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Bruce, Are Your Wife and Children Atheists?

gerencser family 2018

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 wife and children believe about God/Jesus/Christianity/Atheism. This blog is simply one man with a story to tell. Where the lives of my family intersect with the telling of 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. 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 briefly answer Bob’s questions.

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-four 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-two years. I can count on two hands the days we have been apart from one another. 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 currently 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 that 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. Twelve years later, I wish I could say that all these difficulties are gone, but there remains some tension over my outspokenness on matters of God, Bible, and faith. While my family is happy to be free of the family patriarch, some of them don’t seem to want to grant their mother and me the same freedom. Such is the tension that will always be there when a family is an admixture of religious beliefs and unbelief.

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 burning 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.

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’s she is an unbeliever today because I am. Out of all the things that people have said about us over the past twelve years, this by far is the most offensive (and perhaps Bob didn’t mean to be offensive, so I am going 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 thirteen grandchildren. Currently, one of our sons attends a Fundamentalist Baptist church, 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 an agnostic or an atheist, they are certainly anti-Evangelical and generally adverse to the machinations of American Christianity. Politically, outside of the son who attends a Fundamentalist Baptist church, 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 decided to tell their story, I hope they will let me publish it here.

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

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4 Comments

  1. Avatar
    MJ Lisbeth

    Bruce–I have heard Evangelical (and other religious) couples say that God drew them together or “called” them to marry. Would you and Polly have described your relationship that way when you got together all those years ago? And, if you did feel that God brought you together, how do you see your union with Polly now?

    Remember, I am an atheist and haven’t been married in a long time, so I am not trying to judge your relationship or whether you were “really” Christian. I am just curious.

  2. Avatar
    ObstacleChick

    I would like to ask other couples who traveled the road from religion to non belief about their journeys – whether they took a journey together sharing resources and knowledge or whether they traveled individually. However, I don’t know any others to ask. My husband and I started from different religious upbringings, different levels of religiosity, different sects. We are both atheists who arrived at that place in different ways. My husband studied the universe, its vastness, etc, and decided that Christianity couldn’t be true. I studied how the Bible was written, what influences there were on burgeoning Christianity, and I decided it couldn’t be true. There was a span of time where my husband was more in the atheist camp and I wasn’t there yet – and we both gave each other the room to explore. So yeah, 2 people in the same household can change from religious to atheist.

  3. Avatar
    AHR

    ObstacleChick — I get a good bit out of your comments and want to thank you for taking time to write. My husband and I both deconverted at about the same time. We were raised in Southern Baptist homes — going to church every time the doors were open, etc. His family later became Independent Fundamental Baptists and followed the teachings of Bill Gothard. I moved away from home to go to college and started attending the church his family (my husband was in the military and stationed overseas at this point) went to which was an independent Baptist church though I didn’t really understand what that meant. Anyway, I got to know his family, they introduced us, we decided God had brought us together, etc., and we married after about 11 months of long-distance courtship. We became entrenched in the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement while overseas and continued in that vein once we were stationed back in the U.S. We got our fill of that after about 12 years. Then we went to a church was nominally Baptist but more like an independent cult. After several years, we realized what we had gotten ourselves into and left that church. We were not in church for a couple of years but still believed the basic tenets of Christianity. We tried a few churches of different flavors. My husband became a Catholic, stayed in the Church about a year, and then declared himself an atheist. I came close to becoming a Catholic but could never convince myself their doctrine was true. I attended a Methodist church for a while. During this time, our younger daughter came out as part of the LGBTQ+ community. Our other daughter had had severe intellectual and physical problems for years. I had to really grapple with things that I had always been taught were true but had questioned for a long time in regards to my children. I basically allowed myself to acknowledge that a god that is good and who loves us would not “allow” or “cause” a person to have the disabilities that my older daughter has as part of his “plan”. There is no “plan” good enough to justify such suffering. And, there is no god who would allow people to be born gay or bi or whatever and then doom them to hell for it. And, if there is such a deity, I want no part of him/her/it. My husband was thinking the same things when he left Catholicism and embraced atheism though he will tell you that even though he called himself an atheist, he still believed in god for a while. He was actually not “there is no god”; he was more “I hate god.” It took me longer than my husband to abandon organized religion. I knew it would cause a lot of trouble with our families, and it is really hard to turn your back on something that has been such a huge part of your life for 40+ years. We lost a lot, but at least we’re free to use our brains and accept the world as it is.

  4. Avatar
    apostatedaughter

    Thank you, Bruce. So thought provoking, as always. Your essay brought our own family’s saga to mind. It was really our kids who ultimately opened our eyes, after nearly a full lifetime in fundamentalism:

    Came the day when both my husband and I realized that we — and not our pastor / missionary parents (all of who converted in) — were hardwired from birth in fundamentalism in a way that was a clamp on the brain so tight that we woke up every day feeling guilty if we were not living every single moment for Jesus. Married at the ripe old age of 20, most of our ‘dates’ had consisted of sitting extremely close in church together. By the end of our first year of marriage he had been elected to the Church Board. I now realize it was because we never said ‘no’ to anything we were asked to do.

    We were the ones convinced from childhood that we would never reach adulthood, that we had to evangelize the world and usher in the Rapture. It was on us. Our parents were less passionate and were content to let us teach the Sunday school classes no one else would take (I started with the 2’s at age 10), do the door-to-door canvassing, the camps, lead rescue mission services (at their insistence–would be good for us), me a teen girl in a dress (no pants in church, girls) pounding out hymns as the men all stared at my back while my young boyfriend tried to get them to join in from the little pulpit. (They had to sit through the service to be able to eat the dinner that night–which we were required to stay for–show an example of living for Jesus, kids.) We went on to spend our early marriage years at church every weekend, our summers leading camps and VBS, our childrearing lives taking the kids to everything, and being proud of never missing a service. Fortunately we had also gotten our bachelor’s degrees at a secular (public) university in those years as well and thinking became very important to us. We went into public education though we were criticized for selling out to the ‘secular humanism’ in the schools.

    All the while we somehow taught our kids to think, to be readers, to question. We just didn’t know it would extend to evaluating the indoctrination we were too ingrained in to see for ourselves. Our kids were hurt by the church’s authoritarian youth pastor and his control of them and, most importantly, others. They, being empaths, saw it well before we did. As time went on, we left the church of our youth and began to grow out of our indoctrination. Over a few years time they became agnostic and we respected their right not to go to church. As time went on we changed as well. Our politics changed and, of necessity, our lives changed. Came the day we realized we had studied our way into a serene and positive atheism. It was ok not to believe any of it. Those who had seen us in leadership in the church for all those decades could not understand, still do not and we have now become nothing in their eyes. But life for us is more satisfying than it ever was in the conflict ridden days of church life.

    I still wake up every day and work through the old indoctrination. Like farm work I settle it all and find joy in following simple routines that keep me grounded in reason and logic. No gods, no superstitions, no bumps in the night I now say. And, a far better moral ethic than my faith ever gave. (I now longer condemn anyone to a hell–or a heaven–for instance.)

    Interesting that as life went on, our parents aged out, tragedies occurred, old age for them was not the path “shining more and more unto that perfect day” but an agonizing reckoning with loss, trauma, rejection, indifference by those they thought had given their lives to. It was us, the church worker bees of our families, who took care of the details, saw them through, and became guardians, POA’s, worked with agencies to make the uncomfortable details of their lives work. The siblings thought prayer would be enough and gave the credit to The Lord.

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