This writer [Geri Ungurean] believes that Fauci “stepping down” does not come close to what should be done with this man. I believe that a Nuremberg Trial 2.0 should be organized. I believe that Fauci, Gates and all those from Pfizer and Moderna should stand trial for crimes against humanity. These are CRIMINALS.
I believe that all of Fauci’s riches should be confiscated and distributed to families with members who are maimed for life; and to families who lost loved ones to the poison shot.
That would be nice, huh? [Fauci retiring to spend time with his family] I think that it would be “nicer” to see you (Fauci) in striped PJ’s [Ungurean claims she is a Messianic Jew, yet uses antisemitic language) awaiting your trial as a mass murderer of millions. And then when found guilty, you should stand in front of a firing squad. Fauci – if you do not repent of these crimes against humanity, you will spend eternity in hell.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Several days ago, I received two emails from a Baptist pastor named Stacey. What follows is my response to his emails. My response is indented and italicized. I appreciate Stacey’s polite, respectful tone — a rare experience for me with Evangelical preachers
Email One
I was raised in a Christian home and have been preaching for 18 years. I pastor a small congregation in Arkansas. I came across your blog about a year ago and it has intrigued me greatly.
Thank you for taking the time to actually read my writing. Far too often, Evangelicals read a post or two and then go into attack mode. Their goal is not to learn. I am viewed as their enemy, one unworthy of kindness, decency, and respect. I have received thousands of comments and emails from Evangelicals over the years. Few have been respectful and polite. Their goal seems to be to discredit me or deconstruct my life instead of genuinely trying to understand my story.
I can empathize with all of the things you went through as a Christian and especially as a pastor of a church. Sometimes church people can be downright ignorant, mean spirited and even cruel. I will not make excuses for these people or try to explain it away. People are people even when they become religious.
By far, the worst people have been Evangelical pastors, evangelists, missionaries, and professors. And then there’s Independent Fundamentalist Baptists (IFB) They are in a class all their own –overwhelmingly nasty, arrogant, and violent.
I only want to ask how you explain the historical accounts of Jesus. I know you are well educated with not only the bible but other historical accounts of his life. I may have missed this explanation in some of your other blogs and I have read most of them. I am sure you know of Lee Strobel and his Book, The Case for Christ, if Jesus did exist in history, then what do you say about him? Was he just a good man? Was his death and supposed resurrection a hoax? Just curious what you believe or better yet think on it.
We have very little evidence for the existence of Jesus. I am not saying we have no evidence. The Bible certainly contains history, but the challenge is decoupling myth and exaggeration from history. I take a minimalist approach to Jesus. He lived and died in first-century Palestine. We have no evidence for the miraculous claims found in the Bible, including Jesus’s resurrection from the dead.
Non-Biblical evidence for the existence of Jesus is scant, especially when you carefully examine the sources. I am of the opinion that if Jesus was all that Christians say he was, there would be a lot more evidence for their claims than what we have. We have no first-hand accounts, including the gospels.
I am aware of all the “evidence” for Jesus, I just don’t find it persuasive; not enough for me to bow down and worship him or devote my life to serving him. Christianity requires “faith,” a faith I do not have.
If you have not read any of Dr. Bart Ehrman’s books, I encourage you to do so. Ehrman is a New Testament scholar at the University of North Carolina. I found his books helpful when trying to understand the history and nature of the Bible. I would be glad to recommend several book titles if you are interested in checking them out.
I read Strobel’s book years ago. As an Evangelical pastor, I found it persuasive. Now that I have all the evidence at my disposal, I find his book unpersuasive and “simple.”
Email Two
I sent an email asking what your thoughts were on the historical accounts of Jesus were. I have read what you think of the western Jesus, you hate him I know.
The post Stacey is referencing is titled, Why I Hate Jesus — a polemical article about the Jesus of Evangelical Christianity. It is the most widely read post on this site six years running.
I want to know what you think of the Jesus that history records. Was this historical Jesus just a really good hoax that fooled believers then and is still fooling believers today?
Jesus was a flesh and blood person who lived and died. The religion that came to life after his execution for crimes against the state was primarily shaped by the Apostle Paul. I would argue that Jesus’s Christianity is very different from Paul’s; that there are at least five plans of salvation taught in the Bible: blood sacrifice, obedience to the law found in the Old Testament, and Paul’s Jesus’, James’ and Peter’s plans of salvation found in the New Testament.
Christian’s are taught to harmonize the books/texts of the Bible; that there is some sort of grand story and theme running through the pages of the Bible. I encourage people to read the Bible vertically, taking each book and author(s) as stand alone texts. Doing this will present a very different picture from the one painted historically by Christians. Take Genesis 1-3. Evangelicals typically read Trinitarian theology into the text. Reading Genesis 1-3 as a stand-alone text reveals a very different picture — one with multiple deities.
I know you are thinking, how could it all be a myth? Consider Mormonism for a moment, a religion you likely believe is false or a cult. Look at the foundation myths of Mormonism and its rapid growth and ask yourself how this is any different from the foundation and expansion of Christianity.
I can fully understand hating the Jesus that you have described but will you take a moment to tell me what you think of the historical Jesus that many history scholars say did exist. The Jesus that I have researched historically is the one that keeps me from doing as you have done and renouncing my Faith as well. I have found enough evidence in historical writings that make me believe in him. Unless those writings have been compromised and tainted as well. What are your thoughts?
At the end of the day, every person must look at the extant evidence and decide accordingly. For me personally, I do not find the evidence persuasive. And even if I did, I doubt I would worship the God of the Bible. I find the God of the Bible to be reprehensible, a violent, genocidal deity undeserving of my fealty.
I hope I have adequately answered your questions.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Yesterday, a Fundamentalist Baptist man named Richard sent me the following email. My response is indented and italicized. All spelling and grammar in the original.
Hello Bruce. You might guess by my email moniker [saintnow] that this one’s going to be a doozy.
I make no judgments based on a person’s email address. I judge people based on what they say and do.
I have read a lot of your pages,
How many, exactly? Remember, I have access to the site server logs. Based on your email address, I know exactly how many pages you have read. Are you sure you want to go with “a lot of your pages?” Out of 4,000+ pages, Richard, how many did you actually read?
so I have an idea of what things will trigger what kind of reaction/response you might have.
If this is so, then why bother to contact me?
First, I want to say I appreciated your commentary about the IFB movement and the rise and fall of Emmanuel Baptist Church; which article finally triggered enough from me to offer my two cents.
Thank you.
I currently attend an IFB church. I’m wondering about it’s rising and likely future fall which I can almost prophecy is coming; following in the patter of the ministry of “the Doc”. I know the people at the church well and I see the trends which I believe will eventually bring the same results as befell Emmanuel. Your commentaries are very much in line with my observations about the faults and weaknesses…..achilles heels….within IFB circles.
The IFB church movement is a dangerous cult. There’s no such thing as a “good” IFB church. IFB beliefs cause psychological harm, and, at times, physical harm. My advice to people attending IFB churches is always the same: RUN!
It is probably impossible for me to convince you to change your mind as you have spent a lifetime arriving at your stance, and you will never convince me that your rejection of Jesus Christ could possibly be a valid decision for me.
You can certainly try to convince me to change my mind about God/Jesus/Christianity/Bible. All I ask is that you provide empirical evidence for your claims. Not bald assertions. Not subjective personal testimonies. Not Bible quotations. Actual verifiable objective evidence. So far, no Christian has provided me with sufficient evidence to warrant me changing my mind.
I am more than happy to look at your “evidence,” Richard. How about you look at mine? Let’s start with your belief that the Bible is inerrant and infallible. Better yet, have you read any of Dr. Bart Ehrman’s books?
As the young lady at Columbine who looked her killer in the eye and answered yes when at gunpoint she was asked if she believes in Jesus Christ before she was shot and killed, I too will gladly accept the honor of suffering for my Savior.
These words are meaningless. No one “knows” what they will do when in such moments. For the record, I think Cassie Bernall’s martyrdom story is largely a myth (as are many Evangelical testimonies).
Multiple reliable sources, including eyewitnesses who were with Bernall when she was shot, the teen who initially reported that she had been the one asked about belief in God, an audio recording and the FBI, determined within months of the massacre that Bernall was never asked the question at all.
Craig Scott, a student who was in the library, where Bernall and 11 others (including the two killers) died — and the brother of Rachel Scott, the first victim killed in the incident during the massacre, told investigators that he had heard one of the shooters ask a victim whether or not they believed in God during the shooting, and the female victim answered, “yes.” Scott, hiding under a table at the time, did not see the exchange, but told investigators the voice was Bernall’s. However, months later when Scott visited the library with investigators, he identified the wrong location for Bernall, pointing instead to where survivor Valeen Schnurr had been hiding.
Schnurr lay on the floor, injured. When one of the shooters, Dylan Klebold approached her, she said, “Oh, my God, oh, my God, don’t let me die.” Klebold asked her if she believed in God. She said she did, and when he asked why, she responded, “Because I believe and my parents brought me up that way.” Klebold did not shoot her again.
In addition, Columbine student Emily Wyant, who was hiding beneath a table next to Bernall, told investigators that Eric Harris had shot her without asking her any questions at all. He merely knocked on the table twice and said, “Peekaboo.” Another student hiding in the same location confirmed Wyant’s account. Wyant told Bernall’s parents that their daughter had not spoken to either killer prior to the publication of “She Said ‘Yes’,” written by Misty Bernall.
Investigators were aware that Bernall had not spoken with the killers early in the investigation, and even had an audio recording of what actually happened, courtesy of an art teacher.
You can proudly say that you spent your life learning to believe or disbelieve or however you want to call your philosophy and you too will proudly stand at gunpoint and insist there is no God before biting the bullet.
I am a man who lives by his convictions and hopes to die by them. There’s no God, Satan, Heaven, or Hell, so I have no fear over what awaits me. I am on the short side of life, with a few years, at best, to live. Instead of worrying about my nonexistent “soul,” I choose to focus on the here-and-now; on my beautiful wife; on my six adult children and their spouses; on my thirteen awesome grandchildren; on the work I do through this blog; on good food; on just enjoying the moments before me.
You know what the Bible says about that, so I’ll spare you the irritation of repeating it.
Why should I care about what an ancient religious text says about anything? The Bible has no authority, power, or control over me. The Bible is just words on pages.
Now, in hope that we both understand we will not persuade the other for or against Jesus Christ, I don’t know what else to say. I do hope to get a personal response from you, but I don’t expect it as it seems you have quite an enterprise to manage now.
Consider yourself “responded to.” 🙂
Congratulations for the success of your new ministry since denouncing the Word of God.
Thank you, even though you meant your comment sarcastically. I have a far greater reach today than I ever did as an Evangelical pastor. Day by day I continue to win souls, baptizing them in the name of reason, skepticism, and common sense. I implore you, Richard, to join the one true church. Membership is free, no tithing required. Don’t waste your life worshipping a God who does not exist; a Jesus who is dead; and a book that has little to offer twenty-first-century humans. Freedom awaits outside of the box. (Please see The Danger of Being in a Box and Why it Makes Sense When You Are In It and What I Found When I Left the Box.)
Richard later left a comment that said:
……..To the atheist (nothing personal, Bruce) So you insist God is a myth,
I am an agnostic atheist. Look it up. I think the extant deities created by humans, including Jehovah, Allah, and the triune God of Christianity, are myths. There may be a creator that has not yet made itself known to us, so I remain agnostic on the God question.
Are you not an atheist too, rejecting as myths all deities but yours?
and you are at least temporarily real I guess.
I am as real as you are, and I will be as dead as you will be someday. There’s no evidence that I know of that proves humans live after they die. Once we die, Richard, we stay dead. Even Jesus remains buried somewhere on a Judean hillside. Do you have evidence that suggests otherwise?
You insist there is no Hell to be saved from, no God to fear, no Savior to save you.
Yep, yep, and yep. Why do you continue to believe things for which you have no evidence?
Such a stance is nothing new, did it really take all that long to get there?
I have no idea what you are asking here. It took me fifty years to reach where I am today because I was deeply indoctrinated. Breaking free from Evangelical indoctrination and conditioning took time. Better late than never, even for you, Richard.
I guess there is no way out for you.
Way out? From what. You will find the following advice on my About Page:
“You have one life. There is no heaven or hell. There is no afterlife. You have one life, it’s yours, and what you do with it is what matters most. Love and forgive those who matter to you and ignore those who add nothing to your life. Life is too short to spend time trying to make nice with those who will never make nice with you. Determine who are the people in your life that matter and give your time and devotion to them. Live each and every day to its fullest. You never know when death might come calling. Don’t waste time trying to be a jack of all trades, master of none. Find one or two things you like to do and do them well. Too many people spend way too much time doing things they will never be good at.
Here’s the conclusion of the matter. It’s your life and you best get to living it. Someday, sooner than you think, it will be over. Don’t let your dying days be ones of regret over what might have been.”
I live by this advice each and every day.
And I guess it’s not a problem for you, so why should it be a problem for anybody else?
I have no idea what you are asking here.
Saved by Reason,
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Truly, April Fool’s Day is a fitting holiday for all the Communistic, Rock-n-Rolling, Satanic, immoral, child-murdering, feminist, ATHEISTS in the world. There’s not a bigger bunch of fools on the planet.
….
When the truth is revealed, there’s no such thing as an atheist. There are only ingrates who refuse to acknowledge the goodness and omnipotent power of God. Romans 1:20 confirms that there is no such thing as an atheist. All the proof anyone needs of God is found right outside your front door, which is why on Judgment Day all professed atheists will be without excuse. I assure you that there are no atheists in Hell.
Do you know where most atheists are from? They come out of heathen State universities. Most young people profess to be homosexuals in a heathen university, which is where they are indoctrinated with that garbage. Most people decide to become atheist [sic] in some heathen school. Colossians 2:4 and 18, “And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words. … Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind.” The Scriptures warn about taking unsound advice from unsaved people.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Several months ago, I switched to using an email address from mail.com. Mail.com offers alias addresses, so I started using brucegerencser@atheist.com for contact form email. I responded to seventy-five or so emails with this address. Unfortunately, I have learned from Carolyn, my editor, and other readers that emails from me using this address ended up in their spam folders. Carolyn and I tried numerous “tricks” to fix this problem, but nothing worked. As a result, I have switched to a Gmail address for blog-related emails.
I plan to try to re-send the aforementioned emails. If you emailed me and never got a response, please send your email to me again. I’ve been blogging since 2007– fifteen years. I answer EVERY email I receive. Due to my declining health, I am hopelessly behind in answering emails. That said, I do eventually answer them. At times, I have been two to three months behind. There will be days when I get a bit of wind in my sails and I will answer a bunch of emails. Recently, I answered twenty-five emails over a forty-eight-hour period.
I have a Contact Page because I genuinely want to hear from readers. I pride myself on being open, honest, and accessible. This means, of course, that I am going to get emails from people I call Assholes for Jesus®. The reason I changed email addresses several months ago was due to one Evangelical man’s incessant harassment of me. I am trying to do a better job at recognizing such people and not using a real address to respond to them. Instead, I use an anonymous email service to reply to them.
As always, thank you for your love and support.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968. My family moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1972 and this is where I grew up. My parents were not very religious, just enough to not go to hell. We attended a Presbyterian church sporadically through my teenage years. When I was 12, I went to a YMCA summer camp. Most of the counselors were Bible college students. One night, around a fire with other campers, I heard the gospel for the first time that I remember. It included, of course, if I didn’t believe and pray the sinner’s prayer, I would go to hell. Well, what 12-year-old wants to go to hell? So I prayed the prayer, was given a Bible, and was told to read it every day. My Presbyterian parents were wary of my newfound zeal for God and the Bible. I was in and out of church through high school and college. Sometimes I would be zealous about my faith, and sometimes not.
After college, I got a job as an assistant manager at a restaurant in 1993. Most of the servers and several of the kitchen staff were Bible school students. This restaurant did not serve alcohol, so it attracted more Christians than other places. Most of these were from the charismatic/word of faith crowd. At first, I thought they were nuts! But they grew on me after a while. I started going to a large church of this flavor, because of a girl, of course. I played trumpet in the orchestra and was really enjoying it. Eventually, I married the girl that I followed to church and wound up going to a Bible school in the Tulsa area. After graduating, I went to work for the church/ministry that was associated with the Bible school. It wasn’t perfect, but I did enjoy my time there.
A few years later, in 1999, we moved to Memphis “at the leading of the Lord” and hooked up with a similar church here. I was also doing some teaching in churches around Memphis and the surrounding area. We wound up leaving that church and helping someone else start a church in the area. I was the associate pastor and youth pastor — volunteer, of course. Ugh. I also continued to be invited to other churches to speak and was really enjoying it. Until I wasn’t. We started seeing things in many churches that were troubling so we quit going to church for a while. We began meeting other Christians in homes and people would take turns teaching. This was around 2011. After one of these Bible studies, a couple asked me about tithing. We were taught that 10% of your income goes to the church. They had very little money at the time and were feeling bad that they couldn’t tithe. I asked them to study the topic and I did the same. So, I did an in-depth study on tithing. And guess what? What I’d been taught, with limited scripture often taken out of context, isn’t what the Bible says about tithing! I was like, well shit. If I’m wrong about that, what else am I wrong about? Around this time, I started getting interested in secular Buddhism, so my cover-to-cover Bible study was put off for a couple of years.
Around 2014, I started a 2-year, in-depth study of the Bible, the history of the Bible, and the history of the church. Probably my first big revelation was that I stopped believing in hell. Then I pretty much stopped believing in heaven. Then I stopped believing in creationism/Adam and Eve. And it all starts to crumble at that point. No Adam and Eve, no original sin, no need for a savior, etc. Then learning about how the Bible was put together, well shit, it was just a bunch of men who put it together. So much didn’t fit and didn’t make sense anymore. Like many have said, the Bible made me an atheist. Also, just looking at things like prayer and my rate of “answered” prayers. I could have prayed to my cat and gotten the same results! It was about 50/50. Except in one area where I was 100%. Everyone I’ve prayed for to live, who had a terminal, untreatable condition, all died of that condition or complications related to it. Every single one. As I got further away from religion, I started to realize how far away I had gotten from critical thinking. It’s sometimes hard to look back and realize that I believed in the creation story, Noah’s flood, talking animals, demons, angels, etc. But when a person is told that these things are true from a young age, by people they love and trust, you just believe them.
My wife is still a very devout Christian, maybe more so than ever, so that’s been interesting to navigate. She knows my beliefs have changed a lot, but not the full extent of my atheism. Only a couple of people do. All of my family and wife’s family are believers. Most of my friends are believers. I’m not ready yet to come out fully. I’m not sure that I will to everyone.
I’ve noticed some interesting things since leaving my faith. The first thing that comes to mind is that nothing happened. My cats didn’t die, my car didn’t break down, my life didn’t fall apart, etc. In fact, life has gotten better since I left my faith! I’m mentally and emotionally much healthier. I went through a long depression as a believer. I prayed, I read my Bible, I made confessions, I had others pray for me . . . and it just got worse. The group of Christians I had been around were very anti-medication for this kind of thing. It got bad enough I finally went to a good psychiatrist who put me on medication that worked wonderfully! I stopped praying and started learning about how the brain works, how thought patterns are formed, how my diet affects my moods. I started meditating. These things helped me SO much more than prayer and the Bible.
Another thing that I’ve noticed is that I’m much less judgmental and definitely more open-minded. I’m just a better human. I don’t think I was ever a super judgmental asshole. But, religion certainly tainted my worldview. Everything from politics to atheism to the LGBTQ+ community to people of other faiths to music to what I read and watch on tv, and so on. I like who I am now! I never felt like I could like myself as a Christian because we are nothing without Jesus and all that shit.
So, yeah, I am enjoying life much more as an atheist. It’s so nice to not have set in stone, dogmatic beliefs. At first, it was really uncomfortable to not have those solid beliefs. But now I’m used to it and it’s very freeing. As a Christian, I always heard that we were free in Jesus. It is the “sinners” that are bound. Now I see that it is just the opposite. Religion binds you up, letting go of that shit is really what sets you free.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Women come unglued when I try to convince them that giving women the right to vote has been so destructive to this nation. They try to convince me that they are Christian Conservatives, so it’s great for them to vote! Look at the big picture, women! Women overwhelmingly vote Democrat. There would have been few Democrat Presidents if any elected if women didn’t vote! Women vote for abortion and large government. These are both highly damaging to our nation. Men tend to see the big picture far better than women do. They see the damage that big government has done and is doing to this nation. THIS is the big picture!
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The Labor Department’s Employment Situation report for February included pretty good numbers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that job totals for the month of February were up significantly from the previous month—up 678,000 for non-farm businesses and government organizations The official unemployment rate dropped two-tenths of a percent to 3.8%. These numbers suggest that January’s fairly good job totals were not a freak of seasonal adjustments. Also, it is clear that the unemployment rate did not fall as a result of more people dropping out of the labor force. The labor force grew by 304,000, employment increased substantially and the ranks of the unemployed dropped by 243,000.
By Sector–Some Recoveries, Some Far From It
The employment situation was a mixed bag. Restaurants and other leisure and hospitality businesses gained 179,000 positions. Open Table reported that reservations had surpassed pre-pandemic levels. Yet there were 824,000 fewer restaurant jobs than in February 2020. It is a plus that pay in leisure and hospitality jobs rose 14% in one pandemic year. But that brings it to just $17.12 an hour, the lowest average wage of any sector.
The endangered retail sector regained enough jobs to surpass pre-pandemic levels. That is hard to believe. Health care employment is 306,000 jobs below its February 2020 level, and local government jobs, including education workers, are 598,000 jobs below the February 2020 level.
Negatives also apply to other sections of the jobs report. As the National Jobs for All Network’s (NJFAN) Full Count shows, Black unemployment was, as usual, two times the white unemployment rate. Fuller employment with good jobs would help here but won’t solve the problem. Racism–institutional, structural, and personal–is deeply rooted, so Black unemployment is always much higher than white. And the official Black rate underestimates the problem. Hundreds of thousands of African Americans are in prison or have prison records—a red flag to employers. Many unemployed Black workers can’t find a reason to look for work. Only an all-out package of solutions will bring Black unemployment levels down to white rates.
The government undercounts unemployed African Americans, and it undercounts total unemployment. Millions of job-wanters aren’t considered unemployed. While the official number of unemployed was 6.3 million, 4.1 million part-timers could not find full-time work, and 5.4 million people wanted a job but had not recently searched for one–at least not in ways the BLS accepts. When these groups are added to the total, NJFAN found that the number of unemployed in February was 15.8 million, not 6.3 million: The real unemployment rate was 9.3%—not the official 3.8%. Perhaps labor demand was not as high as employers claim. Effective demand would include more good jobs.
Nothing New: Too Many Lousy Jobs
Wage levels are one index of job quality. We have heard a lot about worker shortages and employers lifting pay to attract people. It’s true that the dollar amounts an average employee sees in her pay packet have increased. But so has inflation. For most workers, after-inflation pay has not grown steadily during the pandemic. From January 2020 through January 2021, real hourly pay advanced 4%. From January 2021 through January 2022, real hourly pay fell 1.3%. There was a net gain in real pay, but not by much, especially if we widen our lens for a minute. The history of real pay is a dreadful tale. How much did the purchasing power of hourly pay increase from 1972 through February 2022? The answer: 4%. That’s the total increase in the purchasing power of an hour of work for an average employee over half a century.
Even prior to the pandemic, employers normally had an adequate supply of labor. And that is despite the fact that the U.S. has relatively low labor force participation rates (people working or looking for work). The aging of the population plays a role here. But more oldsters would work if compensation and conditions were better. And even if we focus on prime working ages (25-54), we find that the participating share of the population fell from 85% to 81% between 2000 and 2015. (It rose again and is currently at 82.2%.)
Some prime-age people are not participating due to sickness, disability, and child care issues. Many are staying out because there aren’t enough jobs with livable wages, good benefits, and supportive bosses. Conservatives like to think the reason is that government benefits are too rich for the working class (but never rich enough for the super-rich). But benefits can be very low. For example, if you have a long-term illness or disability and you receive a monthly disability benefit of $1200, you won’t be getting more than you’d earn working 30 hours a week in a low-wage state for $10 an hour. Why not raise pay instead of cutting benefits?
We do not precisely know what labor markets will look like if COVID becomes less consequential. We can expect that more people who are rejecting lousy jobs will have to go back to work. Fewer people will quit their jobs, and the number of job vacancies will fall at a rate of millions a month from their historic highs. Without a union surge, without higher minimum wages, without federal good-job programs, and without truly affirmative action, the lousy job situation will continue. More people will be back at miserable jobs. We hope more will be organizing for collective action at the workplace. Some already are.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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According to Evangelical author Mack Major, Christian women are masturbating themselves straight to hell. Major writes (link no longer active):
Too many Christian women are losing their salvation because they masturbate. Dildos and all of those other sex toys have been used for thousands of years in demonic sex rituals. It’s one of the main ways ancient pagan societies worshiped their demonic gods. Masturbation is a direct path to Satan. There’s nothing normal about it. And shame on any Christian that says so.
According to an article written by Major titled Vibrators, Dildos, and Sex Demons: (link no longer active)
Many of you who are reading this have sex toys in your possession right now. And whether you want to accept it as fact or not: those sex toys are an open portal between the demonic realm and your own life. As long as you have those sex toys in your home, you have a doorway that can allow demons to not only access your life at will, but also to torment you, hinder and destroy certain parts of your life as it relates to sex and your relationships.
Huffington Post writer Ed Mazza notes that Major spends a good bit of space on his website talking about sex and masturbation. Major warns Christian readers that there are sex demons that can take control of them:
There are such things as sex demons. And the danger in masturbating is that one could inadvertently summon a sex demon to attach itself to you through the act of masturbating. And once that demon attaches, it is difficult to get it to leave. It will drive you to masturbate, even when you don’t want to. You’ll be hit with urges to play with yourself so powerful that only an orgasm will allow you some temporary relief.
The next time you are masturbating, just remember you could be summoning a sex demon! I found myself laughing as a read Major’s words. Really? Does anyone buy the bullshit that Major is shoveling? Sadly, yes. There are Evangelicals who think the sin of Onanism is a grievous act of willful disobedience to the teachings of the Bible (even though there are no actual verses that address masturbation or call it a sin). I have read more than a few articles by members of the Evangelical Purity Police® that suggest masturbation is a sin because it requires lust to get the sexual juices flowing. While this line of thinking might work with those still ensconced squarely upon Evangelical sexual prohibitions, for those of us who would love to be taken over by a sex demon, appeals to lust fall on deaf ears. Lust, along with most of the “sins” Evangelicals obsess over, is a religious construct. What Evangelicals call lust, unbelievers call desire — normal, healthy, erotic feelings of sexual need and fulfillment. Visual images can and do enhance sexual relationships, and when one is left to fornicate with his or her hand, well . . . visual stimulation is appreciated.
As is often the case, Major focuses on the sexual proclivities of women. What men like Major fear is that dildos, vibrators, and index fingers remove women’s need for men. While women may or may not find masturbation as fulfilling as intercourse or oral sex (I am not a woman so I cannot speak authoritatively on the subject), I am sure when needed it gets the job done. I know that is how it works for men, having been an expert masturbator since the age of thirteen. Despite warnings that choking my chicken (see 500 Masturbating Euphemisms) will lead to blindness, God’s judgment, and hell, I have found it to be a necessary part of what it means to be human. I often chuckle as I think of the days when it was my turn to clean the showers at the Midwestern Baptist College men’s dormitory. I can only imagine how much sinning went on behind closed shower doors – sinning that the men who are now pastors once performed with gusto. Imagine how shocked Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) teenagers and adults would be if their pastors put their stamps of approval on self-pleasuring.
I have long believed that men like Mack Major, who rage against sex — in all forms but monogamous married heterosexual intercourse — have dark, deep, locked closets filled with what Evangelicals call the sins of the flesh. Those who scream the loudest against this or that sin often practice those very sinful behaviors behind closed doors. The fact that Evangelical churches have a porn epidemic on their hands is a reminder that Evangelicals are every bit as human as the unwashed, uncircumcised, masturbating, dick-sucking, fucking Philistines of the world. The only difference is that we Philistines sin with gusto, waking up in the morning without a guilt hangover. All praise be to dildos, vibrators, and sex demons.
This post was originally written in 2016. Since then, Major has written a book titled Sex Magic: Flirting With the Demonic. Here’s how Major describes his book on Amazon:
Believers are opening portals through playing around with dangerous sexual practices and occult ideas that contradict the direct authority of scripture.
Many are being initiated directly into the occult through something called sex magic; and most don’t even know it.
Are you helping to create the Antichrist, and don’t know it? More specifically: are your sexual practices providing the vessel that Satan needs to usher in the era of The Beast 666?
If you’ve been engaging in masturbation, fornication, watching porn, adultery, homosexual relations, BDSM, cross-dressing, LGBTQ relations of any kind, spouse swapping, orgies, toy parties, had an abortion: you’ve been engaged in some form of sex magic; and whether you know it or not you’ve been having open fellowship with actual demonic entities.
Why do you think sex occupies your mind 24/7, or why you can’t stop watching porn or masturbating? Why is your mind constantly bombarded with unclean thoughts; and in spite of how much sex you have it’s never enough? Perhaps you can’t even enjoy sex anymore without the help of some form of visual aid or a sex toy. Those are not necessarily your thoughts.
Other symptoms of being involved in sex magic are even more pronounced.
Your life is overrun with constant misfortune. Relationships that start off well crumble. Golden opportunities seem to turn into dirt. Opportunities to advance in life slip right through your hands and you end up going nowhere, remaining stuck in constant frustration while living in increased desperation. Nothing that should go right is ever sustained, and instead things end up going wrong.
If this is your situation, you’re not crazy and you’re not cursed. You’ve just opened a sex portal; and now your life is being blockaded by evil spirits that are intent on destroying you in every way. In order to break free and get your life back, you must know how those portals got opened. And most of all you need to learn the methods and techniques for closing those doors forever.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
And Samuel said (to Saul), Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king. (I Samuel 15:22,23)
Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men. (Acts 5:29)
Like all despots, dictators, and potentates, the Christian God demands his followers implicitly and explicitly obey him. When he says, JUMP, the only proper response is, HOW HIGH? The Christian God has no tolerance for those who dare to disobey him. Doubts, questions, or concerns are not permitted. John Sammis’ nineteenth-century hymn Trust and Obey says: Trust and obey, for there’s no other way To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.
Those of us raised in Evangelical churches know all about obedience. Obey God. Obey your parents. Obey pastors. Obey adults. Later in life, women are told that not only must they obey God and their pastors, they must also obey their husbands. As with all cults. obedience is the key to a compliant, easily manipulated group. Jim Jones, once an ardent Evangelical, commanded his followers to drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid, resulting in the death of over 900 people — including 304 children. Evangelical pastors and Catholic priests sodomize, rape, and molest children who have been taught from a young age to implicitly obey them. Trust me, I am a pastor, are words that have caused incalculable harm to young and old alike. Taught to be blindly obedient, these Christian sheep obey the commands of their shepherds. Once robbed of the capacity to think and reason, church members are easy prey for predator pastors and priests.
Of greater concern is the belief that God directly speaks to Evangelicals. Pastors routinely tell congregants that God spoke to them and told them to do ______________. Church members, supposedly indwelt by the Holy Spirit, believe God directly speaks to them with an inaudible, small voice (I Kings 19:11-13). According to the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is given to Christians to be their teacher, voice, and guide:
But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. (John 14:26)
But when they deliver you (the disciples) up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you. (Matthew 10:19,20)
Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. (I Corinthians 2:13)
But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him. (I John 2:27)
According as his (God) divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, (2 Peter 1:3a)
Consider, for a moment, that millions and millions of Americans believe that God lives inside of them and directly talks to them. This should scare us, especially considering that many elected government officials think God talks to them. Do we really want a president who hears voices in his head, thinking it is the Christian God telling him what to do? What if God tells him to launch a nuclear strike on China or Russia? Should Christians such as this be anywhere near the nuclear football?
Several years ago, Randall Murphree, editor for the American Family Association Journal, perfectly illustrated the mind-numbing, reason-killing obedience the Christian God expects from his followers. Murphree recently took a trip to Kentucky to see Ken Ham’s monument to ignorance, Ark Encounter. Reflecting on his visit to the Ark Park, Murphree wrote:
Answers in Genesis (noted for its Creation Museum in northern Kentucky) is building a full-scale replica of Noah’s Ark in Williamstown, Kentucky, about 30 miles south of Cincinnati. I was blessed to tag along a few days ago when AiG hosted a media tour of the Ark under construction. Wow!
We think we can imagine what it would look like, but to walk up to it in real life took my breath away – 510 feet long (more than a football field and a half), 51 feet high (4-5 stories).
AiG cofounder Ken Ham led our tour, taking us through the four levels and to the top deck, explaining how Noah could realistically have cared for two of each kind of animal on the Ark, pointing out interior framework and structure that will house 132 exhibits lining the long walkways, explaining that animals on the Ark itself will be realistic sculptures but a petting zoo will adjoin the Ark property. And there’s so much more to anticipate.
….
As exciting and stimulating as the Ark was, I began to decompress on the long drive home. An unlikely metaphor came to mind – extreme sports, those over-the-top, beyond-reason, insane physical challenges people are tackling these days.
Extreme! Now, Noah was really into the extreme – extreme obedience! I thought. What he did was impossible for man. But God gave him specific directions, and Noah obeyed, giving himself fully to the calling…
….
Unexpectedly I was suddenly doing some real soul searching, taking a little inventory, and considering God’s direction in my life. Sometimes I think He calls me to a task too great. How often have I not been obedient? My little Ark encounter humbles me and challenges to listen more carefully for God’s voice and be ready to demonstrate – as Noah did – extreme obedience.
Murphree says that God demands EXTREME OBEDIENCE! If God tells you to go into the desert and build a huge boat, do it! If God tells you to murder your only son, do it! If God tells you to move to Africa and be a missionary, do it! If God tells you to give all your money to the church or a TV preacher, do it! If God tells you to pitch a tent in your backyard and fast and pray for 40 days, do it! Whatever it is that God tells you to do, DO IT! Any doubt or hesitation is a sin, an affront to the God who holds the keys to life and death in his hands.
Evangelicals are frequently reminded that God only wants what is good/best for them. So whatever God commands, he means it for their good. God is good all the time, all the time God is good say Evangelicals. Since God is the pillar of moral purity and virtue, Evangelicals can trust him when he tells them to do _____________. According to the Biblical passage mentioned above, God isn’t interested in sacrifice (religious works). All God wants is for those who worship him to obey his commands. And not just the commands found in the Bible. God can, and does, command Evangelicals to do things that seem crazy to unbelievers. Better to be viewed as crazy than disobey God.
Remove religion from this story and hearing voices in one’s head would be viewed as a sign of mental illness. But because it involves religion, we are supposed to uncritically accept that Evangelicals do what they do because God told them to. Having spent most of my adult life in Evangelicalism, I intimately understand the notion that God “talks” to Christians. God talked to me many times, telling me whom to marry, where to live, what churches to pastor, and whether I should buy something or give money to a religious cause. For five decades, I believed God lived inside of me. I believed God and I were the best of buds. I would pray (talk) to God and he would often respond. When I needed to know what to preach or what direction to lead the church, I always asked God to tell me what I should do. And guess what? God, ever the chatterbox, never failed to tell me exactly what he wanted me to do.
I now know, of course, that the voice in my head was my own. The God who was talking to me had red hair and his name was Bruce Gerencser. (Please see A Few Thoughts on a Lifetime of Praying to the Christian God.) No big deal right, right? Who cares if Evangelicals think God talks to them? No harm, no foul, right? I used to think so, but as I continue to write about my past life as a soldier for the Christian God, I now think otherwise. I now see how believing God talked (leading, directing, showing, moving) to me hurt not only me, but my family. Instead of being proactive and acting as a reasonable, rational adult would, I allowed the voice in my head to keep me from acting responsibly. From selling family heirlooms and collectibles so I could use the money to “help” someone, to living in abject poverty so I could “minister” to God’s people, I know firsthand how “listening” to the voice of God can cause untold heartache and loss.
Every month or so, we hear of stories about someone who killed or severely hurt themselves or others, all because God “told” them to do it. Several years ago, a Muslim woman cut the head off a child because Allah told her to do so. I am sure Evangelicals saw this as an example of what happens when someone listens to the wrong God. However, there are plenty of stories about Evangelicals hearing the voice of God and doing things such as drowning their children, gouging out their eyes, cutting off their penis, or making the top 12 on American Idol or The Voice. I put “God told me to do it” in the search box on Huffington Post and it returned stories such as Teacher Says ‘Higher Power’ Told Him To Attack Kid With Skateboard; Mom Allegedly Tries To Drown Son In Puddle Because Jesus Told Her To; Man Allegedly Stabs Grandma, Blames Archangel Michael; Nurse Thinks Grandmother Was Possessed, Beats Her To Death; Jesus And Mary Told Me To Kill Him Because He Is Satan’s Spawn!
Jack Schaap, an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) megachurch pastor who is now serving a twelve-year federal prison sentence for having an illicit sexual relationship with a minor girl in his church, told his young lover, “This is exactly what Christ desires. He wants to marry us + become eternal lovers!” Countless religious leaders have used similar lines to seduce women. How do we know it wasn’t God telling them to do what they did? After all, the God of EXTREME OBEDIENCE might ask Evangelicals to do things the unsaved world might not understand. God expected the first woman, Eve, to sleep with her sons and expected Noah’s grandchildren to have sex with their sisters (or mothers). So why is it shocking to hear that sexual predators such as Jack Schaap and other preachers featured in the Black Collar Crime Series prey on young women because God told them to do so?
The belief that God talks to you is a great way to get whatever you want or to justify your behavior. All Evangelicals need to do is say God told me and discussions are over. God is the E.F. Hutton of the universe: When God speaks, everybody listens. His voice must always be obeyed, regardless of how silly, crazy, or irrational his commands sound. While I am sure that Evangelicals will object to my extreme presentation of their beliefs, am I really being extreme, considering that the Bible is littered with stories of people doing irrational/immoral things? If an Evangelical somewhere says that God told him to move to Montana and build a compound in preparation for the end of the world, should any of us think that the man is a nut-job? Isn’t that EXACTLY what Noah did? Isn’t that what Moses did? How about the Mormons, Branch Davidians, Heaven’s Gate, or the people who took over the federal building in Oregon? What about the Evangelicals who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and tried to overthrow the government? All of these people have one thing in common: they believed God told them to do what they did. Either God is schizophrenic or his followers are.
Did you, at one time, believe God talked to you? Have you ever made an important decision based on God telling you to do something? Please share your story in the comment section. I promise I won’t call the men in white coats to come and get you. 🙂
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
