Menu Close

Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Lingo — A Guide to IFB-Speak

ifb

Repost from 2015. Edited, updated, and corrected.

If you are unfamiliar with the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church movement, please see The Anatomy of the IFB Church Movement for more information.

Below is a list of words and phrases used in IFB churches. IFB churches and pastors have a lingo that may sound strange to the uninitiated, so I hope this list will help.

Guide to Words and Phrases used in IFB Churches

Inerrancy of the Bible

The Bible, often the King James Bible, is inspired, infallible, and without error, perfect in all it says and teaches. Some IFB churches believe that even the italicized words added by the translators are inspired.

Inspiration of the Bible

The Bible, in its original writings, was breathed out by God. God directed (moved) the writers of the Bible in such a way that their words were the exact words God wanted to be written down. Some within the IFB Church movement believe that the King James Bible is just as God-inspired as the original writings. Others believe God has preserved his Word throughout history, and the King James Bible is the only Bible for English-speaking people.

The Second Coming of Jesus Christ

Someday, perhaps today, Jesus Christ will come in the clouds and rapture all the Christians off the face of the earth. Then, all the unbelievers will face seven years of tribulation as described in the book of Revelation. Jesus will then return to earth, bind Satan, and establish his millennial kingdom. During the millennium, the raptured Christians will remain in heaven while Jesus rules the earth with a rod of iron. At the end of the millennium, Satan will be loosed for a season and God will defeat him. Then God will judge everyone, destroy the heavens and earth, and make all things new. (This is an abbreviated form of what IFB churches believe about the Second Coming.)

Pastoral Authority

The pastor, called by God, is in charge of the church. He is called by God to speak the words of God to church members. Most IFB churches are pastored by one man. Often, the pastor has the final say on everything. Typically, the longer a preacher pastors a church, the more control he has.

Pastoral Succession

Many IFB churches have pastors who have been in that position for years and even decades. As these preachers age and their children grow up, it is not uncommon for the pastor’s children to be hired as church staff. In some cases, the pastor’s son or son-in-law becomes the pastor-in-waiting. The church becomes a possession, a franchise that is passed down from generation to generation.

Soulwinning

Proverbs 11:30 says The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life; and he that winneth souls is wise. Most IFB churches actively evangelize their community. They believe they are commanded by God to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, even if people don’t want to hear it. Much like Jehovah’s Witnesses, IFB church members often evangelize door-to-door and hand out tracts. They believe God holds them personally accountable for the souls of those they could have witnessed to and didn’t. Ezekiel 33:7-9 says:

So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me. When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it; if he do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.

Altar Call

The altar, located at the front of the church, is the place where the unsaved and saved alike come to do business with God. Often the church has trained altar workers who help those who come forward during the altar call (public invitation). In IFB churches, the altar is similar to the Catholic confessional.

Backsliding

Since IFB churches believe Once Saved, Always Saved, they must account for when members become worldly or stop doing what is expected of them. Such members are called backsliders. IFB pastors spend significant amounts of time trying to get backsliders to live as good Christians should. A good Christian attends church every time the doors are open, reads and studies the Bible daily, prays without ceasing, tithes and gives offerings, evangelizes the lost, and follows the church social code/standards. Congregants who don’t are considered, backslidden, worldly, or carnal.

Standards

Standards are rules that every IFB church member is expected to obey. Standards are often developed, based not on direct commands from the Bible, but upon inferences drawn from particular Bible verses. Every IFB church has its own standards. IFB churches fuss and fight over standards, and often a church will refuse to fellowship with other IFB churches that don’t have the same basic standards as they do. (Please see The Official Independent Baptist Rule Book.)

Separation

Separation is the abstaining from people, actions, and things that are considered worldly. What is worldly is defined by what the pastor says the Bible says is worldly. What is worldly varies from church to church. Worldly can be generously defined as anything the pastor thinks is a sin or could cause someone to “stumble” or have a bad testimony.

Head of the Home

The husband is the boss and the decider of everything pertaining to the family. IFB churches are hierarchal and complementarian when it comes to marriage and family.

Right Hand of Fellowship

When new members are welcomed and admitted into the church membership, they are given the right hand of fellowship. Many congregations have new members stand at the front of the church so every church member can come by and shake their hand or hug them. This is a great opportunity for pervert Deacon Bob to cop a feel.

The Call

The “call” is when God speaks to a man’s heart, telling him to be a pastor, evangelist, or missionary. The man called by God makes his calling publicly known before the church, often at the close of the Sunday morning church service.

Preacher Boy

A preacher boy is a young boy, most often a teenager, called by God to be a preacher. Preacher boys often have favored status in IFB churches. Many IFB pastors pride themselves in how many boys have been called to preach under their ministry. This is very similar to a man passing his seed on.

Faith Promise

Faith Promise is a method used by some IFB pastors to extract money from church members. Most often, faith promise is associated with mission giving. Church members are asked to make a promise of X amount of dollars for missions, and by faith they are to expect God to give them the money for the offering. And when God fails to come through? Congregants are expected to give anyway, even if it caused financial harm.

Prayer Meeting

Prayer meeting is a time when prayer requests are gathered and members or the pastor prays over them. It is also known as the midweek gossip hour. It is a golden opportunity for gossips to share dirt about sinful family members or backslidden Christians — all in the name of “praying” for them.

Stewardship

Stewardship is a method used by some IFB pastors to extract money from church members. Some pastors preach a series of messages on being good stewards (caretakers) of the money God has given each church member. The objective is to get people to give more money to the church.

Revival

A revival is a time when a special speaker, often called an evangelist, comes to the church and preaches each night for a consecutive number of days — usually three to seven days. Many IFB church members make spiritual decisions during the nightly revival altar calls.

Carnal/Worldly Church Members

Christians who don’t live according to the teachings of the Bible — as interpreted by the pastor. Such people are “saved” — barely.

The Lord Has Laid Upon My Heart

A personal opinion or interpretation of the Bible that a Christian thinks is straight from God himself.

This is not an all-encompassing list. If there are other words and phrases you think would be a good addition to this list, please leave them in the comments (and make sure you define them).

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Connect with me on social media:

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Black Collar Crime: Evangelical Pastor Russell Tusing II Charged with Child Molestation

pastor russell tusing

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.

Russell Tusing II, pastor of Sovereign Grace Church of LaGrange, Georgia, stands accused of sexual battery and child molestation. Tusing has been scrubbed from the church’s website.

The LaGrange Daily News reports:

LaGrange police have arrested the pastor of a local church who is facing allegations of child molestation. Russell Jon Tusing II, 44, was arrested and charged with sexual battery (FVA) and child molestation (FVA). According to Troup County Jail records, Tusing was booked into the jail on Friday. According to LaGrange Police Public Information Officer Lt. Chris Pritchett, the charges stem back to a report made in February with allegations dating back to 2022 in regard to a 13-year-old female victim.

Pritchett confirmed that Tusing was the pastor of Sovereign Grace Church of LaGrange, though his name appears to have been removed from the staff leadership on the church’s website. Multiple calls to the church went directly to voicemail. Tusing was named pastor of the church in August 2011, according to the church’s Facebook page.

Multiple calls to the church went directly to voicemail. Tusing was named pastor of the church in August 2011, according to the church’s Facebook page.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Connect with me on social media:

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Jesus Said His Commandments are Not Burdensome

jesus teaching disciples

Jesus said:

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)

Jesus says that those who take on his yoke will find rest for their souls. His yoke and burden are light.

What does Jesus mean when he uses the word yoke? Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance defines the word this way: to join; a coupling that is, (figuratively) servitude (a law or obligation); also (literally) the beam of the balance (as connecting the scales).

Thayer’s Lexicon defines yoke this way: a yoke that is put on draught cattle; metaphorically, used of any burden or bondage (as that of slavery).

After reading several commentaries on Matthew11:28-30, I concluded that the yoke Jesus asks his followers to wear is his commandments and teachings; that according to commentators this yoke encompasses all the laws and precepts found in the Bible — “rightly” interpreted, of course.

John adds:

For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous. (1 John 5:3)

If someone says he loves God, he will keep God’s commandments, and these commandments are not grievous (burdensome).

Deuteronomy 6:17 states:

Ye shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and his testimonies, and his statutes, which he hath commanded thee.

Ecclesiastes 12:13 adds:

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

Solomon says that the whole duty of man is to do what? Fear God and keep his commandments.

Jesus told his disciples in John 14:15: if ye love me, keep my commandments.

How does one show his love for Jesus? By keeping his commandments.

And finally, John says throughout the book of First John:

And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. (I John 2:3-4)

And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us. (1 John 3:24)

By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. (1 John 5:2)

Evangelicals equate salvation with believing the right things. I have often said that the Evangelical gospel can be summed up thusly: BELIEVE this and thou shalt live. However, based on the aforementioned verses, the gospel is actually, DO this and thou shalt live; that the essence of Christianity is not only believing the commandments, teachings, laws, and precepts of Jesus/God/Apostles, it’s putting them into practice and living them out day by day.

do and dont

There are 613 laws in the Old Testament alone. According to an extensive list produced by Christian Assemblies International, there are 1,050 New Testament commands. (PDF)

Evangelicals fuss and fight over how many commands and laws, exactly, there are in the Bible. Once Evangelicals figure out the number of commands, then they argue about how many are still applicable today. No two Evangelical churches or preachers agree on which commandments are valid and in force. Even when it comes to the Ten Commandments, most Evangelicals only practice nine of the commandments, and some Evangelicals don’t practice any of them, choosing to follow only the teachings of the Apostle Paul.

Whatever the number of commands, one thing is for certain, Evangelicals don’t do a very good job of keeping them. Jesus said his yoke was easy and his burden was light. Why, then, do most Evangelicals routinely ignore or disobey the teachings of the Bible? It seems, at least from my perspective, that Evangelicals find God’s laws and commandments a real pain in the ass; a big inconvenience; an impossible task, so why bother?

Evangelicals present their religion as transformative; that Jesus will fix whatever ails you. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:17:

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

Evangelicals SAY they are IN CHRIST. If so, according to the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God, Christians are new creatures (creations): old things pass away and everything becomes new.

Any casual investigation of Evangelicalism reveals that there is a huge disconnect between what God’s chosen ones say and how they live. In other words, they are hypocrites.

I am not suggesting that Evangelicals as a whole are bad people. I have met scores of Evangelicals whom I consider decent human beings. However, Evangelicals have a marketing/messaging problem. Evangelicals tell the unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines of the world that Jesus makes all things new; that Jesus alone can change lives. That’s the sale pitch. However, most people who sign on the dotted line spend their lives trying to measure up to the Biblical standard — and fail. Why do Evangelical preachers spend an inordinate amount of time exhorting and rebuking congregants, calling out their less-than-Biblical lives, all while never looking in the mirror? If Jesus is all Evangelicals say he is, why is the product produced so inferior? Why is there no difference between Evangelicals and their counterparts in the world?

I am sure the True Christians® among us will say that many Evangelicals are fake believers or cultural Christians. However, having once been a True Christian® myself for many, many years, I know that sold-out, on-fire, Holy Ghost-filled Christians are every bit as hypocritical as those deemed fake or cultural Christians. The difference, of course, is that True Christians® are experts at playing the godliness/holiness/sanctified/separated game. They know how to put on a front; how to make those around them think they are super-duper followers of Jesus.

“How dare you insult me. Bruce. I am a real Christian. I follow the teachings of the Bible to the letter.” No you don’t, and you know it. Quit playing the game, and admit that you are nothing more than an everyday flawed, frail human being, just as the rest of us are. Aren’t you tired of riding the high ground on your moral high horse? You may think you have people fooled, but you don’t. Those around you see you as you are. And that goes for so-called men of God, too.

I am not suggesting that Evangelicals stop trying to live according to the teachings of the Bible. There’s some good stuff in the Bible: you know, commands such as loving your neighbor as yourself or not letting the sun go down on your wrath. All I ask is that Evangelicals stop demanding others live according to the teachings of the Bible, when they, in fact, can’t agree on what those teachings are, nor can they keep them.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Connect with me on social media:

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

The Evangelical Worship Wars

worship wars

Any cursory reading of the Bible reveals that the “church” — the elect, god’s chosen ones, the saved — are commanded to live at peace among themselves. How pleasant it is for the brethren to dwell in unity, (Psalm 133:1) the Bible says. Filled with the Holy Spirit, Christians should daily demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit in their lives: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The Apostle Paul told Trinity Baptist Church in Corinth: I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought. (1 Corinthians 1:10) Speaking of the early church, the writer of the book of Acts said in chapter 4: All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. Jesus said in John 13:35: By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. 1 Peter 3:8 says, Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. And finally, Paul tells First Baptist Church of Ephesus:

Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:3-6)

Compare what the inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word of God commands with what we actually see in most Evangelical churches. Several decades ago, Evangelical churches began moving from traditional worship services with primarily hymn singing to contemporary worship services with primarily contemporary Christian and praise and worship singing. The former had a song leader leading music from a hymnbook, the latter a worship team using songs typically projected on a screen with an overhead projector. The former used a piano and organ, the latter used guitars, drums, and keyboards. (These are general observations.)

I started out in the 1970s preaching in churches that had traditional worship services. Over time, we added a few choruses and praise and worship songs, but, for the most part, our worship services were not much different from those from the 1950s. In 1995, I started Our Father’s House in West Unity, Ohio in 1997. Our Father’s House was a nondenominational church, though our worship style was traditional. This changed after our three oldest sons took guitar and bass lessons and needed an outlet for their music. I decided to move from a traditional worship style to what is called a blended worship style. Every Sunday, we sang both hymns and praise and worship music. As we added people and instruments to our band, the music focused more on newer styles of worship. However, hymns were always a part of our worship, just less so.

The change in music ruffled the feathers of three church families, who demanded we stop using contemporary music, or what they called charismatic music. I refused, reminding them that we sang hymns each week, and that the newer music appealed to younger adults and teenagers. These families left in a huff, the only people to leave the church in the seven years I was blessed to be their pastor.

worship wars 2

In 2004, we moved from rural northwest Ohio to Yuma, Arizona — a move that we hoped would improve my health. One church we attended was a Church of the Nazarene congregation which held two services on Sundays: an early service that used traditional music and a late service that used a blended music approach. We attended the late service. We preferred praise and worship music, and those attending the service were younger, people with families. The early services were attended primarily by people in their fifties and sixties; people who were thrilled church was over by ten so they could then eat breakfast at Denny’s. The early service was boring, geared toward old people. Each service time had a different preacher. The early service preacher was a retired pastor; the late service preacher was a pastor in his late 30s. We preferred the younger guy.

The church didn’t need to hold two services. They did so to keep everyone happy. In an effort to keep everyone satisfied and tithing, church leaders split the congregation. This, however, didn’t stop the conflict between the two factions. The church later returned to one service on Sundays at 10:30 am. Not far from our home is a Church of God that holds two services. The early service (traditional 8:30 am)) is primarily attended by old people — farmers and first-shift factory workers. The late service (contemporary 11:00 am) is attended by younger adults — frazzled younger couples with children and others who love sleeping in on Sundays.

As a pastor, I was opposed to split services. I also, later in my ministerial career, opposed children’s church programs. I believed worship was meant to be done together: all ages in one room, families sitting together, worshipping the Lord. We visited numerous churches that divided people up into various groups, choosing to reserve worship services for adults alone. Preschoolers, children, and teenagers attended services geared towards their “needs” — as if worship is all about personal wants and needs. In 2005-06, we attended a Missionary Church in Pettisville, Ohio. The church had traditional (8:30 am) and contemporary (10:30 am) services, with age-focused programs during the contemporary services. We are not early morning people — never have been — so we attended the late service. One Sunday, the church’s youth director came up to our children and tried to get them to attend the youth service. I quickly cut him off, telling the youth pastor that we believed in family worship. We worshiped together as a family. By then, I had a distrust of youth directors, knowing that the levels of sexual misconduct by youth pastors were high. I also knew that youth pastors typically dumbed down their services, and focused on keeping teens entertained for an hour or so. I didn’t want this for my children.

My opinion remains unchanged on this issue. The worship wars have caused incalculable harm and division. People who are members of the same church rarely worship together. Some churches, out of necessity, hold multiple services, but most churches hold multiple services to placate people who either want a certain style of music or want to attend church at a certain time. Instead of focusing on unity, churches, fearing disgruntled members leaving and taking their money with them, cater to the whims of people who can’t or won’t sing certain styles of music.

Do you have experiences with the Evangelical worship wars? Did your church have multiple services? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Connect with me on social media:

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Evangelical Pastor Tries to Justify Being Offensive to Others

faith baptist church members
Faith Baptist Church, Primrose Georgia, members street preaching, calling on sodomites to repent

An Evangelical pastor I know posted the following statements on Facebook today:

I’d rather offend you into heaven…than sympathize you into hell…

The problem in Christianity is that we are hiding behind the need to be nice, while shying away from truth and true devotion… #thetruthhurtsjohn8:32

Where, oh, where, do I begin?

This pastor assumes that he has and knows the “truth.” He proof-texted John 8:32: And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. In John 18 we find Jesus standing before Pilate:

Pilate: Art thou the King of the Jews?

Jesus: Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?

Pilate: Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done?

Jesus: My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.

Pilate: Art thou a king then?

Jesus: Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.

Pilate: What is truth?

Pilate asks a good question, “What is truth?” Spoken like a good postmodernist, Pilate challenged Jesus’ claim that he was a witness to “truth.” Jesus does not answer Pilate, leaving the “truth” question unanswered. That, of course, hasn’t stopped Evangelical preachers and churches from answering the question themselves. If there is one thing we know about Evangelicals it is this: they are certain that they have the truth market cornered; that their beliefs and practices perfectly align with Jesus’ words when he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Evangelicals fail to understand that Jesus was talking about himself being the way, truth, and the life; not their beliefs, not their practices. The only “Bible” Jesus knew anything about was the Old Testament. You will search in vain to find Jesus or Christianity in the Old Testament. Jesus’ Bible was antithetical to the Evangelical gospel of salvation by grace through faith.

How could this pastor possibly know that he has the pure, unadulterated “truth?” Well, his whole understanding of truth is based on his childhood religious upbringing, tribal influences, sectarian education, and personal interpretation of the Bible. The only “truth” he has are his personal opinions and beliefs about God, Jesus, and the Bible. By faith — the ground of all religious beliefs — he believes his “truth” is the “faith once delivered to the saints.”

As an Evangelical, he believes the Protestant Christian Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God. Every word in the Bible is straight from the mouth of God, without error and fallibility. Believing God — in the person of the Holy Spirit — lives inside of him as his teacher and guide, is it a surprise that he thinks his “truth” is THE TRUTH? I have always found it amazing that what Evangelical preachers believe perfectly aligns with God’s “truth.” Amazing, right?

All this pastor has is his personal opinions and interpretations about an ancient religious text. He can provide little to no historical evidence for his “truth” claims outside of the Bible. That’s enough for him, and I am fine what that. Believe what you will, but when you claim you have “truth,” you are going to do a lot more than quote Bible verses or appeal to personal experiences to win me over to your side.

Evangelicals, along with Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and door-to-door siding salesmen, are known for their in-your-face evangelism tactics. They believe they have a duty and right to confront anyone, anywhere, at any time — including when you are lying on your deathbed or just experienced a traumatic event — and preach the gospel at them. Evangelicals believe death is certain, Hell is real, and Jesus is coming soon. Because they sincerely, honestly believe these things, Evangelicals think that this gives them the right to invade the personal space of others. Several weeks ago, my oldest son had an Evangelical zealot try to preach at him while he was pumping gas! I have been repeatedly God-bothered by zealots over the years, thinking I have tattooed on my forehead, “Please Tell Me About Jesus.” I don’t, and I, along with every other unbeliever I know, want to be left alone. If we want to know about God, Jesus, the Bible, Christianity, or your supercalifragilisticexpialidocious church, we will ask. If not, leave us alone.

Of course, this preacher will ignore what I have written here, believing that I am deceived, apostate, or a tool of Satan; that he has a higher calling from God, and that calling compels him to irritate, harass, and bother unbelievers. While he would likely say that he doesn’t want to offend anyone or hurt their feelings, he would also say, “Sometimes the truth hurts.” In other words, what you feel or think doesn’t matter. And therein is the fundamental problem with Evangelicalism: all that matters is your non-existent soul and eternal destiny. Who cares if an Evangelical zealot is a Bible bully or an asshole as long as you get saved and gain entrance into Heaven?

You see, Evangelicals are taught over and over and over again that this present life is transitory; that it is preparation for the life to come. The only thing that matters is “What have you done with Christ?” (Answer: I took a spade, dug a hole in our backyard, and buried Jesus, right next to our cat who died a few years ago.) 🙂 While Evangelical lifestyles betray how Heavenly-minded they really are, when it comes to evangelizing the unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines of the world, all that matters is saving souls.

Several weeks ago, I had a five-hour gastric motility test performed at the local hospital. I had to eat food laced with nuclear medicine that was tracked every hour with a scan as it traversed my stomach and bowels. As I sat there, I couldn’t help but notice all the suffering around me. A woman dying from cancer, weighing less than seventy-five pounds; a woman having a similar test, except she had bowel cancer; a man having radiation treatments. Into our suffering came a seventy-something-year-old Evangelical man Heaven-bent on evangelizing the dying. (I watched Polly silently mouth a prayer, asking Loki to keep this man from saying anything to me. 🙂 Loki answered her prayer. I have no tolerance for such people. I am not afraid to publicly shame them and put them in their place.) This man had an interesting schtick. He sat down next to the bald elderly woman with bowel cancer — a woman he did not know — and said, “Do you like comics?” The woman, who was very, very, very sick, said, “Huh?” He responded, “Do you like comics?” She replied, “No, not really.” Thinking to himself, “I don’t give a shit about what you think,” the man replied “Anyway — a word that says I am not listening to you; I don’t care how you feel — get your phone out and go to https://chick.com. Again, the woman said, “Huh?” He replied, “Chick. They have lots of interesting comics. You should really check them out!” With head turned away from God-botherer, the woman replied, “I will, but not now.” Fortunately, the radiologist came and rescued the woman from her abuser.

Let me conclude by sharing a few things with the aforementioned pastor and any “soulwinners” who might read this post.

First, if I want to know about your God, religion, church, or the Bible, I will ask you. If not, leave me alone. Most people know that religion and politics rarely make for good conversation among strangers.

Second, if you value your peculiar “truth” above being nice and polite, I have no interest in talking with you. Want to talk about Jesus? Go to church. I have dinner once a month with a group of like-minded men. We talk about all sorts of things, including religion and politics. We have a common foundation for having these discussions. I would never go to a nearby table of Trump supporters and say to them, “Did you know Donald Trump is an asshole?” Not the time or the place. True statement, but as a kind, thoughtful human being, I don’t go out of my way to offend my neighbors. Sadly, Evangelical zealots think they have a God-given right and duty to offend unbelievers.

Third, I am not asking you to stop believing what you believe. I am, however, asking you to be aware of your surroundings; to be aware of how your preaching will affect and negatively influence others. How many strangers have you personally won to saving faith in Christ by invading their personal space and cornering them so you can preach at them? One, two, a few, none? Have you ever wondered why that is? That maybe, just maybe, you are the problem, and not their hard hearts, blind eyes, or deaf ears, or any of the other lame excuses you use to justify your soulwinning failures.

Fourth, Jesus doesn’t need you to save me or any other sinner. If he wants to save us, he knows exactly where we live. Instead of preaching at people, how about putting into practice the teachings of Jesus found in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and Matthew 25? Show us your faith instead of preaching at us. Maybe, just maybe, if you live as if this life and your fellow humans really matter and you want to do all you can to help others — especially the least of these — maybe unbelievers might be inclined to look at Christianity more favorably. As it stands now, Evangelicalism is one of the most hated sects in America. When the world sees Evangelicals filled with the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, maybe they will have a different opinion of Christianity. As it stands now, all I see is an Evangelical preacher who doesn’t think love, forbearance, kindness, goodness, or gentleness are important if they get in the way of preaching the gospel.

After writing this post, I came upon an article by a Roman Catholic extolling being an asshole for Jesus:

We, as a culture, hate insults. We love to accuse people of “verbal abuse” or “hate speech.” Everyone should know better than to insult others. It would be best to completely eradicate insults from all social interactions whatsoever. Why shouldn’t we? Insults are belittling, rude, and may even hurt the feelings of others. All things considered, insults are just plain mean. The very idea of disparaging words serves to send shivers down the spines of even the most resilient souls of our generation.

There are several problems, however, with believing that all insults are bad and should be eradicated.

….

Too many of the souls of this world are running toward the gaping mouth of Hell, and as Christians we are sternly exhorted not to just casually let them go. If we let this God-hating culture tell us when we may speak and when we must be silent, we are rejecting Christ as surely as if we rejected Him in the poor. Our brothers are trying to throw themselves off bridges and in front of buses. If it takes rebukes—or even insults—to stop them, then let us not be afraid of the charity that requires.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Connect with me on social media:

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

You Say You Speak for God

angry preacher

Repost from 2015. Edited, rewritten, and corrected.

Millions upon millions of voices all clamoring at the same time, all uttering the same thing . . .

God says . . .

The Bible (God) says . . .

God is leading me to say . . .

God is telling me to tell you . . .

One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, right?

Get a Baptist and a Catholic in the same room and let them duke it out over One Baptism. Infant baptism, adult convert baptism, or both?

Father, Son, Holy Ghost, and these three are one. Surely everyone agrees? Not me, says the Oneness Pentecostal or the Apostolic.

Baptism saves. It doesn’t save. No, it’s water baptism plus speaking in tongues as evidence of Holy Ghost baptism that saves.

Communion is the Lord’s Supper, Baptists say. Other Christians say it is the Eucharist. Is it really the body of Christ (transubstantiation), is it kind of the real body of Christ (consubstantiation), or is it a memorial? Wine? Welch’s grape juice? Pepsi and Ritz crackers?

Pre-, Mid-, Pre-wrath-, Post-rapture, and tribulation.

Pre-, A-, Post-millennial reign of Christ.

Dispensationalism. Non-dispensationalism. Hyper-dispensationalism.

Calvinism.

Arminianism.

Pelagianism.

Cessationist. Non-cessationist.

The Old Testament is for today. No it’s not.

The gospels are for today. No, they’re not.

New Perspective on Paul. No, Old Perspective.

Pauline or Peterine. Or maybe James is right when he says faith without works is dead?

The Old Testament law is still for today.

No, it’s not.

Yes, it is, but only the Ten Commandants.

No, only Nine Commandments, and maybe the verses on tithing. Got to pay my bills, you know.

Only the words in red matter.

Only what Paul writes matters.

Did Paul write Hebrews?

Did Moses write the Pentateuch?

God created the universe in six literal twenty-four-hour days. No, a day with the Lord is as a thousand years. No, God created the earth with apparent age. No, God used evolution to create our biological world.

Eternal Security. No, perseverance of the saints. No, preservation of the saints.

Can a Christian lose his salvation (fall from grace)?

Can I get my lost salvation back? Yes! No! It depends!

Hell.

Annihilation.

Purgatory.

Sixty-six books in the Protestant Bible. Catholics, Mormons, and Orthodox count differently, but they aren’t Christians, so who the Heaven cares how many books are in their Bible?

So when you say:

God says . . .

The Bible (God) says . . .

God is leading me to say . . .

God is telling me to tell you . . .

Pray tell, why should we believe you?

How do we know that you have the faith once delivered to the saints?

Can you even answer the most basic of questions?

What is salvation? How is a person saved?

By grace?

By faith?

By works?

By faith, plus works?

By faith, plus works, and staying true to the end?

I can choose?

I can’t choose?

God chooses me?

I choose God?

Baptism saves?

Baptism doesn’t save?

You argue endlessly among yourselves, like toddlers fighting over a toy or Donald Trump and Mike Pence fighting over a Kentucky Fried Chicken drumstick.

The Bible SAYS!

God SAYS!

Our church SAYS!

Our confession SAYS!

Our catechism SAYS!

The Pope SAYS!

The Pastor SAYS!

There is one TRUE church and it is ours, countless denominations and churches say.

With us, and Heaven is your home. Against us, and you fry. Choose right, lest ye die and burn forever!

Your lack of unity is the indictment against you.

Your lack of a singular voice is clear to all who can see beyond the threats of Hell and promises of Heaven.

You should not then be shocked when you try to tell non-Christians God says or the Bible says and they smile and turn a deaf ear.

Oh wait, they are deaf because God made them that way.

And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand. (Luke 8:10)

It’s God’s fault.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Connect with me on social media:

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Breaking News: Baptist Men in Texas Riot in the Streets Over Censorship

pornhub

Did you see the news today? Southern Baptist and Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) men in Texas are rioting in the streets over censorship. That’s right, these followers of Jesus are upset over being censored. Recently, Texas passed a law requiring users to document their age with a government ID before accessing porn sites.

USA Today reports:

The HB 1181 law primarily passed by Republicans in the Texas Legislature requires companies that offer “sexual material harmful to minors” to ensure its site’s users are 18 or older with an online system that can verify their government-issued identification or another system that utilizes public and private data.

If porn providers fail to verify a user’s age, and a minor ends up accessing their sites, they could be fined up to $10,000 a day and $250,000. Unable to comply with the law, Pornhub — the world’s largest provider of pornography — decided the best course of action was to block all access to their sites originating from Texas. And this has the Baptists upset. How dare Pornhub block their access to porn! What shall these godly men do between Sunday and Wednesday church services — you know the appointed times when men confess their porn habits and seek forgiveness from God? So, these sexually frustrated men have taken to the streets, demanding full, complete access to their favorite fetishes.

Not really, but let me be clear, Texas Baptists have a big porn problem, so I do not doubt that many preachers and congregants alike are upset that they can’t readily access their secret sin. (Never mind the fact that God allegedly sees everything. Evidently, worshiping a voyeuristic God is not enough to keep believers from surfing Pornhub.)

I hope researchers will take a look at VPN use after the Texas law was passed. I suspect that there was a huge uptick in VPN use among Baptist men — an easy way to avoid Texas’ age verification requirement.

According to 2014 survey commissioned by a nonprofit organization called Proven Men Ministries and conducted by Barna Group among a nationally representative sample of 388 self-identified Christian adult men found:

The statistics for Christian men between 18 and 30 years old are particularly striking:

77 percent look at pornography at least monthly.

36 percent view pornography on a daily basis

32 percent admit being addicted to pornography (and another 12 percent think they may be).

The statistics for middle-aged Christian men (ages 31 to 49) are no less disturbing:

77 percent looked at pornography while at work in the past three months.

64 percent view pornography at least monthly.

18 percent admit being addicted to pornography (and another 8 percent think they may be).

Even married Christian men are falling prey to pornography and extramarital sexual affairs at alarming rates:

55 percent look at pornography at least monthly.

35 percent had an extramarital affair.

jesus better than porn

The Gospel Coalition, the Defenders of True Christianity®, objected to this study’s results, saying:

The first is the Proven Men Porn Survey, a survey conducted in 2014 by Barna Group for Proven Men Ministries, a non-profit Christian organization aimed at helping men with an addiction to pornography.

The survey found that approximately two-thirds (64 percent) of Christian men admit they view pornography at least monthly. Based on that claim, you might be alarmed by the thought that two-thirds of the men who you think are faithfully following Christ are looking at porn at least a dozen times a year. But that’s not really what the survey found.

As with all surveys that rely on self-identification, clearly defining the terms—such as Christians—are essential. Fortunately, Barna does a better job than most other pollsters in this regard.

Barna classifies someone as a Christian if they individual self-identifies as Christian or identify with a Christian denomination (other than Mormons or Jehovah’s Witness). Within that category, Barna identifies individuals as “born again” if they made a personal commitment to Jesus that is still important in their life today and believe that when they die, they will go to heaven because they have confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. Barna classifies individuals who do not meet the criteria of Born Again as “nominal Christians.”

Within the subset of the “born again,” Barna identifies “legacy evangelicals” and “non-evangelical, born again.” Non-evangelical born-again Christians outnumber evangelicals by almost a four-to-one ratio, according to Barna. They are less conservative and less traditional than evangelicals, and seven-times as many claim to be advocates for LGBT rights (27 percent). Little more than half of this group (55 percent) firmly believe that the Bible is accurate in all of the principles it teaches, and fewer than one-third of this group (31 percent) contend they have a responsibility to share their religious beliefs with those who think differently.

Returning to the survey we find that 64 percent men view porn at least once a month (54 percent for born-again Christian men)

About one-third of all self-identified Christian men do not view porn every month. Of those who do, 10 percent are nominal Christians. Of those who are born again, only about 11 percent would be what we’d consider “evangelicals.” (The survey doesn’t appear to have asked about church attendance or denominational affiliation.)

Were these pervert men “real” Christians? The Gospel Coalition asks. This, of course, is their standard answer anytime a study or article makes Evangelicalism look bad. They aren’t real Christians! Nice try. I suspect that there are Gospel Coalition fellows who frequent Pornhub. Jesus is no antidote for porn use.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Connect with me on social media:

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

MAGA is Coming For Our Books, Kitchens, and Children, Especially the Ones Not Wearing Pants

katie britt

By Abby Zimet, Common Dreams, Used by Permission

Talk about a tale of two countries: This election year, with only fervid culture wars to offer, a fear-mongering GOP is hating on books, flags, migrants, rainbows, birth control, scary clown drag queens; electing zealots and bigots; drawing pants on goblins’ butts and turning teachers who support trans kids into sex offenders. And this week, they definitively rejected Biden’s nation of hope and decency with a lying, sociopathic White Mom On the Brink – “There’s bodegas on the corner!” – in “some deeply weird shit.”

With a shambolic GOP House flopping at everything – no evidence of a “Biden crime family,” Hunter’s laptop info came from a Russian spy, they can barely manage to fund the government – zealous patriots and lawmakers in multiple states have eagerly taken up the ugly task of stripping someone’s rights somewhere in the name of “freedom.” In don’t-say-woke Florida, a handful of enthused cranks, bigots and “Moms For Liberty” have challenged hundreds of books – including almost anything with an LGBTQ character and dictionaries, though DeSantis denies it. A recent, witless target was Maurice Sendak’s classic In The Night Kitchen, which they dubbed “pornographic” because little Mickey is naked as he bakes a cake. The solution: draw shorts on him. Ditto the bare backside of the disgruntled goblin in Unicorns Are The Worst – he got pants – and the grandfather in Sofia Valdez, Future Prez, who’s wearing a pin for LGBTQ rights, or was. This, despite lawsuits and enough bad press on threatening librarians with felony charges that even DeSantis has backed off, suggesting “random people” are objecting “to every single book under the sun,” which, yes, they are.

In Georgia, GOP lawmakers would also jail librarians who let kids check out LGBTQ books. In Missouri, which supports child marriage and school spankings, they’ve passed 43 anti-trans bills; a new proposed bill criminalizes teachers who call students by their preferred pronouns or otherwise “contribute to social transition,” if they do, they’d face four years in prison and have to register as sex offenders banned from schools or parks. Having outlawed abortion with no rape or incest exceptions – pregnancy “by God’s grace may (be) the greatest healing agent” – the A.G sued Planned Parenthood for “trafficking” minors out of state for abortions. In Tennessee, the GOP opposes rainbows but is all in on slaves: They banned Pride flags but in seconds declined to ban Confederate flags as proposed by Rep. Justin Pearson, who they also made it easier to expel next time. In North Carolina Holocaust-denying, anti-women’s suffrage, sort of black Mark Robinson, who calls LGBTQ and trans people “sick, deranged, sexual degenerates” and school shooting survivors who want gun control “media prosti-tots,” just got the GOP’s well-funded nod to run for governor.

In honor of and reflecting this worldview, in which the way to achieve greatness is to demean, marginalize and deprive of their rights anyone who looks/thinks differently from you comes dystopian masterpiece of “Patriotic AI Art” America Lives.The creation of “Veteran, Father, Patriot” Joseph Youngbluth and one Jason Coursey – “USA’s pronouns are USA” – they made their lunatic, histrionic video “to support the greatest president of our lifetime (yeah him) and “capture “the essence of (his) vision.” And wow, does it. “The idea of America lives in every one of us,” thunders the narrator. “But a storm has gathered at our shores, a tempest that seeks to tear apart the fabric of our nation.” Cue clouds, mobs, lightning, hobos, looming flames, shrieky music, jackboots, rubble, sandbags, wheat fields, blue-haired Antifa stalking through ruined cities, mohawked drag queens reading to kids (probably In the Night Kitchen) and a “hurricane of deceit and moral decay (that) Has Come for our Children.” Fortuitously, in this “true battle of good vs. evil,” “We are great men with a great leader (who) seeks the same ideals as we do, and sees the greatness in us.” Whew.

Many Americans, we are told, are going wild over this dumbfounding paean. “This literally moved me to tears,” wrote one. “Not just from what we have endured, but because there is still hope to Save America!” Strangely, though, their America was nowhere in sight last week at Biden’s “scrappy,” hopeful, much-praised State of the Union speech, wherein he summoned “the gravest threat to our democracy since the Civil War” and urged insurrectionist Republicans to “speak the truth and bury the lies.” Repeatedly critiquing “my predecessor,” He Who Shall Not Be Named, Biden touted his economic successes, insisted “political violence has absolutely no place in America,” celebrated the “core values” of “Honesty. Decency. Dignity. Equality” to “give everyone a fair shot” and “give hate no safe harbor” – what one optimist called “saving democracy so we can do cool shit” – and, refreshingly, delineated the Dems’ desire to offer “freedom for,” in contrast to paranoid right-wingers’ “freedom from” (voting rights, drag queens etc). Citing the GOP talk of a national ban on reproductive choice, Biden retorted, “My God, what freedoms will you take away next?”

Most shockingly to the right, Biden didn’t dribble, stagger, babble or die in accordance with their narrative he’s so old and dementia-ridden – irony alert – he’s almost comatose. Faced with the need to pivot, and reminding us how execrable they are, they quickly came up with a new, evidence-free, doused-in-irony-if they-knew-what-it-was narrative: Biden was “pumped full of god-knows-what drugs!” “Plot twist: It was Joe Biden’s cocaine in the White House!” one screeched, and, “What drugs have they shot him up with? This is not how normal people talk.” Hannity got into the act by conjuring up a new tagline, “Jacked-Up Joe.” Even friggin’ Dr. Ronny ‘Feel Good’ Jackson did – “Whatever they gave to Biden is wearing off! He is struggling big time!” – fresh off a Pentagon report that confirmed allegations he handed out drugs like Skittles at the White House, and his subsequent demotion from admiral to captain. Still Joe charged on, dismissing their “American story of resentment, revenge and retribution.” “That’s not me,” he said, rejecting “the oldest of ideas…You can’t lead (with) ideas that only take us back.” (Later, he did take back his “illegal,” so thanks for that.)

His predecessor, meanwhile, took himself back to a bored 14-year-old bully throwing a hissy fit in detention who nattered through four dozen rants online, sank to re-posting some MAGA moron’s spliced Snapchat filters turning Biden into a goofy cartoon, a girl with pigtails, a slobbery dog etc before finally, laughably declaring Biden “an Embarrassment to our Country!” R-i-g-h-t. There were many others, of course: MTG Three-Toes turned up in full, red, gaudy NASCAR/MAGA regalia, looking like “something pumped out of a trailer park septic tank. Pure trash.” But in the oh-lord-how-long-will-it-go-on GOP Ignominy Sweepstakes, nobody can compete with deeply weird, kitchen-bound, fundie-baby-voiced Worst Lifetime Movie Actress Ever Sen. Katie Britt, who in her SOTU “rebuttal” tearfully swept together Twilight Zone, Birth of a Nation, SNL and a KKK revival meeting to paint a florid MAGA portrait of Trump’s American Carnage, a hellscape of rampaging migrants, struggling families and terrified communities in what was savaged as “the worst acting, ever.” One plaintive query: “Can these people not even pretend to be normal for a few minutes on television?” Not.

The junior senator from Alabama, abortion opponent, Christian nationalist – “We need to get God back in our classrooms” – and former corporate lobbyist spoke from the evidently not real “kitchen” – women love kitchen – of the 6,300-square-foot home she shares with her former NFL player/now lobbyist husband Wesley, daughter Bennett and son Ridgeway – “My daughter Chippendale and my son Marblehead” – “living their American dream, but right now the American dream has turned into (yes!) a nightmare.” In the hushed, breathless whisper fundamentalist women use to convey their requisite, childlike submissiveness – but veering wildly to tearfulness and a creepy fake smile – she declared Biden “out of touch” with “what real families are facing around the kitchen table like this one, where we laugh together and hold each other’s hands and pray for guidance” as they see “the nation slipping away,” because brown people. Also, “We are steeped in the blood of patriots, we walk in the footsteps of pioneers who tamed the wild (and) got knocked down and Stood Back Up,” “Destiny’s Hand,” “moms and dads Just Like You”, “INNOCENT AMERICANS ARE DYING STOP THE SUFFERING.”

Her “handlers,” it was widely noted, “tried to give us ‘America’s mom,”‘ but got the crazy aunt at Thanksgiving who only wants to talk about sex dungeons under pizza parlors. The weirdness and fakery was too much. The response was withering, the parodies flew. She was giving Lifetime TV serial killer mom vibes. This lady is GOP AI. Holy cringe. Is this an infomercial? Is she crying Demonic drama. The kitchen whisperer. State of the carmelized onion. She nuts. She big mad. Is she still crying? Where are the normal people? Evil June Cleaver. Make actors great again. Fellow white moms, are you feeling me? That is the kitchen of a psychopath. Boiling rabbit is next. Stepford Wives. Handmaid’s Tale. Gilead. My Name Is Katie Britt and I Am SingingTomorrow From Annie. Goodness, y’all, bless her heart. Are we watching a hostage video? I wanna fight for you, and by you I mean people who look like me. The Young and the Congressional. Wesley come get your wife, my guy, she’s embarrassing you and your kids. Am I crying? If I am, it’s because of brown people at the border. Empty chairs tonight at kitchen tables Just…Like…This…One. Big finish, fadeout.

Most unforgivably, as uncovered by freelance journalist Jonathan M. Katz, her salacious story about Mexican cartels repeatedly raping a sex-trafficked 12-year-old girl was a cynical, exploitative, “beyond misleading” ploy to turn someone’s real-life pain and horror into a GOP talking point to convince other racists that every dark-skinned person who turns up at the border fleeing violence in their own country is a sex-trafficking cartel rapist and/or a fentanyl salesman. Britt charged Biden’s border policy had “invited” such atrocities; in fact, the story belonged to a Mexican woman who was trafficked and raped in Mexico during George Bush’s tenure, escaped, became an anti-trafficking activist, bravely testified to Congress in 2015 about her harrowing experiences, and today insists what she does should not be political: “The work I do is not a game.” Not only did Britt co-opt the story into “an out and out lie” to serve her own sordid political purposes; she did so on behalf of a sexually assaulting candidate whose policies, when in power, made it harder to curb trafficking and protect victims, pushing traumatized survivors “further into the shadows.”

Some good, however, did come of Britt’s grotesque duplicity: In divided and rancorous times, she brought both sides together in agreement that “her performance was the stuff of nightmares.” “Everyone’s fucking losing it,” said a GOP operative. “It’s one of our biggest disasters ever,” from a kitchen yet. Other reviews: “She was clearly over-coached,” “her delivery was parody-level terrible,” “the experience (of watching) was… experiential,” and from legal analyst Andrew Weissmann, “I don’t think Katie Britt is going to get the lead in the school play this year.” Since then, she got spoofed on SNL and asked to apologize for her lies: “God calls on us to do hard things.” But her spokesman defended the trafficking story as “100% correct,” she got fawning, surreal support from Fox and Friends – “Great job – it all seemed so natural” – and Hannity even as she smilingly doubled down on Biden’s “rage-filled, incoherent” speech, prattled, “We care about faith, family, freedom,” and blamed “liberal media” for…something: “It is disgusting of trying to silence the voice of telling the story of what is like to be sex-trafficked.” Behold, and beware: Alternative facts, worlds, universes are alive and well amongst a despicable people.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Connect with me on social media:

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Is World War III Looming on The Horizon?

WW III

— By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Naked Capitalism, Are We Stumbling Into World War III in Ukraine?

President Biden began his State of the Union speech with an impassioned warning that failing to pass his $61 billion dollar weapons package for Ukraine “will put Ukraine at risk, Europe at risk, the free world at risk.” But even if the president’s request were suddenly passed, it would only prolong, and dangerously escalate, the brutal war that is destroying Ukraine.

The assumption of the U.S. political elite that Biden had a viable plan to defeat Russia and restore Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders has proven to be one more triumphalist American dream that has turned into a nightmare. Ukraine has joined North Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and now Gaza, as another shattered monument to America’s military madness.

This could have been one of the shortest wars in history, if President Biden had just supported a peace and neutrality agreement negotiated in Turkey in March and April 2022 that already had champagne corks popping in Kyiv, according to Ukrainian negotiator Oleksiy Arestovych. Instead, the U.S. and NATO chose to prolong and escalate the war as a means to try to defeat and weaken Russia.

Two days before Biden’s State of the Union speech, Secretary of State Blinken announced the early retirement of Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, one of the officials most responsible for a decade of disastrous U.S. policy toward Ukraine.

Two weeks before the announcement of Nuland’s retirement at the age of 62, she acknowledged in a talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) that the war in Ukraine had degenerated into a war of attrition that she compared to the First World War, and she admitted that the Biden administration had no Plan B for Ukraine if Congress doesn’t cough up $61 billion for more weapons.

….

The imperative must be to chart a path back from this hopeless but ever-escalating war of attrition to the negotiating table that the U.S. and Britain upended in April 2022 – or at least to new negotiations on the basis that President Zelenskyy defined on March 27, 2022, when he told his people, “Our goal is obvious: peace and the restoration of normal life in our native state as soon as possible.”

Instead, on February 26, in a very worrying sign of where NATO’s current policy is leading, French President Emmanuel Macron revealed that European leaders meeting in Paris discussed sending larger numbers of Western ground troops to Ukraine.

Macron pointed out that NATO members have steadily increased their support to levels unthinkable when the war began. He highlighted the example of Germany, which offered Ukraine only helmets and sleeping bags at the outset of the conflict and is now saying Ukraine needs more missiles and tanks. “The people that said “never ever” today were the same ones who said never ever planes, never ever long-range missiles, never ever trucks. They said all that two years ago,” Macron recalled. “We have to be humble and realize that we (have) always been six to eight months late.”

Macron implied that, as the war escalates, NATO countries may eventually have to deploy their own forces to Ukraine, and he argued that they should do so sooner rather than later if they want to recover the initiative in the war.

The mere suggestion of Western troops fighting in Ukraine elicited an outcry both within France–from extreme right National Rally to leftist La France Insoumise–and from other NATO countries. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz insisted that participants in the meeting were “unanimous” in their opposition to deploying troops. Russian officials warned that such a step would mean war between Russia and NATO.

But as Poland’s president and prime minister headed to Washington for a White House meeting on February 12, Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski told the Polish parliament that sending NATO troops into Ukraine “is not unthinkable.”

Macron’s intention may have been precisely to bring this debate out into the open and put an end to the secrecy surrounding the undeclared policy of gradual escalation toward full-scale war with Russia that the West has pursued for two years.

Macron failed to mention publicly that, under current policy, NATO forces are already deeply involved in the war. Among many lies that President Biden told in his State of the Union speech, he insisted that “there are no American soldiers at war in Ukraine.”

However, the trove of Pentagon documents leaked in March 2023 included an assessment that there were already at least 97 NATO special forces troops operating in Ukraine, including 50 British, 14 Americans and 15 French. Admiral John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, has also acknowledged a “small U.S. military presence” based in the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv to try to keep track of thousands of tons of U.S. weapons as they arrive in Ukraine.

But many more U.S. forces, whether inside or outside Ukraine, are involved in planning Ukrainian military operations; providing satellite intelligence; and play essential roles in the targeting of U.S. weapons. A Ukrainian official told the Washington Post that Ukrainian forces hardly ever fire HIMARS rockets without precise targeting data provided by U.S. forces in Europe.

All these U.S. and NATO forces are most definitely “at war in Ukraine.” To be at war in a country with only small numbers of “boots on the ground” has been a hallmark of 21st Century U.S. war-making, as any Navy pilot on an aircraft-carrier or drone operator in Nevada can attest. It is precisely this doctrine of “limited” and proxy war that is at risk of spinning out of control in Ukraine, unleashing the World War III that President Biden has vowed to avoid.

The United States and NATO have tried to keep the escalation of the war under control by deliberate, incremental escalation of the types of weapons they provide and cautious, covert expansion of their own involvement. This has been compared to “boiling a frog,” turning up the heat gradually to avoid any sudden move that might cross a Russian “red line” and trigger a full-scale war between NATO and Russia. But as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned in December 2022, “If things go wrong, they can go horribly wrong.”

We have long been puzzled by these glaring contradictions at the heart of U.S. and NATO policy. On one hand, we believe President Biden when he says he does not want to start World War III. On the other hand, that is what his policy of incremental escalation is inexorably leading towards.

U.S. preparations for war with Russia are already at odds with the existential imperative of containing the conflict. In November 2022, the Reed-Inhofe Amendment to the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) invoked wartime emergency powers to authorize an extraordinary shopping-list of weapons like the ones sent to Ukraine, and approved billion-dollar, multi-year no-bid contracts with weapons manufacturers to buy 10 to 20 times the quantities of weapons that the United States had actually shipped to Ukraine.

Retired Marine Colonel Mark Cancian, the former chief of the Force Structure and Investment Division in the Office of Management and Budget, explained, “This isn’t replacing what we’ve given [Ukraine]. It’s building stockpiles for a major ground war [with Russia] in the future.”

So the United States is preparing to fight a major ground war with Russia, but the weapons to fight that war will take years to produce, and, with or without them, that could quickly escalate into a nuclear war. Nuland’s early retirement could be the result of Biden and his foreign policy team finally starting to come to grips with the existential dangers of the aggressive policies she championed.

….

Reuters Moscow Bureau reported that Russia spent months trying to open new negotiations with the United States in late 2023, but that, in January 2024, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan slammed that door shut with a flat refusal to negotiate over Ukraine.

The only way to find out what Russia really wants, or what it will settle for, is to return to the negotiating table. All sides have demonized each other and staked out maximalist positions, but that is what nations at war do in order to justify the sacrifices they demand of their people and their rejection of diplomatic alternatives.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Connect with me on social media:

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

A Reminder that American Workers Are Just an Entry on a Spreadsheet, Easily Deleted or Replaced

fired

Two weeks ago, Polly’s boss, his boss, the head of human resources, and another man showed up unannounced at Polly’s office promptly at 6:00 pm start time, to inform her and her fellow employees that they were fired; effective March 28, 2024, their department was no more due to company restructuring, and their work outsourced to a private cleaning company. Polly later found out that one department employee was retained — a man. All the fired employees were women.

Polly worked for the company for twenty-seven years, NEVER tardy or missing work. Widely praised for her work ethic, Polly learned that being loyal to her employer didn’t matter; that all her hard work didn’t matter; that her high work standards didn’t matter. Five years ago, the company outsourced some of her department. At the time, I told her that this was a warning sign; and that there would come a day when the company, for financial reasons, would outsource the rest of her department’s employees. That time has come. Polly has learned that in a capitalistic system, she is just a line entry on a spreadsheet, one that was entered twenty-seven years ago, and with a couple of keystrokes will be deleted on March 28.

The company, for years, advertised itself as the “preferred place to work.” And it was until it wasn’t. Numerous benefits have either been cut or done away with altogether. Health insurance premiums have skyrocketed, as annual deductible and maximum out-of-pocket amounts have dramatically increased, all the while pay raises were nominal, if at all, never keeping up with inflation. Nowadays, it is easy to find companies offering better wages and benefits. The company has become just another place to work.

The company is non-union. The argument back in the day was that the wages and benefits were such that a union wasn’t needed. Those days are long gone. If the company was union, Polly would still have a job. Instead, the company can fire whomever they want, and it makes perfect sense in a capitalistic system to get rid of “expensive” employees: long-tenured workers who cost more in wages and benefits. It is a hell of a lot cheaper to have a twenty-five-year-old employee compared to a sixty-six-year-old employee. Age and insurance costs can’t legally be used as continued employment criteria, but I do not doubt that Polly’s age and our family’s high insurance costs were factors in deciding to let her go.

Let me be clear, the company is having serious financial problems. I understand that it must cut millions of dollars of expenses if there is any hope for its survival. Market forces, Trump’s tariffs, runaway insurance costs, and import pressures have put the company in an untenable position. Unfortunately, when a company’s survival is at stake, there’s no time to consider what is best for individual employees and their families. The books must be balanced and, unfortunately, Polly and her fellow employees had to go.

Polly was “offered” other employment opportunities within the company. However, all but one of the jobs she is unable to physically do. This, of course, keeps the company from having to pay unemployment. Ohio is an at-will state. Employers can fire non-union workers for any reason. By offering Polly other employment, the company avoids paying unemployment if she refuses the offered jobs. Again, capitalism at its best.

Polly has several interviews over the next week. One was today. $4 an hour pay cut, with awful — might as well be non-existent — benefits. Family insurance costs? Almost $900 a month, with an annual $6,000 deductible and $14,700 maximum out of pocket. Polly has another interview on Monday with the private company that took over her department. Better wage, uncertain on insurance cost. She would still be a manager, with more employees working under her. Polly may have an opportunity to transfer to a subsidiary of the company she currently works for. This, of course, would be the best course of action, but I am not convinced that Polly can physically do the work. It might be one of those “try it and see” kinds of jobs.

The short-term effects are brutal. In two weeks, Polly will no longer work for the company. On that day, her insurance benefits will cease. This means that the surgery I have scheduled at the University of Michigan is off. We will have to start paying for our prescriptions, office visits, bloodwork, etc. We will likely be eligible for some government assistance, but Polly has to be out of work before we can apply for it. Worse, years ago the company went from a weekly to a biweekly pay schedule. At the time, they advanced employees one check to cover the pay change. Of course, it was understood that this advance would be collected when the employee was no longer employed by the company. That payday has arrived.

Polly and I have weathered many crises in our almost forty-six years of marriage. I am sixty-six and Polly is sixty-five. We are grizzled veterans in this thing called “life.” We will weather this challenge too, although we may have to make serious cuts to our finances and standard of living. One thing being poor has taught us, we know how to do without. We know how to slash the budget and live on Aldi boxed macaroni and cheese. That said, we prefer to maintain our lifestyle without interruption. Unfortunately, no one asked what we wanted — so here we are.

Polly is brokenhearted over how the company treated her. She naively believed that if she did well by the company, they would do the same for her. As someone with a lot of experience in the business world — mainly in managerial positions — I knew better; that companies, when it comes to profitability and stock share prices, don’t give a shit about their employees. All that matters is the bottom line. Yea! for capitalism. Polly has only had three jobs in our forty-six years of marriage. She has no real-world experience with how companies operate and how employees are treated. I know better, having watched numerous businesses (and churches) shit all over me and other employees. Thus, I am angry. Livid over how Polly was treated; livid over their lack of regard for her as a person; livid over how the company caused us grief with nary a thought. I am sure her boss felt bad, but what else could he do? His boss, HR, and upper management said Polly and her fellow employees had to go. His job was to facilitate what his higher-ups wanted.

Some aspects of all of this could violate employment law, but age or sex discrimination is almost impossible to prove. As someone who has hired and fired hundreds of people, I know it is easy to hide your true motivations for dismissing someone. A bigger issue is that two of our children still work for the company. Raising hell over this would likely cause them problems, and we certainly don’t want to do that. So, it is time for Polly to move on . . .

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Connect with me on social media:

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Bruce Gerencser