I’ve written before about how impossible it is to argue with Christians. It’s either that they have superior knowledge because an invisible ghost possesses them and is guiding them towards truths that non-believers can’t possibly perceive. Or it’s that the supernatural just cannot be understood in an evidential, naturalistic way. Science and empiricism – what we can detect with our own eyes, with specialist equipment that serves as an extension of those eyes or that can be mathematically demonstrated – just cannot detect, perceive or understand the supernatural. Gary Matson is currently experiencing this on Escaping Christian Fundamentalism, where a Catholic Christian (an oxymoron to many other religionists) is arguing that the things he believes in – hell specifically and his God generally – are just too sophisticated for the ignorant layman to understand. We’ve met this before too, from pseudo-intellectual Christians who think their faith, which its supposed founder said was best understood by becoming like a child, requires a degree or three in theology or philosophy.
It’s all a sleight of hand, and rather like wrestling with a jelly-fish. The assertion that the believer in the supernatural makes, that his or her particular brand of woo lies outside the purview of science, is mere flannel. ‘You can’t prove this because you haven’t the tools to’, applies to any form of magical belief – in heaven and hell, in an afterlife, in ghosts, and angels, gods who speak to mortals, mystical saints, flying horses, reptilian overlords, UFO abductions… you name it – does not stand up to scrutiny. If supernatural entities and states are outside the natural universe (and they are, by definition) then they will never be detected by science, observation, and empirical measurement; but not because our means of detection is inadequate, but because they don’t exist. It isn’t that they are out there somewhere, detectable only with the right frame of mind or with the help of a spirit that itself has no physical presence; they are nowhere; they are not real. It is not the inadequacy of our means of detection that is at fault; it is that the invisible, non-physical, and intangible have no substance outside the human imagination. As I’ve said before, remove human imagination from the equation and the supernatural goes with it. If humans were to become extinct tomorrow, so too would all the magical beings and places that humans have ever conjured up. They have no existence independent of the human imagination.
Arguing that this isn’t so is to assume your conclusion in your premise: ‘Of course supernatural things exist, you just can’t see them. But I can prove them with my argument/philosophy/faith’. This, however, is a demonstration of irrationality, not of the supernatural. In any case, the fact the supernatural has to be argued for at all is evidence that it doesn’t exist. Nothing real has to be argued for, it can be detected, shown, demonstrated, and measured by the senses, by instruments, by mathematical proofs. That gods and ghosts can’t be, but have to be argued for, tells us they are not real – not that they are beyond the scope of our capabilities.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
Just after my mother died, I started seeing the therapist, again, who helped me during my gender identity affirmation process.
Some would argue that I should’ve found a different therapist. In fact, I asked her whether she thought working with me again was a good idea. Mind you, she didn’t need me: She is well-regarded in her areas of specialty (which include gender identity and expression) and so does not lack for people — some of whom could pay more than I ever could — who want to avail themselves of her insights. But she assured me that as long as I felt our working relationship was beneficial, she had no qualms about it.
If you spend any amount of time with a therapist — a good one, anyway — you find yourself discussing experiences and issues that you might not have thought were related to the ones you wanted to work on, but you come to realize are related, if not root causes. And so it was during a recent session with Carol (not her real name).
Not surprisingly, she knows things about me that not even members of my family or all except a couple of my closest friends know. (She is the second person I told about my sexual abuse at the hands of a priest.) In one of my early sessions with her, years ago, I mentioned that I didn’t drink or do drugs. She asked whether I was attending any twelve-step programs or other similar support groups. I said that I wasn’t, but I wasn’t drinking or using — which was the truth. Also true — which I revealed later: I stopped attending meetings about three years after my second sponsor died — like my first, from HIV-related illnesses.
Being the therapist she is, she expressed neither approval nor disapproval. In fact, she didn’t mention it again — until a few months after I started working with her again. It came up in relation to something else — I forget what, exactly, but it probably had to do with my mother’s death and what it stirred up in me. I admitted that I drank, but not as a result of my mother’s passing: I’d resumed a few years earlier, a couple of years after my gender affirmation surgery. I wasn’t suffering from the “crash” some people are said to experience after any long-anticipated experience. Rather, I’d taken a celebratory trip and, in a place where nobody knew me, had a couple of drinks.
I didn’t wake up under a bridge or in the hallway of a seedy building — or in another place where nobody knew me. I didn’t wake up beside someone I’d never seen before and would never see again. I didn’t want “the hair of the dog” and in fact felt no pain or regret. If anything, I felt as I might’ve had I spent the evening in any number of other ways and didn’t want much besides waffles, fruit preserves, and coffee.
Since then, I’ve re-discovered an old taste for wine, beer, or hard cider with supper. But I uncovered no hidden craving for hard liquor, which I enjoy once in a great while, on special occasions, and with other people. (A bottle of whiskey, cognac, or vodka lasts me for months, or even more.) And I don’t feel that those libations are a “must” with a meal or other people.
After hearing these revelations, Carol asked a question that surprised me only because I didn’t expect to hear one so direct from her, or any other therapist: Have you thought that you aren’t an alcoholic or any other kind of addict?
When the props around you are pulled out, you might flail about. But then you might re-orient yourself to your new surroundings. For a moment, I wanted to scream at Carol: She had knocked out one of the last blocks of a wall that I confused with my identity. Being someone who’d undergone a gender affirmation (what people used to call a “change” or “transition”) and an atheist, I didn’t think I still had any such structure—especially since my belief in a supreme being was all but gone by the time I started to attend AA and NA meetings.
More than a few people in those programs — and outside them — told me not only did I need to believe in a “Higher Power,” but that it was simply impossible to remain clean and sober without “turning it over” to that “HP.” (If you speak Spanish, the HP monogram is particularly ironic.) While they denied that there was any “religious” connotation to their assertion, the way they talked about it, and the very thinly-disguised prayers they said at meetings, said otherwise.
While my first sponsor grew up Catholic and my second knew the Book of Common Prayer forwards, backwards, and sideways, they—fortunately for me — didn’t try to convince me that I needed a God, I mean Higher Power, to whom I could “turn over” my problems. On the other hand, they also didn’t downplay the need to “make amends,” though they emphasized that I shouldn’t blame myself for the ways I harmed others, or simply made mistakes. “Use whatever works to keep you sober,” my first sponsor told me.
So, while both of my sponsors didn’t convey the most toxic aspect of twelve-step programs—denying the religiosity of the program while premising one’s sobriety on it — I came to realize, with the help of my therapist, that I was also clinging, in some way, to the shame and guilt my Catholic upbringing and my later Evangelical Christianity had inculcated in me. Despite my sponsors’ assurances, I sometimes wondered whether I could stay clean and sober without a god or some other “higher power.”
What I realized, after working again with Carol, is that fear is exactly what enabled the priest in my old church to prey upon me: He understood, with a perverse kind of intuition, that I wanted a strong, protective authority figure — or, at least, something that would make me feel protected. And he knew that a child, or anyone who is vulnerable, can very easily mistake an authoritarian or manipulator for a source of strength, or at least safety — and could surrender his or her sense of him or herself to a promise and illusion of protection against the very dangers to which the church or he himself — or any other institution and its representatives–exposes him or her.
In other words, just as the churches to which I belonged and their representatives sold the belief that as long as I surrendered to them, I would attain “salvation” — which meant a life free of sin and damnation — the twelve-step programs claimed that as long as I “gave it over,” I would be on the “right” path. And the churches and programs said that straying from their God or Higher Power would lead to the road to death, damnation, and despair.
“So, even though I didn’t believe in God, I believed I was an alcoholic and addict because I still had the need to feel weak, helpless, worthless.”
My therapist didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
I was born and raised into an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) family. My Mum went to Bible college in Missouri and Dad was converted by Mum at some point before they married. Shortly after I was born, we moved to Australia from Indonesia in 2000. Once we settled there, we promptly joined a young IFB church. I was their very first creche baby and their first Sunday school kid.
At home, I always remembered being taught with the rod of correction. My parents beat me because they loved me, they said. As a result, I would be beaten with belts and thick wooden rods as punishment for my sins. My peers at school would often question my bruising and I would always lie and say I fell over.
I was coerced into being “saved” at the age of five and baptised at the age of nine. I later doubted my salvation, as I realised how young I was when I was first baptised, so I rededicated my life to Christ as a teen.
I went to a secular primary and high school as my parents couldn’t afford a private Christian school. This was my only window and escape to the real world. As I grew through school, I slowly started to realise just how sheltered I was. No Harry Potter, no boyfriends, no worldly music, no revealing clothes. These were all things my peers were into at my age but I was forbidden to partake. The simple thought of the temptation would send me spiraling in an anxious prayer of forgiveness. I did not know it yet, but I was already mentally broken.
When I reached out for help through my church brothers and sisters, I was often dismissed and was told to just pray more. Read the Bible more. It means you’re not right with God. It is demonic spiritual warfare, etc. They truly forsook me when I had nowhere else to go.
It was not until year eleven (the year before graduation in Australia), when I met a kind Catholic boy and fell in love, that my life really changed. He was the one who showed me the true meaning of love and life. I was honest with my parents, which resulted in me being kicked out of home on the first day of my HSC (SAT equivalent in Australia). My mother told me to never come home again. She had found the birth control I was taking, as I had given my virginity to the Catholic boy. She told me God cannot use a corrupt vessel and that she prays that he will deliver me from my sin.
I never set foot in a church ever again. What did not occur to me was just how much psychological damage was done. I became scared to leave the house; scared to get a job; scared to be in the world because of this intense sense of despair that I had wronged my mother and wronged God.
Long story short, I am still on my road to recovery at age 24. The man I lost my virginity to — I owe him my life. If it were not for him, taking me out of that toxic environment, I probably would not be here today. We have been together for seven years and we are still stronger than ever.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
Bruce often directs questioning Christians to read books by Bart Ehrman. I wanted to suggest a couple of objective and scholarly books that a questioning Christian might also find useful. Both these books have never gone out of print and are available on Amazon, Kindle, and through bookstores. Your library may carry them, too. One of the books is about the historical Jesus and the other talks about millennialist and messianic groups.
When I was still going to church I would buy books about Christianity, and after I read them I would donate them to my church’s library. There was one that I couldn’t bear to give away, though. I found it when I was going through my bookshelves recently. It’s called The Changing Faces of Jesus by Geza Vermes, and it was published in 2000. (By the way, Bart Ehrman has an admiring post about Vermes on his website.)
Geza Vermes was a great scholar who wrote about the Dead Sea Scrolls and the historical Jesus. Vermes had a remarkable life. He was born in Hungary to Jewish parents. His parents converted to Catholicism for safety when Nazism was rising, but in spite of that, they were sent to concentration camps where they died. He survived and at one point became a Catholic priest. But eventually he left Catholicism and returned to Judaism.
He did an important translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls into English. And because of his Jewish origins, education, and experience as a practicing Christian at one point in his life, he was uniquely suited to be an expert on the historical Jesus. He wrote a number of books about Jesus, including this one.
In “The Changing Faces of Jesus” Vermes begins with an examination of how Jesus is depicted in the Gospel of John. Then he works his way back through the images of Jesus in Paul, in the Acts of the Apostles, and in the Synoptic Gospels (Luke, Mark, and Matthew). Finally, Vermes makes a pretty solid case about who the real Jesus was “beneath the Gospels.” I also liked how Vermes shows that Jesus was one of many Jewish miracle workers and messianic figures of his era, and Jesus wasn’t as original as he’s made out to be.
Vermes also has an epilogue at the end of the book about a dream he had after he finished writing the book. It’s my favorite part of the book, and, no, I’m not going to tell you why. You will have to read the book yourself and find out. The book is well written and easy for laypeople to understand.
The second book that I want to add to the list is When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World. (In an earlier guest post I mentioned that this particular book dealt the death blow to my Christian faith.) Written by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, it was published in 1956. It first gives a historical overview of how messianic and millennialist groups, even when their messiahs don’t show up, or the world doesn’t end at the appointed times, often continue to carry on with their beliefs intact and even strengthened. The authors also follow a contemporary group of Americans who believed that superior beings from another planet were coming to take them to a higher planet, due to the group’s “higher density” compared to other Earthlings. Even though that event did not happen on the predicted day, some of the group stayed together and kept believing. Here’s a great quote from the beginning of the book:
A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point. We have all experienced the futility of trying to change a strong conviction, especially if the convinced person has some investment in his belief. We are familiar with the variety of ingenious defenses with which people protect their convictions, managing to keep them unscathed through the most devastating attacks.
I hope other people will recommend solidly researched, objective, and interesting books for those who are questioning their Christian faith.
Happy reading and healthy questioning!
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
In previous essays, I’ve talked about sexual abuse by a priest and other misfortunes that were related, directly or tangentially, to the Roman Catholicism in which I was raised and the Evangelical Christianity of my early adulthood. Still, in some ways, I’m lucky: It’s been a while since anyone has made a full-on effort at “witnessing,” proselytizing, or converting me to any system of belief.
One of the last real attempts was made by a student during my first year of living and working as a woman. As far as anyone knew, I was the first faculty member to make such a “transition” (which I now call my affirmation) and within seconds, or so it seemed, of announcing my intention, everyone in the college knew about it. Some saw me as a novelty; others, I felt, were genuinely supportive; still others said all the right things to my face. And a few, maybe more, thought I’d see the “error” of my ways.
Two in the latter category were waiting for me to end my “experiment:” a gay male professor and a gay male student who were convinced that I would realize that I was really one of them. But I was in my mid-forties and had been through more than a few “experiments” in my time—including, I am ashamed to say, a marriage—which, if nothing else, taught me what I’m not. Others included a female faculty member whose flirtation I’d reciprocated during the previous year, even though, naturally, I had no intention of pursuing anything else with her.
Oh, and there were a few female students who tried to appeal to the twilight of my maleness. When I taught as a man, more than a few students—mostly female, but a few males—tried to pique my interest, shall we say. Now, I don’t think I was, or am, particularly attractive, though in those days, I was in really good shape. (Cycling!) A few students, I know, were trying to appeal to me, if subliminally, in a sexual way to win my sympathy, an extension on a deadline or a higher grade. Others, though, saw me as the male figure they’d never had in their lives. “You’re the first man who really listened to me” said a night student in a job and marriage that exploited her. Still another interrupted the advice I was giving her about her essay to exclaim, “You’re looking into my eyes!” I apologized. “No, it’s OK,” she explained. “Most men look at my body, at my breasts.”
Years later, I would glance into Glenda’s eyes — by which, I must say, I could see why more than a few people were mesmerized. (Think of Gigi Hadid.) We were discussing one of her assignments and she noticed, as many other people have, that I make a fair amount of eye contact, mostly to gauge how, or whether, someone has received what I’ve said or conveyed. (People have also noticed that I pay attention to facial expressions and body language, which may be a result of some of my experiences.) But if I was looking for a gateway to Glenda’s mind, she was seeing my glance as an opening.
“You know, the enemy is deceiving you.”
I asked her to explain.
“You know, The Enemy.”
It was 2004: The Cold War was more than a decade past and China wasn’t on most people’s radar. “Who do you mean?”
She sighed. “Satan.”
I politely explained that, as our relationship was professional and we were working in a state-sponsored secular educational institution, I couldn’t discuss religious beliefs. (Truth is, I didn’t want to.) Trying to make her condescension seem like concern, she intoned, “Don’t let him fool you.’
Over the course of the semester, I met with her several times. Her work was average, maybe a bit better, but she was consistent and diligent. And she made as much use as anyone has of my office hours. She made a lot of eye contact, most of it, I realized, not instigated by me. She leaned on my desk and, I noticed that over the course of the semester her attire had become, shall we say, more tailored. During our discussions of her work, she dropped in comments about “the Lord,” “my Savior” and “Jesus.”
At the end of our last class, she barged in front of me and flashed her final paper. “I have to talk to you about this.”
“OK.”
“I deserve a better grade.” (She got a C-)
“All right. Tell me why. Did I miss something?”
“I know I should have gotten a better grade.”
Mustering my patience, I asked her to kindly explain herself.
Silence.
“I know I should get a better grade.”
“Please, tell me why.”
A long silence.
“I know I’m not perfect. Tell me what you think I missed.”
Another silence. “Look, I’ve graded hundreds, maybe thousands, of papers and assignments. Nobody could be right every single time. Nor could I. So, perhaps, I was wrong. But I’m not seeing it. I was hoping you could explain.”
Still another silence. “I just know I deserve better grade.”
Once again, I politely asked her to explain.
“Alex (not his real name) got a B.”
He’d struggled early and I wondered whether he’d make it through the semester. But I saw gradual improvement that could have been explained by sessions in the college’s writing center or other extra effort. I said as much to Glenda.
I saw a tear roll from the corner of her left eye. I tried to soften my tone as I said, “Well, his hard work is showing some results.”
“I helped him,” she blurted.
“W-what do you mean?”
“I helped him.”
“How did he get a better grade than you?”
“I wrote his paper.”
“OK. Maybe I’m not the smartest person in the world. I don’t understand. How did he get a better grade than you?”
Her faucet opened. “I was just trying to help him like God wanted me to!” she wailed.
“God wanted you to cheat?”
“No, the Lord wanted me to help him. When I finished his paper, I didn’t have enough time to finish my paper.”
I waited for her to ask for a chance to revise her work. Thankfully, she didn’t. I was about to order her out of the room. Thankfully, I didn’t have to: she left. I never heard from her — nor about The Enemy or her Lord — again.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
Recently I visited Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. According to Wikipedia, the UAE became a nation on December 2, 1971, when 6 emirates joined together. A 7th emirate joined on January 10, 1972, thus forming the UAE as it exists today. We were fortunate to be in Abu Dhabi on the 50th National Day of the UAE which was celebrated with fireworks, music, and city-wide decorations. As of 2013, the 9.2 million inhabitants of UAE were comprised of 1.4 million citizens and 7.8 million expatriates, most of whom are from Southeast Asia (particularly from India) and Africa. The population is mostly male with 2.2 males per female. The state religion of UAE is Islam, and it is not an exaggeration to say that there is a mosque on every other street corner. Calls to prayer are broadcast 5 times a day, and it is common to see devout Muslim men praying out in the open if they are not in a private prayer room or a mosque that allows for them to do so in relative privacy. Human rights concerns are definitely an issue in UAE, and fortunately we did not commit any crimes punishable by 60-100 lashes or worse, death by stoning.
One amazing marvel we visited was the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. Completed in 2007, it is the largest mosque in the UAE. According to Wikipedia, the cost to build this marvel of architecture was about $545 million. After we visited the mosque, my husband and I discussed how many resources were used to build incredible religious structures such as mosques and cathedrals, money that perhaps could have been spent on feeding, clothing, and caring for human beings. Are these incredibly beautiful houses of worship designed to appease a deity, to show fealty to a deity, to show off to nonbelievers, or to convince human worshippers that if they follow this particular religion their afterlife reward will be as grand as the magnificent house of worship? The reasons could be any combination of these or perhaps others I have not considered.
As we walked through the mosque, the tour guide, a knowledgeable young Muslim man, explained all the wondrous features of the mosque. When we visited the interior prayer sanctuary, we saw a wall that featured the 99 names of the deity. Infidel that I am, I couldn’t help but think of the Jay Z song “99 Problems” and chuckled to myself. There is a separate prayer room for women, one in which the occupants can neither see out into the main prayer room nor be seen. Gotta keep those women hidden away so men won’t be tempted to lust! My husband and I joked later that men and women are separated for prayer so that Brother Abdul won’t be tempted to check out Sister Farah’s voluptuous posterior outlined by her abaya.
Muslims are obligated to pray 5 times a day. The five daily prayers include: Fajr (sunrise prayer), Dhuhr (noon prayer), Asr (afternoon prayer), Maghrib (sunset prayer), and Isha (night prayer). Each prayer must be completed within a certain period of time. As each prayer time is tied to the rotation of the earth, ancient Muslims excelled in the study of astronomy in order for prayer times to be as accurate as possible. With modern technology, calls to prayer (the Adhan) are recorded and played from the mosques; but in ancient times, an individual was responsible for calling out the prayer times at each mosque. I don’t know what the Quran says about praying in public, but we did see a few men praying in public when there were no prayer rooms available in the location at prayer time.
In this post, I won’t get into the topic of Muslim women’s dress codes and how they are tied into patriarchy, rape culture, the demonization of women’s bodies, and control in general. When we visited the Grand Mosque, I had to wear an abaya and hijab, and I was surprised at the feelings wearing those garments invoked. I felt invisible, like I was not a person. Of course, that was my experience, and I cannot speak for how other women may feel when they wear these garments. If you are interested in finding out more about Muslim women’s dress codes, I recommend Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress by Religious Ethicist Elizabeth Bucar of Northeastern University. Dr. Bucar does an excellent job of recounting how the hijab is used and viewed in 3 different Muslim cultures.
On one of our days in Abu Dhabi, we went on a tourist excursion that included dune crashing in a 4×4 SUV, riding camels, sandboarding down a dune, seeing a falcon show, and a belly dancing show, and enjoying dinner outdoors under the stars. It was cheesy but highly enjoyable! Joining us in our SUV was a family from Tehran, Iran – mom and dad, college-aged son, and middle-school-aged son. The college-aged son spoke fluent English, and the mom was quite proficient as well. We had a great time learning more about each other’s countries and cultures, agreeing that government tensions are meaningless among individuals getting to know each other. Their first question was Trump or Biden, and we announced unequivocally NOT TRUMP and apologized for the travesty that was the Trump administration. We also disabused them of the notion that all Americans carry guns, wear cowboy hats and boots, or are rappers and drug dealers. We learned that all Iranians are not supportive of the Ayatollah or Islamic government, nor do they all wear traditional Arabic garb. They also pointed out that while they were all born into Islam in a Muslim country, they themselves do not believe in any of it and are apostates. However, they cannot be open about their unbelief because technically, in Iran, apostasy is punishable by death. They asked about atheism in America. We told them that we were born into Christian families and are now atheists, but that even though our country’s Constitution supports religious freedom and apostasy is not legally punishable, there still exists a social stigma against atheism. We noted that just as there is a mosque on every other street corner in UAE, in parts of the USA there is a church on every other street corner. The Indian driver of our SUV joined in that he was also nonreligious, but as a resident of UAE he has to keep that information to himself. Apostasy is a punishable offense in the UAE as well, and he could be deported for openly declaring atheism. We all agreed that while religion can have useful elements of community and comfort, it can often be weaponized against people in order to oppress and control.
Having visited a Muslim country and visited one of its holy sanctuaries, I am no closer to joining the religion than I was before. If I had grown up in UAE, the probability is that my parents would have been Muslim, and I would have been raised Muslim as well. Born in the Bible Belt, I was raised Christian because my mom and grandparents were evangelical Christians. When my children were young, we attended a progressive, liberal church until I decided to “take a break from religion”. As my children have very little memory of church and received no religious education, they consider themselves to be nonreligious. While there are converts to religions, the vast majority of people claim the religion of their parents. Or, as we are seeing to a greater degree today, people are leaving the religion of their youth.
It was interesting that in a vehicle with 7 people from 3 different countries, driving in a 4th country, all 7 of us were atheists. My anecdote is not intended to make a comment about the decline of religion; indeed, it was a coincidence that we were all of the same mind regarding religion, and it was evident which among us had suffered religious oppression at some point. However, meeting and conversing with these people confirmed that regardless of our heritage, background, ethnicity, we are all just humans trying to make the best of our situations. I am so grateful to be able to have these experiences that expand my world. And not one of us felt the need to proselytize to the others . . .
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
His mother passed away without knowing two things about him. At least, he had never mentioned them to her. Now he was about to tell one of them to his father — like mine, a blue-collar Italian American of the generation that gave birth to Baby Boomers.
His mother had worked as a secretary. So did mine, among other jobs. My mother went to her grave having learned of one of my secrets, which is often conflated with his. My father learned of that secret — or, more precisely, truth — about me the same day, when I was about the same age as the man who is the subject of this post.
I am a transgender woman. He was gay. At the time of his fateful encounter with his father, that was still enough to make him a pariah, at least in some circles. That, and that he had AIDS. I have lost eighteen people to the disease — five of them between Memorial Day and Christmas in 1991. At that time, getting infected was a death sentence in every sense of the word: You lost your job, possibly your family and friends, and much else, before you lost your very life.
Of course, I consider myself fortunate not to have been afflicted with HIV. But if there ever was anything good to be said for it — especially in those days — it focused its victims, at least some of them. They did not fuck around; they knew they had no time for bullshit.
Which is why he had that conversation with his father. In the early 1960s, a boy named Phil Saviano attended St. Denis church in the Diocese of Worcester, Massachusetts: the locale of the College of the Holy Cross (Justice Clarence Thomas’ alma mater). Later in that decade, I was an altar boy in the Catholic church nearly everyone in my blue-collar Brooklyn neighborhood attended.
By now, you may have guessed (especially if you’ve read some of my earlier posts) what I’m about to say next. Phil and I were sexually abused by priests. To this day, I have not talked about it with my father or anyone in my family. But he would tell his father, some three decades after his experience. Not only that, believing that he was dying of AIDS, he revealed that he was about to talk with reporters from the Boston Globe.
His father was furious. “He couldn’t understand why in the world I would want to do that,” he recalled. For a decade, they were at a standoff over the issue. Then their parish, St. Denis printed a message in its church bulletin urging people to come forward if they had been abused. His father sent him the bulletin.
Turns out, the Reverend David A. Holley had ingratiated himself to a number of young boys, including Phil. A year before he had the conversation with his father — and Globe reporters — Saviano read a newspaper article saying that Father Holley had been sued in New Mexico for sexually molesting other boys. Until that time, he’d thought he and his friends had been the only victims.
If you saw the 2015 film “Spotlight,” this story — or, at least parts of it — may sound familiar. Shortly after meeting with Globe journalists, he asked officials at the Worcester Diocese to pay for his therapy. When they refused, Saviano sued the diocese. In the early stages of the case, he learned that seven bishops in four states had known that Father Holley, whom the church secretly sent to four different church-run treatment centers, was a serial child molester. (In 1993, Father Holley was sentenced to up to 275 years in prison in New Mexico. In 2009, still incarcerated at 80 years old, he died.) Church officials offered him a modest sum to settle the case on the condition that he sign a confidentiality agreement. He refused. “I’m not going to my grave with that secret,” he explained. “It would make me no better than the bishops.”
Finally, the church gave Saviano a $12,500 settlement and dropped the demand that he sign a non-disclosure agreement. “I think they figured I wasn’t going to be around much longer,” he said. But, by then, powerful new anti-AIDS treatments had been developed and he lived until last Sunday. He was 69 years old.
When you realize Phil lived for nearly three decades after the settlement, that amount of money isn’t nearly the windfall that it seems to be. If his life has any more parallels to mine than I’ve already mentioned, he’s spent at least that much on therapists and, possibly, medical help for conditions caused or exacerbated by his trauma. Also, while I don’t know much about him, it wouldn’t surprise me if, prior to coming forward, he’d lost jobs and educational opportunities as well as experiences with values that can’t be calculated at least in part because of his experiences. That he accomplished what he did is astounding: During the nearly three decades after his revelation, he advocated tirelessly for people like me and, among other things, founded a survivors’ network.
So, although Phil Saviano had to experience, at least for a time, exactly what I’d (and he’d) feared, he survived and showed us that we could do exactly what our abusers and their enablers didn’t want: Tell the truth about them and, most important, ourselves. (That is the essence of the “Me Too” movement.) It’s no exaggeration that it’s the (or at least a) reason why some of us are alive today.
He faced what he, what I, feared, what so many fear. If that doesn’t define a hero, I don’t know what does.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
A week and a day ago, many of us — trans and gender-variant people, along with our allies — participated in Transgender Day of Remembrance. A now-annual commemoration, it was first observed a year after Rita Hester was found brutally murdered in her Boston apartment — twenty-three years ago today.
This year, hundreds of TDoR commemorations were held all over the world. Nearly all of them, including the one in which I participated, involved, among other things, each participant reading the name of a trans or gender-variant person killed during the past year. I was given the name of Iris Santos, about whom I knew nothing until I read her name and the date of place of her murder (23 April 2021, Houston, Texas) to the crowd.
As important as TDoR commemorations are to me, I have not participated every year. Reading the name of a complete stranger who could have been me always leaves me trembling from a storm of emotions: sadness, grief, fear, rage — and, even at this late date, guilt — among them. They stay with me long after the commemorations have ended. You might say that in some way I “adopt,” if not by choice, the victim whose name I’ve read. Sometimes it’s more than I can deal with.
While people normally feel sadness and grief over someone’s death, especially if they were close to the deceased, my guilt comes in part from knowing that I am old enough to be Ms. Santos’ grandmother — and that I could have been one of the names read rather than one reading her name. She was enjoying a meal at a picnic table when an unidentified suspect approached and shot her. Iris was “so young with so many things to look forward to,” according to Tori Cooper, the Human Rights campaign director for community engagement for the Transgender Justice Initiative. In that sense, and in the way she was brutally murdered by someone she didn’t know, Iris was like too many of us: Researchers at UCLA Law School’s Williams Institute report that trans people are four times as likely as cisgender folks to experience violent crime (including homicide) and most of those victims are, like Ms. Santos, trans women of color.
Another factor in my guilt — and rage — comes from knowing how too many other trans- and gender-variant people die — and how I almost became one of them. Although I cannot fault the organizers of TDoR, the commemorations leave out one group of victims that also are a disproportionately large — and unmentioned — part of our community.
According to Williams Institute researchers, “transgender adults have a prevalence of past-year suicide ideation that is nearly twelve times higher . . . than the U.S. general population”. In other words, between TDoR gatherings, trans adults are twelve times as likely as other Americans to have thought about taking take their own lives. Oh, but that’s not the worst news: “the prevalence of past-year suicide attempts is eighteen (italics mine) times higher than the U.S. general population. In other words, if one member of a group of 100 randomly-selected American adults has tried to take his or her own life during the past year, 18 members of a group of 100 trans folks has tried to end theirs.
Now, I know that the purpose of TDoR is to raise awareness of how too many of us are victimized through the hate and brutality of others—and that homicide is, unfortunately, one of the few crimes that can be verifiably linked to hate and violence. We cannot always know what was on the minds of trans, or any other, people who kill themselves: They don’t always leave notes recounting the personal, familial, professional, and societal rejection and exclusion they too often have faced—let alone the fears they might have, especially if they are young, at the prospect of living at the mercy of such prejudice.
If someone ends their life, or tries to, because they do not know how to deal with their gender identity and wish to express it — or, more precisely, the possible costs of doing so — it is generally known only to the victim themselves and, perhaps, someone to whom they confided. I know this because I tried to kill myself, in part because I simply could not imagine how I could live as the person I have always known myself to be — and because of two other people, one of whom I loved and another who might have become a friend.
(Herein, I will use male or female pronouns because during the time the people I’m about to discuss lived and died, “they,” “them” and “their” were not in use as gender-neutral pronouns and, therefore, the people I’m discussing used pronouns that reflected the gender to which they were assigned at birth.)
His body was found three days before Christmas. He — and I — were only a couple of years older than Ms. Santos was. Though we didn’t meet until our sophomore year at university, we had lived, it seemed, parallel lives: We were altar boys who attended Catholic schools in blue-collar urban communities. We played sports and did many other things expected of male children of our milieux—and a few things that weren’t. Oh, and while there were whispers about our sexuality, before and after we met, most people “read” each of us as cisgender heterosexual (or, at least, bisexual-trending-toward-hetero) males. I won’t say anything about my looks, but my friend — whom I’ll call Keri — was handsome-bordering-on-gorgeous in a young Antonio Banderas sort of way.
Although I tried to do the “dude” stuff, I felt an aversion to most members of the male gender. Keri, though, stood outside of that in a way I could not articulate at the time. I did not see him as I saw other men or boys, which is probably the reason I loved him. I also — if you’ll pardon a hackneyed expression—felt his pain. He felt trapped, as I did, and I now realize he knew it.
Which is why he called me the day before his body was found. I don’t remember exactly what he said as much I recall only a desperation in his voice. Occasionally, I hear echoes of that plea in others, but at the time it was unlike anything else I’d heard: It could have been my own. I think Keri knew that, and that I would show up at his place within minutes of our conversation.
He expressed a hopelessness, a despair I had never heard before — except from myself. “I can’t be who I am,” he lamented.
I could have said the same for myself. He knew that, even though I hadn’t. To this day, I wonder whether that was why he called. Did he want to hear me say, “Yes, I am a woman, too”? It would be years, decades, before I would. Instead, I held him in one of the longest embraces of my life and whispered, “Whoever you are, it’s wonderful, and I love you.”
As sincere as I was—I rarely used the word “love,” and perhaps will never say it often enough–it must have seemed like a platitude, at best. I was trying to console him in the way people try to comfort each other when they can’t, or won’t, truly experience another person’s pain. Much later, I realized that I could have truly loved him, or anyone else, only if I had been willing or able to acknowledge and act upon the truth about myself.
Still later, I realized that I didn’t “kill” Keri by not “saving” him that night. Although he might have lived — another fifty days, another fifty years? — had I given him what he — and I — needed, I came to understand — with the help of the therapist and social worker who worked with me during the first three years of my gender-affirmation process—that what killed him was the hatred, whether or not he experienced it directly, of the world around him. As Miguel de Unamuno wrote, Hombre muere de frio, no de oscuridad : People die, not from darkness, but from cold. The world, specifically, the human race as he knew it, was simply too cold for him, for anyone. He was frozen out.
In short, he was murdered by the world in which he lived, just as Iris Santos was by a random stranger with a gun. I could say the same for someone I met just before I started my gender affirmation process. Fran (not her real name) had lived with her boyfriend who, as she told me, “is the only person who truly loved me.” Her family — who included, I suspect, at least one person who sexually abused her—rejected her, ostensibly for her “choices”: She’d spent years recovering from, and relapsing into, addiction that lessened the pain of the work she’d been doing to support her addictions.
She learned of my gender affirmation process second- or third-hand: Someone had seen me “cross-dressing.” At first, she expressed disapproval — which, I sensed, wasn’t entirely her own. But she would ask me incisive questions about my “change”: What led me to it? How do I see the person I hope to become? How are my family, my co-workers, other people, treating me?
Finally, she confessed, “I admire you.” When I demurred, “I’m only doing what I need to do,” she said, “Well, I wish I could have.” She was about the same age as I am now which, she claimed, is “too late” to live the life she wished she’d had: as a man, with her boyfriend. “He doesn’t know I’m really I’m a gay man.”
Not long after, Fran washed down a bottle full of pills with another bottle of vodka.
She, like Keri, died from the darkness. In other words, she was murdered. Although I understand the purpose of Transgender Day of Remembrance, I really wish I, or someone, could have read their names, just as I pronounced that of Iris Santos a week and a day ago.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
The English Puritans of the seventeenth century, when they were in power, outlawed the celebration of Christmas.”What a bunch of killjoys they were!” I thought, when I first learned about this in history class. “Who would be so harsh and mean-spirited as to actually cancel Christmas?” Although I don’t share the Puritans’ Calvinist theology or politics, I feel like a latter-day Puritan when it comes to having to submit to the relentless tyranny of American Christmas, this unholy season whose real God is mammon.
American Christmas tyranny produces “existential dread” as Christopher Hitchens put it: having to deal with week after oppressive week of the Christmas season.
There is pressure to buy and to consume as American capitalism, already on steroids, flexes its overdeveloped muscles while wearing a Santa suit or an angel outfit. And you feel the pressure keenly, no matter what your religious stance is.
People watch Hallmark Christmas shows or old classic Christmas movies ad nauseum, and you can’t escape hearing Christmas music everywhere you go. When I was a little kid it was the height of bad taste to put your Christmas decorations up more than a week before Christmas Day. This year I saw that someone put their Christmas decorations up on the day after Halloween. (The Nightmare Before Christmas movie may be pointing out how the Christmas season seems to begin at Halloween now. I wish Jack Skellington had taken over Christmas permanently — nobody would want the presents he brings. But then again he’s been co-opted by Disney, which sells Nightmare Before Christmas merchandise on their website.) And need I mention the insane number of Christmas light displays, sucking up enormous amounts of electricity, and all the waste produced by discarded packaging and wrapping?
When a close family member died years ago I did not put up a Christmas tree or decorate for Christmas after his death. I was surprised to discover that I was relieved to have a good excuse not to “do Christmas.” There were no more Christmas trees for me in the years that followed. I gave away all my tree ornaments and most of my Christmas decorations, keeping the Christmas decor at a minimum. Sure, I’d listen to Christmas music a bit and would be with the family on Christmas Day, but I kept away from the madness of getting and spending and rushing around that seemingly possessed everybody, even Christians. What I did seemed to be much more appropriately “Christian.”
One time, during the Christmas season, I went to the mall to buy a few boxes of candy. After I did, I thought it might be fun to sit on a bench and watch the Christmas shoppers. Were any of them enjoying themselves? Nope! I saw nothing but long faces and hurried walking. The only person who was smiling was the musician playing his electronic keyboard in front of Sears. With Christmas looming, and maybe being forced to spend money they didn’t have, no wonder the shoppers all looked so grumpy. So much for the joy of the season. My experience as a retail clerk during the Christmas season also was quite instructive in this regard. Some of the rudest and most unpleasant people I’ve ever encountered seemed to “come out of the woodwork” then, and make us retail clerks miserable.
Churches, charitable and religious organizations milk Christmas for money. I’d bet that the ministers and priests of all Christian denominations are watching the Christmas collections plate or basket closely, hoping for a good Yuletide haul. How interesting that churches and corporate America work in tandem to push Christmas as a way to bring their fiscal year to a satisfying and lucrative conclusion.
For a tonic to American Christmas tyranny, join the Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping for some pointed musical commentary about consumerism, and then put up a Festivus pole on December 23rd, raising a glass (or several) of spiked eggnog to the memory of those dour old Puritans, who maybe weren’t all wrong about Christmas excess.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
Before I became a mature ObstacleChick, my mom and I lived with her parents and her maternal grandmother just outside Nashville, Tennessee. My grandparents were active in their local Southern Baptist Church: my grandfather as a deacon on the Buildings and Grounds Committee, and my grandmother who served sometimes in the choir, as a Sunday school teacher, as a Women’s Missionary Union teacher, and on the Pastor Search Committee. We attended church services three times a week (twice on Sunday and again on Wednesday evening). When my grandfather wasn’t working, he was doing something at the church, helping people in the community, or hanging out at the local gas station/convenience store connecting with more people to help in the community.
Grandma was a strict complementarian who ran the household on a hierarchical structure. She considered Grandpa to be the head of household, and thus we were all instructed to obey him. Grandma’s mother was next on the totem pole as we are supposed to “honor our father and mother that our days may be long upon the earth”. My mom and I were somewhere way down the line, and Grandma considered herself to be the obedient servant. Grandpa did not subscribe to the complementarian plan, and he taught me that I should prepare myself to become a financially independent person, but he did not spend a lot of time arguing with Grandma’s sincerely held beliefs unless she tried to ban TV again. That’s when he used his executive privilege to ensure that he could watch his favorite sports teams and WWII-era movies.
Grandma’s sincerely held beliefs were often dictated by the latest culture wars that she heard about on Christian radio. I think she meant to be as obedient to what she thought God wanted from his creatures as she could possibly be, but she had a long laundry list of what was considered appropriate and inappropriate behavior. For example, she would not play any games with a regular deck of cards because she believed that decks of cards were tools of gambling. Grandma would not consume alcohol in any form, and she didn’t even want to patronize a restaurant that served alcohol. She never went to the movies and only watched the news on television. Substitute swear words were omitted from her vocabulary. Christian media were the only media sources that Grandma partook in (except for the evening news).
When I was 15 years old, I had pneumonia and Grandma had tuberculosis. You can imagine the amount of coughing that was happening in our house. Both of us were prescribed cough medicines, but nothing was working well. My grandfather was at his wits’ end, so he went to the store and brought home a bottle of whiskey, some lemons, and honey. He proceeded to make his family’s cough suppressant concoction from these ingredients plus a heavy dose of sugar, and he told Grandma and me that he wanted us to try it because it had worked when his grandmother (who by all accounts had been a skilled healer) gave it to him and his siblings. I thought, cool, I’ll be able to find out what whiskey tastes like. Grandma, however, was incredibly distressed. She was caught between the two sins of consuming alcohol and disobeying her husband. Unable to decide which was the greater sin, she told Grandpa, “I am only taking this because you’re my husband and I am supposed to obey you, but I do not agree with consuming alcohol.” I am pretty sure that was the first night in a while that anyone in our house got a good night of sleep as Grandpa’s home remedy soothed the coughing beasts. I guess after a good night of sleep, Grandpa took pity on Grandma and did not ask her to use his cough concoction again. Of course, I continued to use it despite the fact that whiskey tasted nasty, even with copious amounts of lemon and honey. My mature ObstacleChick version made with Fireball is much tastier and works better (in my opinion) than the over-the-counter cough syrups. I wonder which Jesus would have preferred?
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
