Jason Keller, pastor of Freedom Family Church in Liberty, North Carolina, and former elementary school principal of Union Grove Christian School, was convicted last week of six counts of felonious sexual offense with a student and two counts of taking indecent liberties with a student. Keller was sentenced to four to five years for five of the counts of felonious sexual offense with a student and thirty months on supervised probation after being released from prison.
A prominent businessman, educator, and pastor has been convicted in Davidson County of engaging in sexual activity with a student.
On Wednesday, Jason Wesley Keller, 42, was convicted in Davidson County of six counts of felonious sexual offense with a student and two counts of taking indecent liberties with a student, according to Assistant District Attorney Marissa Parker. Keller was sentenced to four to five years for five of the counts of felonious sexual offense with a student. He will spend 30 months on supervised probation after he is released from prison for the other three counts.
….
Keller was charged with engaging in sexual acts with a student and taking indecent liberties with a student, according to his indictment.
….
The investigation began in 2009, but charges were not brought against him until 2019 when the student, now an adult, reached out to law enforcement to re-report the alleged sexual misconduct and press charges, arrest warrants said.
Keller was the acting elementary school principal and assistant principal of Union Grove Christian School where the victim also attended, the warrants said. He engaged in sexual activity with her between August 2008 and May 2009, according to the warrants.
Keller continued to be active in civic and church groups after being charged.
Keller also served as a pastor at Freedom Family Church in Liberty. The church did not respond to a request for comment. It was unclear Thursday if Keller still worked at the church.
According to a 2019 article in Forsyth Family Magazine, Keller said he was on an advisory committee that worked with high school students in Forsyth County. Spokesman for the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools Brent Campbell said it would be difficult to confirm Keller’s role with students in the district.
Keller is listed as the lead ambassador for the Lewisville-Clemmons Chamber of Commerce Chamber Ambassadors. Interim director of the Lewisville-Clemmons Chamber of Commerce Denise Heidel did not respond to a voicemail request for comment about Keller’s status there.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Back in 1987, World magazine published an article by veteran journalist Garry John Moes that asked, “Is there a connection between Socialist doctrine and the homosexual rights movement?”
That striking lead disturbed me. While the article presented clear evidence that there is, in fact, such a connection, it didn’t answer a corollary question: Why is there a connection between homosexuality and socialism?
Why, for instance, did Plato endorse both socialism and homosexuality? Why, today, are many homosexuals — and others in the LGBTQIA+ movements — also socialists?
Back then I set out to answer that question in another article in World titled “Denial of Distinction: Socialism’s Roots and Sexual Deviance.” Its lessons are even more relevant today than they were 35 years ago.
….
A fundamental biblical doctrine revealed here is that there are real, abiding, basic distinctions in this world. Some religions — Hinduism and Buddhism, animism and spiritism — believe that all is fundamentally one, that there are no distinctions at the root of reality. Not Biblical Christianity. For the Bible, one is not two; evil is not good; light is not darkness; bitter is not sweet.
When God’s vineyard becomes indistinguishable from the wild vines around it, He tears down its hedge or wall. He will not permit a false distinction to remain. That is why God insists that evil and good, light and darkness, sweet and bitter not be confused with each other.
To those who deny such distinctions — who say that the Church can be like the world, who obscure the distinction between good and evil — to them, God says, “Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and clever in their own sight!” As if to say, “They may be wise in their own eyes, but not in Mine. I am the Judge before whom they must stand. They may overlook distinctions, but I will not!”
What joins socialism with homosexuality and all forms of sexual perversion? They all run against, consciously or subconsciously, of the biblical doctrine of fundamental distinctions.
Biblical thinking recognizes a distinction between Church and world. The church is God’s private property, “a people for God’s own possession” (1 Peter 2:9), and it has a hedge or wall of doctrines and ethics built around it to distinguish it from the world. It must not do what the world does, but must perform God’s judgments and statutes, in which it finds life (Leviticus 18:3-5).
Just as the Bible insists that God has property in the Church, so it insists in the commandment, “Thou shalt not steal,” that people have property that must be distinguished from everyone else’s property. Socialism denies that distinction, claiming that everything belongs to everyone. In so doing, it breaks down a wall of distinction by which God orders reality, and to avoid chaos it reverts to another kind of order: totalitarianism. The Bible also insists that property is a just reward for work, not to be divided equally among all people regardless of their contribution to its production (Luke 19:12–26; 2 Thessalonians 3:10). Again, socialism denies this fundamental distinction, insisting on an impossible equality of economic condition.
What of sexuality? The Bible insists that God made man male and female, and that the distinction must be upheld. Neither adultery (Deuteronomy 22:22), nor fornication (Deuteronomy 22:23-29), nor transvestism (Deuteronomy 22:5), nor homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22), nor bestiality (Leviticus 18:23), let alone transgenderism, may be condoned among the people of God. Adultery and fornication, polygamy and polyandry, and polyamorism, deny the distinction between one’s spouse and all other members of the opposite sex. Homosexuality and transgenderism deny the distinction between male and female. Bestiality, with its religious roots in polytheistic evolutionary doctrines of the origin of the world and mankind, denies the distinction between human beings and animals.
Socialism and all forms of sexual perversion have this in common: they attack fundamental distinctions God has built into creation. Where they come into closest ideological contact is in denying the exclusivity of certain relationships. Socialism denies the exclusivity of property as belonging to one person or family and not to others. Sexual perversion denies the exclusivity of sexual relations to marriage between one male and one female.
Distinctions are fundamental to biblical thought: distinctions of order and chaos, light and darkness, good and evil, animal and human, female and male, saved and damned, Church and world, holy and unholy. So are distinctions of work and sloth, individual and community, private and communal property, freedom and slavery, lawfulness and unlawfulness, variety and uniformity.
Each in its own way — socialism and sexual perversion — denies such distinctions. They rebel against the fundamental orders of God’s creation. They must not be countenanced among God’s people — now, any more than 35 years ago.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Recently, a man named Bradley Brown left the above comment on YouTube. Brown wants to know if I returned the money I earned pastoring churches when I became an atheist. Evidently, Brown’s Bible doesn’t include the verse that says a “laborer is worthy of his honor” and that a pastor/elder is worthy of “double honor” (pay).
I spent twenty-five years pastoring Evangelical churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. All told, I averaged less than $10,000 a year as a pastor. Two churches paid me no money, one church paid me $26,000 and provided housing, and the rest of the churches I pastored paid roughly $8,000-10,000 a year. Total that up and I made around $250,000 as a pastor.
Not one church provided health benefits or any other benefits. We relied on Medicaid or paid cash for our medical care. We only went to the doctor if it was an emergency. Our children went years between doctor’s visits.
Our hillbilly mansion. We lived in this 720-square-foot mobile home for five years, all eight of us.
Only one church provided us housing. The rest of the time, we lived in rentals or two mobile homes we purchased. For five years, our family of eight lived in 12’x60′ mobile home — 720 square feet. Most years we drove cars that cost a few hundred dollars. We did buy a new Plymouth Horizon in 1984 for $6,000, putting 102,000 miles on it in two years. We also bought a spartan low-mileage 80s Chevy Cavalier for $2,900. We junked it at 176,000 miles.
Every church I pastored had my full attention, as I worked full-time even when I was paid paltry wages. In addition, I worked secular jobs to provide for my family. Every dime I ever made, I earned. So, to answer Bradley Brown, no I am not going to return the money I EARNED pastoring churches.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Fake Dr. David Tee blogs at TheologyArcheology: A Site for the Glory of God. Tee is a well-known Internet troll, self-published young-earth creationist author, and a diehard Fundamentalist Christian. Tee is best known for his consummate defense of abusers and child molesters. Over the past several years, Tee has written numerous posts about me and the readers of this blog. He has also sent me several emails which he hoped would emotionally traumatize me. At every opportunity, Tee has attempted to slander my character. He has even gone after my wife and children — in Christian love, of course.
I have long known that “David Tee” was not his real name. I found that he was using the name David Thiessen. Come to find out, that’s not his real name either. According to a source I now believe to be credible, Tee’s actual name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen.
Recently, the following comments were left on this site:
Comment One
I know there’s been a bit of speculation from those who have followed “Dr. David Tee” across the interwebs over the years. I thought I’d expand on it some.
Some of you have divined his real name to be David Thiessen. You’re half right. His name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, and he’s a Canadian national.
“David” is a name he probably picked up after he stole his then-girlfriend’s identity (Social Security Number) to facilitate procurement of employment in the United States, where he was living illegally. If David is his legal name, it’s a relatively new development.
His “doctorate” is from a paper mill. He has never, to my knowledge, submitted to a curriculum created by any accredited institution.
His Bible is missing 1 Timothy 5:8 (“[b]ut if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever”) as he probably began using the abridged version of his last name shortly after he was ordered to pay child support to the child he fathered, of which he never paid a penny before disappearing from the child-support enforcement system’s radar.
But his Bible does have a unique translation of Ephesians 5:22, the same one other males of the species use to justify being abusive to their wives. Except most of them at least aren’t so cowardly to assert that dominance over a quadriplegic who not only can’t fight back, she can’t easily run away from it.
Comment Two
Original poster here. Everything I posted originally is the unvarnished truth.
The name “David Tee” comes from whole cloth, as does the name “David” in general. “Derrick” is the name that he answered to relative to at least three legal documents in my physical possession. One of them involves a restraining order, which is why I am being somewhat vague with what I post publicly. Although an extensive amount of time has passed, I do not wish to be located and identified by him or any apologists he may have.
I believe my recent e-mail to him, sent from a throwaway account, is the inspiration for his latest blog post, meaning he has narrowed my identity down to two, possibly three, people … but he would have long-outdated information if he ever came looking for any of the three, and I’d like to keep it that way.
I am also in physical possession of the court transcript of a deposition in which he conceded, under oath, that he interchangeably used “David Thiessen” and “D. David Thiessen” (as well as “David Ford”) as a pseudonym, supposedly to hide from his family in Calgary. Although, the informal name change roughly coincides with him fleeing (I believe) Washington state after being charged with domestic violence in the mid-90s. The victim was the same person who he claims – quoting from his sworn testimony – “told me she was giving me my freedom” by handing over her Social Security card for him to use for employment purposes. This, presumably, is one of the half-truths and lies he rants about in his blog, although he doesn’t clarify which part of his account of that encounter is only half-true.
I have reviewed the aforementioned sworn affidavit. It is a damning document that suggests Thiessen committed domestic violence, illegally used another person’s social security number, and attempted to commit voter fraud. If these things are true, we now understand why Thiessen has been holed up in South Korea and the Phillipines for years.
Another friend of mine, with whom I shared this information, did an Internet search on Derrick David Theissen. Low and behold he got a hit: Tee used his real name in a 2016 article about a lecture he gave to the Asian Center for Missions:
An inspirational message and challenge were shared by Dr. Derrick Thomas Thiessen, a missionary to Korea for 14 years. He placed emphasis on the significant and distinct roles of the body of Christ in mending the wounds and brokenness of a missionary especially when they make mistakes in their given assignments.
With the article was a picture of the conference participants and speakers. In the back row is a tall white guy. You guessed it. It’s Dr. David Tee/David Thiessen/Derrick Thomas Thiessen.
The person who left the comments on this site about Thiessen contacted him about his allegations. This prompted Thiessen to write an incoherent, unhinged post titled When People Hate You:
We were taught years ago, that a good preacher is preaching himself when he prepares and speaks his sermon. Everything we have said on this website plus this topic has already been preached to us. and we learn the lessons we need to learn.
Everything said in this specific post is said with a lot of heartfelt kindness. And we are not going to go into specifics just using the material to glean lessons.
Recently, we received an e-mail from someone who stated they hated us. We never met the person before and had no direct contact with them. Yet they hated us and not because of what we write on our websites.
We knew that attitude would be in that person because sinful third parties told us what they were going to do and there was nothing we could really do about it. The author of that particular e-mail was a victim of those sinful third parties’ evil deeds yet the author decided to direct their hatred and anger toward us.
There really is nothing you can do when a person takes that stance. Their minds are closed by the hatred and other negative and sinful emotions they let rise in their minds and hearts. A Christian cannot approach the people like that author as their closed mind does not let them see the truth and they can get angrier if one tries.
Sometimes it takes a fourth party to get involved to help the angry person to realize their mistake and see the truth. That 4th party can be God doing it directly or sending another human to work with the angry person.
The angry person won’t hear you but they might hear that God-sent person. There are no guarantees as that person has free choice. The one that wrote us chose to believe the lies and half-truths told him or her, (they did not leave a name), We know they were lies and half-truths as we know the whole story.
We are not getting involved because we do not want that author to hate the people who did this to him or her. They are as much a victim of those third parties as a person who is killed is a victim of a murderer.
We cannot get angry at them for their content in the letter nor do we hold any ill will or negative thoughts against the, We understand where they are coming from. BUT, they have always had a choice.
God’s instructions throughout the Bible apply to the author of that e-mail as well as to every victim that has existed in this world. They can choose the path that person is on right now or they can choose to follow the path that God laid out in the Bible.
We as Christians cannot force that choice nor demand that they choose God’s way over the sinful evil way they have decided to follow. That is up to the Holy Spirit to convict and convince that and those people of their wrong choice.
By not choosing God’s way, they leave themselves on a path to destruction as their hatred and unwillingness to forgive destroys them. They should forgive because they do not know the whole story and are making bad assumptions about the situation and the circumstances surrounding that situation.
They are taking someone’s word for what happened even though the words they received were not true. That is wrong and makes them as bad as the third parties that planned this direction.
The key is for these people to learn that God’s instructions apply to them even though they may not be a Christian. They are the ones in disobedience to God, not the person they hate. Christians must remember that they are not responsible for the decisions of those who hate them.
That responsibility lies on the people who decided to hate. We cannot force decisions on others even though the people that ran the different Inquisitions tried. They were given free choice just like Christians were and their decisions are on their shoulders.
You can’t pass the buck on this issue. Even Christians are responsible for their choices and we must make the right ones as well. As for the author of that e-mail, we do not think bad of them or hate them. They just do not understand that they are victims of evil and deception.
We would hope and pray that God sends a 4th party to that person and help them before it is too late for them. Christians will face different situations where people will hate them just for being Christian. That is not our responsibility.
Our responsibility is that we obey Christ in all situations even when we are victims ourselves. The author of that e-mail said that we would be too chicken to respond, while that person should have made sure their e-mail address accepted responses.
Sometimes all Christians can do is leave these types of people in God’s hands and endure the hatred. Responding in kind is not Jesus supported. Getting all the facts is important before you draw conclusions.
Coming to a conclusion without all the facts means you are making faulty conclusions that lead you away from God and his ways. That is not the right move to make. Christians need to do the same thing especially when they are trying to reach out and win the other person to Christ.
While it is almost impossible to understand what the hell Theissen is talking about, I have concluded that he sees himself as a “victim,” unfairly persecuted and he believes “God” will take care (kill?) of the person making these allegations.
I have long believed that Thiessen was hiding something. I will leave it up to him to defend himself. I will gladly give Thiessen space on this site to rebut the allegations laid at his feet.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Evangelical preachers loved to talk about the number of people saved under their ministries. The Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church movement, in particular, is fixated on “souls saved.” If IFB churches were McDonald’s restaurants, they would replace the “____ billions served” line with “____ souls saved.”
Evangelists love to humble brag about how many people were saved during the meetings. “Souls saved” is the equivalent of a dick measuring contest. Watch a Billy or Franklin Graham crusade and you will see hundreds of people coming forward during the altar call. What most people don’t know is that many of the people coming forward are counselors, not people getting saved.
Some evangelists, using the Billy Graham model, “prime the pump” by having trained Christian altar workers come forward during the invitation time. These altar workers give the unaware the illusion that God is moving and people are being saved. Contrary to Donald Trump saying that he invented the phrase “priming the pump,” Evangelists have been talking about and using this practice since the 1920s. While many evangelists don’t use such a crass phrase as “priming the pump,” and instead use less-offensive phrases such as ‘helping sinners take the first step’, I have heard several notable evangelists utter the phrase. The late Joe Boyd is one evangelist who comes to mind.
A new fad amount Evangelical megachurch pastors is mass baptisms. There was a time when baptism was reserved for new converts (or for church membership in Landmark/Baptist Bride congregations.) Today, churches will mass baptize people who want to recommit themselves to Jesus or have some sort of felt need. Doing so wildly inflates their baptism numbers, hiding the fact that very few new converts are being baptized.
Every day, or so it seems anyway, I read news reports about this or that church/pastor/evangelist having scores of sinners saved. I automatically say “bullshit.” Why? In most Evangelical churches, salvation is little more mental assent to a set of theological propositions. This is especially true in IFB churches that practice “easy believism” or “decisional regeneration.” (Please see The Bankruptcy of the Evangelical Gospel, Let’s Go Soulwinning, and One, Two, Three, Repeat After Me: Salvation Bob Gray Style.) Preachers report large numbers of souls saved, yet when asked why their church attendances aren’t growing, these soulwinning machines say “that’s up to God, not me.” Bob Gray, Sr, the retired pastor of an IFB megachurch in Longview, Texas, proudly states thousands and thousands and thousands of people were saved under his ministry — upwards of a 100,000 people — yet most of these new converts were never baptized (the first step of obedience) or became members of the church.
During the First and Second Great Awakenings, thousands and thousands of people were saved. For a time, church attendances grew. By and by, the revival fires died, and many of these new converts went back to their worldly ways. One evangelist of that era (Jonathan Edwards or George Whitfield, I believe) said that revivialists should wait for a year before counting “souls saved.” They believed that this would give an accurate count of those truly saved.
I pastored Somerset Baptist Church in Mt. Perry, Ohio from 1983 to 1994. The church grew from sixteen people at its first service to 206 in 1987. During the eleven years I pastored Somerset Baptist, over 600 people made public professions of faith. Most of them didn’t become members, often coming for a few weeks or months before returning to their “sinful” ways. While the church did grow in the 1980s, most of the growth came from transfers — people changing churches. I would later see that the gospel I was preaching made people seven-fold children of Hell. I spent the remainder of my time in the ministry trying to get saved people unsaved. This proved much harder than getting them saved. Embracing Calvinism in the mid- to late- 1980s forced me to reorient my approach to preaching and evangelism. I went from being quantity-focused to quality-focused. I went from preaching textual/topical sermons to preaching expositionally. My focus was on building up the church instead of filling the pews with people who had no real interest in following Jesus.
The next time you hear a preaching bragging about how many souls were saved at this or that church/revival meeting, I hope you will quietly mumble under your breath, “bullshit.” 🙂 Or better yet, ask this braggart how many of these new converts were baptized, how many of them joined the church, and how many of them are actively serving Jesus. You will likely see the preacher’s dick shrivel up, and he will probably stammer and stutter as he tries to explain the disconnect between the number of souls saved and the number who are members and actively serving their Savior.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Last Friday, the building where Balsora Baptist Church in Bridgeport, Texas meets burned to the ground, save for the cross pictured above.
When asked to explain the charred cross, Lanita Smith, the wife of the church’s pastor, had this to say:
It showed us that God is there, God is there and he’s going to get us through. [The cross was] used for the members to put their prayer request on. They would, we would write their prayer request on the tags, and they would hang them on the cross. And so we were able to see what different prayer requests we had.
It’s sad, but it’s a happy time that we’re going to, we’re going to get through this and we know God’s in it. We’re just, we’re just going to be anxious to see what God has planned for us.
God is there? God is going to get us through? God’s in it? God has a plan for us? I genuinely feel sorry for the church. They lost an asset that was very important to them. I’m sure they are heartbroken over their loss. Yet, the atheist in me can’t help but question the Heavenly Arsonist’s plan for Balsora Baptist Church. Why burn the church to the ground, leaving only a charred wooden cross? What lesson could the church possibly learn from this, outside of how to file insurance claims? If anything, this story shows how powerless God is when tragedy and adversity strike. God stood helplessly by while the church went up in smoke. Even the cross left in the debris was not his handiwork. The church will pray ceaselessly to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but it will be real flesh and blood humans and insurance that will help Balsora Baptist rise from the ashes. God? He will be busy helping the grannies over at First Methodist find their car keys.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
About five years ago, women began wearing thong bathing suits on our beaches here in San Diego. When they were laying on their stomachs on their towels, they looked naked. I got to the place where I despised walking on the beaches with my husband. I hated being where naked and promiscuous women were, but he liked walking on the beach, so we continued walking on the beach. Well, those same beaches have completely eroded and are filled with rocks so we no longer walk along it. God took care of that!
Aren’t Christians supposed to avoid sin, abstaining from the very appearance of evil? Yet, Ken Alexander wants to take daily strolls down beaches littered with almost naked women (and men). Shouldn’t Alexander refrain from going places where he might be tempted to lust? Of course, Alexander is a man. Jesus may be in his heart, but he loves nice asses and breasts. 🙂 Asses and breasts win every time. 🙂 Advice to Lori: don’t let Ken walk on the beach alone. 🙂
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
2) “There is no specific biblical instruction that a woman should not wear pants.”
3) “Whatever you write doesn’t matter; I’m just not convicted about it.”
4) “I have peace about wearing pants.”
5) “We have thought it through carefully, and we are going to allow pants now. But we will only allow modest pants.”
6) “I only wear pants to work.”
7) “Pants are more comfortable.”
8) “You are wrong; pants as an item of clothing do not belong exclusively to the male gender. That ship has sailed.”
9) “Well, you have to admit, pants are more modest for certain activities. I mean, can you imagine rock climbing at the mall in a dress?”
10) “Say what you want, I don’t have to answer to a man for what I wear.”
11) “That’s Old Testament stuff and we’re under grace now.”
12) “Yes, I wear pants. I am free from the bondage of legalism now.”
13) “It’s just not as important as you make it out to be.”
14) “Everybody knows that men and women wore the same robes in the Bible.”
15) “I can’t wear a skirt or a dress and stay warm.”
16) “Well, my pants are more modest than So-and-so’s skirts and dresses.”
17) “God doesn’t care about how I look; He only cares about my heart.”
18) “You should just stick with teaching the Bible and let the Holy Spirit convict people how He wants.”
19) “Dress standards just breed pride. The Pharisees. Hello?”
20) “You don’t understand, Pastor Brennan. If I require that standard of my daughters they will rebel against me.”
21) “I’m an older woman; ain’t no man going to lust after me.”
22) “What will the lost think when they hear you emphasize such quaint notions?”
23) “Who are you to judge?”
24) “Well, Paul said all things are lawful. So get off my case.”
Please take the time to read Brennan’s responses to these objections.
Brennan thinks that if good IFB women start wearing pants they will go “liberal,” and soon will be wearing shorts, tight jeans, and yoga pants. OMG, the pants apocalypse. 🙂
My wife and I have had this conversation with our own daughter. Why is it that when a formerly conservative independent Baptist family gives up the pants standards it seems to go entirely the opposite direction rather quickly? If they gave up, accepted pants, and wore the (relatively) modest old-lady pants (forgive me, I am sure there is a better term here) I could almost live with that. But they do not. In my experience, never. They say the pants are going to be modest, but inevitably, in a few years, the tight jeans, the yoga pants, and the short shorts show up, if not in the first generation then in the next one.
Brennan’s beliefs are not special or unique. Countless misogynistic IFB preachers hold similar beliefs. I remember losing good church families over my refusal to let church women who served in an official capacity wear pants. I have apologized to several families, but this kind of thinking causes untold heartache and harm, all over a pair of pants.
I am sure some of you wonder why IFB women willingly submit to such nonsense. Perhaps some of the former IFB church members who read this blog will chime in. I do know that women are deeply indoctrinated. They are conditioned to believe that the pastor’s peculiar interpretations of the Bible and social pronouncements are straight from the mouth of God. Little girls, teens, and women are taught to submit to their pastor’s authority and that of their husbands. When this is all you know, you don’t know any better. When you are taught certain items of clothing and fashion are signs of worldliness, is it any wonder you “willingly” comply. This sort of cultic thinking has ensnared countless American women. My wife, Polly, was forty-six years old before she wore her first pair of pants — capris. I encouraged her to buy a pair of pants. She refused, believing God would punish her if she did. We continued to talk about the matter, and Polly finally disobeyed God. What happened next? Absolutely nothing.
I have nothing but sympathy for women trapped in churches such as Brennan’s. Sadly, the only way out for them is rebellion or divorce — which an increasing number of women do. Some IFB churches give in and allow women to wear pants. They do, to a minute degree, become more “liberal.” Brennan sees pants as a red line that must not be crossed. Doing so leads to the incurable disease of “liberalism.” Brennan intends to man the Fundamentalist walls, keeping out the “world.” Brennan will fail, but before he does, he will cause untold harm. Such preaching kills marriages and families, often sending children running for the hills, never to return.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Recently, Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) preacher Patrick Holt, who pastors Bible Baptist Church in Grover Hill, Ohio, wrote a letter to the Defiance Crescent News decrying the decline and depravity he sees everywhere he looks. He blames these things on “liberals,” saying if we just allowed school teachers to lead children in (Christian) prayers and (Protestant Christian) Bible readings and taught them the Ten Commandments (which Holt doesn’t keep), the United States will magically return to the glory days of the 1950s. Never mind the fact that most Americans are Christians, so if he wants to place blame, I suggest he look in the mirror.
Here’s what Holt had to say:
Liberals got what they wanted
It is definitely a tragedy with the recent and past mass shootings at our public schools. Debate continues on about guns being the problem.
I graduated in 1967. Guys driving their pickup trucks to school may possibly have had a gun rack with a shotgun or a rifle in the back glass. Semi-automatic guns had been invented by that time. But there were no mass shootings in our public schools.
During the 12 years of my schooling, the day would start as a student read a Bible verse and then followed by another student reading a prayer over the PA system. Then Mr. Dunlap would make the announcements. But along that time there was the liberal left party which said it didn’t want the Bible, prayer and the Ten Commandments in our public schools. And they got their wish.
Shortly after that they said they didn’t want those terrible three in our society. And they have been fairly successful at that. So what they were asking for was a godless school system and a godless society.
Now you have the right to choose what you want or don’t want, but you cannot choose what the outcome will be. You can choose to drink and to drive, but then you shouldn’t complain about the results of your choice.
The liberal, leftist party said, “We don’t want that commandment that says, ‘Thou shalt not kill’ taught to our children in school.” Toss it out. You got your request and the results.
Remember when you point your finger and say, “guns are the problem,” you have three fingers pointing back at you. Those three fingers are: no Bible, no prayer and no Ten Commandments. You got your wish and the results.
You see, if we are godless, then we are lawless. Own up to who is at fault. The problem is not what is in a person’s hand, but what is in their heart.
Patrick Holt
Grover Hill
Here’s my response, which I submitted to the newspaper today.
Dear Editor,
Patrick Holt is an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist preacher. Stuck in the 1950s, Holt thinks America would be great again if we just returned to the homophobic, racist, misogynistic 50s; a return to the days when Evangelical Christianity ruled the roost. Holt looks at our culture and sees decline, decay, and godlessness. He blames these failures on the removal of Bible reading, prayer, and the Ten Commandments from public schools. If only our progeny were led in daily prayer and Bible reading by their teachers and taught the Ten Commandments, our culture would magically return to the glory days of the 1950s.
That ship has sailed, never to return. The 1950s were hardly what Holt intimates them to be. Racism. Homophobia. Misogyny. Patriarchalism. McCarthyism. Criminalization of birth control and abortion. Shall I go on? Those of us who value social progress, equality, and equal protection under the law have a very different view of the world. We intend to push back when Evangelicals try to drag us back to the “good old days.” Evangelical Christianity is dying on the vine. Younger Americans are abandoning organized religion in record numbers. The number of atheists, agnostics, and nones continues to grow, now equaling Evangelicals as a voting bloc.
Holt would have us believe that the only thing keeping him from being a thief and murderer is Jesus. Is that not the conclusion we must come to when he says “Godlessness leads to lawlessness?” I don’t know about Holt, but I murder all the people I want to. I burglarize as many of my neighbors as I want to. I just don’t want to. The unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines of the world have moral and ethical values — no God needed.
This Saturday, Defiance will have its first Pride Walk. I have no doubt that Holt will see this event as yet another sign of decay and depravity, a sign of the soon return of the dead Jesus. I plan to be at the Pride Walk. I am sixty-five years old, by all accounts a curmudgeon. Yet, I know that a better tomorrow requires justice and equality for all. I have thirteen grandchildren. I want a better future for them. I understand Holt’s beliefs. I once was an IFB preacher, an Evangelical pastor for twenty-five years. I also know that it is possible to break free from the narrow, bigoted, anti-human beliefs of Evangelical Christianity.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
If I lost one of my children I’d be pretty devastated, especially in a way that is so senseless and seemingly has no purpose. I think … I would just have to say, if I had the opportunity to talk to the people I’d have to say, look, there’s always a plan. I believe God always has a plan. Life is short no matter what it is. And certainly, we’re not going to make sense of, you know, a young child being shot and killed way before their life expectancy.
They’re not following murder laws, they’re not gonna follow gun laws. So this idea that somehow if you ban guns from law-abiding citizens, somehow these people that kill people, they’re gonna follow the gun law, but they won’t follow the murder laws, is somewhat ridiculous.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
