In the early 1960s, my parents began attending Scott Memorial Baptist Church in San Diego (El Cajon), California. There, the Gerencser family was saved, baptized, and introduced to the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement — my church home for the next thirty years.
At the age of fifteen, I was saved and baptized at Trinity Baptist Church in Findlay, Ohio, a fast-growing IFB church affiliated with the Baptist Bible Fellowship in Springfield, Missouri. In the fall of 1976, I enrolled for classes at Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan. Midwestern, an IFB institution founded by Dr. Tom Malone, pastor of nearby Emmanuel Baptist Church, prided itself on being a “character-building factory.” While at Midwestern, I married Polly, an IFB pastor’s daughter. In the spring of 1979, we left Midwestern and moved to Bryan, Ohio. Not long after, I began working for my first IFB church in Montpelier, Ohio. I would later plant and pastor three IFB churches.
In 1989, The Biblical Evangelist — an IFB newspaper published by Robert Sumner — released a scathing story accusing Jack Hyles, pastor of First Baptist Church in Hammond Indiana, of sexual misconduct, financial impropriety, and doctrinal error. By then, I had become disillusioned with the IFB church movement over its bastardization of the Christian gospel. The Hyles scandal was the last straw for me. Going forward, I self-identified as a Sovereign Grace Baptist, Reformed Baptist, Evangelical, or just Christian.
While I physically distanced myself from the IFB church movement, its teachings and the damage they caused left a deep, lasting impression on my life. Fundamentalism is hard to shake, especially for lifelong IFB adherents. Why is this?
Let me be clear, the IFB church movement is a cult. Some churches are more cultic than others, but all IFB churches have cultic tendencies. One of the hardest things for me to come to terms with was the fact that I was not only a member of a cult, but I was also a cult leader. I was most certainly a victim, but I was a victimizer too.
Indoctrination and conditioning are keys to turning well-meaning, sincere people into cultists. For children born into the IFB church movement, the indoctrination and conditioning begin at birth or soon thereafter. By the time a child graduates from high school, they have attended almost 4,000 church services and listened to almost 4,000 sermons. Many IFB children either attend private Fundamentalist schools or are homeschooled. After graduation, many children attend IFB colleges such Bob Jones University, Pensacola Christian College, Maranatha Baptist College, Crown College, West Coast Baptist College, Hyles-Anderson, Baptist Bible College — Springfield, Trinity Baptist College, Louisiana Baptist University, Golden State Baptist College, Arlington Baptist University, Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, Ambassador Baptist College, Fairhaven Baptist College, Landmark Baptist College, Massillon Baptist College, and numerous other colleges and church-based Bible institutes.
This means that for many IFB children, they know nothing outside of the IFB bubble. Their parents shelter them from the “world,” and in doing so rob them of the ability to think for themselves. How can rational choices be made if you have never been exposed to any other worldview but that of your IFB parents, pastors, and churches?
The title of this post asks the question, ” What did my IFB upbringing teach me about myself?”
My parents, pastors, youth directors, Sunday school teachers, and professors taught me from my childhood forward:
Bruce, you are a sinner
Bruce, you are broken
Bruce, you are evil
Bruce, you are wicked
Bruce, you are an enemy of God
Bruce, you are at variance with God
Bruce, you can’t do good
Bruce, God is going to torture you in Hell for eternity if you don’t get saved
Bruce, you are going to face endless pain and suffering in Hell if you don’t get saved
Even after I was saved, these same people reminded me that I was still a sinner, and that there was no good in me.
Bruce, if you do __________, God is going to punish you
Bruce, if you do __________, God could kill you
Bruce, if you do __________, God could kill your wife or children
Bruce, if you DON’T do ____________, God will chastise you
Week after week, month after month, and year after year, I was beaten over the head with the sin stick and once I became a pastor, I continued the abuse. No one raised this way can escape harm. Is it any wonder that many people who leave the IFB church movement need professional counseling; that their lives are deeply scarred by decades of indoctrination and conditioning?
Let me be clear, these things are not peculiar to the IFB church movement. Similar indoctrination and conditioning can be found throughout Evangelicalism, including denominations such as the Southern Baptist Convention, Assemblies of God, and countless unaffiliated churches.
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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Bruce, I learned all this too at fundamentalist Christian school (which was started and staffed by mostly IFB people) and at Southern Baptist church. The bulk of the indoctrination came from.the school, with Bible classes 3 days/week, chapel twice a week, and “Christ-centered” learning everywhere else.
Add onto this a whole other set of do’s and don’ts for being female. We were told that we were designed to be too emotional and unfit for leadership, were innately rebellious, and were openly or inadvertently responsible for male gaze and actions just due to our existence.
The things that are etched into our consciousness–including IFB teachings, notions about our race or gender, or anything else about who we are and our place in the world–are very difficult, if not impossible to efface. All we can do is be conscious of how they are affecting us.
I think now of the boys I taught in an Orthodox yeshiva. (I wrote about them in two of my early guest posts.) The community is as much of a cult or bubble as any other religious community. They weren’t allowed to go to movies, watch TV or read anything the rabbis didn’t approve. (This was pre-Internet.) I couldn’t assign anything unless the rabbis approved lest the boys (age 13-18) “read sex into it.” I wonder how those boys are now. Did any leave the community?
If they did, I wonder whether they were like someone I knew for a time. He left his ultra-Orthodox community after having a nervous breakdown at, if I recall correctly, age 19. He was a middle-aged man when I knew him and while he had a lot of book knowledge (he read a lot of history, politics and philosophy), he had the social skills of a pre-pubescent boy. As a result, he was fired from at least one job because of “inappropriate behavior.”
That is a good list, and just like OC added the challenges faced by women, I faced the challenges a gender that does not fit within the acceptable standards.
It is wonderful to be told you are an abomination, and have your evilness drilled into you constantly. It is a battle you were doomed to always lose. People push you to just none normal, pray harder, etc, to “fix” your sinful nature. That’s all it takes, right?
My existence as a femme leaning, androgynous, non binary person is simply sinful. So that means my very core is evil. It can’t just be changed. It was easy to manage language, actions,attitude, overcome anger, and the other requirements to be a good Christian. But you can not overcome who you are.
I don’t think anybody not raised in this type of cultish mindset really ever comprehends the insanity of claiming ‘everyone is a sinner’ or that we are ‘born in sin’. Even people I know who are regular churchgoers (with the exception of a Catholic hard wired friend, and an extreme Salvation Army couple) sort of startle at the suggestion (on the very odd times I’ve put it to them). I recall discussing it over 30 years ago with a local vicar (very local, as the church is next door!) and he told me it isn’t what it says it means. He reckoned that because of Jesus all sin was taken away from mankind, so we’re left simply with people doing sinful things, not being inherently sinful.
I’m so pleased he cleared that up! 😂
Yeah, he cleared that up.🤣🤣
You called him vicar. Episcopalian? If so, his church’s official doctrinal statement says:
Of Original or Birth-Sin
Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk;) but it is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation. And this infection of nature doth remain, yea in them that are regenerated; whereby the lust of the flesh, called in Greek, ,(which some do expound the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection, some the desire, of the flesh), is not subject to the Law of God. And although there is no condemnation for them that believe and are baptized; yet the Apostle doth confess, that concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin.
Of course, Episcopalians largely ignore their official statement of faith. 🤣🤣 We attended the local Episcopal church years ago. First Sunday . . . Woman comes up to us and says: welcome! You can believe whatever you want around here. 🤣🤣 Never heard that in the Baptist church. 🤣🤣
I don’t know if there’s anything Episcopal about the church, but then I don’t understand the terms. I recall my late wife used to refer to it as ‘high’ church, which I always assumed placed it nearer Catholic rituals than Church of England. Here’s the link, though I don’t think it works as such.
https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/13717/
incidentally the link refers to contact ‘Adam’, the church warden, for more information. Adam was formerly Dawn until about 10 years ago. Nobody at the church bats an eyelid, or thinks of him now as other than Adam.
England, Church of England. United States, Episcopal Church — both the same. Definitely high church. The church we attended . . . The music was unsingable.