Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) preachers love to preach on “sin.” Thanks to their extra-Biblical rules and personal interpretations of the Bible, these preachers often have long lists of behaviors that are deemed “sinful.” No two preachers have the same sin list. Many IFB preachers believe it is a sin for women to wear pants, while other preachers believe it is okay as long as the pants aren’t form-fitting. The same could be said about whether it is a sin for men to have long hair, mustaches, or beards. Here’s one thing I know: take any behavior humans practice and it is likely you will find an IFB preacher somewhere who believes that behavior is a horrific sin against his version of the Christian God. (See An Independent Baptist Hate List and The Official Independent Baptist Rulebook.)
IFB preachers are big on having “proof” for their beliefs. I attended and pastored IFB churches well into my late 30s, and I said and heard preachers say countless times, The BIBLE says or GOD says . . . These anti-sin crusaders are adept at molesting the Bible, grooming it so it will comply with their every authoritarian, controlling wish. Being raised in such an abusive environment conditions people in such a way that they believe the abuse is normal; that whatever the preacher says is true, straight from the mouth of God.
Take Ephesians 4:27; six little words that IFB preachers turn into rants against a plethora of behaviors they deem sinful. The verse says, neither give place to the devil. In other words, don’t let the Devil gain access, influence, or control your life. Seems pretty straightforward advice for people who believe there’s a Devil and hosts of demons walking to and fro on the earth, seeking whom they may devour — as the Bible says in I Peter 5:8. Unfortunately, however, many IFB preachers use this verse as a jumping off point, launching themselves into slobbery shouts against behaviors they deem to be “giving place to the devil.” Years ago, I heard a notable preacher at a pastor’s conference in Columbus, Ohio, preach on Ephesians 4:27. He made no attempt to exegete the text, nor did he pay any attention to its context. He had a truckload of axes he needed to grind, so after reading these six little words, he launched into a forty-minute sermon that labeled numerous human behavior sinful, including attending the wrong college, using the wrong Bible, or fellowshipping with the “wrong” preachers. As was the custom at such meetings, the preacher of the hour received countless AMENS and YOU PREACH IT, BROTHER! Never mind the fact that his sermon was thirty seconds of Bible and thirty-nine minutes thirty seconds of bullshit and personal opinion.
Another six-word verse used in the aforementioned way is 1 Thessalonians 5:22. Abstain from all appearance of evil, the inspired, inerrant King James Bible says. These kinds of verses are what I call a catch-all verses, verses meant to cover bad behaviors not explicitly mentioned in the Bible. I played high school basketball. My coaches taught me to avoid doing things during games that looked like fouls. If it looks like a foul, it is a foul, I was told. One of the most irritating moments in a game is to be called for a foul you didn’t commit. I may not have committed the foul, but in the eyes of the official it looked like I did, and that’s all that mattered (I much preferred the no blood, no foul rule of summer playground games). The six words of 1 Thessalonians 5:22 are the IFB version of if it looks like a sin, it is a sin.
For many years — eleven, to be exact — I picked up an older woman at her home and drove her to church. She was legally blind, and was twenty years older than I. She was not in the least attractive — at least to me, anyway. For the five years our church operated a Christian school, I would pick up this woman so she could watch our children while Polly and I taught classes. She was a wonderful, delightful woman who would do anything for us. Tragically, she was tragically killed a few years back in an automobile accident.
One of the resident Pharisees in the church took issue with me picking up this woman for church. She and her husband even floated a rumor that suggested this woman and I were having an affair. The legs of this rumor were 1 Thessalonians 5:22 — abstain from all appearance of evil. In the minds of accusers, the mere fact that a woman who was not my wife was riding in my car was sufficient grounds to accuse me of impropriety. This type of slander happened several times during the twenty-five years I spent in the ministry. I had many faults, but having affairs was not one of them.
I refused to let such people turn my good works into “sins.” I knew that no matter what I did, someone might consider a certain behavior of mine sinful. Some colleagues of mine were so paranoid about giving the appearance of evil that they, for example, wouldn’t go a movie theater to see a G-rated kid’s movie because the theater also played R-rated movies. And if they happened to be seen by a church member coming out of the theater, why, that person might think they were watching one of the R-rated movies. This same logic applied to renting movies. I knew pastors who wouldn’t frequent a video store lest someone see them and think they were renting movies other than Bambi or Five Mile Creek. One former friend of mine, to this day, won’t eat in restaurants that serve alcohol. Why? Abstain from all appearance of evil. This same man would buy groceries at stores that sold booze and buy gasoline at convenience stores that sold beer and Hustler, but he refused to enter a restaurant that served the devil’s brew. This man loved to eat, especially meat, but because he was so worried about giving the appearance of evil that the best steak he ever ate was a gristle-filled, packing-grade, beat-all-to-shit piece of meat at Ponderosa — or as we in our home called the place, a-pound-a-grossa.
Another pertinent passage is 1 Corinthians 6:19-20:
What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.
According to many IFB preachers, 1 Corinthians 6:19,20 teaches that the bodies of Christians are temples in which God, the Holy Ghost lives. Non-Christians, of course, are empty temples in need of filling. This is another one of those verses that is used as a catch-all. Every IFB preacher has his own list of behaviors that he believes pollute the temple of God. The two biggies? Alcohol and tobacco.
There’s a trend in Evangelical circles for believers to trim the sharp edges of their social prohibitions. Drinking alcohol and smoking are two “sins” that have now been, in the eyes of some Evangelicals (especially Calvinists), deemed okay for Christians to do. Over the years, I have received numerous emails from Evangelicals wanting to impress me with their “worldliness.” These sinners want me to know that they are NOT like the Evangelicals I write about, that they have the freedom to drink an occasional glass of wine and smoke a stogie. In their minds, these behaviors only become sin when done to excess — with excess never being clearly defined. Evidently, one man’s excess is another man’s let’s party liberty. Jesse Morrell, an open-air (street preaching) missionary, released a two-minute YouTube video about cigar-smoking Calvinists (which is no longer available). Morrell will have none of this. In his mind, any form of smoking is s-i-n, an affront to his God. Every time someone takes a puff on a cigar, he is polluting God’s temple and aggravating the Holy Spirit’s asthma.
Growing up in the IFB church movement, I heard a lot of sermons about not polluting the temple of God. Believing that God lived inside — oh where, oh where does he live? and surely there’s a sex joke that needs telling about God being inside you — of everyone who was born again, preachers would preach thunderous sermons against drinking alcohol, smoking, or taking illegal drugs. I heard several preachers who even questioned taking prescription drugs, calling on sanctified followers of Jesus to ask themselves, do I really need to take these pills? I knew people who suffered from severe pain because they refused to take doctor-prescribed pain medications. Fearing addiction, polluting the temple of God, or wanting to show that they could valiantly suffer, these Christians chose to have bodies wracked with pain rather than risk God getting high. (Please see Ken Ham, Answers in Genesis, Dinosaurs, and the Sin of Smoking.)
What I found ironic is that many IFB preachers are overweight. Some of them were as obese as I now am. These overweight, out-of-shape consumers of way too many fried chicken legs and slices of cherry pie would, using 1 Corinthians 6:19,20, rail against drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes — smoking won’t send you to Hell, but it sure will make you smell like you have already been there — while at the same time never mentioning overeating. My explanation of this fact back in my preaching days was simple: virtually every human behavior was a sin, so overeating was the one sin Baptists could indulge in without feeling guilty. IFB congregations love their chicken dinners, potlucks, fellowship meals, and numerous other food-focused events. Bless God, beer and Marlboros have never touched their lips, but fat-laden, high-calorie food? Bring me another plate, Sister Maybelle. It’s time to feed the Holy Spirit!
All that this shows, of course, is that the Bible can be used to “prove” anything is a “sin,” and once something has been deemed sinful, IFB preachers feel it their duty to regulate and control human behavior, making sure church members toe the line. Never mind the fact that most of the “sins” IFB preachers preach against are not mentioned in the Bible, or that some of the behaviors now deemed sinful were practiced by none other than Jesus himself two thousand years ago. Yes siree, Bob, Jesus drank alcoholic wine. I bet the man, the myth, and the legend even over-indulged a time or two, or fifty. It’s a Biblical and historical fact, yet some IFB preachers will go to great lengths to prove that Jesus drank Welch’s grape juice, and not fermented wine. The Bible speaks of Jesus hanging out with sinners, but he brought a juice box so he didn’t have to drink Boone’s Farm, right? Such is the logic found in many IFB churches.
It is said that Baptist Fundamentalism is no fun and all mental. Sadly, this line accurately describes what goes on in many IFB churches. Imagine being immersed in such a culture your entire life, and then one day waking up and realizing you were in a cult. That describes my wife and me. Polly was in her forties before she ever wore pants. We lived in Yuma, Arizona, at the time. One day, we were at Target and I suggested to Polly that she buy a pair of capri pants. Why, you would have thought I had asked her to strip and run naked through the store! After a bit of mental strong-arming, I convinced Polly to “sin.” No lightning from Heaven, no being struck dead by the Evangelical God. Polly survived, and now it’s to the point where I say, it would sure be nice to see you in a dress every once in a while. 🙂
Polly and I faced many such conflicts once we began moving away from Fundamentalism. The list of things we first started doing in our forties and fifties is long: drinking alcohol, watching R-rated movies, going to the movies, listening to secular music, and expanding our sexual practices, to name a few. Every “sin” abandoned brought first a sense of guilt, and then relief. For Polly and me, we are, in many ways, experiencing for the first time things that normal people experienced as teenagers or young adults. Our only regret is that we waited this long to enjoy life. Well, that and wishing we had young bodies to enjoy the carnal “sins” of our late-in-life teenage years. 🙂
This post has now passed the two-thousand-word mark, so it’s time for me to stop circling the runway and land this plane. Please share in the comment section your own experiences growing up in IFB/Evangelical churches. What were “sins” back in the day that you now heartily and lustily commit?
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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I remember trying to sign up for a christian medishare scam that my mom referred me too back when obamacare was first rolling out. I couldnt help but notice all the things they didnt cover and realized how they in many ways were worse than the greedy wall st bastards and mafia bozos who currently hold us hostage. The list of things included prexisting conditions like pregnancy(if pregnant before joining and definitely not covered if not married), injuries if alcohol was discovered around you, if you werent in shape you had to get to the gym and go on a diet.Smoking was prohibited and of course when that bitch called cancer showed up you were not covered if you had. Of course they wouldnt help cover diabetes or anything chronic. Needless to say it really seems like they expected you to hand them money and then have thoughts and prayers solve your problems.
Placing the fear, on us, of being a “stumbling block” for someone else.
I never knew, until I left, that not only do people take responsibility for their own actions but they really don’t consider the same things to be sins that the church does (eg women wearing pants). Any blaming the church does/did was actually abuse.
And by me leaving the church (because of their actions), by their own interpretation, they technically caused me to “stumble”. I’m sure they won’t own up to that!
1 Corinthians 10:31 was put to a catchy tune so all of us sweet children coukd be more easily indoctrinated, I mean, learn it more easily.
Between my Southern Baptist church and IFB school, there were some slightly different lists of behaviors or thoughts that constitute sin. Those of us who went to both pretty much learned that EVERYTHING is a sin.
And, in our church once a skinny pastor who had just been hired made the mistake of preaching against gluttony – he never repeated that mistake.
Hatred of self and others is not restricted to the church associated with sweet baby Jesus and his dad. Hatred of self and others is pretty much everywhere in the world inhabited by bipeds. We clearly have trouble simply caring for ourselves and each other. Fairytale superhero gawds and good guys travel with us from early on in life. I clearly recall imagining myself as Superman vanquishing a certain bully idiot who tormented many. I was just a skinny little kid but gawd was with me.
The hatred of self and others is made unique and worthy of scorn by codifying the bully tenents of ‘love’ in the black book, in the Koran, in scriptures that encourage sick ideas and behaviors. Even the simple idea of the golden rule is polluted by making it religious so that dumb twits in fat ties can stand up and spew ignorance among us. Still, I support the fat tie boys in their pulpits because we need to speak out and share and allow one another basic respect. The fat ties can spew all they like for me. Their mental contortions and quirky verbal dances give me pause and even help me laugh sometimes at just how gah-gah we can be, we bipeds. But when it comes down to it, I have to reclaim the language for rational living, for common sense and basic sanity. I have to point out that what they call love is clearly abusive and more akin to hatred. I have to poke some fun at their carnival ways and I have to sometimes just close the door in their faces when they come for me, to love me, to save me. The Bible proves everything, anything, any time and everywhere. The Bible is true and entirely full of shit. Christians and Muslims can be lovely and dangerous too. We don’t like to call our paid killers soldiers; we call them peacekeepers. You get the idea. Onward Christian soldiers! Jesus was an exceedingly clever bully. He told people to follow him in a way that still reminded me of the ignorant bully of the public school. Get thee behind me or consequences.
Great post Bruce! As I was reading this, another “catch-all” verse came to mind, Ps 101:3, “I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me.”
In particular, I remember this verse being used in reference to the evils of Rock -n- Roll music! That lovely little rabbit trail that Evangelicalism went down for a time, and especially with the ridiculous theory of “backwards masking”. Oh shit! Don’t EVER listen to “Stairway to Heaven” or “Hotel California”! Because the subliminal backwards messages in those songs (and numerous others), will find their way into your consciousness! Never mind the countless numbers of rockers who were judged as “satanists” or “Satan worshippers”, (AC/DC anyone?), when in fact, they really weren’t.
It just pisses me off today, that as a teen growing up in the 80s, I bought into that bullshit! And like a good Christian soldier, I got rid of my evil secular albums! “Set no evil thing before my eyes (or ears)”. I’ve done research and discovered that about 90% of the bullshit that those so-called rock music “experts”, (The Peters Brothers: Truth About Rock, for example), shoveled, was exactly that, 100% bullshit! If they’d bothered to talk to the members of AC/DC for instance, they might have found out what the song “Highway to Hell”was really about.
One thing I’ve found since my exit from EC, things are definitely NOT what they seem or were even portrayed to us as, and the crap that most preachers rail against as being “evil” really isn’t.
I’ve always been surprised that fundies preach that putting certain substances into our bodies, like alcohol, tobacco or drugs is a sin against the temple-of-the-holy-spirit thing. Excess of such is also against modern medical advice. But no one, as you say preaches against the sin of gluttony. There is enough food in the world to feed everyone, but the greed, selfishness and over-indulgence of many of us in the west, cause many other human beings to starve. Over 8 million people in the world will go to bed hungry tonight whilst we strive for the self-discipline to restrict our intake from the large store of food we are privileged to be able to keep in our homes every day of our lives.
As a fundy teen, I recall a mission led by dutch x-tians in the Uk. They said after morning service on Sundays, they all met up in local cafes for beer, a smoke and food. My naive narrow fundy mind was so shocked. We never shopped or ate out on the sabbath as that caused others to have to work and prevented them from church-going. And as for the beer and smoking..I couldn’t get my head round those at all.
I was lucky, raised Catholic, so the set of life-restricting sins was much less than the Fundagelical crowd has to deal with. But one memory that comes to mind was an odd one. This would have been in the late 1990s or early 2000s, since my mother died at the end of 2002. One Sunday, Husband and I were visiting my parents, who lived in a small community in California’s rural Central Valley, one of those places where “everybody knows everybody”. My parents lived on a very small man-made lake and their clothesline was in their side yard, so both people driving by and people on the other side of the lake could see it. Nobody had fences.
Mama complained that she’d forgotten to wash her intimate apparel the previous day, that it didn’t do well in the dryer, and she couldn’t hang it out. That utterly baffled me, and I asked why. Apparently some of her across-the-lake neighbors didn’t approve of doing laundry on Sunday. I demanded to know who’d died and made them God. Mama, who had to live with these busybodies nearby, didn’t think I was helping at all.
That’s funny, after I deconverted, that was one of the things I found difficult to free myself from. I was now allowed to hang out washing on Sundays. I still found myself automatically leaving it till Mondays. It was such a bad witness to neighbours…I never peered over their fences to see when their clothes lines were full…but in my fundy deluded world-view, they noticed if I was not keeping the sabbath..and I had to be a Good Witness to them…like always keeping my lawn well mowed might (not) impress them and they’d ask me how to get saved.
I’m a devoted Christian … so few of my Christian friends were appalled when I mentioned that I listen to, and really like, Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper”, and most stuff that Paul McCartney and Elton John put out. There are even a few secular rap songs the I like, much to my friends’ chagrin.
When I was a kid in Southern Baptist church in the 80s, the idea of whether smoking was a sin came up. The pastor trod lightly as half of his deacons could be found outside before and after church smoking.
The body as a temple thing was always a good one too. I remember it being used at fundamentalist Christian school as a reason why we should dress a certain way and look nice as we were representing the God who lived inside us. 🤮
I remember seeing so many of the local preachers and fat ass Falwell (as I called him) had waist sizes that probably exceeded their heights and wondering at their hypocrisy – wasn’t gluttony a sin? Of course as a child I was expected to keep my mouth shut around the grown ups.