We arrived at the Newark Baptist Temple early, deciding that we would not let the church and its pastor “win.”
Mom died on Tuesday, at the age of eighty-seven. We knew what to expect, having attended (and preached) numerous Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) funerals. Very little of the service would be about Mom. The real guest of honor was Jesus.
We sat in the third row from the front, on the right side, in the same church that Polly and I were married forty-five years ago. We talked to Polly’s aunt from Michigan, several cousins, and Mom’s best friend. The pastor never spoke to Polly, and neither did Mom’s church family. Quite frankly, we were glad they left us alone.
At the ten o’clock hour, the man of God, Mark Falls, mounted the pulpit and read the obituary. He butchered our last name — Gerencser. All he had to do is ask and I would have told him how to pronounce my Hungarian name. I would have also told him that Mom’s daughter’s name is Polly, not Pauline — a name she despises. I would also have told him about Mom’s deceased brothers: Art, Floyd, Chet, Bob, and Everett; loving siblings whose names were omitted from the obituary. No matter what, the real man of the hour, Jesus — his obituary was all that mattered.
Next up was an IFB missionary married to one of Polly’s cousins. He delivered a mini-sermon, interjected with a story or two about Mom. Then a grandson and a son-in-law gave short testimonials about Mom, the highlight of the service. Soon Mom would fade into the background and the man of the hour would take the stage — Jesus.
A couple of hymns were sung, and a duet by our niece and her daughter. We lustily sang the songs — strange, I know — and enjoyed the duet — even though we didn’t believe a word of the lyrics.
Mom’s pastor came to the pulpit, opened his Bible, and after a few perfunctory comments, he started to preach. We knew what was coming: Jesus, Heaven, Hell, and salvation. I thought, Bruce, you can handle this! And I did until the last three minutes of the preacher’s fearmongering harangue.
The preacher decided to make his sermon personal, locking his eyes on me. There’s no doubt in my mind who he was talking to. As someone who preached for thirty-five years, one lesson I learned is that you don’t fix your eyes on someone as the pastor did me.
I knew what was happening. Here was his last chance to preach the gospel to the atheist Bruce Gerencser. (I am the villain in this story. Polly is viewed as misguided or led astray.) Maybe Mom wanted him to make sure the unsaved Gerencsers heard the gospel one last time. Never mind the fact all of us are already saved — once saved, always saved, right? In that moment, “it” happened, the period on the end of the sentence. As the pastor’s eyes locked on mine, I said with a low voice — one he and several rows of people could hear — Bullshit! Preach at someone else! (As of the publishing of this post, the church has removed the video of the funeral from Youtube.)
The pastor did not acknowledge my words, but he heard them. So did others, based on the number of biting glares I received. Outside of the church I briefly confronted him, telling him that he shouldn’t have singled me out. He, of course, denied doing so. I replied, bullshit! and walked to our car.
One final indignity awaited — the graveside service. More of the same, without an invitation. More bad theology about the state of the dead. Not surprising. Most IFB funerals are to some degree or the other heretical.
Polly and I left the cemetery and turned north on Hwy 13, headed for Mount Vernon. As we reached the community of St. Louisville, Polly asked me are you ready? I was. With a defiant, cathartic laugh, both of us raised up our middle fingers and said good riddance.
We lived in central/southeast Ohio for seventeen years. We will never return again. Rural northwest Ohio is our home. Our children and grandchildren live here, and it is here we will die. We have made a life for ourselves in the flatlands of Ohio. Mom chose to make a life for herself too; with a family that was not her daughter’s; with a church that was her “real” family. Family in Central Ohio will object and say that Mom repeatedly said how much she loved us. However, actions speak louder than words, and Mom’s behavior said I was a son-in-law she never wanted and Polly was a disappointment — always a disappointment. Mom will never know how much she hurt her daughter. Her harsh, judgmental words; her rejection of what matters most to Polly: her husband and her family.
Mom made her choices, and we ours.
The End.
Note: Next week, I will start writing a wide-ranging series titled: How the Newark Baptist Temple Affected Our Lives for Sixty Years — Part One. Hopefully, this series will explain the deep mark made on our lives by the Baptist Temple. I will be consulting Polly on this series. Her story begins ten years before mine, in the mid-1960s.
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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Bruce, I am so sorry for both you and Polly. For losing a loved one, for losing any possibility of a better relationship. For being subjected to hostile people unwilling to acknowledge you both.
Bruce, that’s too bad about the missing video, would have been interesting to watch. Your experience reminds me of something of a punishment that was popular amongst the teachers during my time at public high school. It was called a “Huxley” because it was a quote from Thomas Huxley. The punishment aspect was that the errant student would be required to write the quote a certain number of times. Often there was a choice to write Huxleys or detention.
“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”
You and Polly did what you had to do.
As for entering a church for relative’s rites, as a young man I’d often think of a Dungeons & Dragons spells “Antipathy/Sympathy”
“Antipathy: The enchantment causes creatures of the kind you designated to feel an intense urge to leave the area and avoid the target.”
Ah D&D, where would I be without it?
Bruce, I am so proud of you for calling out the pastor’s bullshit. You didn’t sit there and take the abuse! The amount of emotional turmoil and abuse that you and Polly have endured is incredible. And you ruined their glorious video of a grand IFB proselytizing funeral service! 🤣🤣🤣
Also, I am sorry you and Polly had to go thru that (and I particularly sympathize with the name butchering, and the use of a name Polly hates instead of her preferred name). I am sure it felt great to give the final colossal middle finger to that place!
Again, condolences to your family for this entire situation.
Good for you! I admire your ability to call it out like it is right during the sermon. It sounds like that was a fitting end to your experiences with that church.
Bruce: “As the pastor’s eyes locked on mine, I said with a low voice — one he and several rows of people could hear — Bullshit! Preach at someone else! (As of the publishing of this post, the church has removed the video of the funeral from Youtube.)”
Zoe: My heart. I threw my hands in the air and laughed with joy at your response to him Bruce.
Bruce—I admire you and Polly even more than I did before I read this post. I would have loved to see and hear you uttering,”Bullshit!”
The real reason to admire you in the situation you described is that you showed up—as you have for forty-five years—for someone who never wanted you in her life—and who let her contempt for you override the love she should have shown her daughter.
The preacher who locked his eyes on you and later denied doing so essentially followed an act of not-so-passive aggression with an attempt to gaslight you. Nice try, dude!
He didn’t succeed. He couldn’t: You are stronger and better than him or his Jesus. My congratulations and condolences to you and Polly.
I have been to more funerals than I care to remember and in most of these the deceased have been reduced to a footnote. I grit my teeth when someone can’t be properly eulogized lest Jesus be nudged off center stage. Bruce’s experience of course had a cruel added twist but I can relate to the seething anger of a deceased loved one playing second fiddle to Jesus and being forced to listen to an extended sermon. Of course the non believer has to sit quietly and listen politely to nonsense that he or she no longer believes when they wanted to do was pay respects to a loved one. Imagine the indignation if a non believer’s funeral featured a long explanation of all of the logical fallacies of religious dogma.
Bravo to you both. Since I am a man of few words, I usually try to find a good quote the speak for me – I can’t find what I am looking for, so this one will have to do:
Mysteriously, wonderfully, I bid farewell to what goes, I greet what comes; for what comes cannot be denied, and what goes cannot be detained.
~Chuang-tzu
My wife and brothers-in-law have been through one of these funerals. Their uncle on their dad’s side had been a drug addict and was struck by a car while walking along a dangerous highway, probably high as many thought. Despite being an addict, he had some connection with an Evangelical church that performed the funeral. Later, my brother-in-law said the sermon described exactly why that congregation believed their uncle was in Hell. What a send-off!
Geeezussss. I’m so sorry for the absolute bullshit of the funeral, too.
I was about half-expecting you and Polly to stand up and walk out while the guy was still blithering.
Is it bad that your post has inspired me to write one about another funeral? I’m thinking that our experiences aren’t that unusual. ::sigh:::
Years ago I was teaching Sunday School when a visitor announced that this was BS, stood up, and walked out. That totally took the wind out of my sails.
I am sorry you were subjected to that sort of sub rosa abuse. Made me angry to read it. As I see it, you had every right to become confrontational.
And I am sorry your loved one was subjected to that sort of parental emotional abuse.
The end struck me as startling and especially sad.
I am glad you have been there for each other through so much of life.
It seems to me you have approached physical and emotional pain with exceptional bravery.
You may not be aware that you are a working model of courage for those of us who sometimes need it.
What is the bad theology you are talking about at IFB funerals?
They preach Hell on Sunday, but come funeral time everyone goes to Heaven. Preachers talk about Granny watching from Heaven or having a new pain-free body. These notions are not Biblical, nor orthodox theologically.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x80eim1 I did not comment at the time about your mother-in-law’s death. I just was not able or willing at the time at the time to deal with that subject. I’m just ripping off a old Twilight Zone episode called Nothing in the Dark. https://www.wordsoftruth.net/BulletinDecember312017.pdf This second link deals with your comment about preachers talking about their relatives watching them from Heaven.
Hi Bruce. I hear you. I have felt the same in services where entire sanctification/sanctified wholly, was preached 3 times a week. It was discourafing and confusing and threatening for a long time even after I moved away to attend college. I was a new born believer having been raised in a family that despised all religions and the Catholic variety most intensely. You seem to be doing ok and I hope you will continue to find peace and freedom as you demand to be authentic, the real you. I was so codependent on my alcoholic father, I learned all too well that unless I was sacrificing “me” for others as a demonstration of my love for Jesus, that I wasn’t grateful for all He’d done to set me free from a life of debauchery. That training in codependency was deeply ingrained and lasted for decades.
Bruce, I’d like to ask you about Jesus, if I may. Did you at one time think/believe with certainty that Jesus was real in your life, or did He seem more like a vague theory or an impersonal, distant concept or something along those lines? Did He ever, was He ever, clearly the risen savior, to/in you? Do you know what I mean? Was He personal, real, intimate, alive, knowable, more than a figure written about 2,000 years ago? Did you meet him and come to know him in the way the apostles/disciples are depicted as knowing Him after His resurrection? I hope I’m not implying anything that might be hurtful. You may be thinking, “Of course I did, you knucklehead!! What? Do you think I didn’t understand what salvation is?” Or, “What are you hollering? Know him? I wasn’t alive 2,000 years ago. How could I know Him?”
I ask because I can’t help but be convinced deep down that indeed, He is real and He changed me most profoundly. Without Him, literally, living inside me, I can’t imagine I’d be alive. Not only alive Bruce but the best comparison I can offer to you as to my life before meeting him would be the Gadarene. I was a foul, vile, hateful, dirty, drunken, sex crazed, female hating, self-pitying, animal with no friends, no hope, nothing but hate and jealousy and anger engulfing me. That all changed when He became real to me. I had no idea, none, none whatsoever, that He existed or who He was or anything about him. But, He put love in my heart for everyone and it blew me away. Completely. Totally. Thoroughly, and sudenly, I was sitting at his feet, clothed and in my right mind. I was incredulous and I still am.
I hope I’m not preaching. I think I can relate to much of what you’ve expressed, but I can’t imagine that one day I’d consider He Himself isn’t real. Do you know what I’m saying?
Thanks Bruce for sharing your life and your heart
I had a personal relationship with Jesus. I was, in every way, a committed follower of Christ. That I did, however, is not evidence for the existence of God. One can even miraculously “experience” God, yet God be a myth. Subjective, personal experiences are not evidence that can be used to prove the truthfulness of Christianity.
I’m convinced Jesus was a human being who was executed by the Roman government for crimes against the state. He lived and died — end of story. Do you have empirical evidence that suggests otherwise?
You mean like the preachers, elders, and church members everybody’s always hearing about?
The Gadarene: ” . . . but I can’t imagine that one day I’d consider He Himself isn’t real.”
Zoe: This was the case for many of us at one time. And yet, here we are.
Unfortunately, for most of us, someone does come along with something similar to this: “Did you at one time think/believe with certainty that Jesus was real in your life, or did He seem more like a vague theory or an impersonal, distant concept or something along those lines? Did He ever, was He ever, clearly the risen savior, to/in you? Do you know what I mean? Was He personal, real, intimate, alive, knowable, more than a figure written about 2,000 years ago? Did you meet him and come to know him in the way the apostles/disciples are depicted as knowing Him after His resurrection?”
“I hope I’m not implying anything that might be hurtful.”
Zoe: It is and can be hurtful to some. Usually depends on where they are in their journey. At the start it’s very hurtful. Countless people in our families, community and former churches knew exactly who we were in Christ. The minute they learn we are doubtful &/or changing our minds . . . bang, they throw up the “Did you . . . ?” stuff. Suddenly they all have amnesia.
As the years go by, some of us just “sigh” (Bruce has a post on this somewhere) or yawn, or just roll our eyes. We’ve heard it so many times. We often don’t bother with it anymore because for the most part, none of us has seen anyone change their approach. We understand that they can’t. Very rarely do they know what we’re saying.