Part One — Part Two — Part Three — Part Four — Part Five
“Dr.” Arv Edgeworth, an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) evangelist, sent me another email. Here’s what he had to say
I have a question for you. I saw the list of IFB pastors and their sexual sins. I didn’t read any of the information, it would be too depressing. I know of a number of incidents like that in churches I have been associated with, sad to say. However, in your opinion, which should be considered worse: an IFB preacher who was guilty of sexual misconduct; or an IFB preacher who did a complete turn around and denied Christ, and tried to get others to do the same thing? Sexual misconduct, or spiritual misconduct? In your opinion, which would do the most damage?
I assume that Edgeworth is talking about the Black Collar Crime series. Edgeworth wants to know which is worse: an IFB preacher who raped church children or an IFB preacher (me) who deconverted and now tries to get others to do the same? What’s worse, Edgeworth asks, sexual misconduct or spiritual misconduct? I assume he thinks “spiritual” misconduct is worse because it leads to eternal consequences.
Let me be clear, sexual misconduct in all its forms is morally wrong and often leads to lifelong consequences. IFB churches are notorious for ignoring or covering up sex crimes. Worse, offenders often leave the churches where the offenses occurred and move on to other churches. More than a few IFB churches are pastored by preachers who have committed sex crimes. God has forgiven them of their sin. How dare anyone keep them from their calling! God forgives and forgets, and so should we. Or so the thinking goes, anyway.
Edgeworth’s claim that I committing spiritual misconduct is absurd. Am I taking advantage of people? Am I fulfilling the lusts of my flesh by spiritually assaulting and raping people? Of course not. I am just one man with a story to tell. I am not an evangelist for atheism. All I do is share my story and carefully examine the central claims of Evangelical Christianity. I write, people read. I have never forced myself or my beliefs on another person.
How is it spiritual abuse to encourage people to rationally think for themselves? Shouldn’t that be the goal for Christians and unbelievers alike? Edgeworth will search in vain for one post that remotely suggests that I tried to get Christians to deny the Messiah. Have some people said that my writing played an instrumental part in their deconversion? Sure, but all I did was answer their questions. Or maybe my personal testimony resonated with them. Regardless, I have never forced anyone to deny Jesus and become an atheist.
Should I not tell my story, Arv? You came to my blog and told yours. Why is it okay for Evangelicals to go from IP address to IP address, preaching the gospel, even to people who have no interest in what they are peddling? I have been told several times that I should shut up and keep my story to myself. One preacher told me he feared that if people read my story that they would deconvert. Really? Am I so powerful that my words carry such power — more powerful than God — that they can cause people to lose their salvation? Trust me, I am not that powerful. More often, my writing is just one step in the process of deconversion.
Instead of worrying about Evangelical-preachers-turned-atheists leading IFB church members astray, I would worry more about sexual predators who have infiltrated churches, using the love, kindness, and forgiveness of congregants to hide their evil actions. Sadly, church members can be naive, thinking a man of God would never, ever commit a sex crime. This is a delusion, one that leads to harm, both to church members who are abused and to vulnerable adults who are taken advantage of.
I should add that if anyone is committing spiritual abuse, it is IFB preachers. I could spend months talking about preachers who spiritually abused the churches — myself included. That’s what cults do.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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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Dear “Dr”, why do x-tians like you, seem to believe that ‘sexual sins,’ by pastors and church leaders are so trivial, that a quick prayer for forgiveness makes it all hunky dory. As Bruce says, you claim that god forgives and forgets after the abuser utters a short shout at the ceiling, (what you call, prayer). Never a mention that their sexual abuse – usually of a minor – will have a huge negative impact on that child’s life for decades ahead. Why, oh why does no x-tian ever, ever, ever quote the verse straight from the lips of your jesus about millstones for anyone who harms a child? And then believe they don’t ‘cherry pick’ verses to make them fit in with their ignorant feelings of ‘ickiness’ about any adult, who, harming no one, loves someone of the same sex, or knows they have been assigned the wrong gender at birth. And I love it that you keep communicating with Bruce whilst admitting you don’t read his blog. Open your closed mind just a little…..and your typical arrogance about theology might just be challenged. I dare you to say, as no fundy x-tian I’ve ever met has said, ‘I could be wrong.’
I don’t know if Arv reads the comments here, but I have to offer my absolute horror that he might consider sexual assault (or ‘misconduct’, as he puts it) to be the lesser evil than spiritual ‘misconduct’ (whatever that is). The victims of sexual abuse are often scarred for life, and struggle to come to terms with what happened. They are usually coerced/threatened into silence, and sometimes even blamed for what happened. There is no equivalence here.
Ben. A thousand upvotes. A UK government survey of survivors of sexual abuse in high places, a few years ago, asked for submissions and received over 1000 from survivors. The govt report said they all wrote of the decades-long after effects – eating disorders, mental and physical health issues, addictions, relationship problems, suicide attempts and more. One said, ‘I can be at a party having a great time, but one touch, one sound or smell and I’m right back in the abuse again and that’s not going to change until I die.’ It’s a red rag to a bull to me when x-tians claim that you can get ‘healed’ from abuse, one prayer and you’ll heal as quickly as a cut on your finger will heal, so if that doesn’t happen, you, the survivor, is at fault and maybe** to blame for the abuse.
** Some of them will say, not ‘maybe’, but ‘probably’, no doubt.
Wow, what kind of person asks a question like this? Obviously sexual misconduct is far worse than nor believing in god, even if that helps others quit believing in god.
What is it that makes Christians try to lessen sexual misconduct to be equal to disbelief or other so called sins. There is no comparison. None.
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Preachers who change their mind about their former beliefs and write about it in order to tell their own story are not practicing “spiritual misconduct.”
I would think a question like that is a poor attempt at a joke, but no, Arv is serious. Sexual assault is one of the worst things one coukd do to another person. It steals someone’s agency, it makes them an object of another’s aggressions, it is the act of someone saying that they dominate another person against that person’s will.
A person who leaves a religion and tries to convince others to leave the religion is merely someone expressing a different philosophical stance. As much as that person tries, they cannot force someone to believe or not believe something – that’s not how it works. My time in fundamentalist evangelicalism was one in which people used tactics of fear, shame, shunning, belittling, etc, to try to keep me (and others) in the fold. Surely, that was a type of abuse from which I had to recover, but it was a verbal or emotional attack basically. It was not both a verbal or emotional and physical attack as sexual assault is. In short, spiritual abuse attacks you as a person, but sexual assault attacks you as a person and attacks your physical body. I think sexual assault is worse, but that’s my opinion.
Religious organizations that sweep away sexual abuse if the person “repents” and “asks forgiveness” and allows the perpetrator to continue to participate in positions of power and access to other potential victims is just as bad as the perpetrator. I don’t believe that victims should be required to forgive their abuser or continue to participate in spaces where the abuser is allowed to continue in power. If a victim CHOOSES to forgive because that’s what they truly feel is right fir them, great – but it shouldn’t be considered a requirement. The victim is not to blame – their rights were violated. The one who violated someone’s rights should be punished, not elevated.
There can be no forgiveness of child abuse, especially child sexual abuse as other commenters have said, child sexual abuse causes large amounts of harm to that child for the rest of life. Religious organizations like the IFB or the Catholic Church which have had proven examples of allowing pastors/priests to just move on to a different congregation are guilty of abetting child sexual abuse unless the abuser is tried in court and put in prison for as long as possible. The person who commits sexual abuse should be kept away from children forever.
Most states (I do not know if this is federal) require suspicion of child sexual abuse be reported to the police immediately. There should be a crime for not reporting child sexual abuse and the person who is guilty of that should serve as long as possible in prison as a sexual offender, especially if this is a person of authority in the organization.
There is no such thing as spiritual misconduct in the United States of America. We are supposed to have freedom of religion. Anyone who tries to intimidate or psychologically harm a person who changes religious or spiritual beliefs should be convicted of a crime possibly called Religious Intimidation.
My family looked at religions from Lutheran, a small church in Denver Colorado called Divine Science which I enjoyed as a child and my father was interested in Buddhism. Our religious or spiritual beliefs were not mandated by anyone outside the family.
Rev. Edgeworth ( you aren’t an actual doctor so I won’t address you as such) your 5th email to Bruce Gerencser was not the usual rude drivel, so thank you for that. But the claim that somehow his accounts of his life, and later deconversion is worse than the crimes against children and church members by pastors and evangelists is quite ridiculous. Many Christians read this blog, enjoy Bruce’s writing, and no, they don’t deconvert because of him ! They still are Christians, they have their reasons, and this fascinating, lively blog is no threat to faith. If anything is a threat to people’s faith in God and Jesus, it’s these demented American churches and their abusive,greedy, power- mad pastors that DRIVE people, often young people, away from God !! There’s lots of abuse accounts on blogs by faltering and deeply offended abuse survivors who are considering or have left Christianity altogether. That should alarm you. The parents and church members who’s sick behaviors drove believers out of the faith. You should be warning such pretty! By not warning abusers to stop their actions and submit to the laws outlawing these crimes, you are actually letting God and Jesus down ! Ever think about that??
What a stupid question! Anyone who has to compare child sex abuse to deconversion is totally and willfully ignorant.
Edgeworth’s comparison is especially offensive to me today: I have learned that Virginia Giuffre, one of the most prominent victims of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, has died by suicide. While she wasn’t abused by a member of the clergy or any other church official, she was victimized by someone who, in his community, had a status similar to that of many preachers and church officials in theirs: Prince Andrew. (Remember: The King or Queen is the head of the Church of England.) She was also beaten by her husband, who got a restraining order that prevented her from seeing their children.
As someone who, as a child, was sexually abused by a Catholic priest, I understand how difficult it is to live with such trauma. To my knowledge, no atheist has ever sexually exploited or otherwise brutalized anyone to destroy their faith. All Bruce, I and every atheist I know has ever done is to tell our stories and answer questions as best we can. And, if I do say so myself, we do a much better job of accepting people’s religious beliefs than folks like Edgeworth do of accepting our lack of such beliefs.
I’m sorry to hear that. I had no idea she was married,and to a wife – beater at that ! She was living in Australia,so I’m wondering where the cops were while this was happening. Those poor kids now only have that violent, crappy dad.