Menu Close

Category: Politics

Out Of Sequence: Their World Order

5 Comments
guest post

A guest post by MJ Lisbeth

You have to be pretty smart to get into the Air Force Academy. And, since the Academy emphasizes majors in engineering, technology, and science, it helps to be very good at math. At the very least, it’s reasonable to expect an Academy cadet to understand number sequence—or, at minimum, to understand when a group of numbers is or isn’t sequential.

Perhaps such an expectation isn’t reasonable for members of the Academy’s Public Affairs Department. Since I’m trying not to assume the worst, I’ll give those folks the benefit of the doubt and believe they were simply trying to insult our intelligence.

I am thinking, in particular, of their response to an incident on 30 October.  The Academy’s soccer team hosted Seattle University in what would be the last home game for the senior players. In recognition of those players, a banner with each of their jersey numbers was displayed underneath the scoreboard. Being, as I said, a place where almost everybody has better numerical skills than I have and where order is valued, the numbers would have been arranged in their proper sequence: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12, 15 and 16.

Or so you might expect.  Now I’m going to give you another factor of this equation, if you will. Perhaps it won’t surprise you to know that the Academy has a very strong Christian Supremacist element. While there are Muslim and Jewish students as well as ‘Nones,” a number of administrators and other officers want to make Christianity—or, at least, their version of it, the “default” or even the only religious belief system.

Knowing what I’ve just said, perhaps, makes what I’m about to say next less surprising, if more galling: in that bastion of numerical literacy, all of the numbers were in sequence, except for “3.” It followed 15 and preceded 16.

According to the Academy’s PR Department, the number 3 had been inadvertently omitted. The remedy, they said, was to insert it where there was space.

Oh, really?  How is it that there was enough space between the 15 and 16, but not the 2 and 5? 

So tell me: why would anyone place a “3” before “16” without a slash between them?

The best-known Bible verse—aside, perhaps, from those of Psalm 23 – to people who haven’t read the book is John 3:16— “For God so loved the world….” Spectators often sport banners printed or emblazoned with it.  And, when Evangelical Christians began to proselytize on a large scale, during the 1970s, that verse was commonly used as a pickup line, I mean, a lead-in.

Now, some might say that I’m making too much of a clumsy attempt to correct a typo. But, knowing how strong the Christian Supremacist element is at the Academy, I can’t help but to think that the choice to insert “3” before “16” was meant to convey a message, however subliminally.

Until recently, politicians and policy-makers who tried to spread the Word of God through the law and its administration and enforcement were relatively covert in their intentions and actions. Sure, an office-holder or office-seeker might mention their own faith and how it (mis)informed their decisions and, perhaps, lead a meeting or rally with a call to prayer.  But there was a limit to how much they could infuse their beliefs into their campaigns and policies, especially if they were trying to appeal—as they had to—to voters who weren’t part of their “natural” constituencies. 

These days, whether they’re on the campaign trail or in office, they don’t have to even pretend to respect other people’s beliefs or needs. This has become especially true since Donald Trump “packed” the Supreme Court with justices who, whether or not they openly express their faith, have pledged to carry out the wishes of Evangelical Christians, conservative Catholics and, to a lesser degree, fundamentalist and orthodox followers of other faiths. In fact, at least one justice has said, in effect, that we don’t have the rights guaranteed in the Constitution.

In such an environment, what’s even more disturbing than the Air Force Academy’s PR department’s insult to our collective and individual intelligence is what the Academy’s (and the Military’s) combination of Christian Supremacy and all-but-unlimited access to weaponry could mean.  What will happen if politicians and judges succeed in abolishing, not only bodily autonomy, but equal rights for LGBTQ, gender and racial equality and in eviscerating the protections afforded in the Fourth Amendment and other documents:  the sorts of things that too many Fundamentalists and conservatives believe are impediments to the “Kingdom of God” they envision? And, after they get their utopia, what if those Fundamentalist and conservative law- and policy-makers have the backing of armed forces ready and able to enforce such a version of Christianity?

Those are not just “what-if” questions: recruits, many of whom were raised in Fundamentalist or Evangelical homes, enter the Academy or the service at an impressionable age. So even the ones with relatively well-developed critical faculties can be inculcated with notions of the interconnectedness between their country and the Kingdom of God, the will of God and the wishes of their country’s leaders and submitting to God with obeying the commands of their leaders.

Oh, and I’d be very worried over leaving sophisticated technological devices that can rain down an actual rather than a Biblical apocalypse in the hands of folks who don’t understand numerical sequences, let alone higher mathematics or physics.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Did My Philosophy of Ministry Change Over the Years I Spent in the Ministry?

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

Several years ago, my editor, Carolyn, asked me a question about how my philosophy of ministry had changed from when I first began preaching in 1976 until I left the ministry in 2005. I thought her question would make for an excellent blog post.

I typically date my entrance into the ministry from when I enrolled for classes at Midwestern Baptist College in the fall of 1976. I actually preached my first sermon at age 15, not long after I went forward during an evening service at Trinity Baptist Church in Findlay, Ohio, and publicly declared to my church family that God was calling me into the ministry. My public affirmation of God’s call was the fulfillment of the desire I expressed as a five-year-old boy when someone asked me: what do you want to be when you grow up? My response was, I want to be a preacher. Unlike many people, I never had any doubts about what I wanted to do with my life. While I’m unsure as to why this is so, all I know is this: I always wanted to be a preacher.

Trinity Baptist Church was an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church, affiliated with the Baptist Bible Fellowship (BBF). From my preschool years forward, every church I attended was either an IFB church or a generic Evangelical congregation. When I entered Midwestern in 1976, all that I knew about the Bible, the ministry, and life itself was a result of the preaching, teaching, and experiences I had at the churches I had been part of. These churches, along with my training at Midwestern, profoundly affected my life, filling my mind with theological, political, and social beliefs that shaped my worldview. These things, then, became the foundation of my philosophy of ministry.

The fact that I grew up in a dysfunctional home also played a big part in the development of my ministerial philosophy. During my elementary and high school years, I attended numerous schools. The longest spell at one school was the two-and-a-half years I spent at Central Junior High School and Findlay High School in Findlay Ohio. All told, I attended four high schools, two junior high schools, and five elementary schools. Someone asked me years ago if I went to so many different schools because my dad got transferred a lot. I laughed, and replied, no, dad just never paid the rent. While my father was always gainfully employed, the Gerencser family was never far from the poor house, thanks to nefarious financial deals and money mismanagement. I quickly figured out that if I wanted clothing, spending money, and, at times, lunch money, it was up to me to find a way to get the money to pay for these things. There were times that I sneaked into my dad’s bedroom and stole money from his wallet so I could pay for my school lunches. Dad thought that the local Rink’s Bargain City — which I called Bargain Shitty — was the place to buy clothing for his children. I learned that if I wanted to look like my peers that I was going to have to find a way to get enough money to pay for things such as Converse tennis shoes, platform shoes, and Levi jeans. In my early junior high years, I turned to shoplifting for my clothing needs. From ninth grade forward, I had a job, whether it was mowing grass, raking leaves, shoveling snow, or holding down a job at the local Bill Knapp’s restaurant. I also worked at my dad’s hobby shop, for which he paid me twenty-five cents an hour, minus whatever I spent for soda from the pop machine. (Please see Questions: Bruce, How Was Your Relationship with Your Father? and Questions: Bruce Did Your Bad Relationship with Your Father Lead to You Leaving Christianity?)

My mother, sexually molested by her father as a child and later raped by her brother-in-law, spent most of her adult life battling mental illness. Mom was incarcerated against her will several times at the Toledo State Mental Hospital. She attempted suicide numerous times, using everything from automobiles, to pills, to razor blades to bring about her demise. One such attempt when I was in fifth grade left an indelible mark, one that I can still, to this day, vividly remember. I rode the bus to school. One day, after arriving home, I entered the house and found my mom lying in a pool blood on the kitchen floor. She had slit her wrists. Fortunately, she survived, but suicide was never far from her mind. At the age of fifty-four, Mom turned a .357 Magnum Ruger revolver towards her heart and pulled the trigger. She bled out on the bathroom floor. (Please see Barbara.)

It is fair to say that we humans are the sum of our experiences, and that our beliefs are molded and shaped by the things we experience in life. I know my life certainly was. As I reflect on my philosophy of ministry, I can see how these things affected how I ministered to others. The remainder of this post will detail that philosophy and how it changed over the course of my life.

When I entered the ministry, my philosophy was quite simple: preach the gospel and win souls to Christ. Jesus was the solution to every problem, and if people would just get saved, all would be well. I find it interesting that this Jesus-centric/gospel-centric philosophy was pretty much a denial of what I had, up until that point, experienced in life. While the churches I attended certainly preached this philosophy, my real-life experiences told me that Jesus and salvation, while great, did not change people as much as preachers said they did. But, that’s the philosophy I was taught, so I entered the ministry with a burning desire to win as many souls as possible, believing that if I did so it would have a profound effect on the people I ministered to.

I also believed that poor people (and blacks) were lazy, and if they would just get jobs and work really, really hard, they would have successful lives. Lost on me was the fact that I worked really, really hard, yet I was still poor. There’s that cognitive dissonance. I would quickly learn as a young married man that life was more complex than I first thought, and that countless Americans went to work every day, worked hard, did all they could to become part of the American middle class, yet they never experienced the American dream. I also learned that two people can be given the same opportunities in life and end up with vastly different lives. In other words, I learned that we humans are complex beings, and there’s nothing simple about life on planet earth. I learned further that good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. I would much later in life conclude that life is pretty much a crapshoot.

In 1983, I started the Somerset Baptist Church in Somerset, Ohio. Somerset Baptist was an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church. I pastored this church for almost twelve years. During this time, the church grew from a first-service attendance of sixteen to an average attendance of over two hundred. The church also experienced a decline in membership over time, with fifty or so people attending the last service of the church. Somerset Baptist was located in Perry County, the northernmost county in the Appalachian region. Coal mines and stripper oil wells dotted the landscape. Unemployment was high. In the 1980s, unemployment exceeded twenty percent. It should come as no surprise then, that most of the members of Somerset Baptist were poor. Thanks in part to my preaching of the Calvinistic work ethic (also known as the shaming of people who don’t have jobs), all the men of the church were gainfully employed, albeit most families were receiving food stamps and other government assistance. During the years I spent at this church, I received a world-class education concerning systemic poverty. I learned that people can work hard and still not get ahead. I also learned that family dysfunction, which included everything from drug/alcohol addiction, domestic violence, child abuse, and even incest, often was generational; that people were the way they were, with or without Jesus, because that’s all they knew. I pastored families that had never been more than fifty miles from their homes. At one point, some members of our church took a church auto trip to Virginia, and I recall how emotional some members were when they crossed the bridge from Ohio into West Virginia. It was the years I spent in Somerset Ohio that dramatically changed how I viewed the world. This, of course, led to an evolving philosophy of ministry.

bruce gerencser 1990's
Bruce Gerencser, Somerset Baptist Church, Early 1990’s

While I never lost my zeal to win souls for Christ, my preaching, over time, took on a more comprehensive, holistic approach. Instead of preaching, get right with God and all would be well, I began to teach congregants how to apply the Bible to every aspect of their lives. I stop preaching textual and topical sermons, choosing instead to preach expositionally through various books of the Bible. I also realized that one way I could help the children of the church was to provide a quality education for them. Sure, religious indoctrination was a part of the plan, but I realized that if the children of the church were ever going to rise above their parents, they were going to have to be better educated. For my last five years at Somerset Baptist, I was the administrator and a teacher at Somerset Baptist Academy — a private, tuition-free school for church children. My wife and I, along with several other adults in the church, were the primary teachers. Our focus was on the basics: reading, English, writing, and arithmetic. Some of the students were years behind in their education. We used a one-room schoolhouse approach, and there were several instances of high school students doing math with third-grade students. We educated children where they were, regardless of their grade level. Polly taught the younger students, and was instrumental in many of them learning to read. Most of the students, who are now in their thirties and forties, have fond memories of Polly teaching them reading and English. Their memories are not as fond of Preacher, the stern taskmaster.

During the five years we operated the school, I spent hours every day with the church’s children. I learned much about their home lives and how poverty and dysfunction affected them. Their experiences seem so similar to my own, and over time I began to realize that part of my ministerial responsibility was to minister to the temporal social needs of the people I came in contact with. This change of ministry philosophy would, over time, be shaped and strengthened by changing political and theological beliefs.

In 1995, I started a new church in West Unity, Ohio called Grace Baptist Church. The church would later change its name to Our Father’s House — reflecting my increasing ecumenicalism. During the seven years I spent in West Unity, my preaching moved leftward, so much so that a man who had known me in my younger years told me I was preaching another gospel — the social gospel. My theology moved from Fundamentalist Calvinism to theological beliefs focused on good works. I came to believe that true Christian faith rested not on right beliefs, but good works; that faith without works was dead; that someday Jesus would judge us, not according to our beliefs, but by our works. While at Our Father’s House, I started a number of ministries that were no-strings-attached social outreaches to the poor. The church never grew to more than fifty or sixty people, but if I had to pick one church that was my favorite it would be this one. Outside of one kerfuffle where a handful of families left the church, my time at Our Father’s House was peaceful. For the most part, I pastored a great bunch of people who sincerely loved others and wanted to help them in any way they could.

bruce polly gerencser our fathers house west unity
Polly and Bruce Gerencser, Our Father’s House, West Unity, Ohio Circa 2000

In 2000, I voted Democrat for the first time. As my theology became more liberal, so did my politics, and by the time I left the ministry in 2005, I was politically far from the right-wing Republicanism of my early years in the ministry. Today, I am as liberal as they come. Politically, I am a Democratic Socialist. To some people, depending on where they met me in life, my liberal beliefs are shocking. One man was so bothered by not only my politics, but my loss of faith, that he told me he could no longer be friends with me; that he found my changing beliefs and practices too psychologically unsettling.

I’m now sixty-five years old, and come next July, I will be married to my beautiful bride for forty-five years. Much has changed in my life, particularly in the last decade, but one constant remains: I genuinely love people and want to help them. This is why some people think I am still a pastor, albeit an atheist one. I suspect had I been born into a liberal Christian home I might have become a professor or a social worker, and if I had to do it all over again I probably would have pursued these types of careers, choosing to be a bi-vocational pastor instead of a full-time one. But, I didn’t, and my life story is what it is. Perhaps when I am reincarnated, I will get an opportunity to walk a different path. But, then again, who knows where that path might take me. As I stated previously, we humans are complex beings, and our lives are the sum of our experiences. Change the experiences, change the man.

I hope that I’ve adequately answered my editor’s question. This post turned out to be much longer than I thought it would be, much like my sermons years ago.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

The One Reason I Might Quit Writing

11 Comments
writing a letter

Polly and I have been married for forty-four years. We are blessed to have six children and thirteen grandchildren. In 2004, we moved back to Ohio from Yuma, Arizona so we could be closer to our children. We had moved to Yuma for health reasons. My sister thought the weather would be better for me. She graciously bought a home for us to live in, charging us rent well below the market rate. It was, by far, the biggest and nicest house we have ever lived in.

I started working for Allegro Medical, managing their Yuma office. I also managed the network and serviced the computers for my sister’s husband’s cardiology practice. Additionally, Polly and I cleaned the practice’s offices. By this time, my fibromyalgia had progressed to an ever-present reality, leaving me in pain and frequently tired and fatigued. This would be the last full-time job I would hold.

We lived in Yuma for seven months. We visited scores of churches, never finding a place to call home. While we thoroughly enjoyed the time we spent with my sister and her husband, after seventh months, we decided to move back to Ohio. Why? We missed our children. While I would have been better off physically (and economically) staying in Yuma, the emotional pull of home was too much to overcome. In September of 2004, we moved to Newark, Ohio — the home of Polly’s parents.

After living in Newark for ten months, we packed up our belongings and returned to rural Northwest Ohio. After living in Bryan and Alvordton for a bit, in 2007, we bought a fixer-upper in Ney — where we live today. All of our children and grandchildren live within thirty minutes of our home. All of them are gainfully employed and all of them except one own their own homes. Our grandchildren are enrolled in schools in four different local school districts. Polly and I are both in the sunset years of our lives. We knew when we moved to Ney that this would be our last move. This is home.

I am known locally for my atheism and liberal/socialist politics. I have written numerous letters to the editors of the Defiance Crescent-News and the Bryan Times. I have a unique name, so when locals talk about “Bruce Gerencser,” they are talking about one person: me. Out of eight billion people, I am the only “Bruce Gerencser.”

As my children and wife can attest, I have always been outspoken, a passionate crusader, and defender of others. This was true when I was an Evangelical pastor, and it is true today. Because I am so well-known locally, my children over the years have been accosted by people who disagree with me and want them to defend something I have written or said. This has happened at the local community college and their various places of employment.

I told my children that they are free to say that they don’t know me. I don’t want them to have to carry my burden. When locals accost me in public or flip me off as they drive by my house, I understand that this is the price I must pay for being who and what I am. I just wish that people wouldn’t expect my children to defend me. I am not hard to find. My email address, street address, and blog are but a click or two away. Why not go to the source instead of going after my children? So far, none of my children has disowned me. 🙂

Some of our grandchildren are now high school age. Two of them are in eleventh grade, another in ninth grade, and two of our granddaughters are in middle school. They, too, must now bear the burden of being Bruce Gerencser’s grandchildren. Several of my grandchildren have had teachers and administrators ask if they are related to me — and not in a good way. It seems that my letters to the editor and infrequent blog posts on local issues irritate the hemorrhoids of some teachers and administrators. Instead of talking to me directly, they quiz my grandchildren. To what end? Are they judging my grandchildren based on something I have written, never considering that they might not agree with me? You see, in the Gerencser family, we are freethinkers. Family members hold a variety of opinions, many of which I disagree with. I don’t expect my children or grandchildren to toe some sort of ideological line. I am a passionate, opinionated, educated curmudgeon. I make no apologies for being who I am.

I recognize that my liberal/progressive politics, socialism, pacifism, atheism, and humanism are out of step with the beliefs of most local residents. Evangelicalism and right-wing Republican politics rule the roost. Seven out of ten voting locals voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. Not one Democrat holds a local political office. Often, Republican candidates run unopposed. Why should Democrats bother to run for office, knowing it is impossible for them to win.

When your religion and your political party have dominated the local scene for what seems like forever (I am old enough to remember when union Democrats were major players in local politics) you forget that there might be people who think differently from you. Or maybe you don’t care. This is the case for a history/government teacher at Defiance High School.

Last week, one of my granddaughter’s teachers decided to go after me by name while she was sitting in his class. He has mentioned my letters to the editor to her before, but this time he took class time to personally attack me. What upset him, you ask? My letter to the editor about the feral cat problem in Defiance. (Please see Letter to the Editor: Defiance Has a Feral Cat Problem, Mayor Mike McCann Says Killing Them is the Solution.) This teacher thought my letter was silly, suggesting that I should find better things to do with my time. His behavior was inappropriate, but not surprising.

Evidently, this teacher didn’t read any of my letters on religion, atheism, humanism, politics, war, marijuana legalization, sexual abuse, and other issues. He evidently is also unaware of my blog and my weighty writing on a variety of subjects. For whatever reason, he wanted to publicly take me down a notch or two.

Part of me wants to make an issue of his boorish behavior, but I have my grandchildren to think of. I don’t want them to be judged or harmed for something I have said or written. If that ever becomes the case, then I will stop writing. I don’t think that will ever happen. My older grandchildren are proud of the work I do, even when they don’t always agree with me.

I do want to make an offer to the teacher in question:

  • Invite me to one or more of your classes to talk to them about my political, religious, and social views. I will gladly answer any questions they might have.
  • I will publicly debate you on any issue — even the designated hitter rule for Major League Baseball. Please have your people contact my people and we will set it up.

It’s easy to take cheap swipes at an old man from the safety of your high school classroom. I am more than happy to defend and debate my beliefs anywhere, any time.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

What’s Happening to the Social Contract?

2 Comments
new social contract

Remember all outrage over Evangelical cake decorators and photographers being “forced” to decorate cakes for same-sex couples or take photographs for their weddings? I am of two minds on these issues. I generally think businesses should be free to serve or not serve whomever they want. If I were an atheist photographer, I should be able to discriminate, choosing not to photograph Evangelical weddings. Same goes if I was a gay cake decorator — I should be able to choose whom I want to serve. I shouldn’t be forced to decorate cakes for heterosexual Evangelical couples. My inner libertarian says I should have the right to choose with whom I want to do business.

My inner socialist and progressive, says that if a person opens a business, he or she agrees to play by the applicable rules and laws: Civil Rights Act; Equal Opportunity Employment Act; Americans with Disabilities Act; building codes; health codes; employment laws; tax laws; and specifics codes and laws that govern particular types of businesses. Don’t like these laws, rules, and codes? Tough shit. These things are the price of admission. Want to operate a business? You must play by the rules. Thus my inner libertarian must submit to the needs and demands of an ordered society governed by the rule of law.

The same goes for Evangelical doctors and pharmacists who refuse to treat certain people, prescribe certain drugs, perform certain procedures, or fill certain prescriptions because doing so is contrary to their religious beliefs. Again, tough shit. If you agree to accept employment, you are expected to play by the rules.

Thanks to unprecedented accommodations to people of faith, Christians (and Muslims and Mormons) now think their jobs, schools, and communities, in general, should cater to them; that their religious beliefs take precedence over the rights of others or their participation in what is commonly called the social contract.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with businesses accommodating the sincere beliefs of their employees. I say “sincere.” We know that Evangelicals routinely lie about their “sincere” beliefs when they don’t want to do something. During the pandemic, anti-vax Evangelicals lied about their religious beliefs so they could get religious exemptions from COVID-19 vaccinations. (For the record, I am opposed to ALL exemptions for vaccinations.) Evangelical preachers often lie about their religious objection to social security so they can be exempted from paying social security taxes. That’s exactly what I did in the 1980s, and I know other preachers who did the same.

Evangelicals are generally anti-government. They love sticking it to the man. That’s why so many of the 1/6/2021 insurrectionists were Evangelicals. What better way to stick it to Biden, the Democrats, and the state than trying to overthrow the government? Why are most private religious schools Evangelical? Why are most home-schooling families Evangelicals (or conservative Catholics)? By withdrawing their children from public schools (and society, in general), Evangelicals are using their libertarian ideology to tell government that they “will not have this man rule over us.”

Here’s the funny thing . . . Evangelicals only want these alleged freedoms and rights for themselves. As you well know, Christian Nationalism is on the rise in the United States, and around the world. Millions and millions of Evangelicals believe that the United States is a Christian nation, founded according to the teachings and principles of the Bible — even though history teaches no such thing. Many Evangelicals want to see Christianity codified into law. They want the Bible to be the law of the land. In their minds, either the separation of church and state is a myth or it was only meant to protect Christians from government encroachment. Recently, I have noticed an uptick in Evangelical writers and speakers saying that the separation of church and state does not guarantee separation FROM religion; that the United States is, by default, a Christian nation, and atheists, agnostics, and other unbelievers should not expect to have freedom from religion.

Recently, Jorge Gomez, senior writer for First Liberty Institute, took to the Christian Post to whine about “woke” Chase Bank canceling the bank account of the National Committee for Religious Freedom. I have no idea why Chase canceled NCRF’s account. What strikes me as funny is Gomez’s outrage over Chase making a decision to not do business with NCRF, yet he thinks Evangelical cake decorators, photographers, and other business owners should have the absolute right to discriminate against LGBTQ people. I suspect Gomez would be fine with Chase not doing business with adult entertainment businesses, escort services, and marijuana retailers. You see, Gomez wants preferential treatment for Evangelicals. He wants different rules for his tribe.

A society only works if we all play by the same rules. Sadly, many Evangelicals (and others too) don’t want to play by mutually agreed-upon laws and rules. When we disagree with a law or a rule, we can either use the political process to change it, refuse to obey it, risking punishment, appeal to the courts for redress, or turn to violence to get our way. What I fear we are seeing today is that when a group of people believe (or know) the political process no longer works or the courts are unwilling to give them what they want, they turn to rebellion and violence. I fear this is where we now are: a dangerous day and hour when it is considered justifiable to beat an old man with a ball-peen hammer, threaten to murder the vice president of the United States and the Speaker of the House, scream at school boards, invade the U.S. Capitol — causing death, physical harm, and property damage — and violently threaten people with physical harm. I have no doubt that we are headed toward violence in the streets; not a civil war, necessarily, but local pockets of tribal violence. We are armed to the teeth, and if the Insurrection taught us anything it is this: given the right circumstances and provocations, people can and will do anything, including murdering their neighbors. One need only look at Germany in World War II, the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda in 1994, or countless acts of violence and murder perpetrated during war, including the United States’ wars to see how this plays out.

People of good will must use non-violence to turn back our tribal tendencies. Social media makes it easy for all of us to congregate according to tribal designation. Certainly, it is natural for us to do so. However, when the only people we see, hear, and interact with are just like us, we can be easily led astray; we can easily engage in behaviors we might not normally engage in. Sometimes, we can turn to violence, and when that happens, our society collapses. When tribe is all that matters, it is easier to cause harm to “others.” I live on Main St. in Ney, Ohio. The other day, I looked at the voter registration records for voters who live on Main St. My wife and I are the only registered Democrats. Worse, it is well-known in town that we are atheists. Our front yard has three progressive, pro-choice signs. Last Thursday, the village had its annual trick-or-treat. I can only imagine how irritated some parents were as they walked by our house with their children. How dare we expose their kiddies to God-hating evil? Locals know I am the guy who writes letters to the editor of the newspaper “attacking” (their word) their religion or politics. Is it a stretch of the imagination to think that given the right circumstances, some of God’s chosen ones might try to destroy our signs (they have been stolen before), cause property damage, or even physical harm? When tribal passions are engaged, who knows what might happen.

Evangelicals are so drunk with political power, having abandoned the gospel as a means of societal transformation, that they will not rest until they have taken Christian Nationalism to its logical conclusion: the obeisance of non-Christians to Jesus and the Bible — actually, to their peculiar interpretation of the Bible. Those who refuse to bow to the Evangelical God will be punished and ostracized — much like Japanese-Americans and communists/socialists were in World War II. As Hitler’s Germany and the Tutsi genocide taught us, neighbors can and will turn on their neighbors if they deem them a threat, or even if they merely belong to the “wrong” tribe.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Listen to My Interview on the Q-Dropped Podcast, Hosted by Courtney Simmonds

3 Comments
podcasting

Recently, I was interviewed by Courtney Simmonds for the inaugural episode of the Q-Dropped Podcast. The Q-Dropped Podcast focuses on:

telling the stories of families that have been torn apart by the Qanon cult and Qanon-adjacent ideas. Most of us know someone who has been affected by the deeply concerning beliefs of Qanon adherents. Many of us have had rifts form between us and people we care about. Unfortunately, however, not many of us are talking about the toll Qanon is having on average, everyday families in countries all over the world. This podcast aims to raise awareness about this issue by telling the stories of people who have lost someone they care about to Qanon.

Give it a listen and let me know what you think.

Video Link

Listen to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, and other podcast providers.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

How Discernment Ministries Use Statistics to Distort the News and Inflame Christians

7 Comments
faithwire headline
Headline and Graphic from Faithwire Article

We live in a time where we are inundated with statistics. We also live in a time where the average American lacks a basic understanding of statistics and how to interpret them. For example, imagine me writing that there’s been a 200 percent increase in deaths from the flu vaccine (this is a made-up stat). Why, many people would lose their collective minds, thinking that the flu vaccine is killing millions of people. Most people are headline surfers. Few would actually read my article so they could gain a proper understanding of the statistics behind the headline. If they had read my article, they would have learned that, historically, two out of every 100,000 vaccinated people annually die from the flu vaccine. In 2020, one out of every 100,000 vaccinated people died from the vaccine. In 2021, the death rate jumped to two out of 100,000 vaccinated people. Is this an alarming increase? Of course not. Yet, many people will read the headline and think that the flu vaccine is killing people in droves.

Some websites and blogs love to use statistics to advance their political, social, and religious agenda. Evangelicals — a group of Christians who generally believe we are living in the end times; that the return of Jesus is imminent; that the world will become worser and worser 🙂 until Jesus raptures them off the face of the earth — love to use, misuse, and distort statistics to advance their Fundamentalist agenda.

Take Protestia, a “discernment” site originally operated by disgraced Calvinistic pastor J.D. Hall. Discernment ministries came of age in the 2000s. I have been following Evangelical sites such as Protestia (previously Pulpit and Pen), The Dissenter (previously Reformed Charlotte, operated by Jeff Maples), Christian Research Network (started by the late Ken Silva, an arch-nemesis of mine), Michelle Lesley, Lighthouse Trail Research, Way of Life Literature (David Cloud), and others since their inception. Initially, these groups focused on rooting out and attacking perceived heresy and heretics in their midst. They pride themselves in calling out by name preachers, colleges, denominations, and churches who fail their theological and social purity tests. Over time, their “discernment” has become more extreme; more political; more hysterical. They have now become sites that are “keepers of the flame” or “keepers of the book of life.” These gnostics — people who think they have some sort of elevated or inside knowledge about and experience with God — now routinely decree who is and isn’t saved. They are the Pharisees of Evangelical Christianity.

The current king of the discernment hill is Protestia. Known for their hateful anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, the boys at Protestia published a post today with a headline that stated: ‘Gender-Affirming’ Mastectomies in Children Spike 389% From 2016 to 2019. Protestia’s post was an excerpt of a Faithwire post with the same title. The goal of both articles was to enflame the anti-transgender hysteria presently burning through the Evangelical community.

Is the latest wave of the sexual revolution really targeting children? Protestia decided to excerpt the Faithwire article before giving its readers the context necessary to properly understand their inflammatory headline:

In 2016, roughly 100 children went under the knife for the procedures. Just a handful of years later, in 2019, that number soared to 489 — a 389% increase.

The findings were based on statistics gathered by the Nationwide Ambulatory Surgery Sample, which found 1,130 chest reconstruction surgeries were performed on children from 2016 to 2019. More than 98% of those procedures were masculinizing, meaning they were performed on females who had their breasts removed. Only 1.4% were feminizing mammaplasties, augmenting but not removing breast tissue.

Of the children who underwent these “gender-affirming” surgeries, nearly 20% were also placed on hormone therapy, presumably to address their gender dysphoric diagnoses.

….

As for the new research, the data shows the patients who underwent double mastectomies ranged in age from 12 to 17 years old. While the majority were 17, roughly 5.5% were reportedly under 14.

For context, the researchers estimated there are currently around 300,000 adolescents in the U.S. between the ages of 13 and 17 who identify as transgender.

Context is everything, right? Is the statistical increase significant? Sure. But the statistics in the aforementioned article tell us that few “children” are getting gender-affirming surgery; and that of the “children” who do, the majority of them are seventeen.

The only way to understand the Protestia and Faithwire articles is through the lens of their hatred and hostility towards LGBTQ people in general, and transgender people in particular. Certainly, there is debate to be had on gender-affirming surgery, and a host of other sex/gender issues, but that’s not the goal of the “fine” Christians at Protestia and Faithwire. Their goal is to provide a daily diet of red meat culture war issues; posts that reaffirm their hatred of the “world.”

Please read Cutting through the Lies and Misinterpretations about the Updated Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People by Dr. AJ Eckert and Dr. Quinnehtukqut McLamore on the Science-Based Medicine website for accurate information on gender-affirming surgery.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Religion, History, Violence, and Adolph Hitler by Ben Berwick

11 Comments
guest post

Guest post by Ben Berwick. Ben blogs at Meerkat Musings.

Allow me to preface this post with the warning that this topic is a sensitive one. The depictions of violence are quite graphic, and quite brutal. Discussions of this nature can easily become heated, for we are talking about cherished beliefs and ideals. We are talking about historical figures of much notoriety.

Some background. This post grew out of discussions over at Silence of Mind. Whilst Silence of Mind himself has proven to be intractable and quite unreasonable, another participant, Citizen Tom, proved to be, if not agreeable to my position, cordial and civil in discussing it.

It is fair to say, judging from a brief read-through of Tom’s site, and he and I will likely not agree on many things. That is normal, that is life. It might be difficult to find common ground, or reach a consensus, but that does not make it impossible, and we all might learn something along the way. In the time since those early conversations with Tom, I have already had cause to reconsider a few things, and at the very least, thinking about the phrasing of my arguments.

With all of that out of the way, what is the purpose of this post? It concerns morality, how it is, heh, ‘divined’. It concerns how we view good, and evil, and in what name we act on what we see as good, and evil. I am rambling, for this post covers a lot of ground, and distilling it all into a single sentence is proving difficult.

A History of Bloodshed

SoM argued that atheists lack morality, for atheism is responsible for more deaths than any other form of ideology. He cited Stalin as an example. SoM would not be the first person to conflate atheism and communism, and therefore incorrectly blame atheism for Stalin’s murderous regime. His motive was to suggest that atheism is amoral, or even immoral. ‘Stalin was an atheist, Stalin was evil, therefore all atheists are evil’. SoM also sought to point out that Stalin and Mao (a follower of Marxist and communist ideals) proved atheism is more violent, by virtue of a greater death toll than religious ideology. Therefore, not only did he falsely equate atheism with communism to make atheists look bad, he proved ignorant of several important factors.

During the era of the Crusades (furious wars of religious ideology, between Christians and Muslims, pagans, and even other Christians), the weapons of war were nowhere near as sophisticated or powerful as they are today. There was a smaller population, and they lived in smaller cities and rural areas. It stands to reason that a holy war, waged with the weaponry of a modern military, among today’s densely-populated urban and suburban cities and towns, would be as devastating as any major war. SoM ignored this, and ignored the point about the Crusades.

Apologies to Tom, for it would feel like I am tackling SoM’s arguments all over again, and expecting Tom to respond to those points. There is some overlap, which I will come to.

Biblical Commands for Bloodshed

Christianity has a long and violent history (it’s not the only religion in this boat, but Christianity quickly became the central point of discussions in SoM’s post). Is this violence because of, or in spite of, what the Bible contains?

The Old Testament is filled with violent commands from God. The Bible is often held as the inerrant Word of God, and to some Christians, is to be taken literally as well. We are often told that we cannot judge God by human standards of morality. Is that because so many people would reject the ‘morality’ on display in passages like this, if read in isolation? Imagine you did not know of God, and for all you knew, the following were said by a human being:

1 Samuel 15:2-3 – This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”

If we heard Numbers 18:2-3, and thought it were another human being who had spoke, what would we think? Bring your fellow Levites from your ancestral tribe to join you and assist you when you and your sons minister before the Tent of the Testimony. They are to be responsible to you and are to perform all the duties of the Tent, but they must not go near the furnishings of the sanctuary or the altar, or both they and you will die.

What would you think if you heard Isaiah 13:15-16 in isolation? This appears to relate to the treatment of prisoners of war. Whoever is captured will be thrust through; all who are caught will fall by the sword. Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be looted and their wives ravished.

Numbers 31:14-18: Moses was angry with the officers of the army–the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds–who returned from the battle. “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the LORD in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the LORD’s people. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

I think we can all generally agree that showing mercy to a vanquished enemy is a good quality. Sparing the lives of civilians is an imperative, and the treatment of women in this passage? It would be considered abhorrent to any good person.

Yet some Christians believe these actions are justifiable, and even good, when carried out at God’s command. These extremists are the ones who would have gleefully been at the frontlines of the Crusades, slaughtering others in the name of God. It is no wonder that there has been so much violence in the name of Christianity, when the Bible is full of it.

A Moral Compass

Bearing in mind the Biblical instructions for bloodshed, and how much conflict Christianity has been involved in throughout its history, is it right or fair to suggest that atheism is immoral?

Which is not to say that Christianity, or other religions, are automatically immoral. There are some terrifying, horrific events in religious texts, but there are good and kind notions to be found within them as well. Some people draw comfort from them, and who I am to say they shouldn’t? 1 Peter 4:8: Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins. 1 Thessalonians 5:11: Therefore encourage one another to build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. 1 Corinthians 13:4-5: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Humans can be tribal. We will gravitate towards like-minded groups, and sometimes, this can polarise us. Our instinctive, intrinsic need to create communities and belong is no bad trait, yet it means it is all too easy for us to see outsiders to our community as inferior or threatening. We feel the need to remove them as a danger, and that might involve blinding ourselves to how people are individuals. We are, as a species, very good at generalising, and often in a demonising sort of fashion. I dare say I have been guilty of this in the past, and I cannot say with certainty that I won’t unwittingly fall into that trap in the future.

One method of generalising is to point to an individual, or a small group within a community, and say ‘that person is immoral, therefore the entire community is immoral’. SoM appeared to operate with such a policy when he referenced Stalin, and the deaths incorrectly attributed to atheism. I’ve seen this sort of fallacy used elsewhere too, against atheism, and against religions. SoM and Tom both objected to a particular example of a Christian who committed some terrible atrocities, yet SoM in particular held up Stalin as an atheist and said ‘this is atheism and what it does’. More on that later.

Organised religion is often held up as a moral compass, with rule to live by, rules that civilisation needs. ‘Thou shall not kill’ is an obvious example of one of the Ten Commandments. However, do we need a commandment to tell us not to kill? Without it, would human beings lack the moral centre that makes killing abhorrent to most of us?

To put it another way, if the only reason you do not lie, cheat, steal or kill, is because a holy book told you not to do these things, how certain are you of your morality? If your faith in your beliefs is shaken or even destroyed, do you think you would become a murderer the day after?

There is another angle to consider. There are millions of atheists and agnostics in the world, hundreds of millions. Countries such as the Czech Republic have a high percentage (over 50%) of people who consider themselves irreligious. Sweden, Japan, and South Korea are in a similar situation. These countries are not morally bankrupt wastelands of corruption (in fact, Japan is one of the safest countries on earth). It would be too simplistic to say that atheism is the reason these countries tend to rate quite highly on quality of life indexes, because atheism is nothing more than the absence of religious belief. On the other hand, it does go to show that countries with large percentages of atheists are not consumed by what some Christians consider to be immorality. Nor are atheists demonstrably amoral.

Morality Always Comes From God?

One of the arguments Tom put forward is that atheists were imbued with Christian standards of morality, whether they know it or not, and whether they accept it or not. Tom regards this as the Truth. It is certainly an explanation for why hundreds of millions of atheists and agnostics are not slaughtering people left, right and centre, but it is also completely and utterly unprovable. I may well be imbued with morality via a supreme being, but how can I show this? I can’t. I have no means to verify this. It is a convenient form of answer, yet also meaningless. I can just as easily say my morality was granted to me by the pantheon of Norse Gods. Perhaps it was given to me by the spirits worshipped by Native Americans. Who can say for certain? Tom, and other Christians, ask me to take this on faith, but I deal with what is tangible.

There is evidence that our concept of morality is the result of evolution. I quote from Frontiers for Young Minds, and a post from Jean Decety and Jason M. Cowell:

How do we distinguish good from evil, right from wrong, just from unjust, and vice from virtue? An obvious answer is that we have learned to do so through socialization, that is, our behaviors were shaped from birth onward by our families, our preschools, and almost everything we contacted in our environments. Morality is an inner sense of rightness about our behavior and the behavior of others. How we feel, think, and act about the concepts of “good” and “bad” are all parts of our morality. For example, hitting another person for any reason is seen as bad, while sharing something we like with another child who is sad is considered good. Morality is so deeply rooted in the fabric of our everyday lives that it seems hard to imagine a society without any moral rules. Indeed, observations made by scientists who study different societies around the world have shown that, despite cultural and individual differences, all human beings have some sense of right and wrong.

When we use the word “morality” we are generally talking about ideas of justice, fairness and rights, and the rules we have about how people should treat one another. Consider the following: as a reward for finishing your homework, you have been given 10 marbles that you really like. You are then told about a poor child who would not be able to get any marbles, even though he did his homework too. However, you have the option to give some of your marbles to the poor child. What would you choose to do? Most children would naturally share some of their marbles with a poor child and would also be surprised if another child received more than 10 marbles after doing the same amount of homework! This shows that children understand both fairness and justice. As humans, when we consider how we or others should share something we have been given, we tend to take into account both how much of a reward someone deserves for the “work” they did and whether rewards are evenly split between individuals.

Interesting isn’t it? From a very young age, and across countries and cultures, we seem to instinctively understand what is fair and what is unjust. The theists will tell us this is because God filled our souls with these concepts. However, these concepts are found outside of humans. Animals, with no concept of God and lacking the capacity for the concept, have display indications of what we define as moral behaviours:

Natural observations of animals in the wild and research in laboratories show us that a number of “building blocks” of moral behavior can be found in animals. For instance, many animals exhibit behaviors that benefit other members of their species. Such prosocial behaviors refers to any behavior intended to benefit another individual. (meaning behaviors that are good for others), like helping each other and caring for offspring, have been seen in rodents and primates. Rats will help other distressed rats that have been soaked with water, and it will also choose to help a cage mate that is in distress before obtaining a food reward. Chimpanzees will help each other and share with each other, but only when they benefit from the sharing, as long as the costs are minimal and the needs of the other chimpanzees are clear. Chimpanzees also collaborate and form alliances in fights or when hunting. Capuchin monkeys have even been shown to react in a negative way when they see other monkeys being treated unfairly.

Babies show indications of morality:

When we see early signs of morality in young babies, this provides strong evidence for the evolutionary roots of morality, because babies have not yet had much time to be influenced by their environment. Psychologists who study human development have shown that human babies enter the world ready to pay attention and respond to social stimuli, such as voices and faces, and that babies begin forming social relationships during the first year of life. Young children provide comfort and assistance to both other children and adults in emotional distress. For instance, when they see their mothers in pain, 18-month-old toddlers show comforting behaviors (such as hugging, patting, and sharing toys). As infants develop and become more able to analyze what is going on around them, they even have the ability to recognize when a person in their environment is treating another person badly. At a young age, infants are quickly able to figure out whether the consequence of a behavior is good or bad, suggesting that their genes are involved and that experience and learning are not the only causes of moral development. At just 3 months of age, infants spend more time looking at a puppet character that has previously acted in a nice way than at one that acted in a negative way, suggesting that infants prefer those who “do good things.” By 6 months of age, this preference is stronger, with children not only looking more at helpful and nice puppet characters but also actually reaching for them. By 12 months of age, infants begin to understand the concept of fairness. When these infants witness cookies being shared, they expect an equal number of cookies to be given to all of the people involved.

So, it would seem that animals and very young children instinctively understand some concepts of sympathy, sharing, and fairness. Some Christians (not all) believe that babies are born sinful (co-incidentally, some Christians believe this justifies the slaughter of children in some of the Old Testament’s more barbaric verses). They believe young children are lacking in morality. To quote:

Parents understand that it doesn’t take long for a baby to being acting sinfully. They cry out of selfishness, they learn to say “no” to their parents, they hoard their toys and refuse to share.

Others might claim that babies are born without a sin nature in the womb, and remain sinless until they commit a sin after birth; but again, this is not what we find in the Bible.

David writes in Psalm 51, “I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Babies in their mother’s wombs are developing sin natures as they develop physically, and they commit sinful actions after birth.

This seems to jar with the study that demonstrates infants are capable of showing comfort to those in distress. Then again, our behaviour is part instinct, and part learned. Babies – especially new-borns (my daughter was a new-born once!) – need a lot of attention, they would not survive without it, so it stands to reason they will cry to get that attention. That isn’t ‘sinful’, that is a survival instinct. As they grow and develop, they learn from their parents. They take their cues from the people around them, and yes, they might sometimes misbehave, as they test the limits of what they can get away with, from time to time. They also combine their instinctive sense of right and wrong with what they learn from the people around them. All of this supports the evolution of morality, which comes from our nature as social animals, and the desire to build and protect communities as a result.

All that being said, can I say with certainty that there is no higher power, directing matters behind the scenes? The truth is, I don’t know. Whilst SoM has labelled me an atheist (it never occurred to him to ask where I actually stand), I consider myself an agnostic. I do not claim to know for sure that there is no supreme being of some kind. The universe is vast, there are plenty of mysterious, unsolved events in the world, and maybe there is something out there that’s created us, directed us, and quietly embedded us with what makes us ‘us’. Whether or not that ‘something’ is the Christian God, is another matter. It cannot be proven, or demonstrated, via empirical means. On the other hand, evidence exists to show that morality can be driven by evolution, and therefore the argument that atheists cannot have a moral compass is on shaky ground.

Conflating Atheism and Communism

A common theme of the discussions between myself, SoM and Tom, was to suggest that atheism and communism are one and the same, or at least, that communism is a product of atheism, and therefore atheism is responsible for the actions undertaken in the name of communism.

This is a fallacy. Atheism is merely the absence of belief. Atheism is not a political ideology, and is not responsible for the rise of Marxism and communism. Karl Marx’s dissatisfaction with society and his critical views on religion would have existed before the rise of Marxism, and existed afterwards, yet note that revolutionary political ideologies were not springing up because of this. Atheism existed before the rise of Marx’s radical agenda, and existed afterwards, and note that violence was not erupting because of it.

This brings me to a pertinent point. You do not hear of people killing (or for that matter, preaching) in the name of atheism. Atheism is not a form of political ideology and it is not (as some incorrectly argue) a religion. Atheism is only the absence of belief. In contrast, people kill in the name of their religion all the time. That isn’t to say that religion is the cause, but it is interesting that people like SoM (who admitted he would kill me if God told him to) are quick to suggest the absence of belief is why people kill, and then defend the presence of belief in killers, through all kinds of mental gymnastics.

Hitler’s Faith

All of this brings me to my next section. SoM had no problems with attacking an entire group of people over the actions of a handful of historical figures (and as we have established, he did so under misleading pretences). Perhaps unsurprisingly, he took a hypocritical issue with the mention of Hitler’s beliefs.

Adolf Hitler was raised as a Christian, and his book, Mein Kampf, referenced Christianity and his beliefs on numerous occasions. In documented discourse, Hitler’s religious views appear to be quite fluid, at times critical of Christianity, at times believing that true Christianity had been corrupted, and yet referring to atheists as ‘animals’. It would not be fair to suggest that Hitler = Christian and therefore all Christians = Hitler. It could be that Hitler was not a Christian. I am willing to modify (mollify?) my original position regarding this, as a result of further reading. However, Hitler was not an atheist either, contrary to any suggestion of such.

Conclusions

It would be far from fair to say that all Christians have the same, frightening, literal interpretation of the Bible (the interpretation that can find no wrong in God’s blood-soaked actions of the Old Testament). There are many Christians who quietly ignore the Old Testament completely. Whether that is the right thing for a Christian to do is not for me to say. However, Christianity as an organised religion has a lot of historical blood on its hands (as do a number of organised religions).

In terms of providing a moral way to live, is Christianity better than atheistic, humanist moral codes? Wrapped up in that question is another question, what is moral? We can delve into the morality of opposing same-sex marriage versus accepting it. We can consider the morality of women’s rights in a secular society, versus a religious one. The religious would argue there are objective standards for morality on these and other issues. The irreligious would argue that these are subjective, dependent upon the beliefs (or lack thereof) of individuals.

Is society better when religion has more influence? I don’t think so. I expect Tom would not agree, and as I said right at the start of this, that’s normal. I will also say that I have no problem with people wanting to have religion in their lives, but it should never be forced upon anyone. I’m British, but the principle of separation of Church and State in the US is an important bulwark against a theocratic regime, and theocracies tend to be quite oppressive. Choice matters, freedom matters.

To sum it all up, I would argue that atheists, as a group, do not lack morality.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Quote of the Day: Do Free Markets Bring Peace Between Countries?

6 Comments
free market

One of the most enduring ideas in economics is that free markets bring peace between countries. It comes from the notion that commerce drives humans to follow their mutual material interests rather than make destructive war due to passions.

This was the animating force behind the U.S. granting China its “most-favored-nation” trade status in 2000, which allows for free trade and economic cooperation. Republicans and Democrats alike assured the public that the deal would bring “constructive engagement” and expose communist China to America’s “ideals” of democracy. Where are we today? Beijing has moved closer to authoritarianism, economic competition is fiercer than ever, and American and Chinese diplomatic relations are near a crisis point, with both countries brandishing threats of war. Free trade has brought some peace, but it has not brought lasting friendship between the world’s two superpowers.

The same point could be made for Russia. Germans clearly thought that free trade for Russian oil would bind Vladimir Putin’s kleptocracy to democratic Europe and lead it toward a more prosperous and open society. Instead, it weakened democratic Europe’s capacity to respond to Putin’s dictatorship and his bloody invasion of Ukraine.

Does this mean that the old idea of a “gentle commerce” of free markets, famously espoused in the French Enlightenment, is dead? Perhaps it never really existed. History shows that free markets can be a basis for friendship between powerful nations, but they are far less successful at securing peace and democracy than many have hoped. In fact, the noble talk of the free market was sometimes simply an excuse to engage in the kind of “great power” competition that too often leads to war and plunder.

….

When British free marketeers managed to liberalize their own markets with the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, it heralded a laissez faire era in Britain but did not bring international peace. Richard Cobden, the famed free market leader of the Anti-Corn Law League, believed that free markets, pacifism, industrial know-how, Christianity and good work ethics would lead Britain to home-grown prosperity for the working man. Indeed, the very confidence and wealth that buoyed so many British to believe in the superiority of free markets was grounded in colonial ideals and wealth. The British colonial leader John Bowring used evangelical terms, claiming that imperial force and laissez faire economics could only bring good: “Jesus Christ is free trade,” he exclaimed, “and Free trade is Jesus Christ.” But the Pax Britannica of the Empire was based on gunboats, violent coercion and the pillaging of riches from colonialized nations. It is now estimated that Britain stole more than $40 trillion from India alone during the hundred-year rule of the Raj.

And while empire created a free trade zone for the British, it also sparked an almost constant series of colonial wars — from the more than 100 years of war with France in the eighteenth century, to another century of overseas wars with peoples and states in the Caribbean, China, India, Burma, New Zealand, Persia and Africa. Indeed, to gain free market agreements with Latin American countries, Turkey and China, the British relied on military threats. Free trade remained based on naval might. While some British free marketeers called for an end to the reliance on colonialism, confident that free trade agreements with other industrial powers brought peace and advantage to industrially superior Britain, Britain’s competitors began to see that if they wanted the free trade and imperial advantages enjoyed by Britain, they too would need to arm.

In 1905, the Cambridge critic of free market economics William Cunningham prophetically warned that the militarization of Japan, Russia and Germany was in direct response to Britain’s one-sided imperial free market and that it could lead to world wars. These countries could not compete with Britain, so from the 1870s to the 1890s, Russia, Italy, Germany, France and America were putting up tariffs against what they considered Britain’s domination of world commerce. Hungry for Britain’s empire and markets, Europe moved toward world war.

When World War I arrived, it could be seen as either a product of protectionism and trade war, or, as Cunningham said, a reaction to imperial free market Britain’s dominance. In any case, with rising nationalism and communism, hope for universal free trade faded. The most famous of the Austrian free market thinkers, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, formed their free market thought in response to rising socialism, but also in reaction to the Nazi regime which forced them to flee Austria to the United States. Both thought that the state was the ultimate danger to peace, but in the end, when World War II was over, the American state bankrolled the rebuilding of Britain, France, Germany and Japan, using the Marshall Plan to rebuild, but also to dictate democracy to, former foes, and, in doing so, to create the most successful economies of the modern age. Paradoxically, the United States provided well over $150 billion in today’s dollars to European countries, and more than $20 billion to Japan, as well as backing government intervention into these economies, to lay the groundwork for a future democratic free trade zone.

During the Cold War, America’s massive military kept the peace among its industrialized, democratic partners, while waging a cold and hot war against communism around the globe. U.S. government support, peace, prosperity and free trade were the dividends for America’s allies. But the global conflict with communism again meant that it took war and government support to establish democracy and, potentially, free markets through the GATT agreements that began in 1947 and expanded throughout the 20th century.

Even when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, a real possibility for peace emerged with the normalization of relations between America, Russia, Europe, India and eventually China. During this period, free markets expanded — but even in peacetime, military budgets have exploded under presidents of both parties. And still, with much of the world embracing free trade, the United States again went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, spending trillions of dollars, and, one might argue, squandering its own free market peace dividend.

Now we arrive at a more perilous moment. Democracy is in retreat around the world. The global economy seems poised for a recession. And war has broken out in Europe, while tensions rise between the U.S. and China. Meanwhile, public skepticism about free trade is surging in this populist moment. Can free markets keep the peace? We must hope they can. However, history shows that free trade is often in the eye of the beholder, anyway. Ultimately, a military based pax or deeper common interest might be necessary to keep commerce and the world on gentle terms.

— Jacob Soll, Politico, One of the Most Famous Ideas in Economics Is Wrong, October 5, 2022

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Why Have Evangelicals Changed Their Minds About the Separation of Church and State?

9 Comments
wall of separation of church and state

My slogan’s “Jesus, guns, and babies.”

Jesus because that’s our First Amendment right. It’s the right to worship Jesus Christ freely. It’s why we have a country. Don’t talk to me about separation of church and state. Church and state was written because the state has no business in our church. But we are the church. We are the church, and we run the state, and Georgia’s sovereign, and we’re running the state with Jesus Christ first.

— Kandiss Taylor, a Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate

I was part of the Evangelical church for fifty years, primarily as an Independent Baptist and later as a non-denominational Christian. While my theology evolved and changed over the years, one belief stayed with me from childhood to today: the separation of church and state; that there is a wall between religion and government, a wall that must never, ever be breached. As a young preacher, my pastors and professors taught me the importance of this wall. I carried this belief into the ministry. I strongly believed that church and state were two separate spheres, both ordained by God. As a pastor, I stayed out of the government’s business, and I expected the government to do the same with the churches I pastored. When the government tried to stick its nose in our business, I forcefully pushed back. I thought it important to not only defend the wall of separation between church and state, but also to make sure it was maintained and, if need be, repaired. And here’s the thing, every one of my ministerial colleagues believed the same. We believed that societal transformation came from winning souls. Most preachers maintained a strict separation between their personal politics and their theology. While I would preach on social issues, I always did so from a theological perspective. While most of the people I pastored were Republicans (if they voted at all), some of them were Democrats or Independents (especially in churches with union members). Did I ever cross the line and politick from the pulpit? Yes, but as a rule, I kept my partisan politics out of my preaching. (I was a staunch Republican for twenty-five years. In 2000, I left the Republican Party, voting Democrat for the first time.)

Here we are fifty years later . . . many Evangelical preachers no longer believe in a strict separation of church and state. Some even say that there is no such thing as the separation of church and state; that Christians have a duty to reclaim America for Jesus and establish the Bible as the law of the land — a Christian form of sharia law. What changed?

Over time, Evangelicals learned that just saving souls wasn’t going to effect the moral and political changes they wanted. So they turned to raw political power to achieve their goals, and in doing they sold their souls for bowls of pottage. Starting with the Moral Majority in the 1980s and moving to the plethora of theocratic parachurch organizations today, Evangelicals are using the power of the state to force people to conform to their religious beliefs. Since 2015, Evangelicals have abandoned all pretense, sacrificing ethics and morality on the altar of political expediency and power. (Just look at their unapologetic support of pathological liars Donald Trump and Herschel Walker.) Left to their own devices, Evangelicals will use any means necessary, including violence and bloodshed, to establish their corrupt version of the Kingdom of God on earth. One needs to only look at the January 6, 2021 Insurrection to see this played out in real time. Numerically, Evangelicalism is dying, but they now control the Republican Party and the Supreme Court, and for this reason, we must see them as an existential threat to our democracy. Make a list of your top ten bat-shit crazy Republicans. What do they all have in common? All of them are Christians. Most are Evangelicals, and the rest are conservative Catholics. At every level of government, Evangelicals now have control. The wall of separation of church and state, in their minds, is a misunderstood relic from the eighteenth century; a relic that has no relevance today.

So what do we do? Is it too late? Have Democrats/liberals/progressives ceded ground that they cannot regain? Can we vote our way out of this mess? Is Civil War waiting in the wings? Are we watching the decline and destruction of American democracy?

I see the problem. I see how we got here. I am not sure, however, we can reclaim what has been lost. Has cancer been spreading for decades in our society, and now it is so far advanced that it is untreatable? Is there anything we can do to turn back the fascists at the gate? Or will none of this matter because Joe Biden and his fellow warmongers, Republican and Democrat alike, have brought war to our shores?

Please share your thoughts in the comment section.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Why Many IFB Preachers Don’t Have Peaceful, Contented Lives

16 Comments
for sale sign emmanuel baptist church pontiac
For Sale Sign in Main Entrance Door, Emmanuel Baptist Church, Pontiac, Michigan

The Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement is a subset under the broad banner of Evangelicalism. IFB pastors and congregants tend to be theological, political, and social extremists. While their theological beliefs differ little from garden variety Evangelicals, how they engage and interact with the broader religious and secular cultures sets them apart from other Evangelicals.

Millions of Americans attend IFB churches. Millions more attend IFB-like churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. In the late 1960s through the early 1980s, many of the largest American churches were IFB congregations. As our society moved leftward socially and morally, IFB pastors and institutions dug in their heels and refused to adapt or change. Thinking the methods they used were timeless truths that must be religiously practiced, IFB churches hemorrhaged members, losing them to churches that were not as intolerant or extreme. By the 1990s, once-filled megachurch auditoriums were empty, resulting in more than a few IFB churches filing for bankruptcy or closing their doors.

In the mid-1970s, my wife and I attended Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan. Midwestern was started in the 1950s by Alabamian pulpiteer Tom Malone. Malone pastored nearby Emmanuel Baptist Church, which at the time was one of the largest churches in America, boasting thousands each week in attendance. Midwestern was never a large college, but the institution was noted for turning out preachers and church planters. By the late 1980s, Midwestern and Emmanuel Baptist were in serious numerical and financial free fall. Eventually, Emmanuel closed its doors and Midwestern became a ministry of an IFB church in Orion, Michigan.

What happened to Emmanuel Baptist continues to happen to IFB churches today. IFB pastors, with few exceptions, are Biblical literalists who refuse to believe anything that contradicts their Fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible. IFB pastors, to the man, believe the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God. Some pastors even go far as to say that only the King James Version of the Bible is the Word of God; that other translations are the works of Satan. Literalism and inerrancy are considered cardinal doctrines of the faith. This has resulted in IFB pastors and churches believing in all sorts of absurdities. IFB pastors are, without exception, creationists. Most of them are young earth creationists, believing that God created the universe in six twenty-four-hour days, 6,025 years ago. Bible stories meant to illustrate greater spiritual truths are often taken literally, resulting in IFB adherents believing, among a host of absurdities, that the earth was destroyed by a universal flood 4,000 or so years ago, the sun and moon stood still (Joshua 10:13), and all humans trace their lineage back to two people — Adam and Eve.  Their commitment to literalism forces IFB pastors to defend fantastical things. If the Bible says it, it’s true. End of discussion!

While there is some eschatological diversity within the IFB church movement, literalism demands that pastors believe and teach that the events recorded in the book of Revelation will one day literally take place. Most IFB church members believe that the return of Jesus to earth is imminent. A wide, deep apocalyptic river runs through the IFB church movement, leading to extreme love and devotion to God’s chosen people, Israel. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital excited IFB preachers — yet another “sign” that the return of Jesus is nigh. That this move could ignite the entire region and lead to war, is of little concern to IFB preachers. They believe that things must continue to get worse; that Jesus won’t come back to earth until the world stage is set for his triumphal return. This means that a war of epic proportions must occur, ending in Armageddon. While IFB preachers might not admit it out loud, I am certain many of them would welcome nuclear war, believing that such a war will make the world ready to embrace first the anti-Christ and then later Jesus when he returns to earth on a literal white horse to defeat the anti-Christ and Satan.

IFB pastors and churches are politically right-wing. If a survey were conducted with IFB adherents, I suspect surveyors would find that church members overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump, and are anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ, anti-same-sex marriage, and very much in favor of returning prayer and Bible reading to public school classrooms (even though many of them either home school or have their children enrolled in Christian schools). In earlier years, the IFB church movement believed there was a strict separation of church and state. Today, many IFB pastors and churches no longer believe the wall of separation exists, and that the United States is a Christian nation — a country chosen by God. This thinking can be traced back to the late 1970s when IFB megachurch pastor Jerry Falwell, along with Paul Weyrich, started the Moral Majority. Since then, scores of IFB pastors have used their pulpits to advance certain (almost always Republican) political policies and candidates.

Bruce, I thought this post was about why IFB preachers (and many within their congregations) don’t have peaceful, contented lives. It is, but I felt it necessary to show how IFB pastors think and view the world before explaining why so many lack peace and contentment in their lives. If the IFB church movement is anything, it is anti-culture. IFB pastors see themselves as prophets or watchmen on the walls, warning all who will listen that God is real, the Bible is true, and Hell awaits all those who reject the IFB way, truth, and life. IFB preachers think it is their duty to wage war against Satan and the enemies of God. I can only imagine how hysterical IFB preachers are over LGBTQ acceptance, same-sex marriage, and the increasing prominence of atheism. Anything that challenges their beliefs must be refuted and turned back. Add to this the internecine warfare IFB churches are famous for, and it should come as no surprise that pastors find themselves constantly battling the “world”; the “forces of darkness and evil.”  Every dawn brings a new day with new battles that must be fought. Not only must IFB preachers wage war against Satan, cults, false Christianity, liberalism, and secularism, but they must also fight against those in their own movement who want to make IFB churches more “worldly.”

The battles, then, never end. Day in and day out, IFB pastors are in fight mode. And those who are not? They are labeled compromisers and hirelings only concerned with money and prestige. Is it any wonder then that IFB preachers rarely have peaceful, contented lives? Their lives are in a constant state of turmoil. Satan and the world are pushing against their beliefs and values at every turn. Not fighting back is considered cowardly, a betrayal of everything IFB believers hold dear. Go to any town in America with an IFB church and ask mainline pastors how they view the local IFB pastor and church. In most instances, mainline pastors will say that local IFB churches have extreme beliefs and seem to thrive on controversy. IFB pastors are viewed as outliers on the fringe of Christianity — haters and dissemblers who have no tolerance for anyone but those who adhere to their narrow beliefs and practices.

Separation from the world and separation from erring Christians is a fundamental doctrine within IFB churches. This too leads to never-ending angst and stress. Concerned over encroaching “worldliness,” IFB pastors often have long lists of rules (church standards) congregants are expected to follow. (Please read The Official Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Rulebook.) While the rules vary from church to church, they are meant to inoculate church members from becoming infected with “worldly” ideas.  The Apostle Paul, writing to the Church at Corinth, said:

Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you. (2 Corinthians 6:14-17)

1 John 2:15-17 states:

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

Verses such as these fuel IFB separatist beliefs and practices. The world is evil and must be, with few exceptions, avoided at all costs. This is why IFB pastors and institutions are at the forefront of the Christian school and home school movements. What better way to avoid worldliness than to wall off families and children from the influence of “worldly” schools?

I am sure that many, if not most, IFB preachers would disagree with me when I say they don’t have peaceful contented lives. However, I would ask them to consider whether their constant battles against sin, worldliness, liberalism, and compromise have robbed them of the goodness, peace, and contentment life has to offer; that constantly being at odds with not only the “world,” but also fellow Christians, is bound to exact an emotional toll. Thinking you alone stand for God, truth, and righteousness requires constant diligence lest compromise and “worldliness” creep in. Aren’t you tired, preacher, of being constantly at war with everyone and everything around you? Maybe it is time for you lay down your weapons of war and rejoin the human race. Countless former IFB pastors and church members have done just that. Tired of the constant turmoil and unrest, they finally said ENOUGH! and walked away. Most of them found kinder, gentler forms of faith, and a handful of ex-IFB believers have embraced agnosticism or atheism. Scary, I know, but not having to constantly be on guard lest Satan gain the advantage is worth the risk of judgment and Hell. I am sure God will understand. A wild, wonderful world awaits those who dare to lay down their Fundamentalist beliefs and walk away. If you are ready to say ENOUGH! and want help plotting a life of peace and contentment, I would love to help you do so.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.