Sadly, many people think Evangelical churches and preachers are pillars of virtue — places and people who can be trusted to care for children. These people are typically unaware of the fact that the goal of Evangelicals is to evangelize children, using aggressive techniques, manipulation, indoctrination, and conditioning. Parents might think that these kind, thoughtful, loving Christians just want to be nice, but little do they know that their unsaved children are viewed as enemies of God and children of Satan. Little do they know that their “lost” children will be threatened with judgment and Hell if they don’t get saved.
Church children are encouraged to invite their schoolmates, promising them fun, food, and fellowship. Most kids want to hang with their friends, so they say yes to attending church with their Evangelical classmates. As promised, churches dish out sumptuous helpings of food, fun, and fellowship. What churches are less inclined to make known is that children will also be exposed to adults trying to convert them. Fear and guilt are often used to coerce children into asking Jesus to save them. Once “saved,” the child typically becomes a member of the church. Often, children are baptized after getting saved. Sometimes, these baptisms take place without parental permission.
Recently, a Catholic grandchild of mine went to an Evangelical church for fun, food, and fellowship. This church (Compassion Church in Toledo, Ohio) is charismatic, so high emotional states are common. Can you imagine what happened next? My grandchild — who is in middle school — came home all excited about getting “saved.” Needless to say, Grandpa Bruce was pissed. If she had been older and had carefully examined the claims made by this church before getting saved, I would understand (while still being disappointed). However, this is not what happened. She was surrounded by friends and subjected to a high-emotion service/preaching/music and manipulation. It is not surprising she got “saved.” I hope that her salvation is temporary, and, in time, she will mature in her understanding of religion. I am not anti-religion. I am, however, adamantly opposed to religious coercion and manipulation.
Have you had a child or grandchild go to church and come home “saved?” Please share your experiences in the comment section.
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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Bruce, if I had read this from anyone but yourself, I would suspect your depiction of the ruthless evangelical zeal to indoctrinate children was exaggerated. Children are blank slates just waiting to be written upon. I’ve seen it happen with a young adult talking evangelical jargon after attending just one service. I saw it happen with a ten year old child after two weeks being fostered by an evangelical family. After child welfare authorities were informed, the family admitted they only fostered children to indoctrinate them. A different foster was found for the child but 40 years later, she is still a committed evangelical. Indoctrination works fast and endures a lifetime. Your advice not to allow children unsupervised exposure to evangelical church is well taken . I’d say children should not be exposed to it at all. Our society thinks certain forms of entertainment are unhealthy for children. I’m convinced religious extremism is no less harmful to kids than X rated movies and perhaps more so.
As well as being indoctrinated, the opposite can happen too. In high school, a friend asked me to go on a church field trip with her. No, it wasn’t fun, food, and fellowship. It was stress, nagging, and Chick tracts. I was lukewarm to religion anyway, and the behavior of the adults disgusted me. I came home with a comic book length Chick tract to show my mom. I thought it was funny. (I was 15) My mom didn’t laugh, she got pissed, and from that moment on, Chick was banned in our home, along with Rush Limbaugh. She told me I should explain to my friend why those beliefs were harmful. I did, and my friend said she hadn’t really thought about it. When she did, she quit going to that church. Plus, her mom saw the comic and wasn’t pleased with it either.
The church I was raised in didn’t use Chick or anything like him. I was used to a gentler Christianity. I can’t remember if we kids were encouraged to bring friends. If I had a child, I wouldn’t let them attend a service without me, no matter what the denomination or religion. If nothing else, the adults in charge may be idiots when it comes to supervising kids.
A real issue with me. My 3 small g/kids other grandparents are leading YECs in the UK. They indoctrinate as much as they can. The children’s parents believe firmly in keeping family bonds in tact, but now restrict unsupervised visits by kids to g/parents. They came home, 3yo and 5yo, singing ‘Shadrach, Mechach and Abednigo, into the furnace you shall go’….and more. These fundy g/parents have now suggested they will pay for three of them to go to a fundy private school in their city. They’ve suggested the family swaps houses with the g/parents, so the children are just 10 minutes away from this school. There seems no end to their machinations. This atheist granny has made a pact with one of the g/parents’ other sons who is bi, flamboyant and much pierced facially (ha ha)…..- that we will always do all we can to show there are other world views…and religion is all fiction
Catholics are “saved” when they are babies & when they go to confession (the Rite of Reconciliation”.
Of course, I’ve had enough to do with Evangelicals ~ included being married to one, which was HELL ~ to know that they don’t think Catholics are Christians AT ALL.
OMG, I did all the Catholic rituals and never knew baptism equaled salvation. That makes me twice saved. My baptism records were lost so I had to be baptized again before my first communion. Well, of course I coudn’t confess my infantile sins and receive the holy host un-baptized. That would be wrong for reasons supposedly known to adults, and not to me.
These superstitious rituals stifle rationality and impose a distorted reality on innocent vulnerable minds. I suspect I resisted and overcame it because to me it was just more of the nonsense I had to endure from irrational adults. My childhood normality was adults imposing arbitrary nonsensical requirements. I’d love to know what vile evil sins I was prodded to confess at ten years old. In retrospect, it’s obviously abusive and unhealthy. I would never allow any child to be subjected to it.
Hi, I’m a first time poster who normally just reads and lurks but several years ago we visited a church in the UK that I now realise was very evangelical ( I’m actually a liberal Quaker who got invited to this church by an old school friend I bumped into one day) I had my children with me and one of them was about ten years old so qualified for their children’s group.
The church was hugely friendly and the minister very charismatic, I was charmed, but totally bemused when walking home with my son and he told me that the youth leader had ” baptised him with the Holy Spirit.” This seemed very strange to us and I offered to go and talk to the youth leader but my son didn’t want me to, apparently he had baptised the whole group to make sure of their salvation. I regret not challenging this, we visited a few more times but then there was a sermon I could just not agree with, about “spare the rod and spoil the child,” and after that weleft. At the same time this old school friend who I thought I was reconnecting with stopped calling me and unfriended me on Facebook, it was an extremely odd experience.
Just last year I was surprised to see a huge conversation had developed on social media over an incident at an apartment complex I used to live at. Seems a Baptist church had people driving around approaching children playing alone and talking to them about attending their church. Parents were angry that any adult would be intentionally approaching their child to talk privately and it sent red flags up to those parents of the creep factor considering there has been several nearby churches where youth ministers were charged with rape. Then some others pointed out the church in question was considered by many in town to be a cult with bizarre requirements for members, especially the women. So people posted stories of their experiences getting mixed up with that church. It sounded like evangelicals, and creepy if they were planning on taking children away in the van without their parents knowledge or permission.
Adults approaching children in public? It’s the creep factor writ large. I imagine my younger more intense self having a child tell me about this happening. The very idea would have made me a danger to myself and others. I would have run out searching for any such person with a propensity for violence.
What people in charge of churches–whether Evangelical, Catholic or otherwise–never admit is that most of their membership is people who either had no choice in the matter (those who were baptized) or who were “saved” or “decided to follow Jesus” (or however they phrase it) before they had any meaningful ability to discern–or were simply vulnerable.
Kids absolutely need to be taught about critical thinking skills, especially before going to church. No one should ever give that skill up, because that’s what will protect you from getting sucked in to a cult. So, Bruce, time to have that talk about critical thinking, with the grandkids, and to never put your brain in anyone else’s hands at church !
Critical thinking seems awfully rare and if you do it a lot you’ll find yourself labelled a conspiracy nut and a troublemaker. Nothing is quite so dangerous as the question that must no be asked, (paraphrasing an intellectual whose name escapes me)
I was probably around the same age as Bruce’s grandchild when I got “saved”. I attended a YMCA summer camp starting when I was 12 years old. After a few days of getting to know and trust the counselors there, we had a big bonfire with all the campers of ages 12-16. There were songs and prayers and then the salvation message. Of course, part of the “good news” is that if you decide to not receive Jesus as your savior, you go to hell. Using the visual of the giant bonfire to describe hell, of course. Like Bruce’s grandchild, when I got home, I excitedly told my parents that I had gotten saved! They were not happy. We were members of a Presbyterian church and they didn’t care for the Babtist/evangelical gospel message that had basically scared me into getting “saved”. When I was a Christian as a parent, how pissed would I have been if my child had been taken to somewhere with a friend’s family of another faith and my child had converted to another belief/religion? Fortunately, my kids as young adults have developed some critical thinking skills and are finding their own way.
Great post, John.
I’ve told my own story a few times in comments on this page. Basically what you just described, but the setting was Royal Ranger weekend campouts (called “Pow Wows”). Royal Rangers was founded in the late 1960’s as Pentecostal/Assembly of God alternative to Boy Scouts. The BSA had/has their own religious affiliations, mostly Catholic and mainstream Protestant churches, but this apparently wasn’t good enough for the speaking in tongues crowd.
I will say I have very fond memories of the pow wows. This was the 1980’s and I got to do things and go places a lot of my school peers didn’t have access to.
Even the “bonfires” (called council fires) in the evenings were ok, until the inevitable altar call, with whatever singing was going on. This seemed like it was never ending. My favorite recollection was the warning that a tree may fall on our tent during the night, or some of other tragedy (accident on the way home, etc) may befall us. We had an opportunity (albeit as 10-18 year old boys) to make this life altering decision. Of course the AOG believes in free will. It was “our decision”, but, you know…
Yeah, not a fan. As you all know I eventually became Catholic. My uncle who introduced me to RR is still alive and we talk, but not about the path I took. The only time I heard him say anything about the Catholic Church was that they are not “Christian”. I love my uncle and he holds a good place in my heart. That said, I followed my father’s method regarding my own kids and religion- let them explore and determine their own spiritual path. And love and respect them for who they are.
Hey John! Yes, I eventually met several folks who were in the Royal Rangers! I wound up in a word of faith/Pentecostal flavor for about 20 something years. Like you, I have fond memories of summer camp. Yes, my parents grudgingly let me and my sister go back. I learned how to ride horses, water ski, camp, archery, and of course all the sinful things of the world that I should be avoiding. I remember coming home from one session and throwing out all my KISS records! Ugh! I have since replaced most of them. LOL I attended this summer camp every summer from 1980 through 1984. Good times.
Gee, and I was thinking Bruce was gonna whip out his list of perverts on the Black Collar Crime Series.
Hey I fell for it too – Pensacola Christian “Camp o The Pines” summer camp.
Yeah, we did some fun stuff but at night was subjected to the voodoo rituals of “salvation”. I was 14, of course I walked up to the front and was “saved”.
This is a little different type of scenario, but I think it applies. My daughter in law decided to take her two children to another state to connect with an adult cousin who has been a lifelong Scientologist. She is all in to the extent that she can have no contact with her father (my DIL’s brother). My DIL is trying to create a bridge to unfracture the family. Of course not only can she not succeed, as it is against Scientology dogma to associate with outsiders, even family members. But also she is exposing my grandkids to a dangerous cult which will love bomb them and make it hard for them to understand its downside. I am at my wit’s end with her decision – and she went against my son’s (her husband’s) wishes. I think my son will be working to use the experience as a way to inoculate the kids so they can face down cult mentality now and later.
I’d love to hear Bruce’s thoughts on Scientology, if any.