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Washington D.C. Episocopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde Speaks Truth to Power, and President Trump is Pissed

trump and budde

Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde spoke truth to power during a sermon delivered at a prayer service attended by President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and the Trump family.

Budde passionately said:

Let me make one final plea. Mr. President, millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives. And the people, the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants, and work the night shifts in hospitals, they — they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurdwara, and temples.

I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love, and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people, the good of all people in this nation, and the world.

Trump later posted to social media:

The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard-line Trump hater. She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.

She failed to mention the large number of illegal migrants that came into our Country and killed people. Many were deposited from jails and mental institutions. It is a giant crime wave that is taking place in the USA. Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one. She is not very good at her job! She and her church owe the public an apology!

Conservative Christians, showing moral bankruptcy, attacked Budde:

Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde is the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. She’s the first woman to hold the position. She was given a great honor today, a chance to unify America around a Christian message at the dawn of a new administration. Instead, she disgraced herself with a lecture you’d hear on CNN or an episode of The View. What an embarrassment. (Charlie Kirk)

Liberal Protestant Pastor Mariann Edgar Budde blindsides Trump and Vance, weaponizing her sermon to attack them in front of their families by saying they should ‘have mercy’ on gay, lesbian, and transgender children. Unbelievable. (Catholic Voice)

[Budde’s sermon] is just the beginning of Democrats’ desperate attempts to race bait America back into the pernicious grips of DEI. The fact that President Trump demanded that God remain as the foundation of America should have received non-partisan praise from all of our nation’s clergy. We are addressing DEI and wokeness in our government and businesses and it’s time to address wokeness in churches as well. (Evangelical pastor Jack Brewer)

Ironically, the bishop used the pulpit and the service to not only lecture the president but to promote a secular worldview and her woke ideology. Unity can only be achieved through a commitment to biblical truth, not cultural assimilation. Her sermon was indicative of the heresy being taught by mainline denominations. Our nation was founded upon the truth that there is God, and he alone defines good and evil. (Evangelical pastor Rob Pacienza)

This Bishop asked Trump and his administration to have mercy on trans kids and immigrants. What I would like to know is why she didn’t ask for the previous administration to have mercy on these trans kids and immigrants? Where was she when it counted? We have children who are so young that they do not know the ways of this world and yet we are doing irreversible damage to their bodies — damage that many have since regretted. Where was she when Biden opened the borders and allowed millions of people who knew they were breaking the law to cross over. We knew a day of reckoning was coming. Yet where was her request for compassion back then. What the previous administration did was not compassion but ideological malpractice. They operated on children out of ideology. They allowed in people from other countries out of ideology. This was not compassion. Our compassion must be for our citizens first and foremost (Evangelical Corey Brooks)

This is what a religious pretender looks like. Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde attacked Trump and told him to “have mercy” on gay, lesbian, and transgender children and illegal immigrants. President Trump rolled his eyes… (Evangelical Graham Allen)

NEW: Trump appears to roll his eyes as Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde begs him to “have mercy” on gay, lesbian and transgender children and illegal immigrants. These people are absolutely nuts. (Collin Rugg)

Woke pastor attacks Trump and Vance to their faces for scaring “LGBTQ kids” and illegals. (End Wokeness)

Are you kidding me? It’s people like this woman “pastor” who put this irrational fear into the heads of LGBT people. (Gays for Trump)

Who thought it was a good idea for this woman, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, to give such an outrageous sermon in front of President Trump at the National Prayer Service? First “protect the trans” and now this? This is NOT a church I would want to attend. (Gays for Trump)

When compassion divorces itself from truth, it becomes a counterfeit virtue—easily manipulated, shallow, and destructive. As Christ warned in John 8:44, the father of lies thrives where truth is discarded, twisting kind intentions into tools of hell. True compassion bows to the authority of law and justice-for his throne is established on Justice; without these, it is not compassion at all, but indulgence in sophistry that serves the enemy of God. (Evangelical pastor David Englehardt)

Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. (Evangelical country music star John Rich)

I am an atheist, but let me shout out a hearty AMEN! to Bishop Budde for speaking truth to power. Her words will have no effect on Trump, Vance, or the president’s family, but maybe, just maybe, thoughtful, compassionate followers of Jesus will pause for a moment and weigh whether they want to continue to blindly support policies that are contrary to the teachings of not only the Bible, but Jesus himself. Evangelicals and other conservative Christians do not have a high moral ground on these issues. I suspect if Jesus were alive today, he would have plenty to say to President Trump about his treatment of “the least of these.” Trump’s response? He would have Jesus arrested and deported.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Billionaire JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon Tells Working Class People to “Get Over It”

get over it

Jamie Dimon, the billionaire CEO of JP Morgan, thinks that Trump’s tariffs will be good for our national security. If the tariffs are inflationary — and they will be — Dimon says, “So be it.” To the working class and poor people who will be hurt the worst by tariff-driven inflation, Dimon smugly replied, “Get over it.” Nothing like a filthy rich man telling poor people to shut the hell up and get on with their lives. Easy to say when you have billions of dollars at your disposal. Things look much different when you don’t have enough money to live from week to week.

Dimon, with a net worth of at least $2.7 billion, told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin during an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos:

If it’s a little inflationary, but it’s good for national security, so be it. I mean, get over it. National security trumps a little bit more inflation.

As someone who has spent his entire life bouncing between, abject poverty, poverty, and working-class poor classifications, it angers me when people of vast wealth tell me how my life will be affected by government policies that reduce the amount of money my family and I have to live on. “A little inflation” for the Jamie Dimons of the world is no big deal, but to people living from paycheck to paycheck, inflation-driven price increases on everything from the cost of housing, utilities, food, gasoline, medical care, and taxes can and does cause harm. Such people turn to government programs for help to keep their heads above water, but what do Trump and his administration want to do? Cut the social safety net that provides food, utilities, housing, and medical care for poor people. Why? To pay for trillion-dollar tax cuts for the rich — especially billionaires.

President Trump has opened wide the henhouse door to the foxes, and slaughter is sure to follow. Oligarchs — very rich business leaders with a great deal of political influence — now sit at the helm of the U.S. government and will do everything in their power to maximize profits and enrich their wealth, even if it means stomping poor, working-class people underfoot. And sadly, the people who will most be hurt by tariffs and anti-immigrant policies, voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. They literally voted against their own self-interest. We can only hope that when these MAGA voters feel financial pain as a result of their ignorant support of Trump, they will repent and vow to undo — if possible — the harm currently being done to our republic. Ha! Who am I kidding? It is just as likely we have crossed a line of no return, and, if unchecked, Trump and his fellow libertarians will destroy our once great nation.

And to Jamie Dimon, I say, “Go fuck yourself.”

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Donald Trump and the MAGA War on Transgender People

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Throughout the history of the United States, federal, state, and local governments have singled out specific groups of people for persecution. Indigenous people. People of Asian descent. People of German descent. Blacks. Muslims. European immigrants. Gay people. And now transgender people. Over our nation’s almost 250-year history, political leaders have used the power of the state to condemn, marginalize, and persecute people deemed a threat to the United States. We have locked up such people in internment camps, reservations, and prisons, and when the persecuted pushed back against their persecutors, they faced state-sanctioned violence, including beatings, rapes, and murders.

Thanks to Donald Trump and his MAGA mob, along with millions of Evangelical, Mormon, and Roman Catholic Christians, transgender people — who make up less than one percent (3 million) of our population — are targeted for persecution. Some Christians think transgender people should be arrested and incarcerated in internment camps, reminiscent of the days when Japanese and German Americans were torn from their homes and incarcerated during World War II. The goal, of course, is to drive transgender people back into the closet — out of sight, out of mind, never to be seen again.

It is easy for people with privilege such as heterosexual whites to say to transgender people, “Stand up for your rights!” However, demographically, transgender people are such a small part of our population that it is unlikely that they have the political and cultural power to stand their ground (without risking physical harm or death). Transgender readers of this blog have repeatedly told me that all they want is to be left alone. They want to live without being singled out for who and what they are. They want the same rights and protections as their non-transgender neighbors.

Sadly, bad times lie ahead for transgender people. Donald Trump and his merry band of bigots fully intend to erase transgender people not only from the government, but society in general. They will not rest until we return to the days when people didn’t understand the difference between biological sex and gender; back to a day when LGBTQ people were labeled deviants and child molesters.

So what are transgender people to do? They have little to no political power. I fear many of them will withdraw from our society out of fear of what could happen to them if they publicly lived openly and authentically as transgender people (no different from what heterosexual people do). Their small numbers are no match for angry mobs of transphobes who want to destroy their lives. It is up to non-transgender Americans to join with them if there is any hope for transgender people to ever have the peaceable lives they desperately wish to have.

Transgender people aren’t asking for special rights or to be treated differently from others. All they want is to be left alone so they can live lives free of persecution, harassment, and violence. Is that not all any of us wants?

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Trump Dump: Russell Brand Says Donald Trump is an American Mystic and Prophet

donald trump dump truck

This series, titled Trump Dump, features outlandish, untrue quotes from Donald Trump, MAGA supporters, and Right Wing media. If you come across a quote for this series, please send it to me with a link to the news story that contains the relevant quote.

Russell Brand, a professed Christian, recently had this to say about President Donald Trump:

Well I do feel optimistic about MAGA, MAHA, I do, because how I came to – not Christ – but how I came to Trump, was like, if they hate him this much there’s got to be something he’s doing right. I don’t know what it is yet, because I was on board with the ‘yeah, you can’t say Mexicans are rapists, that’s horrible,’ you know, but then I just slowly through realizing that the institutional Kafkaesque bureaucrats that ultimately tried to destroy me – I came to think, ‘now, this guy’ – and then more and more I think he’s, like, he’s an American mystic, that’s what I think. He’s like some sort of silverback creature of the American imagination. If there were an American prophet, of course he eats McDonalds, and drinks Coke, and goes around in a jet with his own name on it. What does the American myth demand of you? Of course you’ll have big, phallic, phallic towers with your name. America created him. America needed him. America got him. And I think that he might be the end of the kind of globalism that we were fearful of before when we were doing censorship-industrial complex and stuff, but just none of us knows what it will beget. And I say that without the one true God, I’d be concerned.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Quote of the Day: Half-Assed Doctors

half assed

By Dr. Mark Crislip, Infectious Diseased Expert, Science-Based Medicine, Old Doctor Yells at Clouds, January 22, 2024

Half-assed was the term my father often used to describe the result of my chores around the house as a kid. In retrospect, I can’t disagree with his assessment. I wish I had asked him before he died if a good job would be full-assed or zero-assed. I guess it depends on whether the goal is full or zero.

But I have been impressed with how often the basics of medicine are perfunctory. Cursory? Desultory? Superficial? No, I’ll stick with half-assed.

What I am referring to is so many health care providers I am in contact with as a patient or an observer (such as when my wife or mother sees a doctor) do a half-assed history and maybe a quarter-assed or three-quarter-assed physical.

It is sad.

When I have a medical problem, I organize the history before I see the care provider so they get a classic presentation of the history of the present illness, like I learned as a medical student. Six minutes tops, succinct, and perfectly organized. So I know my providers are getting the right information to make a diagnosis. I do recognize there is the problem in that my presentation also includes my bias as to what I think my problem is. I am well aware that, in regards to my own health, I am not the most reliable of historians or clinicians. The doctor who diagnoses himself has a fool for a patient and an idiot for a doctor and all that.

But for some family members, I have witnessed the most superficial of history taking. I know why. The abdominal pain that brought them into the ER? Going to get a CT to see what’s going on. So why bother with a careful history when the technology and blood tests will likely reveal the diagnosis? I am old and old school. I was taught and practiced that a careful history determines the diagnosis and then the tests are ordered to confirm that diagnosis, not to make it.

And when the CT is negative, everyone looks baffled because they have not bothered to make a clinical diagnosis first. Surprise.

I also find that providers rely more on what they read in the chart than what the patient has to say. And that is always a mistake. I learned early that the best approach to a new patient was to go in mostly blind and gather the information needed from the source. I was kind of an asshole, for when I was called for a consult I told them I wanted no more than a 5-word question they wanted answered. I assumed everyone else had it wrong and the approach occasionally paid off.

And the exam?

How many heart /lung exams have I seen that were both brief and through the gown or shirt? Too many to count. One anesthesiologist’s stethoscope was not on my chest for a complete cardiac cycle. It is rare to get a cardiopulmonary exam done that I think would provide any meaningful information to the examiner.

And abdominal exams? Usually, a brief push on the belly while the patient is sitting up. I have yet to see anyone do the classic look, listen, percuss, and palpate.

Most of the time, I just laugh, as I know the exam isn’t likely relevant. I have no cardiopulmonary issues and do not need a heart or lung exam before surgery. It is not like they are going to find an undiagnosed aortic stenosis that might cause an issue with anesthesia. But it might be with the next patient if they bothered to really listen.

So why are the exams so half-assed? I think two reasons. One is that technology is better than the exam, although more expensive. You will get more information from an ECHO or a CT or an ultrasound or an MRI. Or even a chest X-ray. My pulmonary attending years ago said the lung exam is what you do while waiting for the CXR to develop. And I kind of agree with that.

But finding pathology is fun and, on occasion, you will pick up pathology that the technology will miss. Little things, but important. How many times did I note the patient had blue sclera and talking with the patient revealed they likely had Ehlers-Danlos, unnoted for decades? Or the embolic event in the nail bed that meant endocarditis? And the exam can confirm what you think is the diagnosis from the careful and complete history. If you bothered to take one.

The main reason these exams are half-assed? Docs can bill at a higher level if they do them. So even if you have no heart or lung issues, you will get a half-assed heart-lung exam to bump up that billing code. I never did that. I was told many times that I could bill more if I did, but I never thought it was ethical to provide unneeded care for the sole purpose of billing. Everything you do for a patient should only be for the benefit of that patient.

I should add there is a difference between the initial physical and the follow-up physical. An initial evaluation by your HCP should be complete. After that? Likely should depend on what the problem is.

I will say the exam is not always half-assed with all health care providers. The docs I see often do the exam correctly. But they are all old, at least in their 50s. I have found the younger the provider, the more half-assed. And, sadly, MDs are more half-assed than NPs or PAs.

Grumpy old fart grousing about the youngsters today. And get off my grass.

You may read the entire article 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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Evangelical Apologists Are Wrong When They Say Former Believers Deconverted Because They Were Weak

fat preacher

I have listened to several podcasts and read blog posts by Christian apologists asserting that people who leave Christianity are weak; that if they had more character, backbone, and strength they would have remained Christians. Long-time readers have witnessed Evangelical preachers such as Dr. David Tee frequently suggest that I am weak, a quitter. Such false accusations certainly sting, but I have learned that folks who hurl such things my way are only trying to disparage and hurt me.

Evangelical critics know that it’s anything but easy for committed believers to walk away from Christianity. Such people were not nominal Christians who infrequently attended church. Thus, these critics are gaslighting people when they say that former Christians were weak, and that’s why they deconverted. I contend that most people who deconvert have great strength and courage; and that there was nothing easy about them walking (or running) away from everything they held dear.

In my case, I had been part of the Evangelical church for fifty years, a pastor for twenty-five of those years. As a person of deep faith and love for Jesus, I devoted my entire life to following Jesus and doing the work he called me to do. My partner of forty-six years can say the same. God wasn’t something we just did on Sundays. God, Jesus, the Bible, the church, and the work of the ministry dominated our lives seven days a week. We were not nominal, half-hearted believers, as any former church member and ministerial colleague will attest. Simply put, if we weren’t Christians, nobody was.

Thus, when we walked away from Christianity, it wasn’t because we were weak. If we were weak, we would have remained in the church. If we were weak we would have continued to play the game. Instead, we made the hardest decision in our lives. With much angst and psychological pain, we left all we held dear. we lost our church community, family, and social connections. Overnight we were ostracized and treated as if we were tools of Satan. People we had known all our lives, met in college, or labored together in God’s vineyard, abandoned us overnight. I received nasty, hateful emails, letters, and blog comments from people who previously loved and respected me. Several preachers used my deconversion as sermon fodder, spreading half-truths and lies about me.

Weak, we were not, and neither were others I know who deconverted. How much strength would it have taken for us to stay in the church? Not much. It is always easier to go along than it is to stand up for what you really believe. I don’t fault anyone who takes a different path, but to suggest that I was somehow “weak” because I dared to act upon my beliefs and convictions is untrue. Those who suggest otherwise are guilty of character assassination.

Former Evangelical Christians are some of the strongest people I know; people willing to be true to their convictions and beliefs; people who put intellectual honesty above perception; and people who are willing to make great sacrifices to maintain and practice their beliefs. Many of them have forsaken all to follow reason, skepticism, and rational inquiry. I applaud their commitment to truth. To call such people “weak” is just a cheap attempt to smear their character.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

God and the Future of the Democratic Party

god and the democratic party

Democrats continue to offer postmortems for their recent election loss to Donald Trump. As I drove Polly to her physical therapy appointment today, I listened to a podcast about a recent New York Times op-ed featuring notable religious Democrats discussing the importance of making the Party more hospitable to people of faith. These Democrats, all of whom are Christians or Jewish, want the Party to become more God-friendly. The Times did not interview Democrats of secular, atheist, agnostic, pagan, Buddhist, Muslim, or other religious persuasions. This, once again, reveals a persistent bias found in the media towards religions other than Judeo-Christian sects. Worse, the media almost always fails to distinguish between the thousands of Christian sects and their wildly varied beliefs. When the media deliberately chooses only to interview sources from certain religious sects, it paints a false, distorted picture of religion’s influence and effect on the political process in general, and specifically the Democratic Party.

Some religious Democrats look at how God-centric the Republican Party is and want their Party to be the same, minus Christian Nationalism and Fundamentalism. Should the Democratic Party become more friendly towards people of faith? Should the Party speak more about God and the importance of faith?

The short answer is no. The Democratic Party has generally been neutral towards religion, stressing the value of religious pluralism. Religious and non-religious people alike are welcome in the Party. Unlike the Republican Party with its demands of fealty to the Christian deity, Democrats have promoted the importance of the establishment clause and the separation of church and state. Now, it seems, some Democrats want a more religion-friendly Party. This, of course, is a bad idea, especially since the United States is becoming more secular and less religious. Church attendance is in free fall, and people who are indifferent towards organized religion or are non-religious are a growing demographic.

Instead of becoming more Judeo-Christian (a made-up term, by the way) friendly, the Democratic Party needs, instead, to stress and advertise its big tent approach to people of all faiths, including people without faith in a deity. Democrats should talk about religious freedom, the separation of church and state, and how much taxpayer money goes toward supporting churches, clerics, religious colleges, parochial schools, school vouchers, and homeschoolers, to name a few recipients of billions of dollars of tax money. Americans need to know how much of their hard-earned money is being used to prop up religious institutions.

The Democratic Party should be a place for everyone, religious or not. That said, we should not listen to voices clamoring to be more like the Christian God-obsessed Republicans. God is not the solution for any of the problems the United States currently faces, or will face in the future. As we are fixing to find out with President Donald Trump and his administration’s theocratic agenda, more God will only bring chaos, violence, persecution, and death.

Democrats risk alienating secular and non-religious Party members if they become more like the Republican Party. I, for one, will leave the Party if it does so. By all means, the Democratic Party should be the party of inclusion and pluralism. However, this should not come at the expense of secular and non-religious Democrats, people the Party cannot afford to lose. The Democrats have a short amount of time to figure their shit out before it’s time to give Trump and MAGA a devastating mid-term defeat. If Democrats lose secular, non-Christian voters, their fate is sealed. Losing Muslim voters during the 2024 election materially hurt the Party. It remains to be seen if these voters will return. Democrats need to return to being a big-tent party, and not more like the Republicans. I’m sure God, whomever he/she/it is, will understand.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Updated: Black Collar Crime: Evangelical Youth Pastor Robert Fenton Pleads Guilty to Sexually Assaulting Church Teen

pastor robert fenton

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 2022, Robert Fenton, a former youth pastor at Abide in the Vine Church in Owego, New York, was accused of sexually abusing a church teenager in the 1990s.

WHTM-27 reported:

A former youth pastor from Bradford County has been accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl over 20 years ago during a church-approved “betrothal,” according to the Pennsylvania Attorney General.

Robert Fenton, 52, is being charged with sexually abusing and assaulting a 14-year-old girl from 1996 to 1998 in Bradford County, when he was 26 years old. According to the announcement from the AG’s office, Fenton allegedly claimed that “God wanted the victim to be his spouse” because of a vision he had. The AG further explained that Fenton allegedly got approval from leaders at Abide in the Vine Church to “betroth” the girl to him “with an understanding that no sexual activity would occur.”

The alleged victim, now over 40 years old, first told police about the abuse in 2019, according to the criminal complaint released with the announcement. After the “betrothal,” the victim said Fenton allegedly convinced her parents to take her out of public school so he could visit her at home. Fenton allegedly touched the girl’s genitals and made her touch him.

In 1998, the victim said she and Fenton got engaged, at which point he allegedly made her perform oral sex on him, the affidavit said.

After the wedding was called off because Fenton reportedly got pancreatitis, the relationship ended around August-September 1998. Fenton then allegedly told the girl that she ruined his ministry before moving to Australia. The AG’s Office said that Fenton is a paster at a church in Queensland, Australia.

Once the AG’s office took over the investigation in July 2021, officers interviewed friends of the victim, congregation members, and her parents. Her parents reportedly explained that they were aware of and agreed to Fenton’s betrothal. They also said that the church elders at one point set up a 6-month “no contact” period, during which Fenton and the girl could only write letters. However, the parents claimed that Fenton would “push the boundaries”.

The pastor of the church was reportedly unsupportive of the relationship when Fenton first explained his vision. However, the pastor’s son told the AG’s office that the girl’s family and Fenton pressured the pastor and likened the relationship to Mary and Joseph, with Mary being much younger. The pastor’s son said that his father didn’t know the relationship was sexual.

….

Fenton has been charged with Indecent Assault of a Person under 16, Involuntary Deviate Sexual Intercourse with a Person Under 16, Aggravated Indecent Assault, Corruption of Minors, and Statutory Sexual Assault. The AG said his office will work with the U.S. State Department and Department of Justice to try to extradite Fenton from Australia.

“The defendant used his power and authority in his religious community to lie, manipulate and regularly abuse a young girl in his community. I promised we would hold anyone who was abusing children accountable – and Robert Fenton is no exception,” said Attorney General Shapiro. “Survivors experience a lifetime of anguish and trauma trying to overcome the impact of abuse. I want survivors to know – we believe you, and we will not let predators get away with the sexual assault of children.”

The website for Pennsylvania’s Attorney General stated:

Attorney General Josh Shapiro today announced the charges against former youth pastor Robert Fenton for regularly assaulting a 14-year-old member of his religious community from 1996 to 1998.

Fenton, 52, is believed to be associated with a church in the Queensland area of Australia as a pastor. A letter has been dispatched to the church notifying them of the charges. The Office of Attorney General will seek his extradition in cooperation with the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Department of Justice. He was charged with statutory sexual assault, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, indecent assault and related charges. His alleged victim, now in her 40s, reported to the Pennsylvania State Police that the defendant began sexually abusing her when she was approximately 14 years old and Fenton was 26.

“The defendant used his power and authority in his religious community to lie, manipulate and regularly abuse a young girl in his community. I promised we would hold anyone who was abusing children accountable – and Robert Fenton is no exception,” said Attorney General Shapiro. “Survivors experience a lifetime of anguish and trauma trying to overcome the impact of abuse. I want survivors to know – we believe you, and we will not let predators get away with the sexual assault of children.”

In July 2021, the Office of Attorney General in partnership with state police began investigating the case following a referral by the Bradford County District Attorney’s Office. Investigators learned that Fenton was a youth pastor in Bradford County and declared that God wanted the victim to be his spouse. He sought and received the approval of church leaders to “betroth” the victim to him with an understanding that no sexual activity would occur. However, between 1996 and 1998 the victim sustained frequent sexual abuse by Fenton.

Between July 2021 and February 2022, investigators interviewed multiple former church officials and associates of Fenton and the victim. These interviews corroborated the victim’s allegations, stating that they recalled then 26-year-old Fenton was in a “relationship” with the victim and understood them to be “betrothed” with the blessing of their religious community. The victim came forward to law enforcement after leaving the religious community and seeking counseling for the trauma inflicted by Fenton’s abuse.

On January 16, 2025, Fenton pleaded guilty to aggravated indecent assault and statutory sexual assault.

The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office reports:

Attorney General Michelle Henry announced that a former youth pastor from Bradford County, Robert David Fenton, 55, pleaded guilty on Thursday to aggravated indecent assault and statutory sexual assault.

He will also undergo an evaluation by the Sexual Offenders Assessment Board in Pennsylvania. Sentencing will be at a later date.

Fenton was youth pastor at Abide in the Vine church when the sexual abuse happened between 1996 and 1998, beginning when the victim was 14.

Fenton fled to Australia before charges were filed, and was ultimately apprehended entering the Philippines in April 2024.

“This trusted mentor figure used religion to get close to, and exploit, this child for his own sexual gratification,” Attorney General Henry said. “Investigators went to great lengths — literally — to bring this defendant to justice for deviate crimes he committed decades ago.”

According to the investigation, Fenton, who was 26 at the time, went to the victim’s parents and announced that he had a vision from God that Fenton and the child were to be married. Fenton, the victim’s parents, and other church officials came to an agreement on a betrothal between Fenton and the child. Fenton then sexually assaulted the child.

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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You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman and His Fellow Republicans Plan to Financially Harm Public Schools

ohio school funding

By David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal, Used with Permission

Does Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman hate public schools?

He very well might not hate public schools. I doubt that he would ever use those words. But as an observer, it just really comes off like Matt Huffman hates public schools.

Or maybe he has some sort of grudge against them and thinks they should struggle and suffer more than they already are.

Maybe hate is too strong a word. Maybe he’s just callously indifferent to public schools. Or maybe it’s not hatred or indifference; it’s a kind of gristle-chewing contempt for public schools combined with a deep, warm, abiding love and affection for private, for-profit, and religious schools.

I really don’t know.

What I do know is that since Ohio’s system for funding public education was declared unconstitutional more than 25 years ago, Ohioans have only seen two brief periods of time when anything resembling a constitutional school funding formula has been in place: the evidence-based model passed and signed under Gov. Ted Strickland in 2009 and then quickly overturned by Gov. John Kasich in 2011, and the bipartisan Cupp-Patterson Fair School Funding Plan that was put in place in 2021.

Now the future of Cupp-Patterson is in jeopardy as Huffman has declared it “unsustainable.”

Huffman, who starts the year as Ohio House Speaker after being term-limited out as Ohio Senate President, enjoys enormous influence in the Ohio Statehouse amid Republican supermajorities in both chambers.

The Cupp-Patterson Fair School Funding Plan included a phasing-in schedule over six years, or three budget cycles in Ohio. Now that the first two phases have been implemented, Huffman is signaling he’s ready to call the thing off.

“I don’t think there is a third phase to Cupp-Patterson,” Huffman told reporters Monday. “I guess the clear statement I can say is I think those increases in spending are unsustainable.”

Unsustainable. Fair School Funding in Ohio is “unsustainable.”

Meanwhile, this past school year, Ohio lawmakers funneled nearly $1 billion in taxpayer dollars toward private schools after passing near-universal vouchers the year before. The vast majority of new private school voucher money from Ohio taxpayers went to families with their kids already in private schools.

In Ohio, 90% of students attend public schools, while only 10% attend private schools. But according to Huffman, shoveling nearly $1 billion per year to private schools to help families who were already using private schools is definitely, absolutely, no doubt sustainable, while funding Ohio’s Fair School Funding plan for 90% of students is not.

Even under Cupp-Patterson, school districts across Ohio are facing enormous difficulties.

Here are some headlines about Ohio school districts around the state from 2024:

‘Can’t survive’: Greater Cincinnati school district will have to make $1M in cuts (WKRC)

Perrysburg schools considering cuts after levy failed in November (WTOL)

Princeton City Schools announce hiring freeze, other cuts after tax levy failure (WCPO)

Local school district to move forward with approved cuts after levy failure (WKRC)

Ashtabula Area City Schools superintendent updates board on $1.7 million budget reduction plan (Star Beacon)

Ravenna City Schools making cuts to busing, staffing, extra-curriculars as state places district in ‘fiscal caution’ (WKYC)

Financial health of local school districts varies considerably, driving levy debates (Dayton Daily News)

Akron Public Schools proposes cutting 285 positions to contend with budget deficit (Ideastream)

Federal Hocking School District plans to reduce deficit through attrition (Athens County Independent)

This school district is facing an $81 million deficit. It hopes voters will help. (WEWS)

Cuts and budget reductions expected for Youngstown City School District due to projected deficit (WFMJ)

Youngstown schools to cut 20 positions to deal with budget deficit (Ideastream)

Cleveland Municipal School District plans to cut $168 million from budget over two years (Cleveland.com)

Local school district forced to cut jobs due to budget deficit (WHIO)

Tri-State school districts are making cuts, financial changes after levies failed in November’s election (WCPO)

Mansfield City Schools faces $3.9 million deficit next school year (Richland Source)

Reynoldsburg school levy fails, budget cuts likely (WCMH)

Milford Schools approves over $5 million in budget cuts contingent on Election Day income tax levy failure (WLWT)

Milford School District tax levy fails (WCPO)

I’m going to stop here because I could go on and on with these.

I read an abnormal amount of local news from all around Ohio, so I know this all is happening because I see these headlines all the time. I don’t expect most Ohioans to be aware that school districts everywhere across the state are facing such terrible trouble, but I do expect the Ohio House Speaker to know it, because, well, that’s his job.

What I can’t understand is this: If you know that public school districts across Ohio are facing awful budget hardship, teacher shortages, morale problems, busing problems and driver shortages, an extremely hostile public, a complete unwillingness in many communities to pass local levies, would you, as Ohio House Speaker, try to find ways to help schools give 90% of students the absolute best education possible? Or would you rip away more resources and make their problems worse?

I would try to help.

I hope most people would try to help.

But Matt Huffman is signaling he intends to cause them more pain. And that’s why I wonder, does he hate public schools? Or, does he not care about them? Or does he just love private, for-profit, and religious schools so much that it doesn’t matter to him what happens to the 90% of students in public schools?

I don’t know. But if state lawmakers cut even more from public schools, all these headlines will keep getting worse, and Ohio communities, schools, teachers, students and families will all suffer the consequences.

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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You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Quote of the Day: The High Cost of Donald Trump’s Plan to “Drill, Baby, Drill”

drill baby drill

Excerpted from France 24, Donald Trump’s pledge to ‘drill, baby, drill’ meets the reality of fracking in rural Pennsylvania, January 19, 2025

A double yellow line marks the centre of Route 29, expanding at the top of each rolling hill that sweeps across the frozen landscape of northeast Pennsylvania. From the former coal fields of Wilkes-Barre to the topmost border of the state, the road cuts through sleepy rural neighbourhoods littered with Trump signs and fading Christmas decorations. 

Pulling into Dimock, a majority-White township with just over a thousand inhabitants, wide tyre marks start to form on either side of the yellow line. Hundreds of trucks shuttling equipment and water to fracking wells in the area have become part of the decor. 

Joe Wilson pulls up to his neighbour Ray Kemble’s house in a pick-up truck hauling a 700-litre water tank he filled from a hydrant about a 20-minute drive away.

“You wouldn’t think that in America, people would be delivering water to houses just so they can take a shower,” he says. “This is the kind of stuff they do in Africa.” 

More than two kilometers below his feet, billions of dollars worth of natural gas runs through the veins of the Marcellus Shale – the largest gas field in the United States.

The surface and groundwater used to supply homes in Dimock have become so contaminated with chemicals used during the fracking process that residents have lost access to clean water. As a result, neighbours have had to jumble together innovative solutions to help each other out.

“I deliver to Ray’s house once a week. He lives alone so he doesn’t need as much water. But there are five of us back home, so I have to drive back and forth from the hydrant to my house four times a week,” Wilson says, his face marked with exhaustion. “It becomes a chore.” 

The 39-year-old construction worker siphons the water into Kemble’s basement tank using a long hose and waits for it to empty out. It takes about an hour to finish the whole operation and fill the reserve, which is normally intended for storing and transporting water for livestock.

The tank is attached to a pump which sends water to Kemle’s kitchen and shower, but it is not safe to drink. On top of the thousands of litres Wilson shuttles around each week, he and Kemble have to get additional jugs of bottled water to make coffee, brush their teeth or cook pasta. 

Fracking is slang for hydraulic fracturing, a method used to extract natural gas or oil found in shale by drilling into the ground, then injecting water and other chemicals at high pressure underground to crack open existing fissures. The first company to start drilling for natural gas in Dimock, Cabot Oil & Gas, arrived in 2006 – riding the wave of the US fracking boom that would eventually turn Pennsylvania into the nation’s second-largest natural gas producer.

But shortly after Cabot’s arrival, locals started to fall seriously ill and Dimock saw its water turn brown. The contamination was so severe that people could put a match to a running tap and it would light on fire due to the high levels of methane in the water. A well near a house in the township even exploded as a result. 

Enraged residents began filing lawsuits against the company in 2009 and kick-started what would become a litigation odyssey. A state investigation ultimately concluded that deficient gas wells drilled by Cabot had leaked unfettered amounts of methane into the township’s aquifer. The company was banned from fracking in Dimock in 2010.

Kemble, a former gas trucker who has been at the forefront of the fight from the very start, pulls out a printed report of the water testing done by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) that same year. “I’m not worried about just the methane coming through. Here’s the other 60-plus chemicals that are coming in with that methane,” he says, puffing on his pipe. The report includes arsenic and uranium, the latter of which is an important risk factor for developing chronic diseases

A grand jury investigation found Cabot guilty of environmental crimes in 2020. But two years later, the situation regressed. Rebranded as Coterra Energy under a merger, the ban was quietly lifted and the company got permission to open 11 new fracking wells outside a 23-square-kilometre radius drawn around the township. In exchange, Coterra had to pay $16 million for a public water system set to be completed in 2027.

….

The majority of fracking wells are located in Republican counties across Pennsylvania, including here in Susquehanna County, where Trump won over 70 percent of votes in the 2024 election. Even though the environmental and health consequences fracking has had on Dimock shows a darker reality behind Trump’s promise to “frack, frack, frack” and “drill, baby, drill”, locals seem undeterred in their support for the incoming president.

Except for Kemble, who thinks Trump “is a lunatic anyway”. He is still registered as a Republican but contrary to most of his neighbours, Kemble did not vote for Trump in the 2024 presidential election because “he is all in with the industry”. 

Along the main road, a colossal banner pasted on the front of a white, barn-like building reads “Trump coming soon”. Ironically, it was supposed to be a treatment site for fracking wastewater, but the project was put on hold because local authorities deemed it too dangerous. The building has been vacant for years. 

Back at Kemble’s house, the gun-carrying Craig Stevens slaps his contact card onto the long wooden table where Kemble is sitting. It is bright yellow and has a snake coiled around an oil rig in the centre, a reference to the flag used by the right-wing Tea Party movement. The card reads “patriots from the oil & gas shales – don’t tread on me”. Along with Kemble, he is spearheading the battle against Coterra. 

Stevens describes himself as a “former right-wing conservative” and insists that he is “not anti-drill” but rather “pro-clean air and water”, which is why he is also one of the few inhabitants here who didn’t vote for Trump either. 

“Locals here will not talk about fracking because most of them have their hands in the pockets of the industry. They’ve signed gas leases in exchange for money and are contractually forbidden to speak out due to non-disclosure agreements,” Stevens says. 

Trump made promises to boost oil and gas production by opening more drilling permits and increasing fracking leases on federal lands. But in the US, the vast majority of fracking takes place on state and private land. Gas companies can make deals with landowners to drill on their property, often in exchange for monthly payments in the form of royalties.

“It is a very sensitive subject here in Dimock,” a woman living in the community admits. She prefers to remain anonymous because her family has “had some problems” but “can’t talk about it”. There is a gas well close to her property that not only brought noise pollution but also caused “water issues”.

To solve the problems the family was having, they reached “a settlement” with Coterra, who installed a massive filtration system in their house so they could access clean water. In return, they agreed not to speak publicly about the contamination.

She says that money is the reason people will continue supporting Trump regardless of whether they are affected by the environmental and health consequences of the fracking around Dimock. “Some people get most of their income from the royalties [of gas leases on their property],” she explains. “[Those] with a ton of land like farmers have lots of wells on their properties,” and because they have a hard time making ends meet through agriculture, they sign gas leases. 

Coterra has not only put money in the pockets of residents but has also funded local schools and given over $1 million to Susquehanna County for scholarships. A red brick hospital complex located about a 20-minute drive north of Dimock bears an unmistakable Coterra logo on its façade. 

You may read the rest of the story 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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.