Last Monday, I tested positive for COVID, as did my wife and our oldest daughter. Thanks to vaccines — we are triple-vaxxed, having received our last vaccination in May — and, in my case, Paxlovid, an anti-viral drug, we avoided hospitalization and possible death (a likely outcome for me without the vaccines). While Bethany is back to her ornery self and Polly is mostly recovered, save for a nagging cough and sinus drainage, my recovery, as expected, has been much slower. I still have a good bit of congestion and I am quite weak. Much better? Absolutely! All praise be to science! But, I suspect it will take some time before I return to my normal sickly self where pain is my biggest problem.
I have spent a lot of time in bed over the past nine days trying to combat weakness and fatigue. Of course, spending time in bed doesn’t necessarily lead to sleep. Pain often precludes me from sleeping, and when it does, I try to “rest,” watching YouTube videos, catching up on recorded TV programs, and surfing the Internet. Sometimes, resting eventually brings sleep, other times it doesn’t. I learned long ago to not fight my body when it comes to sleep.
Last night, I stumbled upon the Facebook profile of a man I knew back when both of us studied for the ministry at Midwestern Baptist College in the 1970s. This man, a megachurch pastor’s son, was an usher for my wedding. After perusing his Facebook wall, I took a look at his friend list. (Yes, his list was public, a really bad idea.) I noticed that he was friends with lots of people who were also students at Midwestern back in the day. With lots of time on my hands — after all, how much time can you spend reading the Bible and praying 🙂 — I started stalking my former college friends, looking at what they had posted on their Facebook walls. Click, scroll, click, scroll, click, scroll . . . and as I did so, I found myself becoming increasingly depressed. After looking at three dozen or so profiles, I concluded that I had made a mistake; that knowledge wasn’t power.
Every person — and I mean EVERY — was still either an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) Christian, or, at the very least, a right-wing Evangelical. The hatred and vitriol toward the “world,” atheists, liberals, progressives, Democrats, socialists, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama was on full display. To the person, they were Trump-loving, gun-loving, forced birthers, anti-LGBTQ Republicans. And proudly so. I looked in vain for anyone who was a Democrat, a member of a mainline Christian denomination, or who had lost their faith altogether. Taken together, what I found was a monoculture, a cult-like enclave where fealty to rigid, narrow, unbending beliefs was required for admission. What troubled me the most was the devotion to Trump. Even after two impeachments and the January 6th hearing, they still supported the disgraced immoral ex-president.
This shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. If I could break free from IFB thinking, why can’t others? What is it that insulates Fundamentalists from reality? Is there nothing that can change their minds? I recognize that I am, for whatever reason, an exception to the rule, as is my wife. Sure, scores of IFB congregants exit stage left, moving on to friendlier confines, but it seems that few pastors, evangelists, missionaries, and professors are willing to do so, especially once they have been in the ministry for decades. Why is that?
While I found myself depressed over what I saw, I also felt gratitude. I escaped. I found a way to break free. Am I special? Nope, I am lucky. While I continue to struggle with guilt and regret over the harm I caused my family, my counselor reminded me that life could be a lot worse for me and my family had I remained Pastor Bruce Gerencser, the family patriarch. Imagine how life might be for Polly and our children had I remained in the ministry; had I maintained my rigid Fundamentalist beliefs and practices? I can’t think of any way in which that would have been a good thing. So, while it depresses me that my former college friends have matured very little from the days we roamed the hallways of the Midwestern dormitory, I am grateful that I escaped.
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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It takes a lot of courage and determination to ask the questions and follow the logic, to see past the indoctrination and brainwashing. I’m shocked that my partner and I made it, much less someone both older and far more committed to the church as you were, sir!
It doesn’t surprise me that so few people make it, or even fucking try. They’re scared or they just don’t trust their own ability to critically reason, because “the B-I-B-L-E.” And so they stay, drowning and also pulling in others with them. And when a voice of reason and empathy comes along, they attack it.
Oh, and ya gotta cut out the Facebook doomscrolling, Bruce! Look just long enough to unfriend anyone that makes you want to beat your head against a goddamn brick wall, LOL. Had my last Facebook purge of “friends” this weekend and feel much better…
I deleted my first Facebook account four years ago. I set up a new account with only my wife as a “friend.” I have since added two of our children. Otherwise, I follow entertainment venues, sports teams, parks, restaurants, our church (Episcopalian), etc. for announcements. I spend maybe 5-10 minutes most day, then get off. Some days I don’t get on at all.
As a left of center, independent who votes Democrat, I discovered that Inhad little in common with my old friends. Better to remember them when we were young and they were not yet angry at the world as it is, especially with the great variety of people and cultures that enrich life, but frighten them.
I don’t follow any of the people in my friends list who are Republican Christians. I did occasionally chat with them, but since Trump was in office I can’t bear a superficial facade. Oh well.
Some alumni of my old Catholic school (which closed about 15 years ago) have a Facebook page. I made the mistake of checking it out a couple of years ago. Many of them were racist, homo- and trans-phobic Trump supporters. They reserved their most intense vitriol, however, for those of us who were abused by priests in our parish. We were branded as liars, opportunists and worse.
That’s really sad. I grew up Catholic and my (girls only) high school is still very much going. I gave them money in 2019 and 2020, because I think they’re still striving to educate young women well, and encouraging them to become strong feminists (except as regards reproductive rights) who will go forth and spread love in the world by being forces in boardrooms, leading science or engineering teams, and so forth.
But they’re still Catholic, and after thinking about it, I decided my charity dollars are better spent on Doctors Without Borders.
I don’t keep contacts in the Catholic world, and I like it that way. It takes a lot of cognitive dissonance to be a scientist and a Catholic. It might actually take less to be an IFB church member, because you can simply deny everything that isn’t supported by the Bible, but Catholicism requires some engagement with reality. Not my circus, not my clowns. But I grew up in liberal US West Coast churches in the afterglow of Vatican II, and it has seemed to me that local Catholic churches have become more and more conservative during my 62 years. I remember the nuns who taught me in grade schools being almost giddy about the changes that were going to happen in the church as a result of Vatican II. Which didn’t happen, of course. They were waiting for a wholesale embrace of reality, but religious institutions don’t embrace reality willingly.
When Pope Francis dies, I expect that his successor will drag the Catholic Church so far right, they’ll be dangling off the rightmost edge of reality. At least they’ll have Evangelical companions out there.
Karen—I, too, have noticed the rightward turn of the Catholic Chuch. The last time I went to a Catholic mass (I was helping a friend who had mobility issues), the priest led the parishioners in a “prayer for the unborn” before the actual mass started. That “prayer” sounded more like a stump speech from a Republican candidate in the South or Midwest.
I love your image of what could happen to the Church once Francis leaves the pontificate or dies. They’ll fall off, not only because they’ll move so far to the right, but also because they’ll assert that the Earth is flat (and the Center of Creation, of course).
Ok Bruce, that picture really makes me want to mention a few things:
OMG ! Those pants….I..wow..wow
it almost look like you are flipping off the camera person. I think it’s just an illusion but hmmmm
what are you holding in your hand? I mean, 4 guys in an empty field and a container of….what?
why is Mike sitting on your lap?
Now I am sure it is all innocent. But it does make me – a nice, wholesome person – just wonder.
The guy on the far left is wearing bell-bottom trousers, and I suspect the same of the rest of you. Knowest thou not that bell bottoms were a clear 1970s symbol of the “rebellious against God” hippies and the nationwide culture of free love.? How did you ever get away with wearing suits with that kind of trousers on your campus or in church? Ize jist gots to know.
That is depressing, but rather predictable. It reminds me of some of the FB discussions I have with classmates from my very conservative hometown. My brother always joked that the local Catholic church was the capitol of our sleepy town in rural Michigan. If you engage in anything remotely political you realize how they predictably morphed into their parents. I guess the saddest part is that most of the Trump love is mere team colors, there isn’t much analysis. When I see a truck blast by full of Trump and Confederate flags, this did not spring from a nuanced analysis of policy and analysis of Trump’s character. Why am I different? I suspect some of it is because a friend moved up “from the city” and basically deprogrammed me over a lot of tea.
Do you old friends know that you have embraced Satan’s lies?
Yes. I don’t hide my atheism under a bushel. I let my light shine so Christians can see the way, truth, and life. 🤣🤣
Glad to hear you’re feeling somewhat better.
This sounds to me like a skewed-sample effect. If the first person whose profile you ran across was a mindless cultist of this kind, it’s not surprising that all his Facebook “friends” were of the same type. Anybody who wasn’t of that type, he would not choose to have on his friends list. Very likely there are people from that college who have broken away from the cult, but you won’t find them via this person’s clique.
Let me explain further:
I played the Kevin Bacon game. Midwestern is a small school — a really, really small school. My class started with roughly 100 students. Less than 20 students graduated 4 years later. Thus, it’s not hard to track down a large percentage of the people I went to school with (both inside and outside of social media).
I am fairly well-known in Midwestern circles. I have not heard from anyone from Midwestern who is an unbeliever or a liberal for that matter. I’ve heard from several classmates who genuinely want to understand where I am coming from, and others who want to burn my house to the ground. 🤣🤣
Kent Hovind is a Midwestern graduate. Sadly, he is the norm. 😢😢
Bruce, it’s great that you and Polly were able to break out of that rigid and damaging monoculture. Like MJ, I have a lot of former classmates from fundamentalist Christian school who are MAGA conspiracy theorist right wing nut jobs. Many people from the church I attended in my youth are that way too. However, there are a good number from the school and the church who broke away from that. I haven’t identified any atheists (I suspect one person is), but the folks that broke out are now liberal progressive pro-equality folks. Most of those people got out of evangelicalism, some at great personal cost.
As for the folks still in the fold? I don’t follow them on social media. I didn’t unfriendly them because I hope that from time to time they’ll see picture of me wearing rainbow socks or see some other sign that I am no longer one of their bigoted tribe. Who knows, maybe one post will make a difference.