The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
In March 2018, Robert DeLand Jr. a Catholic priest in the Saginaw, Michigan area and one time pastor of St. Agnes Church in Freeland, Michigan, was accused of sexually assaulting children.
Michael Kransz, a reporter for Michigan Live, wrote at the time:
Investigators say nearly half a dozen people have come forward with stories of alleged sexual abuse, attempted or otherwise, at the hands of a Mid-Michigan priest charged this week with sexual assault.
Some of the new allegations against the Rev. Robert DeLand Jr., 71, date back nearly three decades, and all of them involve people who were minors at the time and accessed through DeLand’s role as a priest, said Tittabawassee Township Detective Brian Berg.
Apart from one female, most of the alleged victims are male, Berg said.
“We want to encourage these victims to know that we’re going to hear them, we’re going to listen and we’re going to leave no stone unturned,” Berg said. “No one is going to stand alone in this anymore.”
In addition to victim statements, Berg said police are receiving “dozens and dozens” of tips about the Freeland pastor since his arrest Sunday night, Feb. 25, at his Saginaw Township condominium on Mallard Cove.
“We’re trying to get our hands around the enormity of it and put it into some kind of logical order,” the detective said.
Saginaw Township Police Chief Donald Pussehl said his office has since received five calls regarding DeLand’s “questionable behavior” in the past.
“Throughout the years, some of the things he would do with young boys, such as inviting them to his home, was somewhat strange,” Pussehl said, relaying the callers’ concerns.
Chris Pham, a spokesperson for the Catholic Diocese of Saginaw, said the diocese is unaware of any past accusations against DeLand.
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DeLand’s arrest, and subsequent charges of sexual assault, came after Tittabawassee and Saginaw townships finished their months-long investigations into allegations of sex crimes involving alcohol, drugs and underage boys.
Separate cases, similar situations
Although the cases were separate, one involving a 21-year-old man and another a 17-year-old male, they were similar in DeLand’s alleged predatory tactics, said Saginaw County Assistant Prosecutor Mark Gaertner.
“There was a number of grooming techniques that were used to befriend the victim, to prey on the victim’s weaknesses and to lure the victim to the residence on Mallard Cove,” Gaertner said Monday. “That was quite similar to the same techniques used in the case where he was arrested last night.”
That incident involved the 17-year-old victim.
The alleged criminal acts involve attempted or actual, unwanted sexual contact.
DeLand, known to some as “Father Bob,” held a variety of positions at numerous parishes and Catholic schools in the Saginaw and Bay City areas since he was ordained in 1973, according to Pham.
DeLand’s tenure at St. Agnes in Freeland began in July 2011. Before that, Pham said, he served as pastor at St. James Parish in Bay City from July 2005 until July 2011. During that time, he was chaplain of All Saints High School.
Following the criminal accusations, DeLand was placed on administrative leave, according to a diocese statement.
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Saginaw Township’s investigation began after a 21-year-old man reported in August that DeLand made unwanted, sexual advances on him while the pair were together at the pastor’s Mallard Cove condominium.
“Because of alcohol use, it did go further than what the victim had ever thought it would go,” Pussehl said.
Pussehl said the pair became acquainted through secular circumstances.
In November, parents of a 17-year-old male doing court-ordered community service with DeLand voiced concerns about the pastor’s behavior to Tittabawasee Township police.
“His parents were very concerned that he was grooming their son and touching him inappropriately and buying things for him and spending a tremendous amount of time with him,” Berg said.
Some of the alleged instances took place at the condominium, and others in DeLand’s residence in the church rectory, Berg said.
Berg took those concerns to the Saginaw County Prosecutor’s Office, where he learned of the Saginaw Township investigation. The 17-year-old agreed to help investigators by going undercover, ultimately leading to DeLands arrest.
DeLand was charged with attempted second-degree criminal sexual conduct and gross indecency between males in the Saginaw Township case. Both are five-year felonies.
A teen is suing a Saginaw-area priest, accusing him of “grooming” the high school student with gifts and invitations to his condo, leading to inappropriate contact including back rubs, groping and suggestions to view gay porn.
The Rev. Robert DeLand was charged last month with criminal sexual conduct following accusations from two males, ages 17 and 21. Police say they have received other complaints since his arrest.
The 71-year-old priest is on administrative leave from St. Agnes in Freeland, where he has had been pastor since July 2011, the Catholic Diocese of Saginaw reported. The suit also names the diocese and its leader, Bishop Joseph Cistone, claiming steps weren’t taken to stop the cleric or look into allegations about DeLand’s conduct.
DeLand allowed the 17-year-old he met last year to perform community service at the church that the youth was ordered to complete over six months, according to the lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court.
When the youth returned to school that fall, the pastor was a volunteer “greeter” there, participated in school events and “engaged in a systematic pattern of ‘grooming’ behavior …, targeting the minor child, gaining his trust and/or providing him with gifts and favors,” attorney Todd J. Weglarz wrote.
Over time, DeLand took the student out of class to talk; bought him an expensive “vape” machine; invited the teen to his home to smoke; and “made inappropriate physical contact … during the school day, including back rubs, hugs and groping of the buttocks,” the court filing read. The priest also allegedly paid for his therapy to help deal with a friend’s suicide, texted or called him up to 17-20 times a day, then encouraged the student “to view large quantities of gay pornography,” according to the document.
DeLand invited the teen to his Saginaw Township condo last month to “party,” but that day, the cleric touched him “inappropriately, groping and fondling his crotch and buttocks, feet and toes,” the suit asserts.
The priest was charged Feb. 26 with one count each of second-degree criminal sexual conduct and gross indecency between male persons. He also was charged with one count of attempted second-degree criminal sexual conduct/personal injury for an incident involving a 21-year-old, 70th District Court records show.
DeLand, who has been ordered by the court during the Feb. 26 hearing to wear an electronic tether and have no contact with anyone under age 21, could not be reached Monday.
His attorney and diocese representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit, which seeks at least $75,000 in damages, contends DeLand abused his position while Catholic Diocese of Saginaw leaders failed to properly investigate allegations he abused the teen as well as others, “which created a climate whereby boundary violations and inappropriate sexual misconduct directed towards children and were permitted, condoned and encouraged,” Weglarz said.
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Earlier today, DeLand entered a no contest plea on charges of criminal sexual conduct in the second degree, gross indecency between males, and imitation of a controlled substance manufacture and distribution. DeLand was sentenced to 2-15 years in prison, and 5 years probation.
Evangelical and Roman Catholic blogs and news sites are buzzing with posts about the anti-abortion movie “Unplanned.” Starring Abby Johnson, a former clinic director for Planned Parenthood, the movie supposedly reveals the deep, dark, evil agenda of those who are pro-choice. According to the movie, Johnson had a come-to-Jesus moment and left Planned Parenthood after seeing an ultrasound of 13-week fetus and concluding that it was a baby. Anti-abortionists have turned Johnson into their latest saint, but as the following excerpt from Texas Monthly will show, her story contains omissions, contradictions, and outright lies. Nate Blakeslee writes:
As it happens, the discrepancy between Johnson’s account and Planned Parenthood’s records is just one of many problems with her story. Johnson describes my piece as the “sole source for every other abortion-supporting website to try and debunk my story.” This is flattering but far from true. My report followed on the heels of an account from the online magazine Salon, which was the first to report on an alternative reason Johnson may have quit her job: She had been disciplined by her boss shortly before she had her alleged conversion experience. Johnson, who was in her late twenties when she became clinic director, had been placed on a “performance improvement plan,” a fact she did not deny when I interviewed her not long after the Salon report came out. Johnson claimed she had fallen out of favor because she was resisting pressure to increase the number of abortions the clinic performed (a claim Planned Parenthood denies) and that she was never afraid she was going to be fired. But Salon discovered another curious fact. Johnson did not show up at the offices of the local anti-abortion organization, led by an activist named Shawn Carney, until nine days after she says she had her crisis of conscience. Oddly, she gave a local radio interview attacking Carney’s organization the day after she says she witnessed the disturbing ultrasound. (Johnson told me back in 2009 that she was still struggling with how to handle her crisis of conscience and wanted to keep up appearances.)
Then there was the Texas Observer story, which came out shortly after mine. Observer reporter Saul Elbein managed to land an interview with Johnson’s close friend Laura Kaminczak, who had remained tight with Johnson since college and who had been an assistant director at another Planned Parenthood clinic. The interview is more devastating to Johnson’s credibility than any set of records could ever be. Kaminczak knew all about Johnson’s troubles at work because she had the same troubles herself. She told the Observer that an email exchange between the two friends—one that discussed their respective coworkers in a highly inappropriate fashion—was discovered by one of Kaminczak’s subordinates, who took it up the chain of command. Kaminczak was fired, and Johnson was required to begin reporting to her own boss on a weekly basis.
According to Kaminczak, Johnson was upset, and she lashed out in a way calculated to cause the most harm she possibly could. “This whole thing is really just about a disgruntled employee,” Kaminczak told the Observer. “That’s all. It’s all just her way of getting back at [her boss].” Kaminczak said that Johnson did in fact mention seeing an abortion performed on an ultrasound not long before she quit but that she wasn’t at all upset about it. In fact, Johnson said the clinic’s increased use of ultrasound was likely to result in more effective procedures that were easier on the patient. There was certainly no description, replete with gruesome details, like the one she would later give. That story, Kaminczak said, was “bullshit.”
Johnson’s decision to join the Coalition for Life, the same anti-abortion group that had picketed her clinic for years, was “completely opportunistic,” Kaminczak told the Observer.
“She called me two weeks before this whole thing broke,” Kaminczak said, “and she told me she was thinking about going to the coalition. She had been having serious money problems—she’d been talking about bankruptcy—and she told me that Shawn [Carney] had promised her $3,000 speaking gigs if she came over.”
When Elbein questioned Johnson about Kaminczak’s account, she didn’t deny that the email exchange had occurred, but she insisted that it was not why she had been disciplined, and she denied having told her friend that she was considering declaring bankruptcy.
Johnson did go public with her story and was booked on Bill O’Reilly’s show shortly thereafter. From there the story of the converted clinic director began snowballing and never stopped—despite the investigative reporting done by myself and others.
Much as she did with Texas Monthly, Johnson has dismissed the Texas Observer, which has a long history of award-winning reporting, as a “liberal publication.” (Full disclosure: I worked there sixteen years ago.) But Elbein’s reporting speaks for itself. Kaminczak, who had, after all, just been fired by Planned Parenthood, had no incentive to come to her former employer’s defense. Nor did she have anything to gain by talking to the Observer; sometimes people just tell the truth because it is in their nature to do so.
And sometimes it is not. If you don’t want to believe Johnson’s close friend, how about Johnson herself? As I reported in my original story, Johnson’s own contemporaneous account on Facebook of her decision to leave the clinic does not line up well with the story she began telling publicly a month later. This is what she wrote on the night she quit:
Alright. Here’s the deal. I have been doing the work of two full time people for two years. Then, after I have been working my whole big butt off for them and prioritizing that company over my family, my friends and pretty much everything else in my life, they have the nerve to tell me that my job performance is “slipping.” WHAT???!!! That is crazy. Anyone that knows me knows how committed I was to that job. They obviously do not value me at all. So, I’m out and I feel really great about it!
Johnson never mentioned being pressured to increase abortions, witnessing the ultrasound-guided procedure, or suffering a moral crisis.
I confronted Johnson with these posts in the winter of 2009 in an interview at the offices of the Coalition for Life, which was just down the street from the clinic. Johnson sat on a couch with a cushion in her lap, not far from where she had sat when she told her conversion story for the very first time, to her erstwhile adversary Shawn Carney. He was perched nearby as I questioned Johnson, nodding supportively. Johnson told me, in essence, that the Facebook account was a cover story she cooked up until she could figure out what she really wanted to say.
One of Johnson’s conflicting explanations for why she left has to be false. How are we supposed to judge whether or not Johnson is telling the truth now? Well, in addition to the discrepancies outlined above, she also told me that abortions were performed by a for-profit company at Planned Parenthood (they are not), that local anti-abortion activists had never threatened physical violence (they had), and that she never made plans to go public with her story (she did).
And, of course, there are the records of the procedures performed—or not performed—on that fateful day in Bryan. Johnson seems to feel the version held by the Department of State Health Services—the ones the agency has refused to share with reporters—will vindicate her account. Unless the department changes its current policy, we may never know. But a person could be forgiven for asking if the release of the records would really change anything. If you view Abby Johnson’s story as an inspiring parable of redemption, there’s likely very little that would change your mind. Likewise, if you don’t think the government—or anyone else—should be telling women not to have abortions, are you really going to go see this movie?
The Abby Johnson story is a rabbit hole. I, for one, am climbing out. Enjoy the film.
Johnson, a Baptist-turned-Lutheran-turned-Episcopalian-turned Catholic, had two abortion herself before giving birth to her daughter. Johnson and her husband have seven children.
13 week fetus
Recently, Johnson was quoted as saying, “I don’t believe in punishing women who seek to have abortion services.” When asked if she supports abolishing abortion in Texas, Johnson replied, “Of course. But I don’t support bills that criminalize women.” Johnson believes women who have abortions are “victims,” not criminals. And therein is revealed the hypocrisy of Abby Johnson and many of her fellow anti-abortion zealots. If life begins at fertilization and abortion is murder, then those who materially participate in aborting a fetus are guilty of capital murder. Johnson wants abortion doctors prosecuted for murder, but not the women having the abortions. Of course, she has to believe this due to her own abortions. To say that women should be prosecuted for murdering their “babies” means that Johnson, herself, should be arrested and charged with a capital crime; a crime, by the way, that carries the death penalty in Texas.
In Texas, you don’t have to actually pull the trigger to be charged with murder. If you materially participate in a murder, in the eyes of the law you are just as guilty as the person who snuffed out a person’s life. If, as anti-abortionist say, abortion is murder, then everyone who participates in the procedure: doctor, nurse, clinic staff, and patient, are guilty of homicide. Is this not the logical conclusion of believing life begins at conception? Why do anti-abortionists such as Johnson refuse to own this fact? The same goes for anti-abortionists who make exceptions for rape and incest. The only rationally sound anti-abortion — I refuse to use the term pro-life since most pro-lifers are only concerned with the pre-born — position is one that outlaws and criminalizes abortion regardless of the reason.
Let me conclude this post with one further observation about the “abortion is murder” position. If it is God who opens and closes the womb, and Jesus holds in his hand the keys to life and death, doesn’t this make the Christian God the greatest abortionist and murderer since Adam and Eve got off the Ark? Far more inseminated eggs/fetuses are miscarried than are aborted. Who is culpable for these miscarriages? Damn, theology is a bitch, isn’t it? God alone is to blame for miscarriages, thus he is the greatest abortionist of all time. And if this is true, shouldn’t God be arrested, charged with murder, and executed? Most Evangelical anti-abortionists are pro-death penalty. These immoral hypocrites believe serial killers, mass murderers, and abortion doctors should be executed. Fine, but shouldn’t God face the same punishment? Or are his “murders” somehow different from those committed by mere mortals? Perhaps it is time for God to be strapped to a gurney and given a lethal injection. If abortion is murder, how can Evangelicals arrive at any other conclusion but this one?
Bruce Gerencser, 61, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 40 years. He and his wife have six grown children and twelve 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. For more information about Bruce, please read the About page.
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Within the past forty-eight hours, two news items related to the Catholic Church caught my attention. One saddened me; the other left me furious but not surprised.
Les francaises sont tres choqués wrote a friend of mine who lives just outside the City of Light. Tout le monde est tres choqué, I responded. Indeed, the French were shocked at the Notre Dame Cathedral fire, and so was the world. I have divorced myself from the Catholicism in which I was raised, and my friend is a non-believer of Jewish heritage. But we both love art, architecture, history and Paris itself, so we feared the loss of one of the monuments Sir Kenneth Clark all but defined as civilization itself. Even in a country that prides itself on laïcité, the Notre Dame is the very epicenter of the nation: distances between Paris and other points in France are measured from the Cathedral.
It seems, thankfully, that the main structure of the Cathedral, and its iconic rose windows, were spared. But as the spire burned away, a leader of the Roman Church was igniting controversy—and re-inflaming old wounds some of us have suffered at the hands of the church’s entrusted servants.
I am referring to a letter from Benedict XVI, the Pope Emeritus. He’d written it several days before the Notre Dame conflagration, but it was going viral right around the time when les pompiers were expressing uncertainty as to whether the 850-year-old house of worship could be saved. Even in an age defined by an American President whose explanation of “the crisis at the border” might be confused with a porn movie script that was rejected because its plot was too unbelievable, Benedict’s explication of the origins of sexual abuse by priests would be seen as disingenuous or simply dishonest if it weren’t so bizarre and discombobulated. Not surprisingly, he blames an “egregious event”: the “collapse” of “previously normative standards regarding sexuality” in the 1960s:
The matter begins with the state-prescribed and supported introduction of children and youths into the nature of sexuality…
Sexual and pornographic movies then became a common occurrence, to the point that they were screened at newsreel theaters [Bahnhofskinos]…
Among the freedoms that the Revolution of 1968 sought to fight for was this all-out sexual freedom, one which no longer conceded any norms.
So far, nothing is surprising. Benedict is simply employing what seems to be the Church’s “go-to” explanation: Sexual permissiveness is to blame, and it started in the ‘60s. Francis himself has said as much. But, from there, Benedict seems to be taking his cues in critical thinking from our Porn Connoisseur-In-Chief:
The mental collapse was also linked to a propensity for violence. That is why sex films were no longer allowed on airplanes, because violence would break out among the small community of passengers. And since the clothing of that time equally provoked aggression, school principals also made attempts at introducing school uniforms with a view to facilitating a climate of learning.
Part of the physiognomy of the Revolution of ‘68 was that pedophilia was then also diagnosed as allowed and appropriate.
Now, maybe I haven’t flown enough, but I never knew that “sex films” were shown during flights. Sure, I’ve been on transatlantic flights where the likes of Léon the Professional and La Femme Nikita were shown. And, yes, Europeans are less squeamish than Americans or other people are about seeing some skin in their movies, but I would hardly label those two films, or any other airline cinematic offerings, as “sex films.” Moreover, while there has been some violence among passengers, I don’t recall hearing of any that was provoked by the showing of anything on an airborne screen.
Some school principals indeed made “attempts at introducing school uniforms.” But, as far as I can tell, any “aggression” provoked by students’ attire wasn’t a result of its sexual provocativeness; rather, it was a result of kids trying to impress each other with designer labels or being enraged by seeing the colors of a rival gang.
And, I’m no expert in the field, but to my knowledge, nowhere has pedophilia been “diagnosed” as “allowed and appropriate” except, perhaps, in NAMBLA literature. Certainly, no one approves of it: Almost any time a teacher, priest or someone else is accused of inappropriate contact, the cries for his or her removal are all but unanimous among parents and others in the community.
So, the former Pope is either seriously deluded about the phenomenon of priests taking advantage of the young people entrusted to them—or he, like too many other church officials, is trying to deflect blame away from those who deserve it: the perpetrators and those who enable and, worse, fail to penalize them.
While the original look and “feel” of the Notre Dame’s spire cannot be replicated, and artworks and artifacts lost in the blaze cannot be replaced, at least most of the cathedral’s grandeur can be saved and/or restored. The same cannot be said for the trust and faith many people had in their priests and church as long as the likes of Benedict offer up explanations for the real crisis in his church that are no more credible for than the ones the American President offers for the Trumped-up “crisis at the border.”
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
Roy McClendon-Thompson, the chief financial officer for Tabernacle Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, was arrested weeks ago and charged with embezzling over $100,000 from the church. McClendon-Thompson was released on a $15,000 bond. On April 8, McClendon-Thompson shot and killed his alleged lover, 45-year-old James Curtis Jones. Later that same day, with police in hot pursuit, McClendon-Thompson crashed into a dump truck. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
In March 2018, I posted a story about Mormon Sunday school teacher Noel Anderson’s arrest on aggravated sexual assault charges. At the time, Anderson admitted molesting ” four children between the ages of two and six over the past seven years.” Yesterday, Anderson, 23, was sentenced to fifty years in prison without the possibility of parole.
Anderson’s arrest and conviction troubled his fellow church members. One church member said, “He was an outstanding youth in our church. The gold standard for what you would want your son to grow up to be.” He may have been an “outstanding youth,” but he was also a sexual predator. Faith does not protect children from such people.
I do find myself wondering what, exactly, went wrong with this boy. News reports say that Anderson molested these children for seven years. This means he was 15 when he began preying on children. While my heart goes out to the victims, I do feel sorry for Anderson. He will be 73 years old before he is released from prison. I wonder, what drove him to molest these children? Was there anything in his past, his upbringing, that was a contributing factor? Were there other victims, children that have not come forward? How did Anderson behave while on mission?
One thing is for certain, child molesters don’t stop harming children until they are caught. I have no doubt that the victims coming forward saved other children from being preyed upon by Anderson. If they had not spoken up, Anderson would have continued in his predatory ways. More ruined lives left in the wake of his vile behavior.
For the first time in history, atheists constitute the largest religious group in America. [All praise be to Loki.] According to the General Social Survey, the number of Americans who have no religion has increased 266% over the past three decades and now account for 23.1% of the population, just barely edging out Catholics and Evangelicals as the nation’s dominant faith. Mainline Protestant churches have suffered the greatest collapse, declining 62.5% since 1982 and now comprising just 10.8% of the U.S. population
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As religiosity has declined, social ills have abounded. [Knowles plays loose with statistics, choosing to focus on single categories, and not Christianity as a whole. Christianity is still the dominant majority religion in America.] Nearly one in five American adults suffers from anxiety disorders, which now constitute the most common mental illness in the country. One in six Americans takes antidepressant drugs, a 65% surge over just 15 years. The problem is particularly acute among younger Americans. While depression diagnoses have increased 33% since 2013, that number is up 47% among Millennials and 63% among teenagers. Coincidentally, suicide rates among American teenagers have increased by 70% since 2006. American life expectancy declined again last year, as Americans continue to drug and kill themselves at record rates. [And the majority of these people profess to believe in the Christian God or some other transcendent being. Again, Knowles twists the data to fit his narrative: Atheists are destroying America.]
Social scientists have long since established the link between religiosity and life satisfaction. As social psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky observes, people who attend religious services several times each week are nearly twice as likely as those who worship less than once a month to describe themselves as “very happy.” Such psychologists simply state the obvious: the belief that God loves you and that you will live with him in eternity offers greater consolation than the view of death as a dirt nap that stiffens you into worm food. [In other words, better to believe a lie than to accept life as it is. No thanks.]
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The misery epidemic threatens not merely American households but also our halls of power. The late Andrew Breitbart observed that politics is downstream of culture, and culture in turn is downstream of religion. “Cult” and “culture” are etymologically related, and a culture is defined by what it worships. A materialistic culture worships wealth; a licentious culture worships sex; a godly culture worships God. But “our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people,” as John Adams wrote to the Massachusetts militia in 1798. “It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
A miserable politics awaits us when the irreligious rot flows downstream. Who but God can help us now? [God is dead, so Knowles and others who think like him better figure out a way to work with non-Christians. God ain’t coming to save us. We alone have the power to “save” our society; the world. Humanism, not Christianity, is the way forward.]
— Michael Knowles, The Daily Wire, God Help Us: Atheism Becomes Largest Religion In U.S., April 8, 2019
It’s not like I don’t feel like I’m a Jew. I feel like I don’t have a choice about being a Jew. Your cultural heritage isn’t like a suitcase you can lose at the airport. I have no choice about it. It is who I am. I can’t choose that. It’s a fact of me. But even when I was 14 or 15, it didn’t make that much sense to me that there was this Big Daddy who created the world and would act so crazy in the Old Testament. That we made up these stories to make ourselves feel good and explain the world seems like a much more reasonable explanation. I’ve tried to believe in God but I simply don’t.
The above comic, drawn by Don Addis, was recently featured on the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s website. I thought it nicely summed up attempts to outlaw abortion by Evangelicals and conservative Roman Catholics. These zygote worshiping zealots will not rest until abortion (and birth control) is outlawed and criminalized.
Are you a member of the Freedom of Religion Foundation? If not, I encourage you join with over 30,000 other freethinkers as they support and defend the separation of church and state. For more membership information, please go here.
Warning! Snark and cursing ahead. You have been warned.
Yesterday, an Evangelical woman by the name of Margo left several comments on Facebook detailing why I never was a Christian. I responded to her several times, but to no avail. I tried to get her to read the posts on the WHY? page and read several of Dr. Bart Ehrman’s books, but she would have none of that either. Her mind was made up: Bruce Gerencser, the one-time Evangelical-preacher-turned-atheist is not now nor ever has been a Christian. At this point, I told her to fuck off. If someone can’t at least give me a hearing or make any attempt to understand my story, I have no time for them.
What follows are two of Margo’s comments/messages. My response is indented. All spelling and grammar in the original. Enjoy!
Comment One
One who professes Faith in Jesus Christ.. becomes a preacher of the Living Word of God… only to become an atheist and secular-humanist. //// Heres what I believe—- one who does this was never saved.
I have written many times about the absurdity of the “you were never saved” argument. First, it flies in the face of all objective evidence from the twenty-five years I spent in the ministry. Everything about my life said that I was a devoted follower of Jesus Christ. My doctrine was orthodox as was my practice. I devoted virtually every waking hour to Jesus, studying the Bible and praying every day. I genuinely cared about my congregation. I made sure their spiritual and material needs were met. I evangelized the lost and attempted to restore backsliders. Ask anyone who knew me at the time, and they will without hesitation testify that I was a Christian. Nothing in my conduct and habits said to those who knew me best — family, congregants, colleagues — that I was anything but a man who took his faith seriously. To suggest, then, that I was never a Christian is absurd.
Think for a moment about the level of deception that I would have had to use to convince thousands of people I was a Christian. The same can be said for my relationships with colleagues in the ministry. These men heard me preach, prayed with and for me, broke bread with me, and knew my secrets, yet not one of them ever had doubts about my faith.
“Why does this matter to you?” you might ask. “You don’t believe in God, so who cares, right?” Sure, but the issue here is her attempt to invalidate my story. Each of us has a right to his or her own story. I refuse to let Evangelical zealots control my storyline. I refuse to let them use their peculiar theology to define who/what I am and who/what I was in the past.
Why? Because truly born-again believing Christians.. no matter what, remain so.
This is a classic example of allowing theology to trump personal observation and knowledge; of faith trumping reason. And I get it. When you believe the Bible is God’s inspired, inerrant, infallible Word, it colors your thinking and how you view others. In Margo’s mind, I can’t be a born-again Christian because I no longer believe; and if I now am an atheist that means I never truly believed in Jesus.
I explain the absurdity of this argument this way: there was a day/time when Jesus and I were married. Our marriage lasted almost 50 years. But, there came a time when I no longer loved Jesus or followed his commands and teachings. Not wanting to be in a loveless relationship, I divorced Jesus. Lots of Christians lose their faith and walk away. Granted, it’s not common for someone of my age and ministerial experience to do so, but it does happen. I know of numerous men who labored in God’s coal mine for decades, only to lose their faith. Christians can pretend all they want that we don’t exist — but we do, and we are not going away.
If in the “real” world a man and woman can get married and later divorce, so it is with those of us who were once the Brides of the Bridegroom — Jesus. Does a divorce negate the past? Of course not. I once was married to Jesus and now we are divorced. Nothing I can do now will erase the memories/experiences Jesus and I shared — even if he was a figment of my imagination.
“But, Bruce, THE BIBLE SAYS!” I don’t care what a critic “thinks” the Bible says. The Bible can be made to say anything; to prove anything; to justify anything. What matters is how a person lives, and my life as an Evangelical pastor measures up to the lives of holy and zealous Christians such as Margo. Even now, as an atheist I do my best to live a moral and ethical life. I’m not perfect, but I do want to treat others well. Is that not the essence of Christianity: to do good to other people? Did not Jesus say that the second tablet of the Law was summed up thusly: to love your neighbor as yourself? I am not bragging here as much as I am saying that I am a decent, kind, loving human being, one who does his best to make the world a better place. Sadly, far too many Christians are focused on eternity, so much so that they ignore what is going on right in front of them.
No matter how tough life may become.. one still knows God is at the helm.//// However, there are true Christians who get down in their boots via the toils of life.. and claim to no longer believe.. and/or have lost their faith. Those types are still saved. ///// What you have done is not that.
When Christ saves the believer,.. he then, SEALS the believer for the day of redemption. In His own ways.. He knows who is whom.. from the instant one hears the Word and truly believes or not. You are no different than those of whom “make a profession of faith in Christ”.. but, sometime down the line.. convert to Islam or Judaism or Hinduism. Those who do such things were never saved.
Margo subtly alleges that something happened in my life — “the toils of life” — to cause me to walk away from Christianity. Instead of “enduring,” I gave up, or so she thinks, anyway. Never mind that my deconversion story has many levels of complexity. Never mind the anguishing tear-filled hours I spent studying the Bible, praying, reading books, and talking to my spouse, hoping that I could somehow, some way hang on to my faith. None of this matters. Margo’s interpretation of the Bible says that I never was a Christian, end of story. E.F. Hutton has spoken.
You’ve taken it a step or two further.. as you enjoy the secular-humanistic ‘doctrines of demons’… and claim to be an atheist. No true born-again believer would ever do such things.
Yet, according to my story, one did. And I know scores of other preachers who have followed similar paths. I may be following “doctrines of demons” now, but years ago I earnestly battled Satan. Filled with the Holy Ghost, I waged war against powers and principalities. This was, of course, a war against a pooka named Harvey, but I sincerely believed I was wrestling angels of darkness. A belief does not have to be grounded in reality for it to affect a person’s life. This is true of all sorts of beliefs, including religious ones.
I don’t need a crystal ball to tell me the future… my future in Jesus Christ. I’m a born-again believing Christian. Not perfect. Just perfect in Christ. Seems YOU Have taken passages of scripture out of context.. and using that as an “excuse” to ‘hate Jesus.’
What Scripture did I take out of context? Is it even possible to take Scripture out of context? The text can literally be made to say almost anything. The Bible teaches several different plans of salvation, yet Margo has determined her plan of salvation and her interpretation of Scripture is the standard by which ALL believers and unbelievers alike will be judged.
For the record, I don’t “hate” Jesus. Why would I waste my time hating a man who died 2,000 years ago? This would be like me hating Julius Caesar or any other historical figure. I am generally not a hater to start with, and I most certainly have never, ever hated an ancient religious figure who lived and died two millennia ago. If I was truly going to hate someone, I’d focus my hatred on the orange-haired toddler currently sucking the life out of our Republic. There’s a man worth hating. “But, Bruce, you wrote a post titled, Why I Hate Jesus. See, that PROVES you hate the Son of God.” “Did you read the post?” If you did, you know that what I hate is the Evangelical characterization of Jesus, not the actual man. My hatred is focused on the Jesus of Evangelicalism, not the flesh and blood man buried in an unknown grave in the Middle East.
Heaven and Hell
Keep going down this path.. and you WILL end up in Hell. And yes…. Hell does exist. Christ taught on Hell plenty. Satan loves self-pity.. and “victims” of whatever he can use to take you to Hell. Hes not choosy. I hope you swallow your pride… and repent. ……..Sincerely, Margo
Ah yes, there’s nothing like being threatened with an imaginary Hell. I have been threatened with Hell more times than I can count. Margo says Hell exists, yet If I asked her for proof of this claim, all she would say is, THE BIBLE SAYS! Well, let’s stick with the Bible. It says Hell is in the bowels of the earth. Surely, we should be able to scientifically determine the existence of Hell. Yet, there’s no scientific evidence for its existence. None.
The only hell I believe in is the one created by and for humans. We make our own hell on earth, and the same goes for heaven. My goal in life is to minimize hell and maximize heaven for everyone. Well, almost everyone. I do have a short list of people I would love to banish to hell. Oh the delight of seeing them tortured day and night with looping video reruns of Donald Trump’s speeches.
Margo signs off with a sanctimonious “sincerely.” Sincerely? Really? Sincerely, my ass. There’s nothing sincere about Margo’s sermons. Sincerity demands decency and respect, none of which have been displayed by Margo. In her mind, I’m just another atheist she has set straight; another false prophet exposed; another notch on her gospel six-shooter.
Comment Two
I’m so sorry…. did you miss the part about Hell not being a threat but, one of God’s promises?
No, Hell is a threat; an idle threat, but a threat nonetheless. Without the threat of Hell and the promise of Heaven, Evangelical churches would empty out overnight. If there’s nothing to fear and nothing to gain, why bother, right? What else would motivate people such as Margo to seek out complete strangers on the Internet and attempt to deconstruct their lives? What has she gained by contacting me? What has she gained by commenting on my Facebook page? Did Margo really think that she could say anything that would cause me to change my ways? Perhaps, Margo just needs to hear herself talk; that her faith is bolstered by going after unbelievers. If God himself — he knows where I am, 345 E Main St, Ney, Ohio 43549 — can’t affect change in my life, what possibly could Margo do?
You are still an apostate and unrepentant atheist because YOU CHOOSE TO BE. In fact, satan owns your mind. And if you desire to press the matter, God can turn you over to a reprobate mind…. IF thats not already where you are.
Margo steps in it here. If I chose to be an atheist, can’t the same be said for me choosing Jesus/Christianity forty-seven years ago? Can’t the same be said for me voluntarily walking away from Christianity?
Margo, warns me that God could give me a reprobate mind if I keep rebelling against him. Too late. I am already a first-class reprobate. My God, I am a Cincinnati Bengals fan. Is there anything more reprobate than that?
I can fuck off better than the rest. The devil loves a pity-party. Good luck w that… and enjoy Hell. Or repent. Its your own immortal soul that you seem to give a single care about. You will go to Hell because you’ve chosen Hell.
I willingly choose Hell. If that means getting away for eternity from people such as Margo, sign me up, Mr. Devil. let’s party, Mr. Beelzebub. Who in their right mind would want to spend every waking minute genuflecting before Jesus? Not I!
I love good fucking, by the way.
I’M HARDLY A PASSIVE CHRISTIAN. You are not the golden standard by which all things are judged. My “brand” of Christianity is THE BRAND of Christianity. Gods brand. Biblical and sound.
It is refreshing to see a Christian actually admit that their religion is exclusionary; that his or her beliefs are the gold standard; that their life is the standard by which truth faith is measured. Usually Christian zealots try to hide their arrogance, but not Margo. She needs to write a book that details what is exactly required for someone to saved. The Bible is oh-so contradictory, so a concise statement as to the requirements for salvation would be greatly appreciated. Since Margo’s beliefs are TRUTH, no need to write theological books or fund Bible colleges. Just read her book and you will know all you’ll need to know! Think of all the money and time that will be saved. Think of all doctrinal fights that will be avoided. Finally, after 2,000 years of internecine warfare, Margo, the Christian has appeared on the scene to set the record straight.
Maybe as a preacher, you misused scriptures that you’ve taken out of context, yes? Maybe you’ve led many to Hell. I have no clue. Maybe you were a wolf in sheeps clothing. Maybe you “became a Christian” for all the wrong reasons? You’ve listened to demonic sermons about making money by charlatans selling blessings? And it didn’t work for you so, you’re flying the coop?
My theology was Evangelical and orthodox. I suspect Margo would have loved me back in my preaching days. I was a man of THE Book. I preached expositional sermons, making sure that I didn’t stray from the clear meaning of Scripture.
Did I lead many people to Hell? Of course not, since Hell doesn’t exist. And in the temporal realm, the here and now, I did all I could to lessen the hell on earth experienced by believers and unbelievers alike. I deeply cared about the welfare of others. I was not passive in putting my faith into action. My prayers had feet on them, not wings. I believed in putting into practice that which I said I believed. I wasn’t perfect, but I damn sure tried to be.
I became a Christian because preachers told me that I was a wicked, vile sinner in need of salvation. Isn’t that the point every Evangelical comes to? I saw myself as a sinner and Jesus as the solution to my sin problem. There’s nothing in my testimony that suggests I believed a false gospel.
The comment about listening to “demonic sermons about making money by charlatans selling blessings” makes no sense to me. I worked for and lived on poverty wages, yet I did so willingly. Why would anyone live the way I did if I didn’t truly believe?
Was I a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Of course not, but Margo has to believe I was for her delusional narrative of my life to be true. I was a deceiver, a liar, a false prophet deceiving the masses. For Margo, believing this is the only way my story fits in her theological box. Not my problem. Perhaps, she needs to get out more and experience the wonderful diversity life has to offer.
I don’t need to read a bunch of excuses as to why you’ve made such an asinine decision.
Translation: I’m not going to read the suggested posts/books. Yet, Margo wants me to listen to her and give her sermon careful thought. Why should I when she doesn’t respect me as a person and accept at face value my story?
I know the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ. And I am very much a human being. Done all my homework.
Margo hasn’t, of course, done ALL her homework. She didn’t read the posts I asked her to read, and in failing to do so, she judged me without sufficient knowledge. She made no attempt to “know” me, yet she rendered judgment anyway. And in doing so, she violated the clear teaching of Scripture: He [or she] that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him. (Proverbs 18:13)
The devil has you by the nose. Hes your master. You were a false-“convert”.. never were a born-again Christian. Just a pawn for satan. Not a damn thing “irrational” about my thinking.
Bam! Bam! Bam! She loves giving it to me, doesn’t she?
There’s nothing irrational about believing virgins have babies and dead people come back to life? Even the Bible admits that the many of the stories of the Bible seem fantastical. That’s why believing them requires suspending rational, skeptical inquiry — also known as faith.
Atheists always want everyone to know how “smart” they are. You’ll not be hearing from me again.
Well, many atheists are quite smart, or at the very least quite educated about religion. In my case, I know what I know. I didn’t magically lose a lifetime of theological knowledge the moment I said I was an atheist. Has Margo not done the same here? “Look at everything I know,” she is saying. She knows who is saved and who isn’t. Margo knows all sorts of things about my life that she can’t possibly know. Why? She doesn’t know me. Margo read a couple of blog posts, and she thinks she now has sufficient evidence to render judgment. Granted, reading the posts on the WHY? page likely wouldn’t have changed Margo’s mind, but at the very least she would have a better, more nuanced understanding of Bruce Gerencser. And that’s all I ask any of my critics to do. Give my writing an honest reading before you pass judgment.
My favorite line in her comment was this: “You’ll not be hearing from me again.” All praise to Loki for such a wonderful blessing.
Saved by Reason,
Bruce
Note
After publishing this post, I intended to send Margo a link to the post in case she wanted to respond. Unfortunately, she deleted all her Facebook comments and blocked me from contacting her.
About Bruce Gerencser
Bruce Gerencser, 61, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 40 years. He and his wife have six grown children and twelve 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. For more information about Bruce, please read the About page.
Bruce is a local photography business owner, operating Defiance County Photo out of his home. If you live in Northwest Ohio and would like to hire Bruce, please email him.
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This is the ninth installment in The Voices of Atheism series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. Know of a good video that espouses atheism/agnosticism or challenges the claims of the Abrahamic religions? Please email me the name of the video or a link to it. I believe his series will be an excellent addition to The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser.
Guest post by MJ Lisbeth
