If people give money, services, or property to a church, they can use the amount of their donation to reduce their federal income tax liability. Every year, billions of dollars of money, services, and property are given to churches. All churches, by default, are tax-exempt. Many people wrongly think that a church must be 501(c)(3)-approved to be tax-exempt. But that’s not the case. All a group needs to say to be tax-exempt is this: we are a church. That’s it. By 9:00 a.m. next Sunday, I could start a church that would be completely tax-exempt by IRS standards, even if only my family attended. (Please see How to Start an Independent Baptist Church.)
The IRS deliberately steers away from explicitly defining what a church is. In their view, if it looks and acts like a church, it is a church. Here are the main criteria the IRS uses to decide whether a church is tax-exempt:
a distinct legal existence and religious history,
a recognized creed and form of worship,
established places of worship
a regular congregation and regular religious services, and
an organization of ordained ministers
As you can see, it is very easy for a group to be considered a church by the IRS.
Churches are also, in many states, exempt from paying sales and real estate taxes. Ohio is one such state. Churches can even operate for-profit businesses that are tax-exempt. In the 1970s, churches were encouraged to start daycare centers as a way to maximize building use and generate income – uh, I mean, minister to the poor. Just because a church tacks the word “ministry” on the end of a business name doesn’t make it one.
The question I ask is this: Should church donations be tax-deductible? Should churches be tax-exempt?
Christians will quickly state that their church is a charity and does good in the community, so their church should be tax-exempt and members should get a tax deduction for their donations. Relative to the amount of money they take in, do churches really do a great amount of good in the community? If the average church closed its doors tomorrow, would anyone outside of the membership care? Take a look at a church’s budget. Where does MOST of the money go? Salaries, benefits, insurance, utilities, buildings, and programs that only benefit the congregation. If a “real” charity spent their money in this manner, the IRS would pull their tax exemption and donations to said charity would no longer be tax-deductible. Yet, the IRS and federal and state governments give churches a blind-eye pass.
I have written on churches and their finances many times over the years. If you are getting ready to object, here’s my challenge. Send me your church’s budget. Let me take a close look at it. I have eagle-like eyes for seeing through the budget secrecy and bullshit many churches practice. Let’s take a close look at the numbers. Not the annual generic summary, but the actual income and expenses, I have made this challenge many times over the years, and not one church, pastor, or Christian has taken me up on it. They whimper, whine, and complain, but they never produce their financial documents. Why? They know the emperor has no clothes. They know if they shared their financials that the truth would be revealed.
If a church wants to be considered a tax-exempt charity, then they should be required to apply for charity status. They should then be required to spend the bulk of their money on charitable services that benefit the community. No church should be tax-exempt just because they say we are a church.
Most churches are social clubs and the price of membership is what people give in donations. The club rightly spends the bulk of its money on things that directly benefit the membership. As a club — a for-profit business — a church should be required to pay taxes and fill out all the tax forms that other businesses do. Isn’t it about time churches start paying their own way, just as every other business does? Why should First Baptist Church or St Peter’s Catholic Church be tax-exempt and receive free fire and police service and free infrastructure improvements? Why shouldn’t Betty’s Coffee Shop or Bob’s Bar and Grill get the same tax treatment as a church?
I support the elimination of all church tax exemptions (sales, real estate, income, social security), church donation tax deduction, and the clergy housing tax allowance/deduction. A practical side effect of eliminating these exemptions is that churches would then be free to endorse political candidates. No more Christian whining about their “free” speech being stifled. Churches would be FREE to do what they want AND pay taxes just like everyone else.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
If it is God’s will that I get coronavirus, that is the will of the Almighty. I will not live in fear.
— Robert Montanelli, Trump Rally Attendee in Tulsa, Oklahoma
On Saturday, President Donald Trump held a pep rally at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Trump bragged about how filled the Center would be, saying that 1,000,000 people requested tickets to his rally. Trump even planned for a huge outside crowd. All told, 6,200 people attended the indoor rally, and outside? Several dozen people, such sparse numbers that Trump canceled plans to address them after the main rally. Trump promised a John Holmes-like crowd. Unfortunately, as is often the case with the President, reality was much smaller than promised (just ask Stormy Daniels).
One attendee at the rally was Robert Montanelli from Broken Arrow — a Tulsa suburb. Montanelli wore a red “Keep America Great” hat and an oft-washed “Crooked Hillary for Prison” tee-shirt. When asked why he refused to wear a mask, Montanelli, with Trump-like bravado, said:
If it is God’s will that I get coronavirus, that is the will of the Almighty. I will not live in fear.
While the New York Times article that quotes Montanelli doesn’t mention his religious affiliation, his words have an Evangelical feel to them. I suspect the overwhelming majority of rally attendees were white Evangelicals. While I spotted a few blacks in the crowd, it was evident, at least to me anyway, that this water fountain was meant for Bible-quoting white Americans.
I suspect more than a few Trump supporters in attendance agreed with Montanelli: no masks needed. God is in control of everything, including the Coronavirus pandemic, and if they (or anyone else, for that matter) are infected with COIVD-19, God is to blame, not them. Of course, Evangelicals never use the word “blame” when speaking of their God’s sovereign, decretive acts, but if God holds the world in the palm of his hand, and is in control of everything, then “blame” is appropriate.
Evangelicals believe God is the first cause of everything, the creator of the universe. Thus, God is to blame for COVID-19. God is to blame for every infection and death. And yes, God should be credited for magically keeping some people from getting infected and/or dying.
Like clockwork, my wife calls her mother every Sunday evening at 10:00 PM. They typically talk for an hour. Last Sunday, Polly asked her mom whether she was wearing a face mask when she went out in public. Mom replied, “no, I don’t need to wear a mask.” When Polly, out of concern for her eighty-four-year-old mother’s health and that of her father, told her mom, “look, you need to get a mask and wear it whenever you go out of the house.” Mom replied, “when it’s my time to die, I’m ready to go.” Polly angrily retorted, “and no one will be able to come to your funeral.” Mom smugly replied, “oh well, I won’t care. I’ll be dead.” And that was that . . .
….
Because of Mom’s intransigent fatalism, it is unlikely that we will ever see Polly’s parents again face to face. (Several weeks ago, we met them a public park for lunch. Seven hours round trip, two-hour visit.) We are not willing to risk infection, all because of her stubborn unwillingness to take basic health and safety precautions. We expect to one day hear the phone ring, and at the other end someone will be telling us one or both of them are dead. Will it be COVID-19 that kills them? I don’t know. Both of them have serious health problems. A virus such as COVID-19 would make easy work of them. We wish they would at least take basic safety precautions, but they won’t. I suspect that a month from now they will join their church family after church down at the local Olive Garden for lunch. “See, we all survived! Glory and praise to Jesus!” And three or four weeks later? Some of them may learn that their God is not in control; that their God is no match for COVID-19, influenza, or any of the other countless bacteria and viruses trying to kill us. Biology and science trump religion every time. Too bad the people who most need to hear this will be dead.
Fatalism is a foundational plank of Evangelical Christianity. Everything in life is predetermined and controlled by God. No need to worry about the Coronavirus pandemic or getting infected with COIVD-19. No need to worry about ending up in the ICU hooked up to a ventilator, dying alone. Everything that happens to you is according to God’s perfect plan for your life. So what if you get infected, suffer, and die? JESUS suffered and died for you — he suffered bigly compared to your suffering — and thanks to his resurrection from the dead, a room in Heaven’s exclusive Trump Hotel awaits you after death.
Of course, Evangelicals such as Montanelli don’t really practice what they preach. Oh, they piously talk about God being in control, but their day-to-day lives reflect the fact that they are the ones controlling their destiny. They may shoot prayers up to the ceiling God, asking for divine direction and favor, but their lives reveal that they are ones answering those prayers.
I suspect that Montanelli looks both ways before pulling into an intersection. I suspect when he goes to the doctor, that he expects to be treated with modern medical techniques. Imagine the doctor saying, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you. Let’s pray and ask God to heal you.” Why, Montanelli would rightly be upset. I suspect that every aspect of Montanelli’s life is controlled not by God, but self. Why then, did he refuse to wear a mask, saying that whether he dies or not is up to God?
Montanelli worships at the feet of the baby Christian Donald Trump. The president refuses to acknowledge or practice CDC or WHO guidelines. He wants to project manly power and strength, even though he has a hard time holding a glass or water or walking down an airplane ramp. Trump’s latest rally was one long infomercial for how great he is. Should it be surprising, then, that Trump’s followers try to emulate him? Montanelli’s bravado is not so much about God and Christianity as it is his need to act like his hero. Sure, Montanelli is a believer, but the central figure in this story is Donald J. Trump, not God.
And if Montanelli contracts COVID-19? Will he “let go and let God?” Will he passively trust that God will, come what may, take care of him? Will he seek medical care? Will he take whatever drugs doctors prescribe? Will he encourage his family members to wear masks? Something tells me that when faced with serious illness and death, Montanelli will do everything in his power to stay alive.
And his boy Trump? Much like God, he will be AWOL. Montanelli will learn that he is on his own, that his life rests not in the hands of Jesus, but in the hands of qualified medical professionals.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Son #3 invited me to a car show tonight in nearby Bryan. I enjoy attending car shows, especially if they have lots of classic/muscle cars. Such cars remind me of the automobiles I owned in the 1970s and 1980s. My favorite car remains the 1970 Chevrolet Nova SS I owned in 1975-76. Lots of raw horsepower, a chick magnet.
I was hesitant about attending the show due to concerns over potential exposure to COVID-19. I decided social distancing and wearing a mask would keep me safe, especially since the event was being held outdoors around the Williams County Courthouse.
According to my finely tuned Baptist preacher crowd counting skills, there were about 200 or so people at the car show. Would you like to guess how many people were concerned with social distancing or were wearing masks? Social distancing? No one bothered. And masks? Five people wore masks: Me and Bethany, a couple selling kettle corn, and a man in a wheel chair. That’s it. Roughly 2.5 percent of the attendees were wearing masks.
Yesterday, I had what I call a Bruce’s Git-r-done Day. I turned 63 today, and I still lack moderation and balance in my life. Hey, the house is on fire! Charge, with an empty squirt gun, and put the fire out! Try as I might to slow down, I find it impossible to do so.
I decided to go to the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles in Bryan to renew my driver’s license. Afterward, I stopped by Bill’s Locker Room to order an embroidered red apron. The BMV was busy, with everyone lined up outside waiting to be waited upon. Out of the 20 or so peopled queued up, four of them were wearing masks. And Bill’s Locker Room? There was a sign on the front door that stressed the importance of wearing masks. Want to know how many employees and customers were wearing masks? One — me. That’s it.
I stopped home to eat lunch with Polly before she headed off to work. I was quite fatigued, but I decided to push myself and drive to Defiance to pick up my prescriptions at Meijer, run our car through the new car wash next door to Kohl’s, and stop by Menard’s to buy two bags of sand.
Roughly 20% of people in Meijer were wearing masks. Menard’s? Everyone was wearing masks. Why? Menard’s requires its customers to wear masks. Damn commies, the lot of them. How dare they tell free-born Americans what they can or can’t do.
The sand, of course, was out in the yard, which I only figured out after traipsing through half the store. As I was headed towards the checkout, I was hit of wave of lightheadedness and fatigued. You’ve pushed yourself too far now, dumb ass.
I managed to check out, crawled into the seat of our Ford Edge, turned the air on high, and sat in Menard’s parking lot for ten or so minutes, hoping to catch a bit of wind in my sail. I finally felt well enough to drive home. I told myself, “this was a really stupid idea.”
II checked my blood pressure and blood sugar level. My glucose level was 62. I took my evening medication, downed a Dr. Pepper, and ate a sandwich. Man, was I tired! I turned the TV on to watch All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC. Halfway through the show, I fell asleep. An hour later, I woke up, and my was body was screaming from head to toe in pain. The pain was so bad that I ran a hot bath and sat in the tub for a half-hour, hoping the pain would abate (and it did).
Around 1:00 a.m. or so, I started trading messages with a woman who was a teen in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church I pastored in southeast Ohio in the 1980s. We had a delightful conversation.
Polly arrived home from work at 2:30 a.m. I told her I was really feeling weak, and my eyesight was blurry. I thought, I’d better check my blood sugar level. What the fuck, it is 40! As any diabetic knows, a 40 reading means its time to head for the emergency room. Not me. I’m Bruce Gerencser, a real American. I can do all things through Bruce!
I started to stand up, only to find that I couldn’t do so. I told Polly, I’m in big trouble. Get me a Dr. Pepper. I chugged it down, no change on my glucose level. WTF! Polly, now quite concerned said, do you want a glass of orange juice? Yes, right away, I replied. 90 minutes later, my blood sugar level rebounded to a whopping 50. It took until 7:00 a.m. for my glucose level to reach 72.
As I reflect on the lack of social distancing and mask wearing by locals andAs I reflect on the lack of social distancing and mask-wearing by locals and my unwillingness to balance my life, I have concluded that American individualism will be the death of us all. While I can smugly and self-righteously chastise locals for not caring about their neighbors, am I really any better? Don’t I owe it to Polly, my children, and my grandchildren to prudently manage my health? It’s one thing for me to push myself a bit, but it’s another thing to run headlong into a brick wall, thinking that I am impervious to harm. I am not.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Genesis: Two fools want more, better information rather than to feel blissfully ignorant all the time. They meet Tim Apple.
Exodus: Egypt, a land of very good administration, responds correctly to a series of plagues by changing nothing about its daily lives or routines.
Golden Calf: People are inexplicably punished for worshiping something shiny and fake.
Daniel: Ferocious beasts defy their duty to attack a man who has committed an offense against his ruler.
Lazarus: Very good illustration of how easy it is to recover if you put your mind to it and why nobody needs health coverage.
Job: Someone is treated almost but not quite as badly as Donald Trump gets treated every day.
Ruth: Ruth accompanies her relative Naomi to a new country in a disgraceful instance of chain migration.
Two Corinthians: There are Corinthians, and there are two of them, for sure!
Joshua and the Battle of Jericho: Very sad story about a man blowing blasts on a trumpet and damaging a wall.
Solomon: A man suggests a very good way of dealing with a disputed baby, but a nasty woman interferes.
Lot: A man’s wife does something different with herself physically, and he sort of notices after the fact.
David and Goliath: Someone makes the mistake of flinging a projectile at a heavily-armored man; they will need to come down on him hard.
Noah: This is a good, inspiring story about a wise man in a floating bunker avoiding a catastrophe, but on the other hand it is bad because he is also surrounded by animals, birds, reptiles — disgusting.
Jonah and the Whale: Bunker again, but worse.
Esther: Failed king listens to a woman about not inflicting violence on people?
Revelation: Beautiful first draft of Trump inauguration speech.
Abraham: Man confusingly remains married to the same woman for decades.
Temptation of Jesus: Man offered infinite worldly power; says no, like an idiot.
I’m going to provide some history of Neo-Confederate, white-identity, apocalyptic evangelicalism, what I call the Cult of the Shining City.
This is who Donald Trump was messaging yesterday with his bible stunt.
For starters, the Cult of the Shining City is not an organized group. The members, most of them, believe they’re just evangelicals. There are members with power who use them and manipulate them.
But there are millions of them, and they worship Donald Trump like a messiah.
None of this is tin-foil hat stuff. It’s not about smoky rooms. It’s the hidden history of how America’s Right has been coopted into an apocalyptic fantasy that currently threatens our safety and the safety of the world.
This is history, not conjecture. It’s how we got here.
Trump’s photo-op yesterday seemed bizarre to everyone but people who grew up in white-identity, apocalyptic evangelicalism.
This was a choreographed messaged that Trump is engaging in a holy battle on behalf of God and Christians, but also a possible call to violence.
Not every Cult of the Shining City member believes Trump is a messiah, but almost all believe he is a holy man fighting on their behalf.
The beliefs vary, but it is an apocalyptic cult that Trump has used to build his base.
To begin, we have to start with the Confederate States of America. Secession was done, in part, based on the belief that the North had violated God’s racist commandments.
They believed in “an Almighty God” who crowned white people as his champions on Earth.
The Confederate States of America was an explicitly Christian nation, in definition and practice. The society was built upon the idea that God was a white supremacist being who ordered whites to enslave lesser people.
White supremacist Christianity was the CSA’s reality.
Confederate preachers like Benjamin M Palmer warned of “perilous atheists” in the North who sought to betray the racist God’s white supremacy religion.
They preached that slavery and white supremacy were ordained by God and that the North was becoming devilish.
….
Jefferson Davis and other Confederate leaders blamed the people’s lack of faith in the racist God for their defeats, ordering days of humiliation and fasting in order to get right.
Failure was seen as God’s fury for disbelief in his white supremacist orders.
When the Civil War ended, it was seen as a reunification of culture, but the Confederate Christianity didn’t just go away. Southern preachers continued preaching that God was a white supremacist and that blacks were to be subjugated and enslaved.
It stills exists now.
One of the Southern preachers who believed in God-ordained white supremacy was Jerry Falwell, whose ministry held segregation as a Godly decree and any attempt toward equality the work of Satan.
Falwell called segregation a “line drawn by God” and warned that any attempt to desegregate or dismantle white supremacy was the work of the Devil and would draw God’s anger.
Like Confederate preachers of old.
Civil Rights protests gained the attention of Confederate Christians like Falwell, who charged that protestors were doing Satan’s work and were being “manipulated” by outside forces, including Communists and anarchists. It was a charge of spiritual war.
Despite popular history claiming Martin Luther King was beloved, he was treated like a satanic antichrist, using Christianity for nefarious purposes people like Falwell and segregationists claimed were Communist and devilish purposes.
Falwell aired his suspicions about MLK and disputed his social justice interpretation of the Bible.
To counteract, Falwell and others actively moved their faith toward hidden white supremacy through ideas of power and economic success.
All tenets of white supremacy.
The new Evangelical Right was white supremacist and Neo-Confederate in nature, but hid that prejudice behind the idea of morality and achieving success through the economic world.
Christianity was about power and profit. Fascistic pursuits behind a smiling veneer.
….
The Deep State conspiracy theory/Qanon is just New World Order, apocalyptic, Cult of the Shining City paranoia
All of it centers around white supremacy, Confederate philosophy, being challenged by evil conspiracies of Jewish interference, traitors, and minority manipulation.
In this fever dream, paranoid reality, Trump is a holy warrior, the last stand against a New World Order coup and the triumph of Satan over God in the holy country of America.
He has played this role to full effect and has been embraced as a faulty messiah.
….
Trump’s posing with the Bible yesterday was a signal that he is the holy warrior, the “chosen one” that many have called him. It’s to prepare the Cult of the Shining City followers for what they’ll see as a holy war of America, God’s chosen nation, against Satan’s forces.
— Jared Yates Sexton, The Muckrake, author of the book AMERICAN RULE: HOW A NATION CONQUERED THE WORLD BUT FAILED ITS PEOPLE
PLEASE. Tell people about this.
I'm going to provide some history of Neo-Confederate, white-identity, apocalyptic evangelicalism, what I call the Cult of the Shining City.
This is who Donald Trump was messaging yesterday with his bible stunt.
Recently, a friend of mine asked her Trump-supporting friends on Facebook to defend the violent clearing of protesters so the President — Bible in hand — could have a photo op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church. My friend sincerely wanted to understand the thinking behind such support. (Please see Donald Trump’s Bible.)
Here’s the first response she received:
You’re assuming what you are seeing is the real story. Watch the documentary at outofshadows.org, research the 6 men that own 95% of the media outlets and explore their political alignments and NWO [New World Order] connections.
As Christians, we all know there is an enemy and he/they have a plan to create a New World Order/One World Government. It’s easy to spot who wants this simply look for their speeches. George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, George Bush, Obama. They’ve all given speeches about the NWO. As Christians we serve God almighty, but do not be mistaken, the enemy has his servants as well in very powerful places. (Ephesians 6:12)
These riots have nothing to do with George Floyd. They have everything to do with Election 2020. If you believe otherwise, I’m sorry.
For 4 years, we’ve experienced Fake Russia Collusion, Impeachment for nothing, a Wuhan Biolab created coronavirus, and now Antifa riots all before the next election. It’s time for everyone to wake up.
What are we to do with such comments? How do you even begin to reach people who think like this? Or have they committed an unpardonable sin of sorts? This man is white, educated, and rich, so not your typical hillbilly with a sixth-grade education and a meth habit. How is it possible for someone to go so far down the proverbial rabbit hole that he loses all sense of reason?
Quite frankly, this kind of thinking scares the shit out me. Is it beyond the pale for these “patriots” to seek a “second amendment remedy,” especially if their demigod Donald Trump is not reelected? Will these Christians accept any electoral outcome except a Trump victory? What happens if Sleepy Joe — Trump’s pet name for Joe Biden — wins and the Democrats control both houses of Congress? Democrats will, most certainly, make swift work of undoing some of the damage inflicted by Trump and his lackeys. How will Evangelicals respond to these reversals?
Typically, I don’t talk politics on my personal Facebook account. In recent days, I have become so enraged over what I am seeing on the nightly news that I decided to make a couple posts about what was going on.
Here’s what I wrote:
Never thought I’d see the day when a U.S. President would use active military personnel to wage war against the American people.
and
Military troops on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. This should sicken every thinking American. We see this in China and other dictatorships, not America.
My friends whom I have met through this blog generally supported my statements. Birds of a feather flock together, right? I was, however, quickly reminded of the fact that most of my friends don’t live in white rural northwest Ohio. Several local residents decided to respond to my posts. That they do so is quite strange since they never comment on anything of mine except the photographs I post from local high school sporting events. It became clear, to me anyway, that my posts hit a nerve. How dare I disparage their man with facts.
Here’s what one young 100% Trumper said:
Are you kidding me! Have you seen the city’s? [sic] It’s called LAW AND ORDER! Pretty crazy to see a Presidential candidate say he was going to DISARM America. You are worried about a President doing what he’s supposed to do, only because his name is Donald Trump. Shame on you!
I responded:
Not only do I watch the news, I grew up in the 1960s. I’ve seen a lot of history. Trump is a self-aggrandizing narcissist who only cares about his reelection. The only shame here is his behavior. You might want to educate yourself about the use of military troops on US soil. It is FORBIDDEN by law, except in dire circumstances— say, the Civil War. Trump did what he did in D.C. because Washington is not a state. It is the responsibility of the Park Rangers and D.C. police to protect government property. And even here, the militarization of the police is troubling. They’ve become soldiers instead of peacekeepers. Trump finally got his military parade. Too bad he trashed the law, Christianity, and the American people to get it.
I received no further comment from this man, save a link to a Federalist article. No discussion on the merits of my comment about the legality of Trump’s actions. Nada, zip, nothing.
This shouldn’t surprise me. I have spent most of my life living in rural Ohio — both in southeast and northwest Ohio. I know that politically I am viewed as a strange duck, a black duckling in the midst of white ducks. The same goes for my lack of religious faith. I love living in the sticks, but I am increasingly depressed by the intractable ignorance I see around me. I don’t want to come off sounding like a know-it-all liberal elitist, but damn, can’t anyone see what Trump is doing to our republic?
While campaigning for presient in 2016, Trump gleefully stated: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” I thought, at the time, that statements such as this one would surely derail Trump’s campaign. Four years later, I must admit Trump was right. When it comes to his Evangelical base — especially those who live in rural states — Trump seems to be coated with Teflon. Nothing sticks to him. Not his lies. Not his policies that harm rural voters. Not his callous indifference towards the death of over 105,000 American from COVID-19. As long as Trump gives the appearance of being Christian and pro-life, Evangelicals are going to vote for him.
Waiting for Evangelicals to have some sort of come-to-reason moment is a waste of time. It ain’t going to happen. And that, my friends, is downright depressing.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The Etch-a-Sketch is made by Ohio Art, a Bryan, Ohio company. Once manufactured in Bryan, it is now made overseas.
I used to be a member of the Growing Up in Bryan, Ohio Facebook group. The group is made up of people who live/lived in Bryan, Ohio. Recently, the subject of racism was brought up and this provoked a lively discussion about the state of race relations in Bryan. This got me to thinking: does racism still exist in rural northwest Ohio and Bryan? Have we reached a place where we live in a post-racial era, even here in homogenous rural Ohio? Before I answer this question, I want to spend some time talking about demographics and my own experiences as a resident of rural northwest Ohio.
My father grew up on a hundred-acre farm three miles south of Bryan and attended Ney High School. My mother moved to Bryan as a teenager. Both of them worked for local Bryan businesses such as K&R Cleaners, The Hub, Carroll Ames, and Bryan Trucking. My father was part of a close-knit ethnic Hungarian group that settled in the Bryan area in the 1920s and 1930s. My parents considered Bryan home, and in 1957 it became my home. My brother and sister were also born in Bryan.
Even though I have spent most of my life living in other places, Bryan is home to me. Try as I might to flee the topographically boring flatlands of rural northwest Ohio, I consider Bryan my home. Over the years, I’ve lived in California, Michigan, Texas, Arizona, and southeast Ohio. I’ve also lived in or near the northwest Ohio communities of Farmer, Deshler, Harrod, Alvordton, Mt. Blanchard, and Findlay. Currently, I live in Ney, a one-stoplight, two-bars village six miles south of Bryan.
Bryan was settled in 1840 and is the seat of Williams County. In 1950, the population was 6,365 people. In 2010, the population was 8,545 people. Bryan saw a 12.9% population growth between 1970 and 1980 and 5.9% growth between 1980 and 1990. Since 1990, the population has grown 8.2%.
The Bryan of today is more racially diverse than at any time in its 175-year history. While this is good news, the reason for the diversity is non-white medical professionals moving to Bryan to work for the local hospital and medical group and white-collar professionals moving here to work for local companies. This diversity is primarily driven by economics.
The Bryan of my youth was 100% white. I was five years old before I saw a black person for the first time — a porter at the Chicago train station. As a teenager, I was told by one proud and ignorant Bryanite that Bryan was 100% white and proud of it. According to him, back in the day, any black caught in town after dark was run out of town. I suspect his attitude was quite common.
In the 1970s, I attended high school in Findlay, Ohio, a community 75 miles southeast of Bryan. The 1970 population of Findlay was 35,800 people. Like Bryan, Findlay was as white as white could be. There were two black students who attended Findlay High School, and they were brother and sister. Today, .3% (886) of Findlay residents are black.
In the mid-1970s, I attended First Baptist Church in Bryan. I can still remember the day that a woman who once attended the church and moved away, returned home with her new black husband. Oh, the racist gossip that ran wild through the church: why, what was she thinkin . . . marrying a black man! Think of the children! It was not long before she and her husband moved on to another church.
It was not until I moved to Pontiac, Michigan to attend Midwestern Baptist College that I came into close contact with blacks. Freshman year, one of my roommates was a black man from Philadelphia. The college was connected with nearby Emmanuel Baptist Church. Emmanuel ran numerous bus routes into Pontiac and Detroit, busing in thousands of blacks. Most of the children from Detroit attended B Sunday school. The B was the designation given for the afternoon Sunday school. It was not long before I figured out that the B stood for black. When an overtly racist man became the bus pastor, one of the first things he did was stop running the buses to Detroit. We were told this was due to budget restraints, but many of us thought the real reason was race.
The college and church were located in a bad part of Pontiac. (Some might argue, is there a good part of Pontiac?) The projects were nearby and the area east of the college was decidedly black. My experiences with the local black community, with its rundown housing and rampant crime, helped to reinforce the racist stereotypes I had been taught by my parents. It didn’t help that gangs of black youth repeatedly broke into the dormitory and ransacked the place while everyone was at church. A few years back, the college relocated to an overwhelmingly white community.
My parents, typical of their generation, were racists. It is impossible to paint the picture any other way. Whether their racism was from their own upbringing or their membership in the John Birch Society, they made no apology for their fundamentalist Christian-driven racism. They had a special hatred for Martin Luther King, Jr. My mother thought King got exactly what he deserved when he was assassinated in 1968. Like it or not, this is my heritage.
In the 1980s, Polly and I lived in southeast Ohio. For a number of years, we were foster parents. One of the children we cared for was black. We had made arrangements to rent a house outside of Somerset, Ohio — where I was pastoring at the time — from a retired school teacher. When we looked at the house, we did not have our foster child with us. Several days before we supposed to move in, the matronly pillar of the community called and said that she decided to not rent the house. We found out later that she told people that she was not going to have a “nigger” living in her house.
We moved to New Lexington, Ohio, and enrolled our foster child in the local public school, thinking little about how hard it might be for her to be the only black kid in the school. Needless to say, she was subjected to daily racial taunts. One day, the principal called us and said our foster child had created a disturbance in class. One of her classmates had called her a “nigger” and she threw her book at her taunter and stormed out of class.
I was quite upset at her behavior. Having never walked in her shoes, I had no way of knowing what it was like to be singled out and taunted for the color of my skin. I gave her the stern Pastor Gerencser lecture, reminding her that she was accountable for behavior and that she couldn’t respond this way every time someone called her a “nigger.” While my words had a ring of truth to them, they were quite insensitive and showed that I didn’t have a clue about how difficult it was for her as a young black woman.
In the mid-1980s, the church I pastored had a black missionary come and present his work. I took the missionary on a tour of the area and we stopped at the Somerset Snack Bar for lunch. The Snack Bar was where locals hung out, and it was always a busy hive of storytelling, gossip, and news. The Snack Bar was quite noisy when we walked in the door, but as patrons glanced up to see who was coming in, the noise quickly dissipated. I later learned that several of the locals were upset over the Baptist preacher bringing a “nigger” into the Snack Bar.
In 1995, I moved back home to northwest Ohio, pastoring a church in Alvordton for a short time, and then pastoring a church in West Unity for seven years. Polly and I have lived in this area now for 23 years. This is our home. Our 6 children and 13 grandchildren all live within 20 minutes of our home.
It was during my time as pastor of Our Father’s House in West Unity that I began to address my own latent racism and the racism that percolated under the surface of the local community. As my politics began to move to the left, my preaching took on a social gospel flavor, and this included preaching on racism.
When a church member would talk about “colored” people, I would ask them, so what color were they? Oh, you know what I mean, preacher! Yes, I do. So, how is the color of their skin germane to the story you are telling? I did the same when members talked about “those” people — “those” meaning blacks, Mexicans, or people perceived to be welfare bums.
What made things difficult was that we had a black man attending the church. He was a racist’s dream — the perfect stereotype. He was on welfare, didn’t work, lived in Section 8 housing, had an illegitimate child, and spent most of his waking hours trying to figure out how to keep from working. The church financially helped him several times, and we brought him groceries on numerous occasions. One time he called and told me he needed groceries. I told him that I would have someone bring them over to him later that day. He then told me, preacher, I’m a meat and potato man, so I don’t want no canned food. Bring me some meat. He’s still waiting for those groceries to be delivered.
As I read the comments on the Growing Up in Bryan, Ohio Facebook group (the post is no longer available), I noticed that there was an age divide. Older people such as I thought Bryan was still, to some degree, racist, while younger people were less inclined to think Bryanites were racist, or they thought local racists were a few bad apples. I think that this reflects the fact that race relations are markedly “better” now in this area.
The reasons are many:
Older generations, those raised in the days of race riots, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jim Crow are dying off.
Local residents are treated by doctors who are not white. My wife’s gynecologist is a dark-skinned Muslim.
Interracial couples now live in the area.
Migrants workers, once a part of the ebb and flow of the farming season, are now primarily permanent residents.
Younger adults and teenagers no longer think race is a big deal.
Music, television, and the Internet have brought the world to our doorstep, allowing us to experience other cultures.
Sports, in which the majority of athletes in the three major professional sports — football, basketball, and baseball — are non-white. Cable and satellite TV broadcast thousands of college and professional games featuring non-white players.
Exposure breeds tolerance. Bigoted attitudes about gays and same-sex marriage are on prominent display in rural northwest Ohio. These attitudes remind me of how things once were when it came to race. Time and exposure to people who are different from us can’t help but change how we view things like race and sexual orientation. My children are quite accepting and tolerant of others, and I hope that these attitudes will be passed on to my grandchildren. We are closer today than we ever have been to Martin Luther King’s hope of “a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
We haven’t arrived. Latent, institutional racism must continue to be challenged. Recent protests and riots across the United States reveal that we have a long, long, long way to go before we reach King’s hope and dream. Unfortunately, there are those who use race and fear to stoke distrust and hate of those who are different. We must forcefully marginalize (and vote out of office) those who want to return America to the 1950s. We must also be willing to judge our own attitudes about race. We enlightened liberals gleefully look at the extreme right and we see racism and bigotry in all its glory. Yet, if we are honest, such things exist in our own backyard. None of us can rest until we have achieved a post-racial world. We have much work to do.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Last week, I wrote a post about my experiences shopping at the local Meijer store. (Please see Living in the Land of Jesus, Guns, and Republicans: I Went Shopping at Meijer Today.) Several days later, a twenty-six-year-old Christian woman who describes herself as an anti-mask “patriot” took to social media to express her outrage towards an elderly mask-wearing woman who dared to “touch” her shopping cart while shopping at Meijer.
After receiving universal condemnation from locals, this “patriot” wrote:
In typical “patriot” fashion, the woman deleted her posts. She didn’t apologize or say she overreacted. Nope, she just deleted the posts and pretended that it never happened. This post is my way of memorializing her act of ignorance and stupidity.
I question, at times, the punitive nature of social media, but I have come to see that the only way to deal with some people is to publicly shame them — the equivalent of being put in stocks on the public square. I am appreciative of locals who stood up to this bully and who also defended the elderly woman. I can be quite critical of the denizens of rural northwest Ohio — rightly so — but in this instance locals responded appropriately to this self-described American “patriot.”
And what, exactly, do mask-wearing and social distancing have to do with patriotism? There seems to be this notion among rural, white, right-wing Trump supporters that all of their beliefs and stands are patriotic in nature. We saw this thinking on full display ninety miles from here when militia members and Ever-Trumpers armed themselves with assault rifles and took over the Michigan statehouse. They called themselves “patriots,” when, in fact, they were bullies and thugs.
Personally, I am not a fan of the word patriotism. Its use and meaning have been co-opted by Trump and the Republican party, and to a lesser degree the Democrats. Let’s debate the issues without our discussions devolving into social media frenzies, the equivalent of two chimpanzees throwing shit at each other.
You would think that the Coronavirus pandemic would bring Americans together, rallying us around a common cause. Unfortunately, thanks to President Trump’s bombastic, ignorant speeches, press conferences, and tweets, a sizeable percentage of adult Americans believe that the pandemic is all about depriving Trump of his birthright, persecuting Christians, and turning the United States into a socialist state.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I learned of his death in a text from his sister. Seeming to anticipate my question, she said it had nothing to do with COVID-19. Rather, he had fallen asleep for the last time.
By today’s standards, he was young to have died that way. Still, it somehow wasn’t a surprise: Given his condition, it’s almost surprising that he made it into his mid-50s. He never learned how to speak or feed himself; he never acquired the basic day-to-day skills most of us have — whether through instruction or osmosis — by the time we’re about three or four years old. Lacking in motor control, he could not walk without supervision, and even with help, those walks were brief. Other kinds of exercise were out of the question, so he — who was naturally big — became obese, which may have led to other conditions he developed.
For most of his life, he was institutionalized. In fact, he was a patient at one of the most notorious mental hospitals — Willowbrook State School, in Staten Island, New York — when a local Eyewitness News reporter exposed conditions that would have made Hard Times seem like Pollyanna. (I once told someone, only half-jokingly, that my cousin helped to make Geraldo Rivera famous.) At the time of his death, my cousin — whom I’ll call Randall — had been living in a group home for more than half of his life.
Although he didn’t succumb to COVID-19, his demise seems — at least to me — connected to a colleague, a student and a friendly acquaintance of mine who died that way. And their deaths all made me angry for the same reason.
My aunt was a devout Roman Catholic who later became an Evangelical Christian. When Randall was a toddler and his sister — whom I’ll name Lorinda — was entering school, they had serious problems. Randall, as I mentioned, wasn’t developing in normal ways. Lorinda, on the other hand, was very intelligent and articulate, but had difficulties that, as it turned out, were related to her vision. Then, as now, my aunt believed that faith and prayer could heal. That also meant that her children’s maladies were a signal from God that she had been, in some way, sinful. In the milieu in which I grew up — pre-Vatican II Catholic in a post-Vatican II world — such beliefs were still common.
Lorinda nearly went blind. Only intervention from a social worker got her the treatment she needed. That same social worker helped to secure a place for Randall at Willowbrook, apparently unaware of its dire conditions. To be fair, at that time, half a century ago, there was little, if any, effective treatment available anywhere in the US for profoundly retarded people.
My anger over what Lorinda and Randall endured at such a tender age re-surfaced with the deaths of my colleague, student and friend because, at bottom, one cause of their deaths was misguided and manipulated religious faith. One reason why leaders at every level of government in the United States have responded to the threat of COVID-19 in ways that were ineffectual, duplicitous, or simply callous is pressure from fundamentalist religious organizations, whether Evangelical Christian in “red” states or Ultra-Orthodox Jews (whose political and social stances are all but identical to those of Evangelical Christians) in large “blue” cities. Some of those leaders are fundamentalists; others, like the President, have allied themselves with the Christian equivalents of Wahhabis because they know their election (or re-election) prospects depend on doing so. That is why mayors, governors, and the President have been willing to throw science to the wind and allow religious gatherings — as if such congregations are any less likely to spread the virus than, say, a concert, art opening, or sporting event.
I am angry today because cynical, rapacious political and religious leaders are still playing on people’s insecurities, and stoking their fears, to inculcate them with disproved notions about who or what is causing illness and pandemics—and how to deal with those things. The blood of my cousin, colleague, student and friend is on their hands.
Repost from 2015. Edited, rewritten, and corrected.
Many years ago, I was watching the Old Time Gospel Hour on TV. At the time, the Old Time Gospel Hour was the flagship program of Thomas Road Baptist Church and Jerry Falwell.
We don’t believe in equal rights for women. We believe in superior rights for women. We believe in putting women on a pedestal.
I remember thinking, at the time, that makes a lot of sense. The Equal Rights Amendment was viewed as an attempt to blur the lines between the sexes; to make our culture unisex, which was considered by Evangelicals to be a grievous, damning sin.
The Evangelical pastors of my youth and college years taught me:
Women are to submit to men.
Women are best suited to be mothers and keepers of the home.
Women are emotional and men are logical.
Women should be discouraged from going to college because graduating from college makes it less likely that a woman will be a good mother and keeper of the home.
If a woman is insistent on going to college and refuses to marry the nice boy who sits behind her in church, then she should go to a Christian college. Her career choices? Pastor’s wife, single missionary, or Christian school teacher.
Women are not suited for intellectual endeavors.
Women should not be involved in making major decisions. The decision-maker in the home is the husband. The decision-makers in the church are men, and political office is reserved for men.
Women are to conjugally perform whenever their husbands demand it. Being tired from feeding the children, changing diapers, cleaning the house, homeschooling the children, and making sure the king of the home’s every need and whim is met, is no excuse for not joyfully having sex for three minutes before her God-fearing husband falls off to sleep. If she doesn’t put out, she is risking her husband having an adulterous affair and it will be HER fault.
The above social strictures showed up in countless sermons. Is it any wonder so many Evangelical marriages are dysfunctional; that women schooled in such an environment have difficultly functioning in the real world?
Even in my marriage, I was a typical “I am the boss, chief decision-maker, you submit to me” husband. I made ALL the decisions. For twenty years this is how we “did” marriage. Gradually, as I became more liberal in my understanding of life, I realized how hurtful this was to women in general and to my dear wife in particular.
For many years, Polly found it hard to make decisions. She told me one time that she was “afraid to make decisions because she might make a wrong decision and then you’ll be mad at me.” I said “Yep. That’s the price of admission. Making decisions means you might piss someone off.” As a supervisor where she works, she is required to make decisions that inevitably leave one or more parties unhappy. When she comes home discouraged by the response of this or that person, I remind her of what Colin Powell said about leadership:
Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.
Bit by bit, I see Polly throwing off the bondage of yesteryear, but I do wonder if she’ll ever be totally free from teachings of the past — I know I’m not. Submit. Obey. Do what your husband says. He is the head of the home. It is hard to shake such indoctrination.
Is marriage really a partnership when only one partner decides everything? Certainly, we each have strengths and weaknesses. I am not about to enter my wife’s kitchen. First, we will all starve. Second, she is a far better cook than I will ever be in ten lifetimes. On the other hand, I pay the bills, write the checks, and manage the money. Thanks to my business background, I am good at handling money, bills, and debt, and I am able to analyze numbers on the fly. I do what I am good at and so does Polly. Our marriage is now a partnership of equals, each doing those things that best serve the partnership. (On a funnier note, she’d rather mow the grass and I’d rather clean the house.)
There is ONE area where I refuse to relinquish control: the remote control! It’s mine, dammit. Don’t touch it. If I died today, Polly would never watch TV again because she has no clue and little interest in how the remote works. She can run a sewing machine and do all sorts of intricate stitches, but ask her to change a TV program or set up a recording and suddenly she’s the young woman wooing her man, hoping he’ll do what she wants him to.
I digress…
How did Jerry Falwell’s superior rights for women work out practically in the church?
You be the judge. Does what follows seem superior to you?
Women sang in the choir and did special music numbers
Women played the piano and organ
Women cleaned the church
Women worked in the nursery
Women taught children in Sunday school and Junior church
Women cooked food for potlucks and church meals
Women cleaned the church
Women took meals to shut-ins
Women did any menial work at the church that needed done
This list looks very similar to what was expected of women at home.
Women were not permitted to be pastors, deacons, elders, or teach older children. They were not allowed to teach any group of people that had adult men in it. Doing so would violate the Biblical command for a woman to never usurp the place/authority of a man. After all, God/Jesus is a man, as were the apostles. End of discussion.
Granted, there is great improvement in some sectors of the Christian church when it comes to how women are treated. Women can now be pastors, elders, deacons, worship leaders, etc. Women teach theology at some Christian colleges. Thanks to feminism, women have a lot more opportunities than they did years ago. But the church still has a long way to go. Vast swaths of the Evangelical church still actively practice the repression of women. They sincerely believe they are following the teachings of the Bible when they do so. If God said it . . . end of discussion. As a result, thousands of churches continue to be man-only institutions.
One church I co-pastored wouldn’t even allow women to speak in a public congregational business meeting. If they had a question, they were required to whisper the question to a man and he would ask the question. I visited a Mennonite church years ago where the women sat on one side and the men on the other. Keeping to the mantra that women should never lead, when the congregation sang, the women always started singing one note after the men. That said, the singing was spectacular.
In the early 1970s, my mother gave me an important lesson in equal rights for all. She worked as a nurse’s aide for Winebrenner Nursing Home (now Birchaven Village), a Church of God-owned facility in Findlay Ohio. Female aides were paid less than male aides because the male aides did more of the “heavy” work. However, as my mom found out, both sexes did the “heavy” work.
So my Mom, ever the crusader, sued Winebrenner in federal court. At the time, to a fifteen-year-old Evangelical teenager, her behavior seemed silly and embarrassing. There were only a few coins difference in the wages, why bother? I thought at the time. I was so embarrassed when the lawsuit story hit the front page of the newspaper, complete with my mom holding a picket sign. But she was right. Winebrenner was discriminatory in their treatment of women. My mother filed a federal lawsuit under the Title 7 provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The court agreed, and my mother won her lawsuit. While I was embarrassed while this was being aired out in public, I now see how brave my mother was; to stand up for what was right; to dare demand that women be treated equally.We still have a long way to go on the issue of equality. Women are still treated as inferior to men. The glass ceiling exists, regardless of whether troglodytes like Phyllis Schlafly can see it. Yes, things are BETTER, but we should not rest until we are a society that is blind to gender, sexual orientation, race, and religion. Utopian? Perhaps. Justice and fairness require that we press forward even when it seems failure is certain. That’s one lesson my mom taught me, one that I will never forget.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
