This could be the shortest post I have ever written. Not really. Remember, I was a preacher for twenty-five years. I always have something to say on a subject. That said, the short answer to this question is this: absolutely nothing. I have no recollection of my pastors or my professors at Midwestern Baptist College ever mentioning atheism or atheists. In the 1970s and 1980s, the enemies of Evangelicalism — particularly in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement — were: liberalism, the Southern Baptist Convention, modern Bible translations, situational ethics, and sexual immorality. The culture war fueled by Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority was all the rage. I heard lots of sermons about abortion and prayer/Bible reading in schools, but not atheism proper. At times, atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s name would come up in sermons, but only in the context of the aforementioned culture war issues.
I pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years. I can’t recall preaching one sermon on atheism. I mentioned O’Hair on occasion, but not her atheism per se. In fact, I didn’t know any atheists. As far as I know, no atheist ever attended one of the churches I pastored. Were there atheists in the midst? Sure, just like there were LGBTQ people too. Such “abhorrent” beliefs and identities were, however, hidden — deeply buried in the proverbial Fundamentalist closet.
There is one atheist story I would like to share with readers, a humorous conclusion to this post. During my freshman year of college, a fellow dorm student and I were out knocking on doors one Saturday, hoping to find someone willing to let us share the gospel with them. Students were required to go soulwinning every week. And then we were required to report our evangelistic endeavors to the college. Many students, myself included, lied about how many doors they knocked on, how many people they led to the Lord. During the three years I attended Midwestern, I led a total of two people to Christ. I was, when it came to winning souls, a failure.
As my friend and I went from door to door in a Pontiac neighborhood, we had little to no success when it came to the “souls saved” department. What happened next, however, left an indelible impression on two virgin Baptist preachers-to-be. First, as we walked up the sidewalk to the next house, we noticed a number of squirrels in the yard. All of a sudden, one of the squirrels ran for my friend, jumped on his leg, and proceeded to scale his tall frame before jumping off his shoulder. Once we regained our composure, we walked up to the door and knocked. I should note before I tell the rest of this story, that locals were frequently harassed by Midwestern students. Imagine, being up late on Friday night, only to have a couple of Bible thumpers banging on your front door first thing in the morning. Many of us went soulwinning early on Saturdays so we could have the rest of the day to ourselves. It was the one day when I could spend significant time with my wife-to-be.
Then, as we knocked on the door, we heard people scuffling inside. Soon the door opened, and standing there stark naked were a man and a woman. My fellow dorm mate and I were speechless — I mean dumbstruck. Before either of us could start our soulwinning spiel, the man said, “we’re atheists, and we are not interested in what you have to say.” And with that and a laugh, the man shut the door.
This would be my first and last interaction with an atheist until I started reading books by atheist and agnostic authors in 2008. I still haven’t met many atheists in person. Most of my interaction with godless people has come through this blog and social media.
As a Christian, did you know any atheists? Did your pastor ever preach about atheism? Please share your experiences in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and 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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In the coffee room at work, I once asked “What do you call an atheist who attends church?” One of my colleagues replied “the organist.”
Need I mention that my colleague was an avid organist.
My brother’s first wife was an atheist, but she was and still is dear to me. And her daughter grew up and also is an atheist. Good people, caring about others. So I did know 2 then. Now, of course, I’m related to several atheists. It’s all good.
As the child of IFB (Inherently Full of Bullshit) sales-folk (dad a preacher and mom, a preacher’s daughter), I did NOT know atheists at all but was made well-aware that my Roman Catholic neighbors might as well be called atheists because they were praying to Mary, worshipped idols, thought the Pope was God and so forth. I felt that if I ever met an atheist, I might catch IT and be doomed. I knew they were out there helping the Devil deceive us children of God, even when we were still under 10 years old! Did I ever meet an atheist? Hell no!
(That being said, we kids played like atheists, I guess and stole candy from Guttridge’s corner store, and participated in torturing weaker bipeds and learned swear words… Yeah, we were already deceived by the evil one but didn’t miss Sunday School and have the Five Year lapel medals to prove it! Bona-fide, heaven-bound!)
Wait there was one guy, a hobo who was directed to our house to ask for a handout and who sat in our living room and smoked a cigarette, flicking the ashes into his pant-cuffs (remember those?) He might have been an atheist. He sure wasn’t Baptist-saved!
He got a sandwich on white bread, I think (and a lot of wide-eyed staring from us kids.)
The neighborhood in which I grew up was almost entirely Roman Catholic, and I attended Catholic school. The only non-Catholics we knew were Jewish, probably Reform or Conservative. The Jewish people we knew were assimilated—they even celebrated Christmas!—and, if anything, we saw them as eccentric: I don’t recall any overt anti-Semitism.
I think I first heard of atheism, ironically, in a social studies class just after my family moved to New Jersey. The context was a lesson about the Soviet Union: The teacher was giving us the comic-book version of its official ideologies, which included atheism. Even though the world was deep into the Cold War, he didn’t try to paint Communism or atheism as things of “the enemy;” rather, he seemed to have a condescending attitude toward them.
I first met in-the-flesh atheists—or, at least, I first heard people openly state their non-belief—when, you guessed it, I got involved with a Christian group in college and started to proselytize. My attempts at evangelism were, as you might expect, about as successful as my attempts to live as a heterosexual tough-guy. (I’m a trans woman who began my transition much later.)
The biggest irony in my evangelical endeavors is that they were part of an effort to hold onto a faith I was losing: I allowed some folks who “spoke in tongues “ to lay hands on me, and I prayed with their group in the hope that I would be healed—of my depression and anxiety.
Brian, I love your story. Reading it, I realized this: Even when I was living as a Catholic and Evangelical, to almost any other Christian, I was an atheist, in effect if not fact. I think Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs actually respect Catholics more than the Fundangelicals do.
MJ said: “Even when I was living as a Catholic and Evangelical, to almost any other Christian, I was an atheist, in effect if not fact…”
When I remember back to those childhood days, I recall how much I liked my RC buddy. He was my best friend then and I could easily overlook his religious views because they were not, after all, pragmatically relevant in our friendship. Belief systems are imposed on children and when they play among themselves, religion/belief are nothing to them. They are gifted with freedom, freedom to be… This freedom is what believers-of-a-sort/priests-of-a-sort must cure them of, correct so that they believe, properly believe. Later in my youth after I moved away from my friend, I began to prEy for him.
I worked in a university biochemistry lab for 8 years, so I am pretty sure I knew a lot of atheists but never asked them if they were! Heck, I don’t think our church understood atheists at all, instead characterizing them as mean people who know God is real but are mad at him for some reason so pretend like they don’t believe. Lol. That could not be further from the truth….
And yet, OC, it seems like the angry mean people turn out to be the fundies. Funny that.
I love the story about the naked atheists. No doubt they were hoping to eliminate further annoying Saturday door knocking by answering the door naked.
I’ve never debated door to door soul winners, but my friend’s dad (who was in fact the first atheist I ever met) would invite them in and debate them.