Objectivity: the fact of being based on facts and not influenced by personal beliefs or feelings (Oxford Dictionary)
Objectivity: the quality or character of being objective; lack of favoritism toward one side or another; freedom from bias (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
Just when I think I have heard everything, Dr. David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, will write something that boggles my mind. What follows is an excerpt from Thiessen’s post titled, Christians Are Not Objective. I am beyond words, so I will leave it to readers to weigh in on Thiessen’s claim that he isn’t, nor can he be, objective.
Thiessen — thank you, Bruce for giving proper attribution — writes:
That is the true concept of objectivity. Nothing is ruled out. That is if one wants to be honest. However, for Christians, the time for being objective is before they become a Christian. After they accept Christ as their savior, they are no longer objective but have sided with God and his words.
The new and old believers have made a choice to follow Jesus and live by the word of God. The word of God does not teach objectivity. It teaches how God created the world in 6 days, leaving no room for alternatives to take place.
The Christian does not need to be objective and question everything. They have found the truth and decided to accept that truth. Once that decision is made, they no longer need to search for answers to a mystery that does not exist.
Objectivity only helps lead one to examine all the facts. It is not supposed to keep questioning once the answer has been discovered. Unfortunately, for many scientists, the answer to our origins has been provided and has been in existence since the beginning of time. There is no mystery to our origins, the origin of the universe or how life developed.
We have those answers and the good scientists who are Christians can move on to more important work either refuting those who promote alternatives or solving many of life’s challenges, including curing diseases, solving water problems in many countries, and so on.
There is a world of problems that need Christian scientists to focus on instead of worrying about where we came from. While we still need Christians and Christian scientists to dig up facts to refute the claims of the unbelievers who reject creation, we do not need as many.
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Objectivity is very limited in its application and it is never a good thing to be objective when you have sided with God and his word. When you do become objective again, you are saying you have not found the answer and there is no reason for unbelievers to convert.
Christians have to decide if the word of God is true or not, then make their stand on it no matter what unbelieving scientists say. God does not lie and to say that unbelieving scientists are telling the truth about our origins, then you are saying that God lied.
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When you serve God, there is no room for objectivity. You either promote his views or you are not serving God.
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Christians, do not even try to be objective as it will put you on the wrong side of God and have you obeying secular man over what God has said. We know that there is no such thing as objectivity as God has said you are either on his side or not.
When you pick a side, you are accepting and supporting the information, etc., that is found on one side or the other. There is no middle ground, which is why progressive creationism and theistic evolution cannot exist.
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No, Christians are not objective as they have picked a side and when they stray from representing that side properly, they have left or almost left their faith. Their words, etc., must reflect that choice and not be swayed by those who do not believe.
The latter side has no smoking gun of evidence or knowledge that will destroy Christianity. They are bringing falsehoods mixed with a little truth to help trap unwary Christians. We cannot be swayed by their degrees or years of experience. If they disagree with God and the Bible, they re bringing a false gospel and the wrong information.
Christians put objectivity aside so that the truth can be shared around the world.
Sigh . . . beyond words 🙁
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Every year or two, I ask readers to submit questions they want me to answer. That time has arrived once again. Any question. Any subject. Please leave your questions in the comment section or send them to me via email. I will try to answer them in the order received.
I look forward to reading and answering your questions.
Jerry asked:
What was your view on the Israel vs Palestine situation when you were a Christian?
Determining my view on Israel and Palestine depends on where I was at a particular moment in my theological journey. I started the ministry as a premillennial, pretribulational dispensationalist. Israel was God’s chosen people, and all the land prescribed in the Bible belonged to them, and nations who bless or curse Israel will be blessed or cursed by God.
In the late 1980s, I left the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) and embraced Evangelical Calvinism. My eschatology changed to amillennialism and posttribulationalism. No longer a dispensationalist, I viewed the New Testament church as God’s chosen people. I saw a continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament. While I believed God had a plan for Israel, they, as a people, at this present time, have been set aside. This allowed me to view Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in a different light.
Today, I view the state of Israel — not Jews individually — as a violent bully propped up by the United States. Israel has turned Gaza into an open-air prison, depriving Palestinians of basic civil rights. I view their illegal settlements in the West Bank similarly. And I think it can be argued that the land “given” to Israel in 1948 was, in fact, violently appropriated from indigenous Palestinian people
The solution to the intractable war between Israel and the Palestinians is straightforward: the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state. Further, ALL the illegal Israeli settlements must be dismantled and the land returned to its rightful owners. Of course, these things will never happen as long as Benjamin Netanyahu and other right-wing Israelis are running the show. No amount of pressure from the United States will stop Israel from turning Gaza into a compact version of Syria. It will take decades for Palestinians to recover and rebuild. Their schools, hospitals, and infrastructure have been destroyed.
Rebuilding homes in Gaza destroyed during Israel’s seven-month military offensive could take until 2040 in the most optimistic scenario, with total reconstruction across the territory costing as much as $40bn (£32bn), according to United Nations experts.
An assessment, which is to be published by the UN Development Programme as part of a push to raise funds for early planning for the rehabilitation of Gaza, has also found that the conflict may reduce levels of health, education, and wealth in the territory to those of 1980, wiping out 44 years of development.
Expectations of a breakthrough in ceasefire talks in Cairo between Israel and Hamas have cooled in recent days, and many observers believe the conflict is likely to continue, if at varying degrees of intensity, for many months or even longer.
More than 34,500, mostly women and children have died since Israel launched its offensive, according to health authorities in Gaza, after Hamas attacked Israel in October and killed about 1,200 people. The militant Islamist organisation, which took power in Gaza in 2007, also seized 250 hostages.
More than 79,000 homes in Gaza have been “completely destroyed” in the conflict, with another 370,000 damaged, the new assessment found.
“Even under optimistic scenarios for the pace of physical reconstruction, the scale of destruction in Gaza has been such that, simply from the narrow perspective of moving in building materials, it would still take until 2040 and probably longer to restore the housing units destroyed since the start of the war,” the researchers concluded.
In addition, schools, health facilities, roads, sewers, water pipes and all other critical infrastructure have all suffered massive damage.
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“The scale of the destruction is huge and unprecedented. This is a mission that the global community has not dealt with since the second world war,” al-Dardari said.
The latest assessment found that, with the high number of casualties and the big destruction of health facilities in Gaza, life expectancy had already been reduced by a minimum of four or five years and was likely to be reduced by seven, if the war continued into its ninth month. Researchers also found that real GDP per capita in the territory could be reduced to its lowest level since the mid-1990s.
More than 37m tonnes of debris needs to be cleared in Gaza to permit reconstruction. The mountains of rubble are full of unexploded ordnance that leads to “more than 10 explosions every week”, with more deaths and loss of limbs, Gaza’s Civil Defence agency said on Thursday.
It is doubtful that a two-state solution will be achieved in the short term. Until Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is turned out of office and the United States stops funding Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians, no change is forthcoming. It is far more likely a regional or world war will break out than that a sovereign Palestinian state will be established. Netanyahu is hell-bent on destroying Gaza, and nothing the feckless Biden Administration says will stop him. President Biden is more concerned about reelection than he is about protecting innocent Palestinians.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Afterward, Baptist sent me a polite email that I thought I would respond to in a post. I suspect more than a few readers will find my response interesting and, hopefully, illuminating.
Baptist first shared his experiences with Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) churches. Some of his experiences were similar to mine, though I want to make clear that I left the IFB church movement years before I left the ministry and later deconverted. I stopped self-identifying as IFB after the Jack Hyles scandal (Please see The Legacy of IFB Pastor Jack Hyles) and my adoption of Calvinistic soteriology.
What I want to focus on is Baptist’s second paragraph:
But my main point of contact was that you stated that you, one day, realized that the Bible is not infallible. Why did you come to believe that? I maintain that the Bible (K.J.V. for English readers) is fine and has no errors or contradictions, and I have spent decades answering questions on this topic. I study the Bible and a lot of ancient history. Most of the supposed errors/contradictions believed by people comes down to ignorance of ancient customs. I would like to know what it was for you, where you came to believe it was not perfect.
Evangelicals generally believe the sixty-six books of the Protestant Christian Bible are inspired, inerrant, and infallible. Inspiration is a faith claim, for which no argument for or against can be made. Either you believe, by faith, the Bible is inspired, or you don’t. I don’t. Inerrancy and infallibility, on the other hand, are empirical claims which can be tested, proved, or disproved. For much of my Christian life, I believed that the Bible was inspired, inerrant, and infallible. In the early 2000s, I stopped using the King James Bible, opting instead to read and preach from the New American Standard Bible (NASB) and English Standard Version (ESV). Devotionally, I started reading The Message. By this point, I had concluded that the Bible was faithful and reliable, but not inerrant and infallible. I never doubted that the Bible was the Word of God, but I came to see and understand the deep, fallible imprint human authors made on the original manuscripts (which do not exist).
The King James Bible was first released in 1611. The KJV was primarily a revision and update of the Bishops’ Bible. Translators primarily used Erasmus’ Greek text (Textus Receptus) for translating the New Testament, and the Masoretic text for the Old, along with the Greek Septuagint, and the Latin Vulgate.
In 1769, the KJV was updated, modernizing the English and fixing scores of errors and mistakes. Wikipedia states:
By the mid-18th century the wide variation in the various modernized printed texts of the Authorized Version, combined with the notorious accumulation of misprints, had reached the proportion of a scandal, and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge both sought to produce an updated standard text. First of the two was the Cambridge edition of 1760, the culmination of 20 years’ work by Francis Sawyer Parris, who died in May of that year. This 1760 edition was reprinted without change in 1762 and in John Baskerville’s fine folio edition of 1763.
This was effectively superseded by the 1769 Oxford edition, edited by Benjamin Blayney, though with comparatively few changes from Parris’s edition; but which became the Oxford standard text, and is reproduced almost unchanged in most current printings. Parris and Blayney sought consistently to remove those elements of the 1611 and subsequent editions that they believed were due to the vagaries of printers, while incorporating most of the revised readings of the Cambridge editions of 1629 and 1638, and each also introducing a few improved readings of their own.
They undertook the mammoth task of standardizing the wide variation in punctuation and spelling of the original, making many thousands of minor changes to the text. In addition, Blayney and Parris thoroughly revised and greatly extended the italicization of “supplied” words not found in the original languages by cross-checking against the presumed source texts. Blayney seems to have worked from the 1550 Stephanus edition of the Textus Receptus, rather than the later editions of Theodore Beza that the translators of the 1611 New Testament had favoured; accordingly the current Oxford standard text alters around a dozen italicizations where Beza and Stephanus differ. Like the 1611 edition, the 1769 Oxford edition included the Apocrypha, although Blayney tended to remove cross-references to the Books of the Apocrypha from the margins of their Old and New Testaments wherever these had been provided by the original translators. It also includes both prefaces from the 1611 edition. Altogether, the standardization of spelling and punctuation caused Blayney’s 1769 text to differ from the 1611 text in around 24,000 places.
The 1611 and 1769 texts of the first three verses from I Corinthians 13 are given below.
[1611] 1. Though I speake with the tongues of men & of Angels, and haue not charity, I am become as sounding brasse or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I haue the gift of prophesie, and vnderstand all mysteries and all knowledge: and though I haue all faith, so that I could remooue mountaines, and haue no charitie, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestowe all my goods to feede the poore, and though I giue my body to bee burned, and haue not charitie, it profiteth me nothing.
[1769] 1. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
There are a number of superficial edits in these three verses: 11 changes of spelling, 16 changes of typesetting (including the changed conventions for the use of u and v), three changes of punctuation, and one variant text—where “not charity” is substituted for “no charity” in verse two, in the belief that the original reading was a misprint.
Most people who use the KJV use the 1769 revision. The 1611 version is unreadable for most modern readers. Once I understood the changes and corrections that had been made in the 1769 revision, I could no longer say with a straight face that the KJV was inerrant and infallible. I came to the same conclusion about ALL English translations of the Bible. It is impossible to conclude that the KJV or any other Bible translation is without error. Since the original manuscripts no longer exist, the same can be said about the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. This is the position taken by virtually all non-Evangelical Bible scholars. One can still hold on to the Bible being inspired by God, but inerrancy and infallibility cannot be rationally sustained. The data is overwhelming: both manuscripts and translations have scores of errors, mistakes, and contradictions. Dr. Bart Ehrman says there are over 40,000 differences in the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. Granted, most of these differences are minor, but when you believe the Bible is inerrant, it only takes one error to bring inerrancy tumbling down.
Baptist, as all Evangelical apologists do, likely has explanations for every error, mistake, and contradiction in the Bible. That’s why I don’t get into long, drawn-out debates over Bible errancy and fallibility. Evangelicals always have answers, but are they good answers? Keep in mind, for Evangelicals, the data don’t come first. Before they even read the text, Evangelicals are guided by several presuppositions: the Bible is God’s word; the Bible is inerrant; the Bible is infallible. When confronted with obvious errors, Evangelicals must, according to their presuppositions, find ways to make the text fit in the inerrant/infallible box.
As a pastor, I had a 1,000-plus-page book that addressed all the alleged errors and contradictions in the Bible. When I came across verses that seemed contradictory, I would consult this book. Most of the time, I was satisfied with the explanation, but other times I found the book’s explanations weak, incoherent, or absurd. In these instances, I put aside intellectual inquiry and appealed to faith. I told myself, “The Bible is the perfect Word of God.” Any apparent error or mistake was due to my lack of understanding, and, in time, God would make things clear to me. And if he didn’t, I would still trust him, believing the Bible was without error.
After I left the ministry twenty years ago, I began investigating the central claims of Christianity, including the claim that the Bible is inerrant and infallible. I concluded that these claims could not be rationally, intellectually sustained. I found Dr. Bart Ehrman’s books on the nature and history of the Biblical text to be helpful in this regard. Bishop John Shelby Spong was another author I found helpful. When people want to debate me on Bible inerrancy or infallibility, the first thing I do is ask them if they have read Ehrman’s books. If not, I usually say, “Read a couple of his books, and then we will talk.”
If someone is unwilling to read Dr. Ehrman’s books, I encourage them to watch the videos produced by Bible scholar, Dr. Dan McClellan. I watch Dan’s videos almost every day, always learning something new. I wish I had been exposed to men such as Bart and Dan in my younger years as an Evangelical preacher. I suspect I would have caused a lot less harm to the people I pastored.
I appreciate Baptist’s questions. I hope I have adequately answered them.
Saved by Reason,
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Every year or two, I ask readers to submit questions they want me to answer. That time has arrived once again. Any question. Any subject. Please leave your questions in the comment section or send them to me via email. I will try to answer them in the order received.
I look forward to reading and answering your questions.
Merle asked:
What are the benefits and downsides to being an atheist?
Atheism is the lack of belief in the existence of God. An atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in God. Technically, I am an agnostic atheist. I cannot know for certain whether a deity of some sort exists, so I am agnostic on the God question. However, when it comes to the extant Gods — especially the Abrahamic Gods — I am convinced that these deities do not exist, thus I am an atheist. It is possible someday a God might make itself known to me, but until then, I remain an atheist.
We live in a society dominated by religion in general and Christianity in particular. I can’t think of one benefit I gained when declaring my atheism. Benefits accrued when I left Evangelicalism, regardless of whether I embraced atheism. I was no longer bound by the authority of the Bible and the church. I no longer had to play by the rules or believe certain things. I was free to believe and do what I wanted. So the most important thing gained by deconverting was FREEDOM! I can now “sin” to my heart’s content. I can cavort with prostitutes, smoke crack, get drunk, rob banks, and commit murder — if I want to. I choose not to. I am no longer bound by religious creeds, rules, and standards. I no longer need them to guide my life. No need for religious texts or religious authorities determining for me what these texts mean. I am a rational human being, capable of deciding for myself how I want to live. I have never felt freer than I do today, and my partner, Polly, can say the same. We do what we want, when we want, with nary a thought about what God thinks or the Bible says. It is a great way to live. Of course, I will burn in Hell if I am wrong about the God question. 🙂
Now to the negatives of being an atheist. If you are a private or secret atheist, you will likely face few, if any, problems. It is when you publicly declare your lack of belief that problems can and do arise. Atheists are roundly considered in an unflattering light as people who lack moral and ethical values; people who have secret desires to commit sexual sin; and people who are child molesters or pedophiles. Stupidly, many Christians believe that moral and ethical values require religion. This is absurd. I can’t think of one value that can’t be formulated without religion — not one. I don’t need the Christian God, the Christian Bible, or the Christian church to know how to live morally and ethically.
As an atheist, I have faced discrimination. I am an outspoken atheist, the village atheist who regularly writes letters to the editor of the local newspaper about Evangelicalism, Trump, MAGA, liberal/progressive politics, abortion, LGBTQ issues, handicapped parking, and degenerates who kill cats for sports. I am a well-rounded letter writer. These letters have resulted in personal attacks from locals on social media or in response letters to the paper. Polly and our children have been accosted at work and the local community college by people demanding they defend something I wrote. Too cowardly to confront me directly — I’m easy to find and contact — they go after my family instead. Last year, a local high school teacher gave one of my granddaughters a hard time over one of my letters. I told her to tell this bully that I would gladly publicly debate him or address his class, answering any questions students might have. There have been several times when business owners made it clear they weren’t interested in doing business with me. I have also lost out on job opportunities; more than qualified — I mean, really, really qualified — yet not receiving an interview.
I consider the aforementioned things to be the price of admission. If I am going to be an out and proud atheist and humanist, there are costs involved I must be willing to pay. (Please see Count the Cost Before You Say “I am an Atheist.”)
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Every year or two, I ask readers to submit questions they want me to answer. That time has arrived once again. Any question. Any subject. Please leave your questions in the comment section or send them to me via email. I will try to answer them in the order received.
I look forward to reading and answering your questions.
Charles asked:
Did your former congregations and Christian friends completely ostracize you after you deconverted?
The short answer is yes. However, the ostracization began before I deconverted. The last Sunday in November 2008 marks the day when I finally admitted I was no longer a Christian and stopped attending church. Before that, I still professed faith in Jesus, albeit a questioning, doubting faith. I started blogging in 2006. As I publicly worked through my questions and doubts, my colleagues in the ministry and former congregants took notice, voicing their concerns over my leftward slide into liberalism and unbelief. Some of these people broke with me, saying they could no longer support a man who held heretical beliefs. In their minds I was backslidden, or, God forbid, a false Christian; someone who never knew Jesus as his Lord and Savior. Most of my friends and acquaintances still considered me a friend or colleague, but they distanced themselves from me, praying I would repent, but ready to chuck me in the trash bin if I did not.
After publicly declaring I was no longer a Christian, I sent out a letter titled Dear Family, Friends, and Former Parishioners to several hundred people. I knew that there were a lot of rumors circulating about me, so I thought, through this letter, I would let everyone know where I was in life. Surely, my family, friends, and former parishioners would want to know, right? I wanted, most of all, for them to “understand.” I quickly learned no one was interested in understanding anything. I received emails, letters, and phone calls from people outraged over my decision to deconvert. Nobody said, “I understand” or “I wish you well.” Instead, I was told I was mentally ill (by my best friend) and/or demon-possessed ( by a woman I’ve known for 50 years). Others told me I was out of the will of God, backslidden, or other terms Evangelicals use to describe people who don’t play by the rules or believe the right things. All of them, to the person, immediately cut me off. Some of my preacher friends preached sermons about me, using me as a cautionary tale of what happens when someone rejects the one true Evangelical faith. Sixteen years later, not one friend remains. My partner, Polly, and I have had to completely start over, building friendships with people who have likeminded beliefs.
I don’t blame people for breaking fellowship with me. I came to understand that my faith-based relationships were conditioned on fidelity to certain beliefs and practices. Once I rejected these beliefs, the bond that held us together was broken. What surprised me was how ugly and nasty people were towards me — decidedly unChristian. They could have told me they were disappointed without burning our relationships to the ground. Sadly, Evangelicals are well-known for how badly they treat people who leave the in group. Only one person — the woman I had known for 50 years — ever apologized for the way they treated me. Everyone else, stood by their hateful, judgmental, disrespectful words, poignant reminders of the rot that is at the core of Evangelical Christianity.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
President Joe Biden thinks giving Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel billions of dollars in direct military aid is a “good day for peace.” His statement is irrational. U.S. military aid is directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in the past year, and millions of deaths since the inception of our nation. Many of these deaths were children and civilians.
Colorado coach Deion “Prime Time” Sanders is a bully. His treatment of Colorado’s football players shows he has no regard or respect for them as men.
Social Security is not broken, contrary to what Congress tells us. Congress owes the Social Security Administration the 2.7 trillion dollars it “borrowed” from the fund. Repay this first before saying the fund is insolvent.
According to Evangelical megachurch pastor and grizzled culture war general John MacArthur, there’s no such thing as mental illness, especially PTSD. Someone should sue MacArthur for not only being an asshole, but practicing medicine without a license.
President Joe Biden supports “peaceful protest.” Evidently, “peaceful” means doing what you are told or we will send in the police to arrest you. Biden is clueless when it comes to war, peace, civil disobedience, and nonviolent resistance.
Atheists, agnostics, and nones overwhelmingly support Joe Biden. Why, then, does the president and the Democratic Party pretend we don’t exist?
Kristi Noem shot and killed her fourteen-month-old puppy. She also killed a goat that she deemed unworthy of continued life. Noem is a bad person, yet she is being considered for vice president on the Republican ticket. The Republican Party lacks a moral and ethical foundation. Trump is their God, and whatever he says is law.
Evangelicals think Taylor Swift’s latest album is Satanic and anti-Christian. Good job, Taylor! Anyone that pisses off Evangelicals is good by me.
Childhood immunization should be required before students enter school. No religious exemptions, and that includes students in private religious schools.
God did not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah due to homosexuality. It’s in the Bible. Look it up.
Bonus: Churches should be required to run annual state and federal background checks on all clerics. staff, and volunteers. Churches that refuse to do so should lose their liability insurance coverage.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
A Hesperia pastor is in police custody following an investigation into allegations he sexually abused two minors under his care as a foster parent.
Jose Manuel Lozano is awaiting trial at the High Desert Detention Center in Adelanto, where he is being held in lieu of $5-million bail. Investigators described his alleged victims as girls ages 16 and 10.
The 54-year-old Hesperia resident led bilingual services for a predominately Latino and Spanish-speaking congregation at Zion Assembly Church of God Hesperia, an affiliate of Zion Assembly Church of God International, headquartered in Tennessee. A representative from the latter said in an interview that the organization condemns Lozano’s “ungodliness” and that he was removed from office March 15, when the allegations came to light. He was arrested last week.
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Zion Assembly Church of God Hesperia is holding services in Lozano’s absence with interim pastor Henry Rodriguez in his place. Rodriguez did not respond to The Times’ request for comment, and the church’s Instagram and Facebook pages have been taken down.
Since 2018, Lozano’s congregation had been renting space from Sovereign Way Christian Church, according to that church’s pastor, Stephen Feinstein. He said he knew Zion Assembly Church of God Hesperia as a good tenant that communicated well. The news “came as such a shock,” he said.
He said the Sovereign Way Christian Church campus has security cameras in nearly every room, but law enforcement hasn’t asked for any video.
“Sexual abuse is a problem in every institutional setting,” Feinstein said.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
Kenneth Sapp, pastor of Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in Ruston, Louisiana, stands accused of exposing himself to an undercover police officer. Sapp was charged with obscenity, possession of a Schedule Two, prohibited acts/drug paraphernalia, open container, weapon use violent act, manufacture/distribution/possession of a Schedule One drug, and possession of marijuana.
From the documents KTVE/KARD gathered, we know that on Thursday night, right before midnight, Reverend Kenneth Sapp of Arcadia was arrested after allegedly exposing himself to an undercover officer in the public restroom at the Stoner Boat Launch in Shreveport, Louisiana. The 63-year-old is the pastor of Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in Ruston, Louisiana.
According to police in a probable cause statement, Sapp was also found to be in possession of 30 grams of suspected marijuana, 21 grams of suspected meth, multiple glass pipes, and an unlabeled bottle of pills. Officers also found a handgun in Sapp’s possession. Sapp was booked into the Shreveport City Jail Friday morning and transferred to The Caddo Correctional Center early Saturday morning. His bond was set at $21,000 and he was booked on obscenity, open container, and 5 different drug charges.
On Monday, KTVE/KARD did reach out to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church for a comment, but we were told that a statement would not be given at this time.
Kenneth Sapp, 63, of Arcadia was booked into Shreveport Jail on obscenity, possession of a schedule two, prohibited acts/drug paraphernalia, open container, weapon use violent act, manufacture/distribution/possession of a schedule one and possession of marijuana.
According to booking records, Sapp was arrested after allegedly exposing himself to an undercover officer in a public restroom.
Booking records also state he was found to have 30 grams of suspected marijuana, 21 grams of suspected meth, multiple glass pipes, an unlabeled bottle of pills and a handgun.
On April 28, Sapp was transferred to Caddo Correctional Center, with his bond set at $21,000.
Sapp is the pastor at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church the Oasis in the Woods and has served in this position for the last 30 years.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
Ralph Britt, Jr., a long-time youth worker at Dunwoody Baptist Church in Dunwoody, Georgia stands accused of nine counts of sexual exploitation of children. Dunwoody Baptist is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.
A church employee was arrested after Roswell police say they found child sexual abuse material at his home.
The investigation began on February 10, 2024, when Roswell detectives began looking into child sexual abuse material transmitted through peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.
This led detectives to Ralph Britt Jr., 59, Johns Creek home on April 24, where a search warrant was executed.
According to police, authorities found more child sexual abuse material at the home and took several electronic devices for processing.
Later that Wednesday, detectives met Britt at Dunwoody Baptist Church, where he was arrested.
At the time of his arrest, Britt was an employee of the church, where he reportedly worked closely with children and the youth in different capacities over the past 20 years.
RPD says the church has cooperated with the investigation, which remains active and ongoing.
Britt was booked into the Fulton County Jail on nine counts of sexual exploitation of children. Officials said more charges are forthcoming.
Channel 2′s Tom Regan was at the Dunwoody Baptist Church Tuesday, where church leaders said the news hit the congregation hard.
“We are shocked and devastated,” Pastor Allen Taliaferro said. “This is someone we have known for decades.”
Taliaferro said Britt was most recently involved in a drama production and was involved with several different ministry departments.
Church leaders broke the news to their 2,000 members in an email and conversations.
“This was tough to sit down and say to the church,” Taliaferro said.
Pastor Alan Jackson said there is no evidence that the crimes happened on church grounds.
“No evidence has been brought forward that any person-to-person contact took place, and no parent has brought any suspicious memories either,” Jackson said.
Church leaders said they did regular, rigorous background checks on Britt and have measures in place to protect children.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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I attended Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan from 1976-1979. Midwestern is a diehard Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) institution. Established in 1954, Midwestern requires its professors to rigidly hold to IFB/Evangelical beliefs. Not doing so leads to firing for professors and expulsion for students. No one was permitted to deviate from the “faith once delivered to the saints” — as interpreted by Chancellor Tom Malone and the college’s administration.
These presuppositions guided every professor’s teaching:
The Bible is the very words of God.
The Bible is inspired — breathed out by God.
The Bible is inerrant — without error.
The Bible is infallible — true in all that it says,
The Bible is meant, with few exceptions, to be read and interpreted literally.
The Holy Spirit teaches us what particular verses of the Bible mean.
The Bible has no errors, mistakes, or contractions.
The Bible is internally consistent (univocality).
Further, Midwestern had particular beliefs about soteriology, eschatology, ecclesiology, and pneumatology. Only the King James Bible was used in the classroom, and only Erasmus’ text was used in Greek class. Hebrew was not taught at Midwestern. Opposing viewpoints were rarely brought up, other than to tell students, “We don’t believe that here.” Not one class was spent addressing Calvinism or any other eschatological system except dispensationalism, premillennialism, and pretribulationalism. Indoctrination, not knowledge, was always the goal.
My college education was rudimentary, at best. My real education came in my study, as I spent 20,000 hours reading and studying the Bible. I quickly learned that my professors had misled me. I suspect many of them didn’t know any better, having been raised in similar IFB surroundings as I.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
