Hundreds of people a day come to this site via Google/Bing searches — 45,000 in the last three months. What follows is twenty searches that brought people to this site and my answers to their questions.
Has Ray Boltz returned to Christ?
Please see Evangelicals and the Gay Closet: Is Ray Boltz Still a Christian?
Boltz never returned to Christ because he never left him. Boltz has always claimed the Christian moniker. What Evangelicals wrongly assume is that when Boltz came out as a gay man he lost his faith or stopped being a Christian. This is not true.
Is it okay to masturbate after you have been baptized?
Sure, but not while you are in the baptismal pool. Gross!
The question reveals the fact that the masturbation question continus to vex Evangelical Christians. Most Evangelical preachers believe masturbation is a sin. I suspect the person asking this question wonders if his sexual wants, needs, and desires are supposed to change after he’s saved/baptized. The short answer is no. Masturbation is a normal, healthly biological act. I would not attend a church that demonises masturbation (or sex between consenting adults, married or not). What people do in the privacy of their bedroom is no one’s business but theirs.
How do Independent Baptists discipline their children?
Generally, Independendent Fundamentalist Baptists (IFB) follow what they call “Biblical discipline” — the use of corporal punishment to discipline children. I am of the opinion that beating/hitting/spanking children is child abuse (though there are certainly degrees of the violence used by IFB parents to keep their children in line).
Please see Does the Bible Command Parents to Beat Their Children?, Why Do So Many Evangelicals Abuse Their Children?, and Lori Alexander Says Beating Children is God’s Approved Way of Controlling Children.
How do preachers get such strong faith?
They don’t. Preachers are just better at faking “strong faith” than their congregants. Practice makes perfect, right?
Is Maren Morris a Christian?
While Maren Morris uses a lot of Christian/Church imagery in her music, it is unclear whether she is actually a Christian. Her music does show that she has intimate knowedge about the workings of southern Evangelical Christianity.
Please see Songs of Sacrilege: My Church by Maren Morris
Will [Christian] women go to Heaven after they die?
While the Bible teaches all Christians go to Heaven after they die (or after the general resurrection, depending on your theology), it also teaches that there will be no women in Heaven.
Please see Will There be Any Women in Heaven? Hint, the Answer is No!
Is Kenny Bishop gay?
Yes.
Kenny Bishop grew up in an Evangelical home in Waco, Kentucky. As a teen, Kenny joined with his father and brother Mark to form the southern gospel group The Bishops. For the next eighteen years, The Bishops traveled the country singing at churches, concert venues, and conventions.
Bishop left the family group in 2001, began working for several politicians, and went through a divorce from his wife of fifteen years. Kenny is now a married gay man and a bivocational pastor at Bluegrass United Church of Christ in Lexington, Kentucky.
Please see Southern Gospel Singer Kenny Bishop is Now a Gay United Church of Christ Pastor
Is Kenny Bishop a Christian?
Yes. Please see the previous question. Do Evangelicals think Bishop is a Christian? Absolutely not. Being gay is one of the many unpardonable sins in the Evangelical church.
What should matter is whether Kenny Bishop is happy. By all accounts he is. I wish him well. The Bishops were one of my favorite southern gospel groups back in my Evangelical days. I still listen to them today from time to time.
If Jesus is a myth, why are people willing to die for him?
People are willing to die for all sorts of lies, including religious ones. The mere fact that people are willing to die for their faith doesn’t prove that their faith is true; personally true to them, perhaps, but not true on an evidentiary basis.
Is Stalin in Hell?
Sadly, no. Hell is a myth, a religious construct used to instill fear in people or give the appearance of some sort of divine cosmic justice in the world.
Please see The Horrors of the Evangelical Hell.
Did Jesus have human parents?
Yes, Joseph and Mary. There is a rumor floating around that says God, the Holy Spirit, raped and impregnated Mary, but science tells us that Jesus had two very human parents.
Does the Bible say who can be refused entrance into Heaven?
Yes.
Please see It’s in the Bible: Who Won’t be in Heaven.
Why are Ohioans such douchebags?
Good question. 🙂
Why are women not allowed to wear pants?
Because the Bible says so.
Please see Is it a Sin for Women to Wear Pants?
Why do people think Bethel Church is a cult?
If a church walks, talks, and acts like a cult, it is a cult.
Please see Bethel Redding: A Dangerous Evangelical Cult and Do You Really Have to Ask if Bethel Redding is a Cult?
Were Cain and Abel White or Black?
Race is a social construct based on skin pigmentation. If Adam and Eve are the first two human beings, that means every race comes from them. Think about that for a moment, Evangelicals.
Please see The Curse of Cain: Why Blacks Have Dark Skin.
What do pastors and their wives do behind closed doors?
I ain’t telling. 🙂 I will tell you this much: whatever you do behind closed doors, pastors and their wives do the same (if they are so inclined). Trust me when I say, pastors and their wives aren’t special or different from their congregants or the unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines of the world.
Where does the Bible say your works are as filthy rags?
But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. (Isaiah 64:6)
Please see The Bible Says Our Good Works are as Filthy Rags.
Why are Evangelical Christians fucking assholes?
Certainty breeds arrogance, and arrogance breeds superiority and self-righteousness. Further, Bible literalism forces Evangelicals to adopt hateful beliefs — especially towards people outside of their sect.
This blog is a running commentary on the assholery of Evangelical Christians. If Evangelicals don’t want to be viewed as Assholes for Jesus, they need to change their behavior towards people different from them — especially LGBTQ people, atheists, agnostics, liberal Christians, Democrats, and anyone else on their NATC (not a true Christian) list.
Why do ex-Evangelicals hate Christians?
While I can’t speak for all ex-Evangelicals (I don’t use this label), I can safely say that most former Evangelicals don’t hate Christians. I know I don’t. My focus is on what Evangelicals believe and practice. I try to separate the skunk from his smell. Sometimes, this is hard, if not impossible, to do. Some Evangelicals are nasty, arrogant, hateful people. Such people are hard to love and respect.
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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No women in heaven? Maybe everyone would be non-binary ahahahahahahahaha!
Really enjoyed reading this post! 🙂
Oh boy… These plain and simple honest observations, for some reason, read collectively, kind of blow my mind. You say it without adornment, without guile and ritual and it all glares Truth after Truth for me. Thanks for this, Bruce.
Evangelical preachers listen up! My Baptist preacher dad never made it out alive, lost his mind to dementia and still quoted bits and pieces of scripture mixed in with his own addendums and adornments. I wish he had had the opportunity to know someone like you, Bruce, when he was still with us. I wish he could have come ‘home’ again instead of closing the door behind him for Jesus.
I wouldn’t have bothered to “get saved” so many times if I had known women weren’t eligible for heaven anyway! And that’s definitely not what the Southern Baptist church or the fundamentalist Christian school (basically IFB influenced) taught. We were ALL supposed to get saved and live by the rules!
I use the label exvangelical, and I don’t hate Christians. In fact, some of my relatives and friends are exvangelicals who are still Christians. They are lovely people who follow the Matthew 25 teachings of Jesus and are appalled by the bigoted white American Jesus portrayed in many evangelical churches. I hate fundamentalism in any form, but I don’t hate the people themselves.
There’s a joke that there are two kinds of Catholic schools: the ones that taught you masturbation would cause you to go blind, and the ones that taught it would make you deaf.
Whether or not this comment contains any typos should tell you what kind of Catholic school I went to.
What’s that, you say?
People will die, or at least harm themselves, for a lie if a.) someone convinces or bullies them into believing it’s the truth or b.) if they perceive some reward in making themselves casualties for it.
Really, dying for the lies of salvation and such isn’t so different from dying in a war that one’s country entered because of, or a “cause” that is, a lie (e.g., the Spanish Armada blowing up the USS Maine, weapons of mass destruction, “the glory of God” or notions that a way of life, “values” or the “purity” of a race is at stake).
https://protestia.com/2021/11/21/barna-poll-50-of-mainline-pastors-seriously-considering-quitting/
Maybe this illustrates your point about preachers faking ” strong faith”. From what a recent Barna poll( George Barna does polling about issues in so-called Evangelical Christianity), about 50 percent of mainline pastors seriously think about quitting the ministry. Of course there are some of the more conservative Fundamentalist pastors, church members, church hoppers, who are not unhappy that these ( their quote, not mine) ” scripture traitors” are thinking of quitting the ministry. Of course, that might just mean that the less abrasive and more conciliatory types of people will leave the ministry and they will be replaced with the more confrontational characters that all too often do more harm than good.
That settles that. There’s no sex in heaven, or if so, it’s only between men.