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Category: Evangelicalism

Christian Perfection: A Personal Story

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be ye perfect

I am sure you have seen the bumper sticker I am not Perfect Just Forgiven. The Christian driver of the car is warning you ahead of time that he plans to drive like a non-Christian. As he cuts you off in traffic or changes lanes without a blinker, remember, he is not perfect, but he is forgiven. I am quite sure that there are no perfect people. I have met some great examples of human character, but given enough time, they will always show that their feet are made of clay. In the human realm, perfection does not exist, and it seems quite clear to me that perfection does not exist in the spiritual realm either.

I have battled with perfectionism most of my adult life. Coupled with an obsessive-compulsive personality, the result is that I have often set an impossible standard of living for myself. I crave order and structure. I demand answers. The TV has to be perfectly centered on the entertainment center. All of the cables must be hidden away so no one can see them. When I go to the doctor’s office or the store, I quickly point out crooked signs. Polly laughs as I try to straighten out these hanging monuments to human laziness and imperfection. I am the type of person whom people would love to have clean their house but can’t stand to be there while I am doing it because it would drive them crazy. I am the one person in America who still has the receipt from the lifetime-warranted $4.00 can opener purchased 5 years ago. Any of my six children will tell you that they have heard their father say to them countless times, everything has a place. That, and the Bruce Gerencser classic, do it right the first time.

My desk drawers are kept in perfect order, though thanks to declining health, I’m finding it harder to keep every paper clip and rubber band in its proper place. My clothes must hang the same way, sorted by type of garment. Back in the day, when I bought newspapers, I had to be the first person to read them. Why? Everyone else messed up the paper. I liked to read it first, making sure every section was is in its proper order.

I obsess over the smallest of things. If something isn’t working right, I will expend hours attempting to fix it. I know all about the law of diminishing returns, but I know I can figure it out if I have enough time. This approach has served me well in many areas of my life. With significant amounts of time invested in figuring things out, I have become something of an expert on certain things (computers, for example). Sadly, an increasing loss of cognitive function is ever-so-slowly robbing me of my storehouse of knowledge (and minutia).

I bought my first computer almost 30 years ago. I started out with a DOS Vtech 286 and have owned numerous computers since. Currently, I have a Windows-based desktop computer I built, a newly acquired Lenovo Legion Laptop, and an iPad Pro. While I, at times, have Luddite tendencies, I do love owning new technology. Whether it is a new camera or the latest, greatest offering from Apple, I invest significant time learning everything I can about my recent purchases.

I have broken, crashed, and screwed up more computers than I can count. Well, I could count them. Making lists of things is another thing l seem driven to do: how many jobs have I had, how many cars have I owned, how many houses have I lived in. That’s how my brain works. I don’t know that I understand it; it’s just how I am. If I’m sitting in the doctor’s office impatiently waiting for my savior to walk through the door, I will occupy myself with counting how many ceiling tiles there are or some other silly game. Polly, did you know there are 43 ceiling tiles in this room? No, I didn’t, she says, smiling as she returns to reading a six-month-old issue of People Magazine. Polly, did you know that the tiles on the one end of the room are a different size from the tiles on this side? No answer, just a smile as she returns to the latest on Brad and Angelina. Polly, did you . . . no smile this time. Time to silently play the ceiling tile game, I tell myself.

My three oldest sons have a plethora of stories they could tell about their father’s obsession with perfection and order. They’ve watched me go to great pains to make sure this or that is level. My need to make sure the church pulpit was exactly in the middle of the center aisle is legendary, right down to 1/32 of an inch.  Back before we had HD television, I would obsess over cable roll in the TV picture. I’d check every connection, every cable, as I attempted to find the cause of the roll. While digital equipment has put an end to cable roll, rarely does a year go by without one of my sons making a joke about there being something wrong with my TV’s picture quality. Ah, fond memories.

In every area of my life, I strive for perfection. It is a frequent topic of discussion during my visits with my counselor. For all my striving to be perfect, I know I’m not. I have character flaws and shortcomings that are ever-present reminders of my imperfections. However, as any perfectionist will tell you, knowing you have imperfections just makes you try all the harder to be perfect.

Where did my drive for perfection come from? I wasn’t raised in a perfection-dominated home. My mother kept a clean, but cluttered house. If I wanted to play sports, I could, but my parents never pushed me to excel. The same could be said for my schooling. There never was any pressure from my parents to be an exceptional student. By the time I got to high school, I learned how to get by, a smart kid who could get B’s and C’s with little effort. So where exactly did my perfectionist tendencies come from?

I am convinced that my battle with perfectionism and all its attendant problems stems from my religious upbringing. It goes something like this: A perfect God gave us a perfect Bible and he expects us to keep his commands perfectly. I believed the Bible to be the perfect Word of God for fifty years — a direct revelation from God to me. In this perfect Bible are verses that speak of perfection. Verses such as:

These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God. Genesis 6:9

And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect. Genesis 17:1

Thou shalt be perfect with the LORD thy God. Deuteronomy 18:13

Let your heart therefore be perfect with the LORD our God, to walk in his statutes, and to keep his commandments, as at this day. I Kings 8:61

And thou, Solomon my son, know thou the God of thy father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind: for the LORD searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts: if thou seek him, he will be found of thee; but if thou forsake him, he will cast thee off for ever. I Chronicles 28:9

There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil. Job 1:1

Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace. Psalm 37:37

For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it. Proverbs 2:21

Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. Matthew 19:21

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. Romans 12:2

Finally, brethren, farewell. Be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace shall be with you. 2 Corinthians 13:11

That the man of God [pastor] may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. 2 Timothy 3:17

One verse, above all others, reminded me of God’s standard for my life:

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect Matthew 5:48

I remember thinking as a newly-saved, baptized, called-to-the-ministry teenager: Wow! God demands and expects perfection from me. And according to the Bible, this goal was attainable. 2 Peter 1:3 says that God gave me the Holy Spirit that would teach me EVERYTHING that pertains to life and godliness. God saved me, called me, and filled me with the Holy Spirit. He also gave me a perfect book, the Bible. Within its pages was all knowledge necessary to live a godly, holy, perfect life.

The new-fangled grace and love passivity that is quite common in Evangelical circles these days had no place in my life. James said faith without works is dead. While I knew that good works saved no one, I strove to show my love, devotion, and dedication to God through my good works. As a pastor, I expected church services to be orderly. I expected parishioners to give 100% of themselves to the work of God. I taught them and tried to live by example that God deserved 100% of our time, effort, and money. Think of what Jesus did for us, I often said. Should we not give our all for him?

Such thinking led to an outward form of righteousness. I knew I wasn’t perfect, but God demanded it, as did many of the people I pastored.  Over time, I learned the fine art of covering up my imperfections. I didn’t commit awful, evil sins, but I did do things that were contrary to the perfect standard set forth in God’s infallible Word. This dualistic way of living kept me in constant turmoil. Right with God. Messed up, not right with God. Pray for forgiveness. Right with God. Rinse and repeat.

Eating too much, watching R rated movies, going to a strip club, fighting with my wife, not claiming love offerings on my tax return, buying non-essential stuff, not giving more money to the church, not praying enough, or not reading the Bible as much as I should — all these kept me in a seemingly constant state of repentance. This kind of thinking was reinforced every time I attended a preacher’s or Bible conference. Great men of God — great outwardly, anyway — would rail against sinning preachers and their worldly habits. I’d hear their pronouncements, and their words would cut me to the quick. You need to repent, I’d tell myself. So I would, and with the fervor of the apostles on the Day of Pentecost, I would strive for perfection once again, knowing that in a day, week, or month, I’d be right back on my knees pleading with God to forgive me of my sins.

Since departing the ministry fifteen years ago, and leaving Christianity three years later, I have been on a path towards regaining self-worth and personal identity. Christian perfectionism robbed me of my humanity, and here I am, an aged, broken-down ex-preacher learning what it is to be human. My focus and standard of conduct have changed dramatically. My list of “sins” is much smaller than it ever has been. Bit by bit, I am learning to just live life and enjoy what comes my way. Above all, I’m working to embrace my imperfections. This isn’t easy, and it doesn’t mean I no longer strive to be better in areas where I need improvement. The difference now is that the standard has changed. There’s no God to please and no church demanding perfection. I’m free to be who I am, a man who still craves order, but who is learning that it is okay if the window valances at the dentist’s office are off-center, or the pictures in the doctor’s waiting room are crooked.

How about you?  Do you have a story to tell about how Christian perfectionism affected your life? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

1975: Anita, My First Love

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bruce-gerencser-1975
Only picture of me I have from 1975, age eighteen.

In the spring of 1972, my parents divorced. I was fourteen at the time. Several months later, both of my parents remarried. Mom married her first cousin — a recent parolee from the Texas prison system. Dad married a nineteen-year-old girl he met at the Millstream Motor Speedway outside of Findlay. She brought with her a toddler girl. A year later, Dad suddenly decided to move to Tucson, Arizona. As was his custom, he didn’t ask his children what they thought about moving. Dad treated us like furniture, things to be moved whenever he felt like it. I hated my father for uprooting us repeatedly over the years. What made this move worse was that I had actually attended the same school for thirty-one months — a record. I loved my church and had lots of friends. I played basketball and baseball and had an active social life. None of that mattered to Dad. I later learned that creditors were chasing him, and THAT was the reason for the sudden move to Arizona. Several months after we moved, Dad’s creditors finally figured out where he was and repossessed both of his cars.

I stayed in Arizona for the remainder of my tenth-grade year. As soon as school was out, I jumped on a Greyhound Bus and returned to Bryan, Ohio to live with my mom. By that time, she was living with a violent drunk named Chuck Jones. After living with Mom for two months, I moved back to Findlay to live with a church family. After a few months living with this family, I was abruptly told I could no longer live with them. At the time, I had no idea what I had done to warrant being booted out of their home. Years later, I concluded that the husband likely thought his wife and I were getting too “close” to each other. Was he right? I don’t know, but I can certainly understand him thinking that way.

I then moved in with an older woman in the church, Gladys Canterbury. I was made a ward of the court so she would receive monthly income for my care, and I would have Medicaid health insurance. I finished my eleventh-grade year in May 1974, and then, unbeknownst to Gladys, I arranged for my mom to pick me up so I could move back home. This caused quite a bit of controversy, including threats of arrest. I was, after all, a minor and a ward of the court. However, I was also seventeen, close to the age of emancipation, so the court decided not to intervene.

When it came time to enroll at Bryan High School for my senior year, I decided I no longer wanted to go to high school. Mom was livid when I told her I was dropping out of school. I was a good student, but I just wanted to do my own thing at this point in my life. Influencing this decision was the fact that one of my friends had also dropped out of school. In the 2000s, I took and passed the GED exam, remedying one of the biggest mistakes of my life.

In November of 1974, Mom was committed to the state psychiatric hospital in Toledo, leaving her children, ages 17, 16, and 14 to fend for themselves. Dad got wind of this and came to Bryan to move us back to Arizona. By this time, Dad had moved to Sierra Vista.

Got all that? Now let me get to the subject of this story: Anita.

Once settled in Sierra Vista, I quickly found union employment as a stocker and cashier at Food Giant. As a devout Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) Christian, I also found a new church to attend, Sierra Vista Baptist Church — affiliated with the Conservative Baptist Association of America. It was while attending this church that I met a nineteen-year-old girl named Anita Farr.

Anita and I quickly hit it off, and for the next five months, we had a torrid relationship — Baptist-style. No sex, but lots of making out. While I had dated lots of girls before Anita, she was what I would call my “first love.” Whether she truly “loved” me, I still don’t know, but we were inseparable until she left for college in the fall of 1975.

Anita and I had similar personalities: talkative, bullheaded, and ornery. Years later, I concluded that had we gotten married, one of us would have killed the other and ended up in prison. Our similar personalities quickly put us on the radar of the legalists in our church. One deacon, Chuck Cofty, took issue with Anita’s miniskirts, asking me to do something about it. I, of course, didn’t have a problem with Anita’s skirts. Some members also had a problem with Anita waitressing at a local pizza place that served beer — a cardinal sin in IFB churches. While Anita could have got a job elsewhere, I suspect she loved the fact that her employment irritated the hell out of the church’s legalists.

Our first date was at the Reid Park Zoo in Tucson. We also took several trips to Mexico, spending the day walking the streets of the border towns. As I look back on our time together, we spent a lot of time driving — anywhere that was away from Sierra Vista. We would drive for hours with no planned destination, talking about God, family, and one another. Sometimes, we would take drives up into the mountains and park to watch the stars — well, that, and make-out. Both of us also loved to hike. Our hikes took us all over southeast Arizona, including to the hummingbird sanctuary in Ramsey Canyon.

Anita, on occasion, would come to my house. My siblings are fond of reminding me that I gave them money to go to 7-11 while Anita was there. I remember my dad “meeting” Anita for the first time. We were lying on the floor making out when Dad walked in on us. “Hi, this is my girlfriend, Anita.” I also spent a fair bit of time at Anita’s house. One night, we were sitting at the dinner table, and Anita said something smart to her father. Her dad stood up and smacked her, knocking her off her chair. I was shocked by her father’s behavior. I was fourteen the last time my dad laid a hand on me.

In the fall of 1975, Anita moved to Phoenix, Arizona to begin her sophomore year at  Southwestern Conservative Baptist Bible College — now known as Arizona Christian University. We intended to continue our relationship. I would drive up to Phoenix on weekends to visit Anita, staying in the college’s dormitory. However, I began to notice a different Anita. I saw that she was quite the flirt, and this, of course, made me jealous. This came to a head in late September. Filled with jealousy and pettiness, I broke off our relationship. I jumped in my 1967 Chevy wagon and returned to Sierra Vista at breakneck speeds, picking up a speeding ticket several miles from home. A week later, I packed up my meager belongings, hopped a bus, and returned to Bryan, Ohio.

Our break-up emotionally wounded me, affecting my dating proclivities and relationships with women for quite a while. While I dated several women post-Anita, I made it clear that I was not interested in a serious relationship. I would carry this feeling with me to college, thinking that I would spend my years at Midwestern Baptist College being a serial dater. However, I met a beautiful dark-haired girl named Polly, and forty-two years later, I am still madly in love with her.

Anita and I corresponded several times after I returned to Ohio. I lost touch with her, and I have often wondered how life turned out for the first love of my life.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Can You Know Anything in Your Heart?

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missing heaven 18 inches

Evangelicals believe every human has a body, soul, and spirit. It’s evident to all of us that humans have bodies, but there’s no evidence outside of the Bible and the pronouncement of preachers that humans have a soul or spirit. Much like evidence for the existence of God, no one has ever seen a human soul or spirit.

Most Evangelicals believe humans are tripartite beings. If you are unfamiliar with this term, Wikipedia defines it this way:

In Christian theology, the tripartite view (trichotomy) holds that humankind is a composite of three distinct components: body, spirit, and soul.

I never believed the notion that humans were tripartite beings. Instead, I concluded that we were bipartite beings, consisting of a body and a spirit, that the words soul and spirit were used interchangeably in the Bible.

As a rationalist and an atheist, I concluded that there was no evidence for the existence of a human soul or spirit; there was no evidence for these things outside of the pages of the Bible. Christians and other religious people continue to try to prove the soul’s existence, but so far, they have miserably failed.

For those raised in Evangelical churches, we have likely heard preachers warn us countless times of missing Heaven by eighteen inches — the distance between the human mind and heart. According to these preachers, many Christians believe in Jesus only in their minds, not their hearts. They have “head knowledge,” not “heart knowledge.” As you likely know, intellectualism is frowned upon in many churches; that believing the right things in your mind is not enough for salvation, that you have to really, really, really believe the right things in your heart. Salvation requires the work of the Holy Spirit in your heart. Just believing the faith once delivered to the saints in your mind — assenting to a set of intellectual facts — is not enough. Unbelievers must have their hearts transformed to become born again.

Of course, the problem with this kind of thinking is that it is based on a false premise: that humans have a “heart” — the seat of the soul and spirit. Where is this heart located? Most Evangelicals point to the blood-pumping organ in their chest. The authors of the Bible certainly thought this was so. The Greek word most commonly used for heart in the New Testament is “kardia.” The only evidence Evangelicals have for the existence of the “heart” is the only evidence they have for a lot of things: THE BIBLE SAYS _________.

This is why it is difficult, if not impossible, to have rational discussions with Evangelicals. Press them on their beliefs, and more often than not, Evangelical believers will say, “I believe in my heart that the Bible is true, God is real, Jesus saved me, and I am going to Heaven after I die.” Instead of using their minds to think and reason, Evangelicals appeal to a part of them that does not exist. Everything they know and feel comes from their brain, not a mythical heart. Yet, because Evangelicals believe God, in the person of the Holy Spirit, resides in their “hearts,” it’s impossible to reach them with rational, intellectual arguments.

Renowned Evangelical apologist and philosopher William Lane Craig had this to say about the matter:

The way in which I know Christianity is true is first and foremost on the witness of the holy spirit in my heart. This gives me a self-authenticating means of knowing that Christianity is true, apart from the evidence. (Thanks Doctor DJ for the quote)

Craig makes his living from arguing for the existence of God, yet when it comes to where the proverbial rubber meets the road, Craig says that it is the witness of the Holy Spirit in his heart, not evidence, that proves to him Christianity is true.

Evangelicals-turned-atheists know where Craig is coming from. We too thought, at one time, that we knew Christianity was true because of the witness of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. It is difficult to move a believer away from this type of thinking, regardless of how irrational it seems. I have concluded that the only way to reach Evangelicals is to disabuse them of the notion that the Bible is inerrant and infallible. If you can get them to question the nature and history of the Bible, this can and does lead to doubt. And as those of us who used to be Evangelicals know, doubt is the first step away from Christianity. Once the Bible loses its power and authority, it is far easier to convince people that many of their beliefs are false.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Don’t Believe in God? Pray and Ask Him to Reveal Himself to You.

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god reveal himself to you

When confronted with my unbelief in the Christian God, Evangelicals will often ask me to pray and ask God to reveal himself to me. Evangelicals have even given me scripted prayers to pray on more than a few occasions, telling me that if I “sincerely” pray these prayers to the triune God of Christianity, he will reveal himself to me. On days when I am filled with 100-proof Gerencser snark, I will pray the prayers and then report back, “Nope, God didn’t reveal himself to me!” Their reply? “well, you didn’t “sincerely” ask God to pull the rabbit out of the hat.” I am always to blame, not God, when he fails to show his work, speak to me, or do anything that would lead me to conclude he is real.

Evangelicals who take this approach with me are ignorant of their Bibles — the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God. Evangelicals believe every word in the Bible is true, written by holy men of old as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. You would think Evangelicals would follow the Word of God instead of asking unbelievers to pray. Don’t they know that the Bible says that God doesn’t hear the prayers of the unsaved, that libertarian free will is a myth, and the only way that someone can be saved is if God chooses to save them? Don’t they know that lost people are dead in trespasses and sins, alienated from God, and unless God grants them the faith to believe, they will never be saved? What drives this notion of praying and asking God to reveal himself to you is bad theology. Shocker, right?

Take the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16. (Please see Luke 16:19-31: The Rich Man and Lazarus.) Towards the end of this story, we have a dialog between Abraham and the Rich Man:

Rich Man: I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him [Lazarus] to my father’s house. For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment [Hell].

Abraham: They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.

Rich Man: Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.

Abraham: If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.

The Rich Man, facing the torments of Hell, was rightly concerned about his family, particularly his five brothers. The Rich Man asked Abraham to resurrect Lazarus from the dead and send him to preach to his brothers. Abraham replied, no, they have the Moses and the Prophets, the Old Testament; let your brothers read and hear their words. Knowing the Bible wasn’t enough to convince his brothers to believe in Jesus, the Rich Man pleaded yet again for Abraham to resurrect Lazarus and send him up top to witness to his unsaved loved ones. Abraham’s response is germane to this post: if they won’t hear the Bible, they won’t be persuaded if someone rose from the dead and preached to them.

Evidently, Abraham didn’t know Jesus would soon die and three days later resurrect from the dead. This leaves me wondering, if the Bible is written by God, surely he knew Jesus would soon be crucified, placed in a borrowed tomb, descend into Hell, and resurrect from the dead. Evangelicals believe that Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is the linchpin of their religion; that Jesus’ resurrection is the one thing that should convince unbelievers of the veracity and truthfulness of Christianity. However, Abraham didn’t think such magic tricks were useful. Instead, the Evangelical Abraham said: Read the Bible!

For those of us who are atheists and agnostics, neither appeals to the resurrection of Jesus nor reading the Bible have convinced us that Christianity’s central claims are true. Perhaps this is why some Evangelical zealots ask us to pray and ask God to reveal himself to us. They believe that a supernatural encounter with their God will surely cause us to fall on our knees, repent, and embrace Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. If only believing was that simple, right?

Before asking us to pray to their God, Evangelicals must first provide evidence for the existence of said God. I assume Evangelicals would think it silly for me to pray to any other God but theirs. All deities but the Christian God are no gods at all. There is one true and living God, and Jesus is his name — well, he’s called the Father and the Holy Ghost too. I am quite willing to pray to the Christian God sincerely, but before doing so, I ask Evangelicals to give sufficient evidence for their deity’s existence, that he is whom Evangelicals say he is.

I walked away from Christianity twelve years ago. Since then, I have heard from and, at times, interacted with thousands of Evangelicals trying to “save” me. It’s been years since I have heard a new argument for the existence of God. Solomon rightly said that there is nothing new under the sun, which can certainly be said of Evangelical apologetical arguments.

I don’t get as many emails or comments from Evangelicals trying to “save” me as I did in the past. I suspect Evangelicals have decided that God has given me over to a reprobate mind, that I have crossed the line of no return, or have committed the unpardonable sin. This allows them to attack my character, revealing their lack of character, respect, and decency. After scores of such attacks and deconstructions, I am immune to their words. Twelve years of interacting with such people have given me a thick skin. I am still open to new evidence for their God’s existence, but the incessant playing of William Craig Lane’s greatest hits really doesn’t work with me.

Does the Christian God really need me to pray before he will reveal himself to me? Doesn’t he know everything beforehand, including the words people pray and how he will respond? Why doesn’t God skip the theatrics and appear to me at my home? If, as the Bible says, with God nothing is impossible, surely Jesus can stop by and have lunch with me, and while he is here, heal me of bile reflux, gastroparesis, fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, and peripheral neuropathy.

I hope this post puts an end to the notion that if atheists and agnostics would just “sincerely” pray to the Evangelical God that he would reveal himself to them. There is no evidence that this has ever taken place.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Bruce, Why Did it Take You So Long to Leave Christianity?

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bruce and polly gerencser 1978
Bruce and Polly Gerencser, May 1978

On occasion, I will have an atheist ask me why it took me so long to leave Christianity. Typically, such atheists are lifelong unbelievers, having little to no experience with organized religion. Others became atheists at a young age and have no lasting scars from their brief involvement with Christianity. What is left unsaid here is this: how stupid do you have to be to be a Christian for fifty years?

Last night, I listened to Matt Dillahunty’s podcast, The Hang Up. This week’s episode featured Dr. Darrel Ray of Recovering From Religion and the Secular Therapy Project — two awesome services I heartily endorse.

One of the commenters on the podcast stated:

When you left religion. When exactly was that Matt [Dillahunty]? You joined the military when you were 30 for 8 years? Joined Dell and studied the bible a couple of years after that? So you finally figured out you had been a gullible idiot at 40s.

In other words, how stupid did Matt have to be that it took him years to conclude that the Evangelical religion (Southern Baptist) he grew up in was false?

It’s always lifelong atheists who make such comments. They cannot wrap their minds around how it is that demonstrably intelligent people can stay tethered to Christianity for decades. This post will hopefully explain this issue to atheists.

Much like Matt, I was a wandering Baptist before I finally deconverted. I left the ministry in 2003. Two years later, in the spring of 2005, I briefly tried to reenter full-time ministry, but after candidating for Southern Baptist churches in Weston and Hedgesville, West Virginia, I told Polly that I was done; that I no longer wanted to pastor. At that point, I was still an Evangelical Christian, albeit with an increasingly liberal bent. (Please see It’s Been Fifteen Years Since I Preached My Last Sermon.)

From July 2002 to November 2008, my wife and I, along with our three younger children, wandered from church to church looking for a congregation that took seriously the teachings of Jesus. From Roman Catholic to Greek Orthodox to Evangelical to mainline Protestant, we visited a broad spectrum of Christian churches. All told, we visited over 125 churches. Please read the post But Our Church is DIFFERENT! to see the list of churches we visited.

During this time span, we spent seven months living in Yuma, Arizona and moved to Stryker, Bryan, Alvordton, Newark, and Ney — all in Ohio. In April 2007, we purchased our home in Ney. We spent time visiting numerous local churches, but eventually decided to plop our weary asses in the pews of the Ney United Methodist Church. This would be the last church we would attend, walking out of the church’s doors for the final time on the last Sunday in November 2008.

During this six-year period, we became increasingly disenchanted with organized Christianity. While I was no longer a pastor, we sincerely wanted to find a church where we could use our talents for God’s glory. Atheism was never discussed. We quickly learned that more than a few pastors viewed us as a threat. All we wanted to do is serve Jesus, but the mere fact that we had spent 25 years in the ministry caused territorial preachers to feel threatened. One pastor told Polly that she could best help his church by working in the nursery. A mother of six who spent decades working in the nursery, I am surprised Polly didn’t gut this preacher on the spot. One Evangelical church about two miles from our home made it clear that we weren’t welcome at their church. We visited this congregation twice, and both times the pastor’s wife repeatedly glared at us. I suspect she viewed me as a threat to her husband’s ministry. Sure, I was a far better speaker than many of the pastors of the churches we visited (we heard some atrocious sermons during this time). That wasn’t my fault. All I wanted to do is use the gifts God gave me. I wasn’t there is take over the church, but I knew I could be a help if asked.

By the time we hit 2008, both Polly and I were worn out from all the bullshit, indifference, and petty territorialism we experienced at many of these churches. It was in this fertile soil that our doubts about Christianity began to grow. The previous year, I had started blogging. I connected with people who were emergent/emerging Christians — a postmodern liberal movement within Christianity. I met an ex-Charismatic preacher, Jim Schoch, during this time. We hit it off, spending countless hours talking about the ministry and churches in general. Well, that and eating chicken wings and drinking booze. We were what I called the rebel preachers; still believers — barely — but not church friendly. I will forever be grateful for the countless hours Jim spent with me shooting the breeze. Our discussions really helped clarify some of the problems I was having with Christianity.

You cannot understand my path to agnosticism and atheism without understanding this two-year period of my life — two years of questions and doubts that culminated with me concluding that I no longer believed in God; that the central claims of Christianity were not true.

Now that I have sketched for readers the path I was on before I deconverted, let me answer the question: why did it take you so long to leave Christianity?

In the early 1960s, my parents moved from Bryan, Ohio to San Diego, California. Dad was looking for the pot of gold at the end of the proverbial rainbow. Unfortunately, California proved to be just as disappointing as Ohio for my parents. Dad ended up working sales jobs and driving truck, just as he did in Ohio. Mom’s mental health problems made their presence known, making our new life in California challenging, to say the least. Please see Barbara.)

Not long after arriving in San Diego, the Gerencser family visited Scott Memorial Baptist Church (now Shadow Mountain Community Church), then pastored by Bob Jones University graduate Tim LaHaye, of The Act of Marriage and Left Behind fame. Mom and Dad both made public professions of faith and were baptized, as was I at the age of five. From that moment forward, the Gerencsers were born-again Fundamentalist Christians.

I was seven when Mom and Dad packed up our belongings and we returned to Bryan, Ohio. By then, we were attend-church-every-time-the-doors-are-open Baptists. I attended church three times a week, along with revivals, conferences, and special meetings. Once I became a teenager, I started attending youth group and special events for the church’s teens. I was totally immersed in the life of the church. It was the hub around which everything turned. For atheists reading this post, think how deeply and thoroughly I was indoctrinated in Fundamentalist Baptist Christianity’s beliefs and practices.

At the age of fifteen, I made another public profession of faith at Trinity Baptist Church in Findlay, Ohio. This is not an uncommon experience for people who were “saved” at a young age. A week later, I stood before the church congregation and told them God was calling me to preach. Several weeks later, I preached my first sermon. Thirty-three years later, I would preach my last sermon. All told, I preached over 4,000 sermons.

At the age of 19, I left my mom’s home to move into the dorm at Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan. Midwestern was an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) institution known for training preachers. While I was at Midwestern, I started dating an IFB preacher’s daughter, Polly Shope. We married the summer between our sophomore and junior years. Six weeks later, Polly became pregnant, and a few months later, I was laid off from my job. In the spring of 1979, we left Midwestern and moved to Bryan. A few weeks later, I was offered a position as the assistant pastor of Montpelier Baptist Church. Over the course of the next twenty-five years, I would pastor seven churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan.

I was a true-blue believer. I believed every word of the Bible was the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God. I believed that the doctrines taught to me by my pastors, youth directors, and professors were the “faith once delivered to the saints.” While I was a voracious reader, having a library of over 1,000 books at one time, every book I owned served to reinforce the idea that what I had been taught and what I was teaching others was true. It wasn’t until the six-year period mentioned above that I began to read authors that caused me to doubt my beliefs. Authors such as John Shelby Spong and Bart Ehrman forced me to question whether what I believed about the Bible and Christianity was true.

As a pastor, I lived in a bubble, as did the churches I pastored. This bubble protected me from the “world.” When you surround yourself with people who all think as you do, it is easy to think that you are right. Further, doubts and questions were discouraged, tools of Satan used to cast aspersions on God, Jesus, the Bible, and Christianity. While certain things in the Bible didn’t make sense to me, I believed God would reveal the truth of the matter in time or in Heaven. I had no reason to doubt the veracity of the Bible.

I lived this way well into my forties. Does this mean I was stupid for hanging on to my faith for so long? Of course not. Looking at the way I grew up, the college I attended, the woman I married, and the years I spent pastoring Evangelical churches, how could it have been different for me?

When lifelong atheists disparage me, I tend to tell them to fuck off. These pillars of truth seem clueless about how religious indoctrination affects every aspect of one’s life — especially the Fundamentalist brand of Christianity. (Please see Are Evangelicals Fundamentalists?) Instead of treating me as a dolt, how about giving me a little credit for breaking free from the chains of cultic Christianity? How about giving me credit for punching a hole in the bubble and escaping? How about acknowledging the work I now do to help people who have doubts about Christianity or have left Christianity? Or, you can fuck off. 🙂

Lifelong atheists are a small minority in America. Most Americans come from Christian families. Millions and millions of Americans religiously attend Evangelical churches, pray, read the Bible, and believe Christianity’s central claims are true. Before simplistically and ignorantly calling such people ignoramuses, I suggest that you walk in their shoes a bit instead of projecting your lives onto them.

I wish I had been raised in a home free of religion. I wish I had taken a different path in life — that is, if Polly still became my wife. I wish I had attended a secular college and had non-church employment. I wish, I wish, I wish . . . but wishing is for fools. Life is what it is, and all I know to do is embrace my past, live in the present, and do all I can to help people avoid Evangelical Christianity. For those who walked a similar path as I did, all I can do is listen and say to them, I understand.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

IFB Bullies in the Pulpit

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angry preacher

I recently read a blog post on another website that talked about bullies in the pulpit. For those of us raised in Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) churches, we are quite aware of so-called men of God bullying church members under the guise of preaching the Word of God or sharing what God laid upon their hearts. Let me share a couple of illustrations I believe will aptly illustrate my point.

In the early 1980s, my wife and I attended the Newark Baptist Temple in Newark, Ohio. The church’s pastor was James (Jim) Dennis, Polly’s uncle. Jim graduated from Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan in the 1960s. Polly’s father would later attend this college, as did Polly and I. Midwestern was known for producing fire-breathing, authoritarian preachers. Tom Malone, the chancellor of Midwestern and pastor of nearby Emmanuel Baptist Church, took a ” my way or the highway” approach to ministry. Legalistic thinking permeated both the church and the college. Run afoul of Malone, and you were shown the door. I vividly remember someone leaving a church service at Emmanuel and Malone stopping his sermon to address the man leaving. Much to the man’s embarrassment, Malone said, with his Alabamian drawl, “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” The only phrase missing was “on the ass.”

Jim Dennis followed in the footsteps of Malone when it came to being a bully. While Jim could have a winsome personality, cross him and he would quickly put you in your place. The Baptist Temple was his church, end of discussion. God had called him to be its pastor, and as God’s chosen oracle, his word was law.

The church was going through a difficult time financially. Jim decided that he would inspect the tithing records to see which church members were giving and how much. Jim was shocked to learn that many of the teachers and staff in the church’s Christian school were not tithing. Never mind that teachers and staff members were paid pathetically low wages and had few, if any, benefits. Polly taught first grade one year at the school. She made $180 a week before taxes. She also worked in the church’s daycare the previous year. Polly’s total gross wages in 1980-81 were $9,111. I made almost three times as much money working for Long John Silver’s (and had full benefits) as Polly did teaching and caring for the church’s children. Worse yet, women were paid less money than men. Why? Because men were breadwinners, not women. Employees were expected to treat their jobs as a ministry of sorts, the equivalent of a Baptist vow of poverty. It should not be surprising then that many teachers and staff members couldn’t afford to tithe and give offerings. When you are in the poorhouse, it is hard to justify giving money to the church.

One Sunday, an angry Jim Dennis — righteous anger, right?— took to the bully pulpit and savaged his selflessly serving teachers. He demanded that they immediately start tithing, and if they didn’t, he would have their tithes deducted from their paychecks. While I’m sure Polly’s IFB family would wish I didn’t write stories such as this, I think it is important to expose this sort of behavior for what it is: bullying.

Let me share another story before moving on to my own abhorrent behavior. In the 1980s, a fire-breathing Fundamentalist named Mike Lee was the pastor of Montpelier Baptist Church in Montpelier, Ohio. Montpelier Baptist was the first church I worked for after leaving Midwestern in 1979. The pastor I worked for, Jay Stucky, later left and Lee became pastor. My sister and her husband were members of the church both while I was there and after Lee took over the helm. After my sister’s marriage fell apart, Lee would have her followed to see what she was up to. Granted, her behavior didn’t measure up to the IFB standard, but deacons following her to the local bar and grill to observe her behavior? My sister, of course, left the church.

Several years later, the good pastor Lee decided to address the burning issue of church teenagers attending their high school prom. In the minds of Fundamentalists like Lee, attending the prom was among the vilest of “sins.” After his sermon was over, Lee told the congregation that he had something he wanted to talk to them about. Wanting to make sure that no one could leave the church auditorium, Lee had the ushers lock the doors. How do I know this happened? A couple who would later join the church I pastored in West Unity were visiting Lee’s church that day. They were scared witless by his behavior. There’s one word to describe this pastor’s behavior: bullying.

These two illustrations likely seem beyond the pale to non-IFB Christians, but trust me, such behavior is quite normal among IFB pastors and churches. Why is that? Most IFB pastors are anti-culture. I suspect most of them voted for Donald Trump in the last election. Authoritarians love other authoritarians. Many IFB pastors run their churches in a fashion similar to the way Trump ran his businesses and the federal government. IFB pastors, to the man, believe the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God. Couple this with a literalistic interpretation of the Bible, a belief that pastors are divinely called by God to speak on his behalf, and that their opinions and personal interpretations have the weight of law, is it any surprise that many of them are bullies?

I grew up in IFB churches and attended an IFB college. My pastors, professors, and colleagues in the ministry all modeled bullying behavior to one degree or another. I heard it at pastor’s conferences in the stories preachers told about their churches, and I witnessed it when I visited other IFB churches. People wrongly assume that Steven Anderson, an IFB pastor in Tempe, Arizona, is an outlier, an aberration. He’s not. The same goes for the late-Fred Phelps, pastor of Westboro Baptist Church.

It is not surprising, then, that I was an authoritarian and bully as a pastor. I may have been kind, compassionate, and may have gone out of my way to help church members, but I expected congregants to heed my pronouncements. I expected them to recognize and bow what is called in IFB circles “pastoral authority.” This false notion was reinforced in my sermons, private interactions, and church business meetings. Church members were warned that failure to obey the man of God would lead to judgment and chastisement from the Almighty. And surprisingly, hundreds of people bowed to my authority, believing I was in some way or the other chosen by God to be their “shepherd.”

The good news is that I stopped being a bully long before I left the ministry. I came to see that the church didn’t belong to me. It was “our” church, not my personal fiefdom. Did I totally lose my authoritarian bent? Sadly, no. I learned that many church members were quite comfortable with me making all or most of the decisions. They were fine with me telling them what to believe and how to live. I endured countless church business meetings where I would plead with congregants to share their opinions, only to see them stay silent or let me have the final say. This was frustrating, to say the least, but it is hard for me not to conclude that every church I pastored had cultic tendencies.

After leaving the ministry in 2005 and Christianity in 2008, I have repeatedly apologized to former parishioners for my bullying behavior. While I have been forgiven by those I have harmed, it’s hard for me to live with the damage and harm I caused to others. Sure, I was a product of my environment and training. Sure, I did what was modeled to me by my pastors, professors, and other IFB pastors and evangelists. All that is true and makes for a great psych profile, but the fact remains that I was a bully, that I harmed other people, including my wife and children.

Alas, there are no do-overs in life. All I know to do is tell my story and hope that others will be warded off from authoritarian pastors. Not all pastors are bullies, so I suggest potential church members carefully pay attention to how a preacher conducts himself before committing one’s time and money to a particular church. Bullying behavior can be found in other sects too. In general, Evangelicalism has a problem with bullies in the pulpit, men who are engorged with power and control. The only way to end such behavior is to stop giving these bullies an audience. When all the students stay off the playground, the bully has no one to harm. It’s time for Christians to leave authoritarian pastors to their own devices.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Personal Testimony: I Know God is Real Because He Saved My Soul

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argument from popularity

I recently listened to a debate between atheist Tom Jump and a Christian woman named Sybil. By all accounts, the debate was a train wreck. Jump is a low-key, levelheaded debater, but after an hour of Sybil trying to make the same point over and over and over again, I wondered if he was ready to start banging his head on the wall. No matter how many times Jump addressed her point, Sybil returned to claim that Christianity is real because many people believe in Jesus. Because 2.3 billion people profess to be Christians, that means Christianity is true. Sybil reiterated ad nauseam that countless Christians have personal testimonies of faith in Jesus, so Christianity can’t be false. Jump tried and failed to get Sybil to see that personal testimony is not the evidence for God, particularly the Christian God. Countless people say they have seen Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, and have been abducted by aliens, yet we have no evidence that their claims are true. So it is with the existence of God.

The debate is one hour and eleven minutes long.

Video Link

I want to focus on the notion that personal testimony is sufficient evidence for the existence of God — either singular or cumulative.

For those of us who attended Evangelical Baptist/charismatic churches, we know a lot about personal testimonies. Salvation stories were shared from the pulpit, in Sunday school classes, and during testimony times during church services. Testimonies are supposed to a way for believers to give praise and glory to God/Jesus. However, having listened to hundreds and hundreds of testimonies over the fifty years I spent in the Christian church, I can tell you that many testimonies are all about the sinner, not the Savior. What I call “bad sinner” testimonies always get the most attention. In the 1970s and 1980s, Jerry Falwell had countless bad sinners give their testimonies on his TV program, the Old-Time Gospel Hour. At the time, I was mesmerized by these testimonies. However, they have not aged well. We now know many of the bad sinner testimonies were not true. Mike Warnke, for example, claimed to be a Satanic high priest before Jesus saved him. In 1992, Cornerstone Magazine debunked Warnke’s claims. The previous year, Cornerstone trashed the Satanist claims of Lauren Stratford (Laurel Rose Willson), the author of Satan’s Underground.

Wikipedia states:

As Stratford, Willson wrote three books, the most famous of which was Satan’s Underground, purporting to tell a true story of her upbringing as a baby breeder (for sacrifices) in a satanic cult. Willson had also claimed to have first-hand knowledge of high-profile cases of alleged Satanic ritual abuse (including the child abuse cases in Kern County, where she resided), but her claims were dismissed by investigators as unreliable and fabricated.

An investigation by Bob and Gretchen Passantino and Jon Trott in the Christian magazine Cornerstone discovered Stratford’s real name and family background, and that her stories of abuse were false. In interviews with Willson’s family and former associates, it was revealed that Willson had a long history of mental illness and making false allegations of abuse. She repeatedly threatened suicide and practiced self-mutilation. She attracted the attention and sympathy of evangelical author Johanna Michaelsen, one of the most influential promoters of the Satanic moral panic of the period. While living with Michaelsen, Willson claimed to have given birth to three children as a result of rape; two were allegedly killed in snuff films, and the third was supposedly sacrificed in her presence at a Satanic ritual. However, Cornerstone found no evidence that she had ever been pregnant or adopted a child.

She was also briefly involved in the McMartin preschool trial, claiming to have witnessed the abuses and to have been involved in an ongoing lesbian relationship with Virginia McMartin.

Johanna Michaelsen was another Evangelical who built quite a reputation on the testimony circuit.

Rational Wiki has this to say about Michaelsen, the author of The Beautiful Side of Evil and Like Lambs to the Slaughter:

Johanna Michaelsen is a fundie writer and self-proclaimed “authority on the occult” who promoted the Satanic Panic in the 1980s-90s.

….

During the 1970s, Michaelsen claimed to have worked with a psychic surgeon, Pachita, who claimed to do lung transplants, remove impossible tumours and the like, despite considerable evidence that the psychic healer named “Pachita” was far less than claimed. After visiting a Christian centre in Switzerland, she would be convinced that her occult experiences were not from Jesus but Satan. This led to her conversion to Christian fundamentalist.

Michaelsen’s story of her “occult” experiences shot her into fundie superstardom and she became a beacon for other forms of wingnuttery, like the promoting of Lauren Stratford‘s fraudulent Satanic ritual abuse screeds. Michaelsen was one of the biggest defenders of Stratford and supposedly took Stratford into her home for months. She was also a champion of Mike Warnke, author of another fraudulent memoir of his life as a Satanist.

Michaelsen was also instrumental in telling Christian parents the evils of cartoons like He-Man and She-Ra, as well as Dungeons & Dragons. It even turns out that she was Hal Lindsey‘s sister-in-law, until he left Johanna’s sister for a Bible study student.

Although completely discredited, Michaelsen has her own ministry and rants about “demonic spirits,” the evils of the German rock band Rammstein and Halloween.

Despite not making major mentions of Warnke or Stratford in public, it still seems that after all these years Michaelsen believes that Satanic Ritual Abuse is real.

As an Evangelical Christian and pastor, I heard testimonies from believers who said they were mob hitmen, murderers, bank robbers, sex traffickers, perverts, Satanists, renowned sports stars, or atheists before Jesus magically saved them. Over time, I became quite cynical over such testimonies, and today I largely believe that these stories are fabrications or admixtures or truths and lies. Preachers, in particular, are notorious for massaging their testimonies. As David Foster Wallace said (and I paraphrase), don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.

In 2018, I wrote a post titled Testimony Time: The Blue Light Special at Somerset Baptist Church:

Older readers might remember shopping at the stores of discount retailer Kmart and seeing what was commonly called a “blue light special.” Blue light specials were sudden discounts offered to shoppers during their shopping experience at Kmart. A store employee would roll a cart with a police-like blue light attached to a pole near the aisle where the sudden discount was going to be offered. At the customer service desk, another employee would announce to shoppers, for example, “ATTENTION KMART SHOPPERS! There’s a blue light special going on right now on GE light bulbs in aisle three!” The employee in charge of the blue light would switch it on. and with its flashing/rotating light, the blue light would guide customers to their exciting just-for-them discount on light bulbs. Woo-hoo!

….

For eleven years in the 1980s and 1990s, I pastored the Somerset Baptist Church in Mt. Perry, Ohio.

….

The church also attracted more than a few people who had — in my Baptist eyes, anyway — screwy beliefs. One such person was the mother of a woman who was a member of the church (along with her husband and two children). I had visited this woman and her husband several times at their home, hoping that they would join their daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren in worshiping Jesus at the “fastest growing church in Perry County” — as the church’s sign said, anyway. I knew the woman had some charismatic tendencies, but I thought I could preach all that nonsense right out of her if she would only give me the opportunity to do so.

….

As was our custom for many years, the church has a testimony time on Sunday evenings. This was time allotted for church members and visitors to stand up and share with everyone in attendance what Jesus had done for them over the past week. Sometimes, these brag-on-Jesus times turned into narcissistic, look-at-what-I-did-done-do for Jesus sessions. Often, testimony time was a time for congregants to lie about their relationship with God. One dear woman, who had been a smoker her entire adult life, stood up one Sunday and praised Jesus for delivering her from the filthy sin of smoking. We had a quite a praise-fest that night, thanking our Lord for delivering Sister R from her addiction. Years later, I learned that Sister R had, in fact, never stopped smoking, and that the only reason she said that she did was so she could have the appearance of a victorious Christian life like the rest of us. Oh, if she had only known that NONE of us, including her preacher, had victory over sin, she might not had felt compelled to lie. Sister R felt so guilty about not being as spirit-filled as the rest of us that she was willing to lie to her friends about her deliverance from smoking.

….

On one particular Sunday night, the charismatic lady mentioned above decided to attend church with her daughter. She had visited several times before, and let it be known that she really liked my “old-fashioned” preaching. Prior to my sermon, I asked if anyone had a good word they wanted to put in for Jesus. Several people raised their hands, signifying that they wanted to brag a bit on their Lord and Savior. The charismatic woman excitedly raised her hand, anxious to let everyone know about a recent encounter she had with Jesus. When it came time for her to testify, she popped up  from her seat and said this (as recounted from thirty years ago):

I was asleep last night, and all of a sudden I awoke, feeling a “presence” in my bedroom.  As I stood to see this presence, my eyes saw a blinding blue light. Now, I knew that Satan could present himself as an angel of light, so I spoke to this light, saying, If that’s really you Jesus, please make yourself known to me. And right then and there I heard, Attention K-Mart Shoppers! (Okay, that last sentence was a bit of literary fiction, also known as preaching.)  And right then and there I heard a voice that said, it’s me, Jesus. Praise, the Lord. I knew then that the presence in my room was Jesus.

I KNEW it was Jesus, the charismatic woman said. This is the same argument Sybil used in her debate with Jump. She knows God is real because she has personal testimony to that effect, as do countless other Christians. In doing this, Sybil is committing the ad populum fallacy.

Wikipedia describes the ad populum fallacy (appeal to popularity) this way:

In argumentation theory, an argumentum ad populum (Latin for “appeal to the people”) is a fallacious argument that concludes that a proposition must be true because many or most people believe it, often concisely encapsulated as: “If many believe so, it is so”.

Just because a large number of people believe something doesn’t make it true. Sybil is a Christian. I assume she thinks Mormonism, Islam, and Buddhism are false religions, and their “gods” are no gods at all. Yet, 1.8 billion Muslims, 500 million Buddhists, and 17 million Mormons think she is wrong. Why should we believe Christianity is true based on the number of adherents, and not these other religions? In fact, upwards of 500 million people are atheists. Using Sybil’s illogical logic, doesn’t this prove that atheism is true?

As of today, Christians have provided no sufficient evidence for the existence of their God (s). However, we do have other explanations for Christianity’s existence, arguments that do not require appeals to myths, magic, or logical fallacies. (Please see Why Most Americans Are Christian.)

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

God DESERVES the Best of Everything!

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free-money-for-pastor-walt

Sarcasm ahead! Easily offended Evangelicals should not read this post.

The Christian God is quite demanding, according to Evangelical preachers. God demands and expects the best of everything from his followers. Never mind the fact that God allegedly owns and controls everything right down the hairs on our heads. He still demands that Christians bow in fealty to him and bestow upon him everything they own and have worked for. According to Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) eschatology, Christians will be judged by their works on Judgment Day and rewarded with crowns for their good works. A lifetime of slaving for Jesus, and all Christians get are tinplate crowns made in China? And even then, God expects believers to remove their crowns from their heads, joyfully, reverently casting them at his feet. What’s God’s going to go with all these crowns, anyway? Sell them on eBay?

For those raised in Evangelical churches, how many times did you hear sermons about giving God your best? Jesus died on the cross for our sins! If Jesus gave his ALL for us, shouldn’t we give our ALL to him? Our thoughts, words, and deeds, all belong to Jesus! This life is just preparation for the life to come. Giving everything to God now means he will reward us after death! Or so preachers say, anyway. No evidence for this claim is forthcoming. You are just going to have to take them at their word. But let’s, for a moment, take the non-inspired, errant, fallible Bible at face value. What awaits Christians after the resurrection of the just and unjust? Sure, no more pain, sickness, or death. But that aside, I am not sure Heaven (the eternal kingdom of God) will be such a great place to live for millions and millions of years. What will Christians spend their endless days doing? Worshiping, praising, and glorifying the universe’s ultimate narcissist, God. God demanded everything from his followers in this life, and he does the same in the life to come. Come on, Jesus, when is enough enough? Can’t believers have a toke of marijuana out back of the throne room with Peter or share a few off-color jokes with John? Must believers forgo the joys of human existence all because he who has EVERYTHING wants more? I am starting to think Hell is a far better destination. Satan didn’t ask anything of me in this life, and I heard from a reliable source, Christopher Hitchens, that Hell is quite the party. Sure, Hell is a bit warm in July, but hanging out with Hitch and other atheists at Beelzebub’s Bar and Grill seems preferable to neverending worship of Jehovah.

This notion of God deserving the best of everything has real-world implications. Instead of Christians focusing on life and enjoying the fruits of their labor, they are expected to hand their pay and the title of their property to God. How does this transfer of wealth take place? On Sundays, at Evangelical churches everywhere. Congregants are expected to tithe, give offerings, and give money to whatever project the pastor cooks up. Church members are reminded that all they have belongs to God, that he is just loaning it to them, subject to call at any moment. Christians are conned into believing that nothing they own belongs to them. Cue the song, All to Jesus I Surrender, All to Him I Freely Give.

Churches are, at their base level, membership clubs. I don’t have a problem with churches expecting members to pay their dues. However, it is not uncommon for Christians to give 10-25 percent of their gross income to their churches. In the IFB churches, we had numerous income streams: tithes (10% of gross income), building fund offerings, and faith promise missionary offerings, along with special offerings collected for guest speakers, evangelists, and singing groups. And then there were special projects that needed funding, often requiring thousands of dollars. Pastors think the church needs this or that, so they go to their congregations and ask them to cough up the money. “God is leading us to do __________! preachers say. Over the twenty-five years I spent in the ministry, I raised money for everything from pews to building refurbishments to copiers to buses. While some of these projects were certainly worthwhile, at what point do preachers stop bleeding church members for more money? If the early church could meet in homes or outside, can’t modern churches do the same? Surely, you jest, Bruce. God needs the best of everything! And that includes lighting and AV equipment. One local megachurch took up residence at the Defiance Mall. God “led” the pastor and other church leaders to install $100,000 of state-of-the-art AV equipment. Nice set-up, to say the least, but where did this money come from? Church members.

Bruce, shouldn’t Christians be free to give as much money as they want to their clubs? Sure. We live in a free society. We are free to spend our money as we wish. My objection is to what drives giving in Evangelical churches: the idea that God deserves the best of everything. How do Evangelical preachers know what God wants? How do they know that God only shops at Saks Fifth Avenue? You see, when I read the Bible, I see a God (Jesus) who is more of a Walmart shopper. If Christians are to follow Jesus’ example, how does that comport with the notion that God deserves the best of everything; that church buildings should be temples of capitalistic splendor? And this is not just an Evangelical problem. One need only look at mainline and Catholic church buildings to see glaring testimonies to the belief that God deserves the very best. If Jesus is the example, it seems evident, at least to me, that most Christians are not paying attention.

Further, I have a big problem with preachers who manipulate church members with claims that God spoke to them, telling them that to receive his blessing God wants new $30 a square yard carpeting for the sanctuary. Churches should be focused on meeting congregant needs and ministering to the sick, poor, and marginalized, and not building an opulent palace for a deity who supposedly already owns everything.

People who wholeheartedly love Jesus are bled dry by such thinking. People give even when they don’t have the means to do so. Their pastors encourage them to have faith or sow mustard seeds for God. Matthew 17:20 says:

. . . verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

NOTHING SHALL BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU, shouts the pastor. On his last show on 700-WLW, Gary Burbank — my all-time favorite comedian — said this:

The Little Radio Church of the White Winged Gospel Truth is in the air. Flock, as it sayeth in the Book of Hominominies, not your old testament, not your new testament, but your present testament, writ by me, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, ‘cause the Lord likes to mess with us. Can I get an “Amalulah!”? Now the Lord is taking Gary Burbank – not calling him home, just getting’ him off the radio. I’m going to need some love offerings soon before my radio pulpit goes away. So reach into them jeans and pull out some greens. Fly them rockets from thy pockets up around my altar. Don’t make me holler, don’t make me shout. Turn them pockets inside out.

The only difference between when Burbank acted out this script and the present is that Evangelical preachers now have MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal for extracting money from congregants. Imagine a cash strapped congregant at First Church of the Born Again hearing his pastor’s plea for money to fund new equipment for the praise and worship band. This devout Christian, feeling the “leading” of the Lord — also known as psychological manipulation — goes online and maxes out his credit card for the Lord. His pastor praises him for heeding God’s voice. And then the first credit card bill comes. For the next five years, this God-led Christian will be paying off his donation monthly with 24.99% interest. Ain’t God awesome?

Did your pastors pressure you or your parents to give money to the church? Please share your experiences in the comment section.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Avoiding the Appearance of Sin

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hear see speak no evil

The Bible says in 1 Thessalonians 5:22:

Abstain from all appearance of evil.

Eighteenth-century theologian Matthew Henry explains I Thessalonians 5:22 verse this way:

Corrupt affections indulged in the heart, and evil practices allowed of in the life, will greatly tend to promote fatal errors in the mind; whereas purity of heart, and integrity of life, will dispose men to receive the truth in the love of it. We should therefore abstain from evil, and all appearances of evil, from sin, and that which looks like sin, leads to it, and borders upon it. He who is not shy of the appearances of sin, who shuns not the occasions of sin, and who avoids not the temptations and approaches to sin, will not long abstain from the actual commission of sin. (E-Sword Bible Program)

For those of us raised in Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) or Southern Baptist churches, we likely heard numerous sermons about abstaining from the appearance of evil. These sermons often included lists of things we should abstain from because the pastor, uh, I mean God, declared them to be sinful/evil. Sometimes, Ephesians 4:27 would be quoted: Neither give place to the devil. Not abstaining from the appearance of evil meant you were giving the Devil place in your life.

In the churches I grew up in, the IFB college I attended in the 1970s, and the churches I pastored in the 1980s and 1990s, abstaining from the appearance of evil meant not doing anything that looked like you were sinning. As you will see in just a moment, this kind of thinking led to all sorts of laughable and bizarre behavior.

As a pastor, my interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 5:22 evolved quite a bit over the twenty-five years I spent in the ministry. As a young preacher, I was quite the literalist. I obsessed over being seen doing something that others might view as sinful. In particular, I made sure that church members never saw me doing anything that would lead them to conclude that I was sinning. Baked into this thinking was the notion that what could be seen was the problem. If I wanted to do something that might be perceived as sin, I just made sure no one saw what I was doing. Let me share two stories that should illustrate my point.

From 1983 to 1994, I pastored Somerset Baptist Church, a thriving IFB congregation in the Appalachian foothills of southeast Ohio. The congregation was dirt poor. Though most of the men in the church were gainfully employed, poverty was common, and that included Pastor and Mrs. Gerencser and their six children. It was not uncommon for me to preach the Puritan work ethic and trusting God for all your needs from the pulpit. Congregants were expected to trust God, not the government, to meet their daily needs. Of course, this was an impossible standard for many of the church families to live by. When God failed to provide, families turned to the government for assistance. Many of the families were on food stamps — now called SNAP. There was a sense of guilt in the church over this, but when given a choice to go hungry for Jesus or have food on the table, church families turned to the government for food.

The church went through a difficult spell financially in the late 1980s, and I went unpaid weeks on end. During this time, we applied for food stamps. Boy, were we embarrassed. At the time, we thought that we were letting God (and the church) down by accepting government assistance. I suspect my pride played a big part in how I felt at the time, but with a family of eight to feed, my pride had to take a back seat to meeting our needs.

Thanks to our family size, we received a huge food stamp allotment each month — more than we could actually use. After we received our first food stamp coupon booklets, I told Polly that she was NEVER to use them at local grocery stores. We had to avoid the appearance of evil/sin, and in IFB circles, accepting government assistance was indeed considered sinful. Instead of buying groceries locally, we would drive an hour to Columbus to buy groceries. Twenty minutes away, Zanesville had several groceries, but since many of our church members shopped at these stores, we couldn’t do our shopping in Zanesville.

Polly’s uncle, James (Jim) Dennis, pastored the Newark Baptist Temple in Newark, Ohio. The Baptist Temple was a strict IFB congregation, with rules and regulations governing virtually every aspect of life. Congregants were not permitted to attend the movies. Doing so meant you were supporting evil Hollywood. Even lingering around the entrance of a movie theater was viewed as giving the appearance of evil.

As a child, Polly and her parents would vacation with the Dennis family in Florida. Remember 1 Thessalonians 5:22? Abstain from all appearance of evil. Well, this verse took on a whole different meaning in Florida. With no church members around, the whole family would go to the movies. That’s right, a Baptist preacher who preached one thing but did another!

During the almost twelve years I spent pastoring Somerset Baptist Church, I developed an elaborate code of conduct fueled by avoiding the appearance of evil at all costs. I never wanted church members to see me doing something that could be construed as sin/evil. Of course, what they didn’t see couldn’t hurt them. Polly and I became experts at playing the game. We could be having a big row as we drove to the church house, but as soon as we pulled into the parking lot, we put on our “Oh, How I Love Jesus” faces. You see, appearance was everything in my book. Lest someone come to the wrong conclusion, I had a deep love for Jesus and sincerely desired to walk in his steps. Unfortunately, I was human AND a Fundamentalist — a sure recipe for failure. Sure, I wanted people to see me in a certain light — who doesn’t, right — but I also loved the Lord, my God, and wanted to follow his commandments.

I should mention in passing the Biblical idea advanced by the apostle Paul that Christians should not do anything that would cause another Christian to “stumble.” Even if a particular behavior was not sinful, if a weaker Christian thought a behavior was sin or it could cause him to fall, you should not do it in his presence.

Let me conclude by illustrating how avoiding the appearance of evil/sin worked out practically in my life. I know these illustrations will seem absurd, but former Fundamentalist Christians will likely shake their head and say, “yep, been there, done that.” I hope readers will come away from this post understanding how Bible literalism and Fundamentalist thinking can deeply affect one’s life.

The following illustrations all took place from 1983-1994.

One day, I received a letter from the Somerset Ministerial Group asking me to join them for their monthly meeting at the Little Phil Restaurant. The letter was signed by the pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church. Unbeknownst to these clergymen was the fact that IFB pastors were hyper-separatists who didn’t fellowship with anyone but their own kind. How could I break bread with pastors I believed were preaching a false gospel and leading people to Hell?

I wrote the Lutheran pastor a scathing letter, point by point, telling him why I would never join them for their meeting. Besides, the Little Phil served alcohol, and I didn’t eat at restaurants that served booze. The Lutheran pastor sent me a short reply, gently trying to show me the error of my way. He concluded by asking me to reconsider. “Just remember, Bruce, even Jesus ate with sinners.”

I refused to eat at any restaurant that sold alcohol. This meant that my idea of a good steak was Ponderosa (pound-a-grossa), and I ate far more fast food than was good for me. This also meant that we didn’t buy groceries at stores that sold booze or buy gasoline from gas stations that sold alcohol (or porn-lite magazines such as Playboy). This made life quite challenging for us at times, but I sincerely believed God wanted me to abstain from ALL appearances of sin. How could I preach against drinking alcohol if I was giving my money to businesses that sold the Devil’s elixir?

My views began to change after I left Somerset Baptist, and the last decade of my time in the ministry was very different lifestyle-wise from the first. As anyone who has carefully read my story knows, my beliefs and practices bumpily moved over the course of twenty-five years from Bruce, the Fundamentalist to Bruce, the generic Evangelical to Bruce, the progressive Christian. Intolerance begat tolerance, and in the end, I no longer believed that I was accountable for how people lived their lives. My preaching moved from thundering sermons on sin to emphasizing the two great commands: loving God and loving others. Now, this doesn’t mean I didn’t preach against sin, I did. But my sin list changed, becoming smaller and smaller over time.

I want to think that the cancer of Christian Fundamentalism has been excised from my life, but I know better. I still battle the notion that appearance is everything, that I always want people to see me in the best possible light. As a social construct, I suppose this is fine, but it does, at times, get in the way of me being my authentic self — warts and all.

As a Christian, how did you interpret the verses mentioned in this post? Did your pastors preach about abstaining from the appearance of evil/sin? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

How to Tell Your Evangelical Parents You Are an Atheist

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coming out as an atheist

In the Western world, Evangelical churches are hemorrhaging members left and right — particularly younger congregants. Evangelical pollsters and church growth gurus continue to discuss WHY so many people raised in Evangelical families are exiting stage left once they get out of high school, and WHAT can be done to retain them. I managed restaurants for several major fast-food chains. Several of the stores I managed faced declining sales. As manager, I was tasked with figuring out why customer counts were down and what could be done to get former and new customers to spend their money at the restaurant. This is exactly what is going on in Evangelical churches.

Churches and their pastors know that their future rests in retaining younger members after they graduate from high school and go off to college. Yet, most Evangelical churches (don’t let megachurches skew the picture of what is really happening) are losing younger members — not replacing the older church members who are dying off. Average congregation age continues to climb, especially among sects such as the Southern Baptist Convention — the largest Protestant sect in the United States.

The reasons for these defections are many. However, it seems clear that many young adults are leaving their childhood religious homes because of politics, science, and Evangelicalism’s increasing inability to honestly answer the hard questions of life. Younger adults refuse to be placated by appeals to faith and authority. If their church leaders can’t answer their questions, then these budding skeptics look elsewhere. Further, Evangelical churches, pastors, and educational institutions threw their weight behind the culture war, justifiably earning the label as the most hated religion in America. Younger Christians watched from the sidelines as their pastors, teachers, and parents supported Donald Trump, villainized LGBTQ people, labored to outlaw abortion, and supported systematic racism. These young adults rightly concluded that they no longer wanted anything do to with their parents’ religion.

Most Evangelicals have what I call a “borrowed faith.” The bulk of Evangelical members were raised in the church. Everything they heard and experienced reinforced the faith taught to them by their parents, pastors, and youth leaders. For readers not raised in such environments, it is often hard to understand how isolated and intellectually stilted such places are. Everything is governed by a set of propositional facts about God, Jesus, the Bible, and their peculiar version of Christianity. While “questions” are sometimes permitted, the only answers allowed are those which conform to the one true faith.

Evangelical pastors know they must protect their churches from the Philistine horde outside the gates, so they use lies, distortions, and repetition of beliefs to hopefully inoculate their congregations from faith destroying questions and doubts. Churches and their pastors know that atheism and agnosticism are existential threats to their existence, so what do they do? They either pretend there’s no such thing as an atheist (Romans 1) or they lie about what it is atheists actually believe. One need only watch YouTube videos shat out by Evangelical apologists to see how these men grossly misrepresent atheist beliefs. If atheism is no threat to Evangelicalism, why all the interest from apologists? If God and his Word will always prevail against the godless, why do apologists spend so much time attacking atheism? Their behavior suggests that atheism is a real and present danger for Evangelical churches. Thus, pastors and apologists are willing to lie, distort, and misrepresent atheist beliefs (and their own beliefs) in their attempts to hang on to those whom pollsters call the “Nones.”

Nones are best described as those who are disaffected by religion. While many Nones are atheists or agnostics, some are not. Nones are often people who no longer give a shit about the religion of their youth. Quite simply, their churches, pastors, and parents no longer provide adequate answers to their doubts and questions. Many of them are sickened by the Evangelical culture war and the reduction of church on Sundays into a spectator sport. Four years of support for Donald Trump and the immoral policies of the Republican Party have driven thoughtful, caring young adults out of the church. And what do many Evangelical apologists and pastors do? They double-down, suggesting that the problem is a lack of Bible knowledge among young adults. “Get back in church,” these preachers demand, “and listen to my preaching.” These supposed men of God think that there’s nothing that can’t be fixed with a few verses and sermons from the Bible. They refuse to acknowledge that the real issue is that disaffected young adults no longer buy what they are selling; that behavior speaks louder than words. These salesmen for Jesus also fail to understand that the Nones often sat in their churches for years, silently plotting exits from these temples of ignorance and irrationality. Over the years, I have corresponded with countless young adults who were biding their time until they were old enough to stop attending church or move out on their own. Some of the people I have talked with have actually escaped the snare of Fundamentalism, but they keep the true nature of their beliefs secret. Even older people can be trapped behind enemy lines, so to speak, unable or unwilling to tell their spouses, children, parents, and grandparents that they no longer believe.

I am often asked for advice on how to tell your Evangelical parents that you no longer believe in God. (Please see Count the Cost Before You Say “I am an Atheist.” This is not an easy question to answer due to the fact that there are so many variables to consider. When my wife and I left Christianity in 2008, I drafted a letter and sent it to family, friends, former parishioners, and colleagues in the ministry. (Please see Dear Family, Friends, and Former Parishioners.) While this letter was signed by both of us, it was largely received as coming from me alone. Polly was viewed as a lemming, a woman under the spell of her husband — a lie that still irritates the hell out of her to this day. Polly’s mother and extended family — all Independent Fundamentalist Baptists (IFB) — believe that once I die Polly will come running back to Jesus and the church. They think so little of her that they refuse to acknowledge that it was her decision alone to tell Jesus to take a hike.

Over the past 12 years, we have paid a heavy price for sending out that letter. We have lost all of our friends, and family relationships are strained to the point of breaking. I have been asked if I had to do it all over again would I still send out the letter? Looking at the carnage that came from the letter, was it worth it? Would it have been better for all involved if I just ducked and kept quiet? Maybe, but that has never been my style. I knew the Evangelical gossip mills were working overtime as they deconstructed my life, my ministry, and even my marriage. The only way I knew to control what was being said about me and Polly was to write a letter and send it to hundreds of family members, friends, former parishioners, and colleagues in the ministry. I thought, naively, that this would put an end to the lies and gossip. Silly me. I should have known better. While the deconstructions of my life have waned a bit, I still hear from people from time to time or learn second or third hand that I am still be talked about behind my back. So while I stand on decision to send a letter to those who knew me, I would never suggest to anyone else that they do the same — that is unless you want immediate fireworks and assaults on your character.

Many Evangelicals-turned-atheists quietly leave the religion of their parents and family behind. They dodge questions or obfuscate the true nature of their unbelief. “Mom, I just haven’t found a church that I like,” a little white lie that hides the fact she hasn’t darkened the doors of a church since going to college. I am what most people consider the village atheist. I live in rural northwest Ohio, five miles from the place of my birth. I can safely say that virtually everyone knows who I am. Yet, on occasion, I will run into older people (who often don’t have computers/Internet) who knew me from my preaching days. They will ask me, “Bruce, where are you preaching these days?” assuming I am still a Bible-believing preacher. I typically reply, “I am not preaching anywhere right now, ” and then I so quickly change the subject that they don’t know what hit them. Should I give them a rundown of my loss of faith in the middle of the grocery store? I think not. Am I deliberately deceiving them? No. I am just choosing what questions to answer. I don’t owe anyone an accounting of my life.

Some Evangelicals-turned-atheists want to be out and proud. They are tired of hiding in the shadows, tired of giving evasive answers to questions about their religious beliefs and relationship with Jesus. Yet, they know that sharing with their parents that they have abandoned the family deity will not only cause conflict but hurt the people they love. Further, there is a real risk of being excommunicated from their family.

For those of you who want to stand up at the next post-COVID family reunion and shout, I AM AN ATHEIST!, I suggest that you carefully weigh the consequences of doing so. I am not saying that you shouldn’t do this — far from it. However, once you out yourself to your parents, you no longer control what happens next. LGBTQ readers can tell us this is true, and that often there is a heavy price to be paid for being true to self.

And therein lies the fundamental issue for Evangelicals-turned-atheists: being true to self. We all want to live authentic lives. We all want the right to be who and what we are. Unfortunately, Evangelical Christianity is not known for love, acceptance, and tolerance. Countless atheists were cut off from their families, told never to return until they “got right with God.” It is heartbreaking to learn that many Evangelical parents love Jesus and their church far more than they love their atheist children. In fact, such people believe their churches are their true families. The notion that blood is thicker than water just doesn’t apply in many Evangelical families.

Generally, I encourage Evangelicals-turned-atheists to be honest and frank with their believing parents. Life is too short to deny who and what you really are. If your parents truly love you, they will understand. Maybe not today, tomorrow, or a year from now, but they will eventually embrace you as their son or daughter, regardless of your beliefs. And if they don’t? Then you have to ask yourself if you really want to continue to have a relationship with your parents. I know, I know, harsh words, but your life is short, my friend, and isn’t it better to surround yourself with people who genuinely love you and accept you as you are? And it goes without saying that we should do the same for our parents. We are not asking them to join our merry band of heathens. All that ask for is respect.

I hope you find this post helpful. I would love to hear you tell of your own experiences with your parents in the comment section. What advice would you give to Evangelicals-turned-atheists who no longer want to lurk in the shadows of life?

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.