have studied the Bible and read far more books than many of you. What do you really think you are going to show me that will be so powerful and unknown that it will cause me to return to the religion and politics of my past?

Constant reminders that you are praying for me. Please don’t think of me as unkind, but I don’t care that you are praying for me. I find no comfort, solace, or strength from your prayers. Be my friend if you can, pray if you must, but leave the prayers in the closet. As long as God gets your prayer message, that will be sufficient.

Please don’t send me books, tracts, or magazines. You are wasting your time and money.

Invitations to attend your Church. The answer is NO. Please don’t ask. I used to attend Church for the sake of family, but no longer. It is hypocritical for me to perform a religious act of worship just for the sake of family. I know how to find a Church if I am so inclined, after all I have visited more than 125 churches since 2003.

Offers of a church to pastor. It is not the lack of a church to pastor that has led me to where I am. If I would lie about what I believe, I could be pastoring again in a matter of weeks. I am not interested in ever pastoring a church again.

Threats about judgment and Hell. I don’t believe in either, so your threats have no impact on me .

Phone calls. If you are my friend you know I don’t like talking on the phone. I have no interest in having a phone discussion about my religious or political views.

Here is what I do want from you:

I want you to unconditionally love me where I am and how I am.

That’s it.

Now I realize some (many) of you won’t be able to do that. My friendship, my familial relationship with you is cemented with the glue of Evangelical orthodoxy. Remove the Bible, God, and fidelity to a certain set of beliefs and there is no basis for a continued relationship.

I understand that. I want you to know I have appreciated and enjoyed our friendship over the years. I understand that you can not be my friend any more. I even understand you may have to publicly denounce me and warn others to stay away from me for fear of me contaminating them with my heresy. Do what you must. We had some wonderful times together and I will always remember those good times.

You are free from me if that is your wish.

I shall continue to journey on. I can’t stop. I must not stop.

Thank you for reading my letter.

Bruce

This letter, of course, caused a firestorm of epic proportions, one that is smoldering to this day. My life and career went up in smoke, with countless Evangelical friends, family members, and colleagues in the ministry, standing on the sidelines cheering as I burned. Polly’s Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) parents have both died since I first wrote this post, so the tensions with them no longer exist. What does remain is sadness over being unable to reconcile with them before they died. We were willing, but their Fundamentalist beliefs kept them from doing so. In the end, Jesus won.

As you can tell from the letter, I still believed in some sort of deity — a deistic God, perhaps? However, by the end of 2009, I was calling myself an atheist. Polly, on the other hand, embraced agnosticism. Her reasons for leaving Christianity are very different from mine, but that story is hers to tell.

I read in Bob’s question an accusation of sorts, one I have heard countless times: that Polly doesn’t think for herself; that she is an unbeliever today because I am. Out of all the things people have said about us over the past seventeen years, this by far is the most offensive (and perhaps Bob didn’t mean to be offensive, so I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt). For the record, Polly is a college-educated woman. She graduated second in her high school class. To suggest that she is a lemming following in my footsteps is absurd. Granted, Polly is quiet and reserved, and I am not. This fact might lead people to false conclusions. Here’s what I know: Polly knows exactly why she no longer believes in the Christian God. Her reasons for deconverting are somewhat different from mine, but she is far more hostile towards organized religion than I am. Again, perhaps she will share why this is so someday.

We have six children and sixteen grandchildren. One son attends the Catholic church with his family, and the rest of our children are largely indifferent towards religion. I suspect the NONE label best describes them. While none of our children has publicly said they are agnostics or atheists, they are certainly anti-Evangelical and generally adverse to the machinations of American Christianity. Politically, most of our children are progressives and liberals, with a smidge of conservatism and libertarianism stirred in. This is as specific as I can be without trampling on their right to control their own storyline. I respect the boundaries we have set, and if one of them ever decides to tell their story, I hope they will let me publish it here.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.

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.

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: There’s No Such Thing as Millions of Years

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According to Discover magazine, “Charles Darwin, the naturalist best known for his theories of natural selection, described evolution “as ‘descent with modification.’” That means humans descended from common (and now extinct) ape ancestors that lived millions of years ago, a process also referred to as “common descent.” While we share our ancestry with these animals, along the way, over millions of years, we all changed. “[We] each adapted to our own environments or specific circumstances or niches,” says Cofran. It’s believed that this human divergence from the chimpanzee lineage of apes happened between 9.3 and 6.5 million years ago.”

There are so many errors and lies in that paragraph! [So says a man with a Bible College education] If the Bible is a correct record of history – and it most certainly IS – then there is no such thing as millions of years.  There is no such thing as ‘descent with modification’ because God made each species unique, and reproduction was always “after his kind.”

….

Now, we have an omniscient God.  Darwin’s beliefs didn’t surprise God.  So, why would God go ahead and create an animal with such similarities to man, knowing that man was going to create such a blasphemous, heretical doctrine that would lead millions astray through the years?

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Man was presented with a choice:  Worship and serve God or worship and serve His creation.  Believe what the Bible says or believe the foolish inventions and imaginations of man.  We learn a lot about those who will follow the pseudo-science.  God says that they are fools with their foolish hearts darkened.  They are not wise.  They are fools.  And God gave them up because of this.

— John MacFarlane, Pastor of First Baptist Church, Bryan, Ohio, Let’s Go Ape, December 14, 2024

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.

Black Collar Crime: Ohio IFB Pastor George Bell Charged with Raping a Child Under the Age of Ten

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pastor george bell

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.

“Dr.” George Bell, founder and pastor of Anchor Baptist Church in Columbus, Ohio, stands accused of our counts of rape and two counts of gross sexual imposition involving a minor under the age of 10. Anchor Baptist is an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregation.

The Columbus Dispatch reports:

A former pastor who resigned from the Columbus church he founded earlier this year has been charged with sexually assaulting a child.

George Bell, 72, of Grove City, appeared Tuesday for arraignment in Franklin County Common Pleas Court on four counts of rape and two counts of gross sexual imposition involving a minor under the age of 10. He pleaded not guilty to all charges and was released on a $20,000 recognizance bond, according to court records.

Bell was formerly the pastor at Anchor Baptist Church, located at 3699 Clime Road on the city’s Far West Side, which he founded in 1989.

Court records say the alleged assaults occurred between 2021 and June 2024. The sexual assault charges do not involve a member of Bell’s congregation, authorities said.

….

A statement on the church’s website said he resigned in front of the congregation in June, citing personal reasons.

Anchor Baptist released the following statement:

As a church, we are committed to full transparency and to the truth throughout this process. We have been and continue to fully cooperate with any law enforcement and the justice system. We invite you to join us in prayer for and support of victims, their families, and individuals involved. We continue to remain loyal to God’s Word and the principles established in Scripture. We sincerely desire your prayers for us to have Godly wisdom and clear direction as we move forward. We were previously informed by law enforcement that there was no evidence of any incident on church property or involving any church member. Recent events have verified this. Colossians 1:18 “… that in all things he might have the preeminence.”

And then released another statement:

Our former pastor, George Bell, submitted a resignation letter which was read to Anchor Baptist Church after the Thursday evening service on June 27, 2024. Pastor Bell cited personal reasons for his immediate resignation and did not go into details. To our knowledge there was nothing untoward involving church members or church property. We are grateful for his and Mrs. Bell’s years of service to Anchor Baptist Church and ask for your prayers for them during this difficult time. Isaiah 55:11 “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”

Anchor Baptist Church will continue forward for the cause of Christ. Please pray for church leadership as we seek God’s will and follow our Constitution, By-Laws, and Statement of Faith. The deacons and staff have unanimously selected Bro. Peter A. Cordrey to serve as the interim pastor. During this transition, we will maintain the same schedule and activities. We will act with integrity and transparency in this process. Colossians 1:18 “… that in all things he might have the preeminence.”

And another:

Due to new information that has come to our attention, we are amending our previous statement released on July 3. Our testimony in this community is of the utmost importance to us. We now know that there was more to the unexpected resignation of our former pastor, George Bell, than we were originally led to believe. It breaks our heart to discover that there have been serious allegations and an indictment that have been brought. Any conduct that is contrary to the Bible and our laws as citizens are unacceptable and not tolerated. In light of this new information, we endeavor to make clear our stand to our church family and to our community.

  1. We have been and will be cooperating fully with law enforcement and the justice system.
  2. We are committed to full transparency and to the truth throughout this process.
  3. As a church, we are loyal to God’s Word and the principles established in Scripture.
  4. We sincerely desire your prayers for us to have Godly wisdom and clear direction as we seek God’s help and guidance.

We get it, your pastor is a pervert and you say you didn’t know ANYTHING about his proclivities. In time, the truth shall be known — no prayers or “understanding” needed. My advice? Stop making statements and carefully consider whether the church was in any way culpable in Bell’s crimes. Quoting Bible verses rings hollow when sexual abuse against children is the crime. Readers of this site are familiar with rampant IFB cover-ups of criminal misconduct by pastors, evangelists, missionaries, youth pastors, bus drivers, music directors, choir directors, and Christian school administrators and teachers. Your commitment to “full transparency and to the truth” remains to be seen. I do hope you are true to your words.

Bell had this to say about himself on a now-deleted page on the church’s website:

I was born in the very poor and crime-ridden area of North Columbus, Ohio. Of four girls and two boys, I was the second youngest. My only brother was to play a key part in my life as a sinner and a Christian.

My parents were not close. I never heard my dad and mom exchange an “I love you” or show much affection at all. My dad never had much time for us kids, and I personally never heard my dad say to me, “I love you” or “I am proud of you” while I was growing up. My parents were not Christians and never attended church, though my mother and grandmother tried taking us to a Seventh-day Adventist church for about a year. We were not taught to pray anything more than a bedtime prayer and never read the Bible. No church people ever stopped by the Bell house to present the Gospel. No bus workers ever stopped by to see if the Bell children could go to church.

I was eleven years old. A woman I did not know was standing in our living room. My mother was there, and all of us kids were ushered into the room. The woman stranger then asked us if we wanted to live with our dad or our mom. I could not understand what was really going on, but I heard the others say, “Mom,” so I did, too. Not long after, my mom and dad were divorced after twenty-one years of marriage. As I grew older, it did not surprise me as to the reason why: my dad was a drunkard, a womanizer, and abusive to my mom and us kids.

That event seemed to open the floodgates of tragedy. The family continued to fall apart. For the first time in twenty-one years my mother had to get a job. My sisters began to date, go to slumber parties, and run with other bad kids. My brother, Bill, started fighting, drinking, and gambling. He was good at it, and I emulated him. By age thirteen I was already smoking, drinking, and running the streets. After having several altercations with the police, my mother thought it would be best to leave the small suburb where we lived and move to the west side of Columbus.

….

I was seventeen-and-a-half years old. In September of 1969, I volunteered for the Army. Because I was very physically fit and tough, I liked basic training. In A. I. T. (advanced individual training) at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, I met my first airborne sergeant. As a result of our meeting, I determined I wanted to be an Airborne Ranger. From a worldly viewpoint, I thought I was finally on track at the age of eighteen. I found something I was good at that those around me appreciated me doing. Like any other teenager, I was starving for attention, and if being a “gung-ho” soldier would do it, then why not?

After airborne training, while waiting to get on a list for Green Beret (the next step before getting into Ranger school), I again fell in with the wrong crowd. I was living in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. I was eighteen with no dad to call for answers, no paster with whom to get counsel, and no Christian friends upon whom to rely. With my security level and self-confidence basically non-existent, it was easy to follow a strong voice of any kind. The wrong crowd began to convince me that the government and military were all against me and giving my best to them was a joke. They taught me to rebel, disobey, make fun of authority and look for an opportunity to get out of the Army. They introduced me to illicit drugs. I had smoked cigarettes since I was eleven and drank since I was thirteen, but now I encountered marijuana and LSD. The early success of my military career notwithstanding, since nothing I had ever wanted, tried or was good at last long, it was not surprise that my life continued to go down. Because of never having a Christian background and never being witnessed to of Jesus, I assumed my condition was just bad luck and that it was bound to change sooner or later. But it did not. Without going into detail, I got into deep trouble while at Fort Bragg. Once again, I came before a judge and was told that if I was found guilty, I could receive a maximum sentence of 15 to 25 years in the penitentiary.

I had nowhere to turn. Because I was in trouble, I called my brother Bill, thinking he would understand. I really did not want help; I wanted help out of trouble. On the phone he said, “I can’t help you live like that. I go to church now.” And he hung up. He had gotten saved. My idol and example changed directions on me. The person I thought would always understand and side with me had abandoned me.

At eighteen my life had added up to zero and now I was looking at prison time. Don’t ask me why people do it or where it comes from, but it seems whenever people are in real trouble in life, they somehow find themselves in a church house. While walking across a parade field on base, I noticed a small while church house situated there on a hill. I opened the door, walked inside, sat on a pew, and through tears got down on my knees and pleaded with God, “If you get me out of this mess, I will never do it again.” Of course, the prayer was nothing more than selfish plea-bargaining. I remember when I was done, I felt as lonely and as empty as I was before I knelt. Oh, had a real Baptist preacher or soul winning been there to guide this blind, hurting, and lost soul!

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I never met a Christian while in Vietnam. No one ever talked to me of Christ, and no one spoke of church. But one day while being re-supplied in the jungle, word was spreading that a chaplain was coming out. I remember many men went over to him. He spoke to us, and though I do not remember what he spoke, he prayed for us and gave all of us a little Bible. Though I did not read it, I thought it was incredibly nice of him to do that for me. Oh, but had someone, anyone, interrupted my life! Had someone spoken up and at least shared the Gospel with this young man seemingly doomed for Hell, but “no man cared for my soul.”

Still in the Army but back in America at age nineteen, my rebellion and hatred grew for everyone and everything. Little did I know I was about to come face to face with two people, Jesus and my brother Bill, who were not afraid of me and were determined to change me.

I came back to America just before I was discharged from the Army. At that time I met a girl whose daddy preached at a small by fiery Baptist church out in the country. Her dad said that if I wanted to see her I had to come to church. I did not know that it was the same church that my brother had gotten saved in and was attending. No one knew I was coming that night. I had never been in a Baptist church before, and though it was not a fundamental Baptist church, they believed in fiery preaching and sinners getting saved by Jesus.

A young man who had recently been called to preach was preaching that night. As I sat there I was dumb-founded that he seemed to know all I had been doing, and then he was telling everyone! I honestly believe that at the age of nineteen, for the first time in my life I heard about sin, wickedness, Jesus dying, and men needing to get right. They did not teach soul winning in that church. They believed folks should be saved, but they just believed the Holy Spirit and the sinner would work it all out when they met at the altar. So at the end of the church service, with my brother pleading with me to come back in and pray, I walked out. Between that first time I attended a Baptist church and the second time I attend (which is when I got saved), I had gotten busted four grades in the military, almost killed two people in a car accident, was almost sent to prison again, and was numb to the world and everything in it.

At twenty years of age, I was discharged from the military and found myself back in Columbus. More trouble with fighting, drugs and jail had inundated my life. Now I had lost everything. I literally had no friends, no job, no money, no car, no drugs or booze and no place to live. My mother said I could move back home until everything got better. And who lived behind my mother’s house? My brother, Bill, “the preacher.” It seemed that every evening he was over at my mother’s house talking to my mom and sisters about the Bible and telling them that they should be saved. He would beg and plead with them to come to church. I would stand by the back door and ignore the whole thing, wanting nothing to do with it. But each time he left to go back home after being turned down again by the family, he would stop and invite me to go to church with him. As always, I would turn him down.

Then came April 14, 1972. That evening I was once again standing and staring out the back door of my mother’s home when once again my brother came over to invite everyone to church. Once again, they all turn him down. And as usual, on his way out, he stopped to talk to his little brother. “Would you like to go to church with me tonight?” he said. “There is no preaching, just singing.” I told him, “I don’t have a shirt.” He said, “I’ll get you one.” “Well, I don’t have any dress pants.” “Would you quit worrying about it and just go?” he pleaded. There was one statement my brother always used when trying to get me to come to Christ. He would say, as he said that night, “I know someone Who will help you if you just let Him.” Finally, I relented and said, “Okay.”

As soon as we walked into that Baptist church on that cool Saturday night, I felt unclean and dirty. I thought this was no place for a guy like me. Before the service even started, I was overwhelmed with guilt. We found our place on the fourth row to the pulpit’s right. Outwardly I tried to return the friendliness the people showed to me. People who did not even know me acted as though they cared about me. I shook their hand. I gave a nod and a “hello.” Yet as I quietly sat there, an immense struggle began inside me.

The service began. We stood and began to sing a full-throated congregational song. Unhindered tears began to run down my face. I wanted to hide my face. We sat down and I buried my face in my hands questioned and reasoned: “What’s going on?” While an average church service continued, two voices raged in my mind. One rehearsed the same old routine of promises: “Don’t give in! Remember that party? That girl is waiting. What about your friends?” The other promised nothing, it said, “Come on. It’s the right thing to do. Come on.”

There seemed to be no one else in that room but me. Like a rush it dawned on me that the old voice was lying to me. I thought, “I have no friends out there. No one wants me around anymore. What do I care what they think?” I had heard the preacher say (yes, there was preaching that night), “You who need to be saved need to pray and ask Jesus to forgive you.” I did not know what to do. He said to pray. I had never been taught to pray. I did not know how, but I made up my mind to do whatever it would take to find relief. I was broken. With my heart breaking, my lips trembling, and my cheeks dripping with tears, I turned to my brother and said, “Bill, what do I do?” He simply stepped into the aisle and pointed toward the altar.

My heart was bursting inside. I ran to the altar and in a child-like trust begged Jesus in the only words I could form, “Oh, Jesus, forgive me; forgive me; forgive me; forgive me; I’m sorry; I’m sorry; I’m sorry…” This was the simple prayer of a lonely, empty, sinful man. I knew nothing of Bible doctrine or Christianity.

….

I am now Dr. George E. Bell, pastor and founder of Anchor Baptist Church and schools in Columbus, Ohio. The church started with ten people (six of whom were my own family) in a recreation center, on July 30, 1989. Currently (2002), our average Sunday morning attendance is over 550. We run six bus routes, average 110 soul winners out each week, average 100 baptisms a month, and have over 40 Sunday school classes. We have just built a 6,000 square foot education building and have property worth well over a million dollars. Our church has led our state in baptisms for the last four years.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.

Answering a Question From a Christian About My Mother-in-Law

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Recently, a Christian sent me the following question:

Do you think your mother-in-law was ridiculously stupid for loving Jesus? Or brainwashed and just really dumb?

I have written a handful of posts over the years about my late mother-in-law. While I deeply loved Polly’s parents, I had a strained, acrimonious relationship with Mom. There are many reasons for this, but they are not the subject of this post today. Mom was a lifelong Fundamentalist Christian, both as a member of the Church of the Nazarene and several Independent Fundamentalist Baptist congregations. Mom attended the Newark Baptist Temple, pastored by her brother-in-law James Dennis (The Family Patriarch is Dead: My Life With James Dennis), from 1976 to her death in 2023. Mom and Dad left the Baptist Temple for eight years to start a new IFB church in Buckeye Lake. Actually, Dad and I started the church, but Mom was there in “spirit.” She never wanted to leave the Baptist Temple, but felt her duty was to support her husband. The church eventually closed its doors and Mom and Dad returned to the Baptist Temple.

Mom was a devoted follower of Jesus. She daily read her Bible and prayed, sang in the choir, and faithfully attended church on Sundays and Wednesdays. That said, the sum of her understanding of the Bible and Christian theology came from whatever her pastor said from the pulpit. Dad, a pastor, was not much better. I don’t fault them for their lack of knowledge. I pastored countless Moms and Dads over the years; good people who loved Jesus, but lacked a comprehensive understanding of Christianity. They believed whatever their pastor believed. He would never steer them wrong, right?

I never use the word brainwashed when describing Fundamentalist Christians. Indoctrinated? Conditioned? Sure, but not brainwashed. Merriam-Webster defines brainwashing this way:

a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas.

Brainwashed people lack the will and power to believe differently from their church and pastor. Mom willingly believed what she did, even though indoctrination and conditioning played a significant part in her beliefs. Outside of hearing me preach from time to time, Mom never heard anything from the pulpit that challenged her beliefs. As far as I know, Mom never changed her beliefs, going to the grave believing the same things she did as a young adult.

So, was Mom stupid or dumb? No. She was a product of her religious/social environment. She was, however, ignorant about the history and nature of the Bible, Christianity, and science. As far as I know, outside of devotionally reading the Bible, the only other books Mom read were Christian romance and historical novels. She had little to no interest in the complexities of the world, choosing instead to fix her mind on Jesus and church. Politically, Mom was a right-wing Republican. She voted for Donald Trump twice, as did almost everyone in her church. Yet, when asked about specific Trump policy positions, she was largely ignorant and indifferent.

I could have, over the years, eviscerated Mom’s beliefs, but to what end? Nothing I could say would move her from her rigid Fundamentalist Christian beliefs. And so I didn’t try. She went to her grave believing she was going to Heaven and would see her dead Christian relatives again. Sadly, we will never see her again since there is no life after death.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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.

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.