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.
Josh Price, pastor of Southside Baptist Church in Lexington, North Carolina, and his son Matthew stand accused of growing marijuana in the church building. According to news reports, the church closed sometime during the Pandemic. Price and his son, however, kept serving the Lord by growing weed.
A former pastor and his son have been charged with growing marijuana at his former church.
Josh Price, 50, and Matthew Price, 28, were arrested after an investigation that recovered approximately 13 pounds of marijuana and 20 plants as well as other drugs at the former Southside Baptist Church south of Lexington, the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office said. The church has been closed since the COVID-19 pandemic.
During the investigation, it was determined Josh Price, who lives in the fellowship hall behind the church, was growing marijuana, the sheriff’s office said.
On May 28 officers with the patrol division and detectives with the Special Investigations Division conducted a search at the church building at 1014 Floyd Church Road. In addition to the marijuana, deputies found about 32 grams of psilocybin mushrooms, 41 THC vape pens (THC is the psychoactive chemical in marijuana) and about 2 pounds of marijuana wax, a dense, highly potent form of THC. Investigators also recovered grow lights, potting soil, fertilizer and several growing bins, the sheriff’s office said.
The Prices were both charged with felony manufacturing marijuana, felony trafficking in marijuana, felony possession with the intent to manufacture, sell or distribute a Schedule VI (THC wax) controlled substance, three counts of maintaining a dwelling for the distribution or sale of a controlled substance, felony possession with the intent to manufacture, sell or deliver a Schedule I controlled substance (psilocybin mushrooms), felony possession with the intent to sell or deliver marijuana, felony conspire to traffic in marijuana and misdemeanor possession of marijuana paraphernalia.
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.
David Barsamian: American Justice Robert Jackson was the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. He made an opening statement to the Tribunal on November 21, 1945, because there was some concern at the time that it would be an example of victor’s justice. He said this: “If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down the rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”
Norman Solomon: It goes to the point that, unless we have a single standard of human rights, a single standard of international conduct and war, we end up with an Orwellian exercise at which government leaders are always quite adept but one that’s still intellectually, morally, and spiritually corrupt. Here we are, so long after the Nuremberg trials, and the supreme crime of aggression, the launching of a war, is not only widespread but has been sanitized, even glorified. We’ve had this experience in one decade after another in which the United States has attacked a country in violation of international law, committing (according to the Nuremberg Tribunal) “the supreme international crime,” and yet not only has there been a lack of remorse, but such acts have continued to be glorified.
The very first quote in my book War Made Invisible is from Aldous Huxley who, 10 years before the Nuremberg trials, said, “The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.” Here we are in 2023 and it’s still a challenge to analyze, illuminate, and push back against that essential purpose of propagandists around the world and especially in our own country where, in an ostensible democracy, we should have the most capacity to change policy.
Right now, we’re in a situation where, unfortunately, across a lot of the political spectrum, including some of the left, folks think that you have to choose between aligning yourself with U.S. foreign policy and its acts of aggression or Russian foreign policy and its acts of aggression. Personally, I think it’s both appropriate and necessary to condemn war on Ukraine, and Washington’s hypocrisy doesn’t in any way let Russia off the hook. By the same token, Russia’s aggression shouldn’t let the United States off the hook for the tremendous carnage we’ve created in this century. I mean, if you add up the numbers, in the last nearly twenty-five years, the country by far the most responsible for slaughtering more people in more lands through wars of aggression is… yes, the United States of America.
….
Barsamian: At the White House Correspondents’ dinner President Biden said, “Journalism is not a crime. The free press is a pillar, maybe the pillar of a free society.” Great words from the White House.
Solomon: President Biden, like his predecessors in the Oval Office, loves to speak about the glories of the free press and say that journalism is a wonderful aspect of our society — until the journalists do something he and the government he runs really don’t like. A prime example is Julian Assange. He’s a journalist, a publisher, an editor, and he’s sitting in prison in Great Britain being hot-wired for transportation to the United States. I sat through the two-week trial in the federal district of northern Virginia of CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling and I can tell you it was a kangaroo court. That’s the court Julian Assange has a ticket to if his extradition continues.
And what’s his so-called crime? It’s journalism. WikiLeaks committed journalism. It exposed the war crimes of the United States in Iraq through documents it released, through the now-notorious video that came to be called “Collateral Murder,” showing the wanton killing of a number of people on the ground in Iraq by a U.S. military helicopter. It provided a compendium of evidence that the United States had systemically engaged in war crimes under the rubric of the so-called War on Terror. So, naturally, the stance of the U.S. government remains: this man Assange is dangerous; he must be imprisoned.
The attitude of the corporate media, Congress, and the White House has traditionally been and continues to be that the U.S. stance in the world can be: do as we say, not as we do. So, the USA is good at pointing fingers at Russia or countries that invade some other nation, but when the U.S. does it, it’s another thing entirely. Such dynamics, while pernicious, especially among a nuclear-armed set of nations, are reflexes people in power have had for a long time.
More than a century ago, William Dean Howells wrote a short story called “Editha.” Keep in mind that this was after the United States had been slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people in the Philippines. In it, a character says, “What a thing it is to have a country that can’t be wrong, but if it is, is right, anyway!”
Now, here we are in 2023 and it’s not that different, except when it comes to the scale of communications, of a media that’s so much more pervasive. If you read the op-ed pages and editorial sections of the New York Times, Washington Post, and other outlets of the liberal media, you’ll find such doublethink well in place. Vladimir Putin, of course, is a war criminal. Well, I happen to think he is a war criminal. I also happen to think that George W. Bush is a war criminal, and we could go on to all too many other examples of high U.S. government officials where that description applies no less than to Vladimir Putin.
Can you find a single major newspaper that’s been willing to editorialize that George W. Bush — having ordered the invasion of Iraq, costing hundreds of thousands of lives based on a set of lies — was a war criminal? It just ain’t gonna happen. In fact, one of the things I was particularly pleased (in a grim sort of way) to explore in my book was the rehabilitation of that war criminal, providing a paradigm for the presidents who followed him and letting them off the hook, too.
I quote, for instance, President Obama speaking to troops in Afghanistan. You could take one sentence after another from his speeches there and find almost identical ones that President Lyndon Johnson used in speaking to American troops in Vietnam in 1966. They both talked about how U.S. soldiers were so compassionate, cared so much about human life, and were trying to help the suffering people of Vietnam or Afghanistan. That pernicious theme seems to accompany almost any U.S. war: that, with the best of intentions, the U.S. is seeking to help those in other countries. It’s a way of making the victims at the other end of U.S. firepower — to use a word from my book title — invisible.
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 will soon celebrate my sixty-sixth birthday. In July, Polly and I will celebrate our forty-fifth wedding anniversary. We now have thirteen grandchildren. Two of our granddaughters will start their senior year of high school in the fall. Both are straight-A students, and both have boyfriends! OMG, where had the time gone? I am now, without question, an old man, a cranky curmudgeon. I have seen a few things and experienced a lot of this thing we humans call life. As I comb through my past, I have come to the conclusion that life is the sum of our choices (and, at times, the choices of others), held together by the mortar of luck and circumstance. As I carefully examine my life, I can see how certain decisions I made in the past materially affect my life today. For example, as a married, full-of-life, physically fit young preacher, I decided to opt out of Social Security. For the next seventeen years, I paid no social security/Medicare taxes on my ministry-related income. I leveraged the clergy housing allowance and other legal tax avoidance schemes in such a way that I often ended up showing no personal income on my tax return and paid zero taxes for the year. This went on for years. Not bad, right? My motivation was simple: as a die-hard right-wing Republican, I believed that the government didn’t deserve my money. In my mind, the less money local, state, and federal agencies had, the better. I thought, at the time, “Why should I pay real estate taxes? My children attend a private Christian school or are homeschooled. Why should I pay for the world’s children to be educated in government schools?” When I bought automobiles, I purchased them through the church, thus avoiding paying sales tax. I expensed everything I could, with the goal in mind that I was economically starving the government.
In the late 1990s, I had an epiphany of sorts. I realized, for the first time, that I was one day going to be where I am now, and that I would need some sort of retirement income. I also started having niggling health problems, and in 1997, after months and months of unexplained fatigue and pain, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. At that moment, Bruce-with-a-big-S-on-his-chest learned that he was not invincible; that life was a kryptonite of sorts that will, in the end, lead to my demise.
I opted back into Social Security and started paying taxes again, but this was too little too late. Fortunately, over the course of my work career — from age fourteen to today — I worked numerous “secular” jobs:
janitor, gas station attendant, short order cook, newspaper motor route, life insurance salesman, sweeper salesman, restaurant general manager, network manager, durable medical equipment supply office manager, dairy department manager, grocery stock clerk, workfare/court offender program manager, litter control manager/officer, building code enforcement officer, grant manager, real estate updater for an auditor’s office, farm worker, auto mechanic, cable box repairman, shipping and receiving, turret lathe operator, and numerous general laborer jobs in factories
These jobs provided enough work quarters for me to qualify for a nominal monthly social security payment of about $800. While this is not a large amount of money, retirement-wise, it makes a meaningful difference for us. Neither of my parents lived long enough to collect social security, so I have outlived them and will win the prize. Woo-hoo! However, I can’t help but think about how much better off I would be as a disabled retired man had I paid social security/Medicare taxes on my ministerial income. The difference would be significant, but due to a singular decision made long before I ever had a thought about getting old, I am forced to live with the consequences of that decision.
I always made more money working secular jobs than I did working for God. The most I ever made income-wise as a pastor was $24,000. Most years, I made $8,000-$20,000 (including housing) pastoring churches. If it hadn’t been for secular work, government assistance, and Medicaid insurance, we would have been destitute. As it was, we were dirt poor for most of the years I spent in the ministry. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that things improved for us. Polly started working for Sauder Woodworking (she just celebrated her twentieth-seventh anniversary there) and our oldest sons started working jobs of their own.
It’s unfortunate, though, that I had decided as a young husband and father to let “God” take care of our wants and needs. As anyone who has ever done this has learned, “God” loves keeping his followers in the poor house. Why, if “God” had backed up a Brink’s truck to our home and unloaded some of the “treasure” he supposedly has, we wouldn’t have “needed” him any longer. So, “God” kept us on our knees, ever begging for divine assistance. I sincerely believed that “God” would meet our needs and even throw in a few wants from time to time, so I accepted that our poverty was God’s good, acceptable, and perfect will for our lives (Romans 12:1,2). Of course, I never asked Polly or our children what they thought of this arrangement I had with God. I was the family patriarch. End of discussion. I wonder how different our lives might have been had I put the financial and material welfare of my family first; had I built a career managing restaurants or working in government alongside my work as a pastor. Would we have been better off? Probably. But, who really knows for sure?
Have you ever thought about certain decisions you have made in your life and wondered how things might have turned out differently? I call this the what-if or would-of, could-of, should-of game. While we like to think that life would have been different if we had only made this or that decision, there are too many variables for us to know for sure how things might have turned out. For example, at age eighteen, I was madly in love with a twenty-year-old college girl named Anita Farr. (Please see 1975: Anita, My First Love.) For much of 1975, we had a torrid relationship — as no-sex-before-marriage Baptist relationships went, anyway. I was sure she was the one. However, our relationship didn’t last, and in late ’75, I packed up my meager belongings, hopped a Greyhound bus, and returned to Ohio. As I look back at this time in my life, I see two people who had similar personalities and dispositions. Both of us were quite outgoing, personable, and temperamental. I told Polly a while back, as we were talking about past choices, “If I had married Anita, one of us would have murdered the other and ended up in prison.” Our relationship was very much one of a lit match and gasoline. A year later, I enrolled in ministerial classes at Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan. My game plan, girl-wise, was to play the field. I thought at the time, “what a blessing from God, a dormitory filled with fine Baptist women!” Sure enough, I started dating a girl by the name of Peggie. After a few weeks, our casual relationship petered out and we moved on to other people. Next up for me was a seventeen-year-old dark-haired preacher’s daughter named Polly. She was (and is) a beauty, but I had no thoughts at the time that she was a woman I was ready to settle down with. It was not long, however, before Bruce, the player, was smitten and in love. On Valentine’s Day in 1976, I proposed and Polly said “yes.” So much for playing the field!
Choosing to marry Polly — a choice I would make again in a heartbeat — certainly changed the course of my life. On a hot day in July,1978, at the Newark Baptist Temple, we stood before our family and friends (and God, or so we thought at the time) and pledged our troth to one another. We were two mutually infatuated children, ill-prepared for the pressures and challenges of married life. Six weeks after we married, Polly informed me that she was pregnant. Six months after that I was laid off from my job. This forced us to leave school and move to the home of my birth, Bryan, Ohio. So much for our “plans,” or God’s, for that matter. From there, my ministerial career and our married life took a completely different path.
I have written this trip down memory lane — one that will receive the voluminous treatment it deserves in my book — to illustrate how the many choices we make, along with external influences, materially and permanently affect our lives. I don’t believe in soulmates. I don’t think for a moment that Polly is the only suitable woman on planet earth for me. She is, however, the woman I chose to love and marry, and together we have made a good life for ourselves. We have made a hell of a lot of bad decisions and wish we could have a do-over on more than a few things. But, on balance, we’ve had a good life. The sum of our choices has led to where we are today. Hopefully, we have learned a thing or two over the past forty-five years, but I am confident that we still have a few fuck-ups left in our lives. Live and learn, right? Or, well, live anyway . . .
Do you ponder the decisions you have made in your life and how things have turned out for you? Do you wonder about how different life might have been for you had you made different decisions? Do you have a simple philosophy by which you govern your life? Please share your erudite thoughts in the comment section.
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.
Last year, I participated in Defiance’s pride parade — a first for me. I came of age in the Evangelical church, attended an Evangelical college in the 1970s, married an Evangelical preacher’s daughter, and pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years. I was virulently homophobic. Not that I knew any LGBTQ people — I didn’t. I would later learn that several of the people who called me pastor were, in fact, gay. Children, at the time, they were forced to endure attacks on their persons, complete with quoted Bible verses and a pulpit-pounding “thus saith the Lord.”
In the mid-90s, I met a gay man in the course of my work for a restaurant in Zanesville. We offered free drinks to mall employees. All they had to do is bring their refillable cup to the store and we would refill it. I vividly remember the first time this man handed me his cup to fill. I thought, “does he have AIDS? Could I get it?” Over time, I got to know him — a delightful human being. I wish meeting him put an end to my homophobia, but it didn’t. It was, however, a first step towards where I am today — an outspoken supporter of LGBTQ people.
What caused the transformation in my life? Certainly, leaving Evangelicalism helped, but the biggest influence was actually meeting and befriending LGBTQ people. Having a widely read blog helped too. This exposed me to people different from me. Sadly, many of the locals who angrily oppose LGBTQ people on social media and on the editorial page of the Crescent-News, live in religious monocultures, safely protected from icky gay people. One local Baptist preacher preached numerous sermons on the evil “transgenders.” No LGBTQ people attend his church, but much like the Jim Crow preachers of yesteryear, he wants his congregation to know who the real enemies are.
On Saturday, June 24, there will be another pride parade in Defiance. Hundreds of people attended the first one, and I hope even more will attend this one. Opposition to the parade is organizing, promising to picket the event. Some of these followers of Jesus are even encouraging people to “open carry,” subtly threatening violence toward peaceful parade participants.
I hope people will ignore the protesters, choosing instead to show their support for the LGBTQ community. It’s time for all of us to come out of the closet.
Bruce Gerencser Ney, Ohio
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 United Methodist Church is facing a split over the inclusion of LGBTQ people in the life of their congregations. Some churches are inclusive, others are not. Those who oppose LGBTQ people — and make no mistake about it, they ARE hatefully opposing real, flesh and blood people; people who are Christians — are leaving the Methodist denomination and either starting new sects, joining Fundamentalist Methodist denominations, or becoming independent churches.
One such church is Asbury United Methodist Church in Williams Center, Ohio. Asbury, a rural congregation of twenty or so people, has left the Methodist denomination, becoming an independent church named Calvary Community Church of Williams Center. Thomas N. Graves is listed as the church’s pastor.
Calvary Community posted the following on Facebook (their account is currently marked private):
Our Name has Changed to: Calvary Community Church of Williams Center
We have disaffiliated from the United Methodist Church, as of April 16, 2023.
We as a church would like to express some of our views to you, our community.
We want to minister to our community and families.
“YOU ARE THE SALT OF THE EARTH…YOU ARE THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD…” MATTHEW 5:13-16
We believe that The Family Can Be Redeemed by Restoring:
Marriage, which God created to be between one man and one woman only
The family unit of Father, Mother and Children as He has ordained it
Parents Authority over raising their own Children without government encroachment
Abolishing abortion, addressing sexual promiscuity, and acknowledging the harms of pornography
We see the Church’s Part in the Restoration of our Culture by:
Being Biblically Correct and not Politically Correct
Exercising our God-given right and using our voice
Refusing to be silenced and marginalized
Learning to love in Spirit and truth those with unbiblical doctrines and ideologies
Maintaining religious freedom as ordained by God and refusing state/governmental intervention on matters of conscience
We believe our government Can be Restored by:
Upholding the foundational, Judeo-Christian operating system of America.
Understanding that God is first. We, the people, answer to God-government answers to us.
Understanding that government originates with everyone, if we govern ourselves according to the Word of God, all will fall into place.
Those are our beliefs, come join us to bring them into the life of this community.
Pastor Tom [Graves]
Graves’ word salad is just his way of saying that Calvary Community is a homophobic Christian nationalist congregation, most of whom voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. Graves’ manifesto is a call to theocracy — God rule. Graves says “come join us.” However, LGBTQ people, liberals, progressives, and people different from him are not welcome. Graves wants a monoculture where his peculiar version of Christianity rules supreme.
Graves says that if “we govern ourselves according to the Word of God, all will fall in place.” I assume the good pastor supports stoning to death sodomites, adulterers, fornicators, rebellious sons, and anyone who worships any other God except his. Keeping it real! Thus saith the Lord.
Small Methodist churches dot the rural Ohio landscape. I suspect more congregations will come out of the closet in the coming weeks and months. I say, good for them. No more hiding their bigotry, racism, and homophobia. The only question I have is whether other local Methodist churches will take a stand against bigots such as Graves and his merry band of Christians, and say, everyone is welcome here.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
Christopher Fourcade, a children’s minister at First Christian Church of Norman, Oklahoma, stands accused of four counts of lewd acts to a minor and two counts of possession of child pornography. First Christian is affiliated with The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
Christopher Fourcade was arrested and charged with four counts of lewd acts to a minor and two counts of possession of child pornography. The Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy said he was in a position of authority as a trusted adult, fostering children and working in a church.
“Oftentimes, these predators will enter as a ruse with churches because they feel that is a safe place where they’ll be trusted,” Dorman said.
The First Christian Church of Norman, where Fourcade worked, said he’s no longer an employee, and the investigation doesn’t involve any of their children. They also said no adults work one-on-one with children.
Fourcade also volunteered at multiple local organizations. Some told KOCO 5 volunteers are under the direct supervision of staff, while others said they didn’t have contact with children.
Fourcade was arrested Thursday evening and was in the Cleveland County Jail but has since bonded out.
An affidavit revealed more details in the case describing Fourcade making the victims feel comfortable to be alone with him. The OICA said it may be an example of grooming, but there are ways parents can spot potential predators.
Christopher Fourcade, 48, director of children’s ministries at First Christian Church in Norman, has been arrested on four counts of lewd acts with a child and two counts of child pornography possession, according to the Norman Police Department.
The Norman Police Department responded to a Norman residence on Dec. 28, 2022, where the reporting party said a caregiver facilitated lewd acts with a child.
An investigation was immediately initiated, and additional juvenile victims were identified, officials said. Norman police obtained an arrest warrant Thursday.
Fourcade was also a member of Fostering Futures, a Cleveland County nonprofit organization that provides “financial and emotional support for children and their families who receive services from the Cleveland County Child Welfare System.”
The church is aware of the arrest of Chris Fourcade. He is no longer employed by the church. While the investigation and arrest does not focus on any children from the church, our staff is fully committed to the truth, and is fully cooperating with any requests regarding the investigation. It is the church’s practice to never have adults alone with children, and we remain vigilant in that practice.
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.
Local Christian churches are full of those who claim to be Christians but are not. The same goes for churches that claim to be Christian but are not. Many like to follow the man (preacher) & hold him up as an idol.
How could Richard possibly know this? Is he God? Shouldn’t who is and isn’t a Christian be left up to God? Richard, of course, KNOWS that he is a Christian; that his church is a True Christian church, so he uses his personal experiences and his church as the standard by which he judges others. 2 Corinthians 10:12 says: “or we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.” It’s a bad idea to use ourselves as the standard by which we judge others.
You can use the excuse all day this is why you left this church, that or Christianity. If you never possessed the Holy Spirit you never were a Christian in the first place. There is no way Bruce was ever a Christian but if it’s true he was a pastor then he filled those typical fake Christian churches.
Welp, Richard, my boy, I did possess the Holy Ghost. My life gave evidence of the fruit of the Spirit. The arc of my life was towards holiness. I was a true-blue devoted follower of Jesus. That Richard can’t square my present life with my past is his problem, not mine. It is up to Richard to provide evidence for his claims. Talk to my wife and children. Talk to those who called me preacher. Talk to my colleagues in the ministry. I double-dog dare you to find one person who, at the time, said, I wasn’t a Christian.
If Richard is a Christian — and I don’t doubt that he is — so was I. When someone tells me that he is a Christian, I accept his self-identification at face value. I wish zealots such a Richard would do the same. Of course, he won’t. The testimonies of people such as myself are kryptonite to beliefs. Thus, he must, despite evidence to the contrary, maintain I never was a Christian.
He claims to have read the bible numerous times which says nothing. You can read the bible all you want but if you don’t have the Holy Spirit to take you through the Living Word of God then the mysteries will never be revealed and it will just be foolish to you.
Except it wasn’t, and the Holy Spirit did guide me through the Bible as I read it numerous times and preached 4,000 sermons. I spent, on average, 20 hours a week, reading and studying the Bible over the course of twenty-five years in the ministry. Does Richard really expect anyone to believe that I was a fraud; a liar; a deceiver; a false prophet? Even God is shaking his head. 🙂
Most of you have hardened your hearts & God has come in turned you over to that, nothing odd about that, your futures are sealed.
Richard now turns his judgment toward the readers of this blog, not knowing that many of them are Christians. In his addled mind, we are reprobates; people who have hardened hearts; people who cannot be saved (according to Romans 1 and 2).
It is hard not to conclude that Richard is a judgmental prick.
It is this that burns you up inside.
What burns me up inside is hot food. Evidently, Richard has psychic abilities he uses to see inside of us. Amazing, right?
I couldn’t imagine The feeling knowing God & His Holy Spirit abandoned me, of course you’d have to have known Him first to feel that.
So which is it? Did I know God and the Holy Spirit, or didn’t I? Come on, Richard, get it right!
Even though most of you never really have you do feel the guilt of where you are going, this is plainly written in your remarks.
Again, Richard changes his mind. This time, we don’t feel the hunka, hunka, hunka burning love of the Holy Ghost on our innards, but we do feel guilty about “where we are going.” Chicago? Detroit? New York? LA? London?
The only guilt I feel is the over past harm I caused as an Evangelical pastor, husband, and father.
I feel for you but then again I don’t, you clearly denied Him & continue to do so. It honestly sucks to be you
Richard, be honest. You don’t give a shit about me or the readers of this blog. If you did, you would have behaved differently. Instead, you are just the latest example of a judgmental Evangelical who only cares about preaching AT people. Good job. What, exactly, do you think you accomplished for the kingdom of God?
I would love to compare lives with you. I have been married for forty-five years. We have six adult children, thirteen grandchildren, and two cats. While it is true that I am quite sick and on the short side of life, I am blessed beyond measure, grateful for all that I have. And the Reds have won four straight! Woo! Hoo!
What sucks is people like you; people who have lost all sense of decency, kindness, and respect for others. You said your piece, Richard. I am sure God is pleased by how you represented him.
BTW, I haven’t denied God. What I have done is reject the insufficient evidence presented for his existence. If you have better evidence, Richard, please provide it. Maybe you will be the one to win me to Jesus. Oh wait, you can’t. You have already determined I am a reprobate; a man headed for Hell, without recourse. You better hope you are not wrong. Imagine what God will say to you come judgment day?
Saved by Reason,
Richard’s response to this post:
Wouldn’t expect anything less for a response to attempt to justify yourself as an atheist & what you claim as a humanist – LOL. I just find your love affair for the IFB very humorous as I stumbled onto to your blog that attempts to discredit it. Most interesting were the comments of poor followers that agreed with you all beaten down and claimed to have PTSD. LOL rebellion. Funny how anything fundamental scares people. How dare people in 2023 take the Word of God literally when we should be re-creating God in our own image. I mean after all, Hollywood, the state & government say marriage between a man and a man is good & legal, after all they claim now up to 150 genders. How dare the church say women shouldn’t wear them hot britches and spray on tops, I mean it’s up to them men not to be tempted of lust. I applaud those IFB’s that do this and turns off those that disagree. Obviously you have a refuge those that are hurt because no means no. It’s only humanistic to build an army of like minded antichrists & atheists to make you feel better. If them queer suspenders do it for you then be my guest.
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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Over the weekend, I received the following email from Marlene Strader.
Strader read all of two posts: Songs of Sacrilege: Need a Favor by Jelly Roll and Why I Hate Jesus before contacting me. She looked at the Why? page, but evidently didn’t have the finger strength necessary to click on any of the listed posts. So, her attack on my character is fueled by one Songs of Sacrilege post and a polemical post about why I hate Jesus — a post often misunderstood by Christians who lack comprehensive reading skills.
Here’s what Strader sent me:
Why all the hate? Hate is what’s wrong with the world. People selfishly worshiping themselves, their politics, and their own ideologies. So you’re an atheist? So you claim your own moral authority? Fine. What do you care what others believe if you believe in nothing? So what if you think they are wrong? You just come off like the hypocrites you despise. Full of hate, bitterness, and unforgiveness.
What hate, exactly, is Strader talking about? Maybe she confuses critique and challenge with hate. I don’t hate anyone. Life is too short to be hating people. I do, however, hate certain political, religious, and social beliefs. I make no apology for doing so. When beliefs cause harm — both psychological and physical — their proponents should expect pushback.
Yes, I am an atheist. Yes, I am my own moral authority, as are Christians and other religious people. Each of us decides what moral and ethical standard by which we will govern our lives.
Strader thinks I believe in “nothing.” Of course, I have all sorts of beliefs about everything from God and the designated hitter to socialism and which sex position I prefer. If Strader wants to know what I believe on any given subject, all she has to do is ask.
Had Strader bothered to read any of my autobiographical writing, she would have learned that I don’t care one whit about what people believe as long as said beliefs don’t materially affect me and my family. Unfortunately, Evangelicals, conservative Catholics, and Mormons are determined to turn the United States into a theocratic state; one where Jesus rules supreme and the Bible is the law of the land. History tells us that when church and state are one, blood is shed, people die, and freedoms are lost. So, as long as Christians try to turn America into a “Christian country,” I plan to be on the front lines pushing back. As long as Christians try to criminalize abortion, ban birth control, demonize LGBTQ people, ban books, force public schools to teach creationism as science, demand teachers daily lead students in Bible reading and prayer, and promote abstinence-only sex education, you can count on me to publicly and vocally challenge their anti-democratic ideologies.
I have thirteen grandchildren, and all but two of them attend local public schools. Their futures matter to me, as do the futures of my six children and their spouses.
Strader attacks my character, yet she provides no evidence for her accusations. None. Anyone who reads more than a few posts on this site knows that I am not “full of hate, bitterness, and unforgiveness.” Strader has built a strawman of the Evangelical-preacher-turned-atheist Bruce Gerencser in her mind. In doing so she has disobeyed God. Proverbs 18:13 says: Answering before listening is both stupid and rude.
A minute or so after I received Strader’s email, I received another message, this time from a Southern Baptist pastor:
From one evangelical pastor to one previous evangelical pastor, I stumbled on your page, and I think you are witty and funny. I thought a kind, humorous word might be a small counterbalance to all the irritating things you have received from evangelicals. Rather than “God bless you,” I’ll just wish you good luck. LOL. Take care, my friend:)
I will leave it to readers to decide which commenter best describes me.
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.
Over the weekend, A Christian man by the name of John sent me the following email. My response is indented and italicized. All spelling and grammar in the original.
After reading about your “mind reading ability” and your becoming a non-believer I wonder what changed you.
I have no idea what John is talking about when it comes to “mind reading ability.” I was unable to find a log reference for John’s IP address — an oddity, to be sure — so I don’t know what he read on this site. I suspect he didn’t read any of my autobiographical writing. Had John shown a bit of curiosity, he would have found the WHY? page. The posts listed on this page would have answered most, if not all, of John’s questions about “what changed me.”
I knew Father Jack Baker for years and I have zero doubt he was wrongfully convicted by an extremely woke, political attorney general.
Joseph “Jack” Baker is a Roman Catholic priest who was convicted last year on sexual assault charges and sentenced to 4-15 years in prison. He was convicted by a jury of his peers. Were they all “woke?” Does John really expect anyone to believe that Baker is innocent; that he was convicted because a “woke” attorney general was out to get him? Baker was convicted of sexually assaulting a child under the age of thirteen. In other words, he is a pedophile.
Baker actually got off easy. As I wrote at the time: “Baker was given a lighter sentence because of all the “good” things he did as a pastor. Does anyone seriously think that this was the only time that Baker took advantage of a church minor? I mean, really? As has been shown in countless Black Collar Crime stories, judges often give offending clergy what I call the “preacher’s discount,” sentencing them to lighter sentences than non-clerics receive. Lost on judges is the fact that these men abused the trust their victims had in them, causing untold physical and psychological harm. They should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.”
John says he knows Baker. Unfortunately, not well enough to know that he was a child molester. None of us knows people as well as we think we do; even our spouses, children, and best friends. We all have secrets. Baker’s “secret” landed him in prison.
The bible warns in the end times even the elect will be deceived. I wish no contact with you except to plead that you look into the world-wide drive toward woke and the perversion of over 2,000 years of Christian beliefs.
The Bible does not say that in the end times the “elect” will be deceived. Matthew 24:24 says: For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Note that it says, “if it were possible, they — the false Christs and false prophets — shall deceive the very elect.” The elect are those chosen IN Christ from before the foundation of the world. The elect will, without fail and at an appointed time, be saved, and they will persevere until the end. The elect might be deceived for a time, but they will always return to the faith. John might want to read the Bible again to see what it actually says about election and the elect.
In John’s mind, wokeness — which I doubt he could define — is some sort of evil that is destroying the world. Evidently, John is anti-progress. He likely pines for the good old days when Christianity ruled the roost; a time when women were keepers of the home; abortion was illegal; Blacks knew their place; LGBTQ people were still in their closets; teachers led public school students in daily Bible readings and prayers. John can’t stand equality, freedom, and justice for everyone. John doesn’t say exactly what he believes, but since I can read minds, I’m confident that what I have written here is correct.
I know two communist party members that are celebrating the “useful idiots” that now promote much of what is in our daily headlines.
John is one of those conspiracy theorists who believes that people in seats of powers are working towards turning the United States into a communist state. This, of course, is untrue. That two unnamed communists says otherwise means what, exactly? Nothing.
Perhaps John thinks socialism and communism are one and the same. They are not. The United States has always had socialist tendencies. John even benefits from socialist programs and laws. It is true socialism is making a comeback in the United States. I, for one, applaud this move towards a better future. Capitalism is a broken system. What rises out of its ashes remains to be seen.
I found God years ago, particularly living through four children dying in my hands. I know where they are and I know you have the option to learn why.
I have no idea what the backstory is about John “living through four children dying in his hands.” Certainly, the death of any child is tragic. That said, John does not know where these dead children are today. By faith, he believes they are in Heaven, but he has no evidence for this claim. None. All the evidence says that dead people stay dead, either buried in the ground or turned into ashes. Christians claim there is an afterlife, but the only evidence they provide for their claims are Bible verses. That’s it. Believing there is life after death in Heaven or Hell requires faith, a faith I do not have.
Further, historically, the Christian church has taught that people who die remain in the grave until the general resurrection of the dead. No one is currently physically in Heaven or Hell. All the Heaven and Hell nonsense spouted by primarily Evangelical preachers is feel-good nonsense meant to soothe the feelings of those who have lost loved ones. Heaven and Hell await, but not today.
John seems to think he can teach me a thing or two about these things. I await his lesson. 🙂
Saved by Reason,
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I grew up in a dysfunctional Evangelical home. We attended church every time the doors were open, read our Bibles, invited our friends and neighbors to church, and practiced the Christian art of praying. I want to focus on the art of praying in this post. I hope what I write will resonate with readers, and provoke their own thoughts about their past prayer experiences.
As a child, I was taught to pray every night before I went to bed. The first prayer I remember praying went like this:
Dear God,
Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my Soul to keep, If I should die before I ‘wake, I pray the Lord my Soul to take.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen
As I grew older, my prayers became more extemporaneous. I would confess my sins, thank God for saving me from my sin, thank God for my parents, family, pastor, church, pray for the missionaries and lost sinners, and finish off my prayers with a few personal requests. Still waiting for that new Schwinn 3-speed bike with a banana seat and sissy bar, Lord. As a teenager, my prayers became more elaborate, often taking minutes to recite. I wanted God to know I was serious about my faith; that I was serious about making my petitions and requests known to God. In my late teens, as I became more involved with girls, I would ask God to keep me morally pure. Two serious relationships, one at eighteen and the other with the woman who is now my wife, brought frequent prayers for moral strength. I was a virgin when I married, but I suspect that had Polly and I waited much longer, we would have rounded third and slid into home. I can remember to this day, kneeling before God, still sexually aroused, and thanking him for keeping me from fornication. I know now, of course, that what kept me from sexual sin was religious indoctrination, threats of judgment and Hell, and fear.
I was also taught the importance of praying before every meal. As a child, I prayed:
Dear God,
God is great, God is good. Let us thank him for our food.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen
On more than a few occasions growing up, I started eating before the prescribed prayer was uttered. This would usually elicit a stern warning from my mom:
Mom: Did you pray for your food?
Bruce: Uh — mouth filled with food — I forgot.
Mom: You better pray right now lest God chokes you.
Bruce: (Who had never seen a non-prayer choked by God) bows his head and silently mouths a prayer of thankfulness to God.
I had drilled into my head by my mom and pastors that God gave me food to eat, and that if I wanted to continue eating beans and wieners or chipped chopped ham/gravy over toast, I better thank God for meeting my sustenance needs. This training stuck with me, and I continued to pray over meals until I was almost fifty years old.
Several years ago, we visited Polly’s Fundamentalist Christian parents. (Both of them have died over the past three years.) Polly’s dad was a retired Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) pastor. Mom was an excellent cake maker, and she had made a double-chocolate cake for us and my oldest son and his children, and my youngest son and his fiancée, who accompanied us. As we were preparing to eat the cake, my father-in-law said to my oldest son, “Are you going to pray for the cake?” We all sat there stunned, not knowing what to do. You see, desserts were never prayed over. Never made sense to me why we prayed for the pot roast, carrots, and potatoes, but never for dessert. My son quickly avoided the prayer question, and Dad decided to go ahead without it. Crisis averted. When Polly and I left Christianity, Dad would frequently ask me or one of my oldest two sons to pray for the food. Such requests were quietly and respectfully rebuffed with a “Why don’t you pray, Dad/Papaw?” Certainly, Polly and I don’t prevent anyone from praying at our table as long as they do it silently. God hears silent prayers, does he not? Yeah, I know, not really, but from an Evangelical perspective, he does. Want to pray for your food at atheist Nana and Grandpa’s table? Bow your head and silently shoot a prayer to Jesus. That’s all that matters right? If not, it would seem, at least to me, that meal prayers — especially in public settings — are meant to be statements instead of acts of piety and devotion.
These days, I am with Jimmy Stewart when it comes to praying for our food:
What were your praying experiences as a child? Did you pray over your food? Always, or did you make exceptions? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.
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.
