Recently, a friend of mine — a retired pastor — posted the following on Facebook:
One thing I’ve noticed since the murder of Kirk is the outpouring of support and adoration for him. He has certainly become a powerful symbol for many. But to be honest, I wonder how many of us actually followed him before last week or even knew much about him? In a culture of celebrity worship, many have latched onto him, or at least the vision we’ve been given. Politicians are demanding in some cases that we say nothing ill of him.
I pride myself in being in the know about a lot of what’s going on in the country abd the American church, but I’ll admit im not always aware of the powerful forces at work. I knew about Kirk and his organization, Turning Point USA (TPU) But what seemed to be behind the scenes is now coming out in the open. A toxic mix of church and state is becoming a reality, but instead of a Rome or Canterbury, generic evangelical Christianity is becoming our national religion.
If you go to the TPU website, as I finally did last night, you’ll either love what its about or be horrified. They is no line between church and state. And for many of us, that is a problem. Our country did not come together as a ‘Christian’ nation. Nations are not Christian. People are Christians. And together, that is the true Church. Our citizenship is in heaven, and Jesus emphatically said his kingdom was not of this world. We are a nation of many religions and cultures, or even no religion at all. We need to respect that. But pushing for what amounts to a theocracy, we often demand laws that do not touch on the poor, greed, and injustice, which were major themes of the New Testament and the Prophets. We instead gear towards a Christian Taliban, punishing those that we deem unclean or immoral.
As a Christian and a pastor, I reject the idea that the state and the church can co-exist as equal partners. When the Church gets into bed with the state, it becomes a whore that is only used for the pleasure of its false master. The Church, Christ’s bride, needs to reject this false idol of power and be a prophetic voice to the world instead of a mouthpiece for antichrist values. We promote Christ and his Kingdom, not the whore of Babylon. Let us not confuse the two.
If you doubt this pastor, consider what took place at Charlie Kirk’s funeral — a full-blown worship of not only Kirk, but Christian Nationalism. The funeral was nothing more than masturbatory worship of Kirk, the Evangelical deity, and Christian Nationalism.
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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Now I want you to understand, brothers and sisters, the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand,through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain.
For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. (1 Corinthians 15:1-8 NRSV)
Allegedly, Jesus Christ resurrected from the dead after being executed by the Roman government. Twenty or so years after the death of Jesus, the Apostle Paul (with Sosthenes as his co-author) wrote the words above, saying that Jesus appeared to more than 500 men and women at one time after he resurrected. Most of these witnesses were still alive at the time of writing 1 Corinthians 15.
Question Evangelical apologists about the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus, and they will often quote 1 Corinthians 15:1-8. “Over five hundred witnesses saw the resurrected Jesus,” they claim. However, what evidence do Evangelicals have for this claim? Outside of this passage of Scripture, there’s no evidence for the claim that over five hundred people saw the post-resurrected Jesus. No, all we have is a singular author claiming more than five hundred witnesses saw Jesus. Not one historical record apart from Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15 testifies to the five hundred witnesses claim.
We find another interesting passage in Matthew 27:
Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last.At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split.The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many.
According to this passage of Scripture, when Jesus died, the veil in the temple was torn from top to bottom, and scores of saints who were sleeping in their graves resurrected, walked through the streets of Jerusalem, appearing to many.
In 2003, our family moved to Yuma, Arizona, hoping the weather would be better for my health. Yuma had a static population that would double in the winter months when “snowbirds” arrived. So it was for Jerusalem in the first century. Its population would swell during Passover, upwards of 150,000 people. Yet, despite the large crowds, not one historian, biographer, or reporter wrote one word about any of the events mentioned in this post. No mention of the five hundred witnesses or one word written by them. No mention of dead people coming back to life and walking through Jerusalem.
Could these claims be true? Sure, but there’s no evidence that they are. Saying more than five hundred people witnessed the resurrected Christ is a wonderful claim, but such a fantastical event was not mentioned by contemporary writers one time outside of the Bible. The same goes for the ripped veil and the resurrected saints walking the streets of Jerusalem. Justification for these claims requires more than a few Bible verses. These supernatural events were so astounding that you would think someone in Jerusalem might have written them down. They didn’t, so all we are left with is this: The Bible says . . .
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 fiery shards from the murder of Charlie Kirk still ricochet in baleful ways, even as his shooter’s views and motives remain murky. Despite rabid calls by a regime eager for revenge to extinguish leftist “scum” who rendered their bigot hero “a martyr for truth and freedom,” the killer seems to be a muddled mix of gun freak, devout gamer, and violent nihilist. In his bloody wake, many now beset by irrational vitriol are left to argue, “I don’t support what happened to Charlie, but Charlie supported what happened to Charlie.”
Political violence is, of course, as old as America: Federalists vs. anti-Federalists, indigenous genocide, slavery, lynching, war, Lincoln, the 1960s’ white and black assassinations, civil, women’s and gay rights struggles, Jan. 6 riots, police state troops, racist ICE raids and, in a country with perhaps 500 million guns, an estimated 125 Americans killed daily with guns – a rate 26 times higher than any other developed nation – and up to 800 children killed in school shootings impacting over 360,000 students. In 2023, the most recent year with full data, nearly 47,000 people died in gun violence. The first six months of this year saw an almost 40% surge in gun-related acts of terrorism and targeted violence over last year, with over 520 reported plots or acts of violence and, to date, 300 mass shootings, forty-seven at schools. In a nation awash in killing machines, an increasingly right-wing GOP, and a mood of rage-fueled paranoia and polarization, each act of political violence makes the next more likely.
Charlie Kirk, 31, was shot and killed by an assassin’s bullet in the neck while speaking under a tent that read “Prove Me Wrong” on the campus of Utah Valley University on the first of a 15-stop “America Comeback Tour” by his right-wing Turning Point USA; he was struck just as he responded to a question about mass shootings by blaming gangs. It was the day before a historically freighted Sept. 11 symbolizing myriad acts of or against violence: It was the day when Gandhi launched the first nonviolent resistance in South Africa in 1906 to stunning political effect; when Chile’s democratically elected Socialist President Salvador Allende was assassinated; when Al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center and Americans came together with such inspiring grace and strength the event came to represent “the ultimate failure of terrorism against the United States” – until a pernicious Bush Administration launched two bloody, pointless, illegal wars, which still haunt us, in its name.
Kirk was a vibrant, hateful, genial, incendiary mouthpiece for a MAGA worldview of bigotry and intolerance, a “loathsome human being (who) celebrated violence against people he didn’t like” and used his mocking, performative “debates” with students to effectively spread misinformation, inflame young, impressionable, vaguely discontent people, surreptitiously urge democracy be replaced by an emergent Christian Fascism, and make millions. “The language has been violent. The discord has been great,” wrote Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler. “There has been a consistent invitation to dine at the table of heated racist discussion posing as legitimate political speech,” in which Kirk “rhetorically violated” the safety of Blacks, Muslims, queers, immigrants, and multiple ‘others’ in the name of a defaming, divisive “free speech.” “He (did) not care about the security of others. He did not show empathy,” said Hagler. “Charlie Kirk expanded hatred (and) marketed the vile speech of old racisms in new wineskins.”
Kirk claimed America was full of “prowling Blacks” who target white people “for fun.” He said “God’s perfect law” says gay people should be stoned to death, Black people were better off during Jim Crow, Democrats “stand for everything God hates,” the Civil Rights Act was a mistake, Islam is “the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.” He put liberal academics on watch lists to be targeted and harassed, called Dems “maggots, vermin and swine,” mocked the death of George Floyd, “joked” a “patriot” should bail out Paul Pelosi’s attacker, urged “a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming doctor,” charged prominent Black women like Michelle Obama “don’t have the brain power” to succeed unless they “steal a white person’s slot.” A fierce critic of gun control, he argued we cannot allow mass shooting victims to “emotionally hijack the narrative,” and championed as “prudent” and “rational” the cost of gun deaths in exchange for having “the 2nd Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”
Like much of the right, he practiced “eliminationist rhetoric,” wherein political opponents aren’t just wrong but evil, less than human. Still, when the 2nd Amendment came for Charlie Kirk, thoughtful opponents wrestled in a deeply human way with the complexities. “He was a vile human being,” said one, “but I do not want to live in a society where vile human beings are assassinated.” Again and again, people echoed that pivotal duality: “We can condemn political violence and Kirk’s murder while also condemning Kirk for the hate he fomented,” “Murder is bad, and sometimes bad people are murdered,” “Kirk said and did many despicable things, but he did not deserve to die,” “Kirk should not have been shot and killed for his beliefs, and nobody else” – Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, whose deaths Trump still refuses to acknowledge, no pol, no child – “should be either.” This was not vengeance-tinged schadenfreude, he said; it was a moral and political reckoning with America’s dissonant reality.
The right, obviously, ignored those subtleties, unable to recognize any space between “endorsing over-the-top grief for white men who espouse violence” and not endorsing that violence. Here, as usual, appeasement is in vain. “They are going to claim we (left/liberals/Democrats/non-white non-supremacists) said whatever is most convenient for them to say we said, no matter what we say,” wrote Rebecca Solnit. “They’ve already decided all of us were the shooter.” And they did. Within minutes, with zero information on the killer, Trump, elected on a platform of fomenting online rage against the “other,” seized the deadly moment to foment more. He raved against “a radical left group of lunatics” – “we just have to beat the hell out of them” – “the agitator,” “the scum,” who for years “have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis…This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country.” Elizabeth Warren, asked if Dems should “tone down” their rhetoric: “Oh, please.”
After he ordered the nation’s flags flown at half-mast – never once done for the hundreds of schoolchildren gunned down over the years – fellow brownshirts picked up the vengeful tiki torch and feverishly ran with it. Musk: “The Left is the party of murder…Our choice is to fight or die.” Libs of Tik Tok: “THIS IS WAR.” Matt Walsh: “We are up against demonic forces from the pit of Hell.” Seethed Paulina Luna, “EVERY DAMN ONE OF YOU WHO CALLED US FASCISTS DID THIS,” charging, “You were busy doping up kids, cutting off their genitals, inciting racial violence…YOU ARE THE HATE you claim to fight.” Logically, they also vowed to use the power of the state to exact retribution against Dem pols, “libtard” pundits, anyone who may have viewed Kirk as anything but a flawless hero and martyr. Clay Higgins urged social media posts be banned, business licenses revoked, students or teachers be kicked out, non-citizens be banished: “Cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals.”
As usual, a spewing, psychotic Stephen Miller won the talking-evil-bullshit-out-of-your-Nazi-ass award, raving about “a wicked ideology” that “hates everything that is good, righteous and beautiful and celebrates everything that is warped, twisted and depraved,” an ideology that views “the perfect family with bitter rage while embracing the serial criminal with tender warmth” as its adherents “tear down and destroy every mark of grace and beauty while lifting up everything monstrous and foul.” Say what the fuck? In a posthumous Kirk podcast in the White House hosted by J.D. Vance – who flew Kirk’s body home in Air Force Two and pledged to “go after” fictional leftist NGOs, includingThe Nation, that “foments violence” – a smitten Miller decried those “cheering the evil assassination that cruelly robbed this nation of one of its greatest men” and vowed to use his “righteous anger,” “as God is my witness,” to “use every resource” to destroy the left’s “vast domestic terror movement…in Charlie’s name.”
Experts say the first, vital violence the authoritarian right commits is against fact, truth, history, meaning, language – reality itself. And so, again, it comes to pass. There has been no “cheering” of an act everyone knows with “horror” will spiral into chaos and repression. Though Miller said his last message from Kirk “before he joined his creator in heaven” was “we have to dismantle radical left organizations…fomenting violence,” there is no such organization; nor is there a leftist “vast domestic terror movement.” But there is, well-documented, on the right. See here,here, and here: Far-right plots and attacks have “significantly outpaced terrorism by other types of perpetrators” since 1994, and 2024 was the third year in a row thatallextremist-related killings in the U.S. were carried out by right-wingers.” A study by the DOJ itself likewise found, “The number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism.” It was just scrubbed from its website.
But who needs facts? Not a desperate, unhinged right that increasingly views everyone else as an existential threat to the white, straight, Christian nationalist oligarchy they seek to create. And now, notes Chris Hedges, they have their martyr, “the lifeblood of violent movements”- albeit “a reprehensible human being and Christo-fascist who enacted his agenda by preying on weak-minded people” – often critical to “turn the moral order upside down” en route to “full-scale social disintegration.” Inevitably, he predicts, the right’s newfound, giddy, sanctimonious “intoxication with violence will feed on itself like a firestorm.” In less than a week, it already is, with dozens of people across the country facing retribution – hounded, fired, threatened, arrested – in a GOP-sanctified ”witch-hunt” against anyone who dares to not mourn Kirk, or accurately, scathingly quote him, or decline “to be sad that a guy willing to sacrifice school children for the Second Amendment wound up getting shot at a school.”
MSNBC fired political analyst Matthew Dowd for musing, “Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which lead to hateful actions.” The Washington Post fired Karen Attiah, their sole Black columnist, for noting Kirk’s racist history, especially toward Black women. Dem Rep. Seth Moulton was flooded with threats – “Cute kids – be a shame if they didn’t have a father” – for arguing Trump should make it clear political differences can’t and shouldn’t be solved by violence. And in what Thaddeus Howze calls “deafening hypocrisy,” a populace who long (if selectively) quoted Scripture to make their pious points has abruptly banished their “live by the sword” tenet after “the gun culture (Kirk) championed did not exempt him.” “Here was a man who minimized other people’s agony, suddenly forced to taste the violence he once dismissed,” he writes. As a result, his “2nd Amendment justice” is neither celebration nor solution; it’s simply the fact that, “The logic he defended and normalized folded back on him.”
Enter Tyler Robinson, who on Tuesday appeared by video in court to be charged with aggravated murder and six other counts; prosecutors will seek the death penalty. After Kash Patel’s error-ridden, “amateur hour” clown show of an FBI search, Robinson was ultimately convinced by his father and a family friend to turn himself in. Described as a quiet, “squeaky clean” kid, he came from a Trump-voting, gun-loving family; his father was a sheriff turned evangelical pastor, online, his mother often posted (now-deleted) photos of Tyler and his brother grinning with guns, and they’d gifted him the rifle he killed Kirk with. Early reports suggested he was part of Nick Fuentes’ “Groypers,” a white-nationalist group from the “toxic underbelly of the MAGA ecosystem” who use Internet memes, underground cultural references, and racist dog whistles to covertly spread hate, and who’d publicly harassed Kirk as not extremist or “pro-white” enough. Now, it’s only clear that Tyler was “a guy who plainly had Internet brain poisoning.”
As “experts” struggled to decipher reported markings on the killer’s ammunition – “Hey fascist, catch!” with a sequence of arrows, etc – gamers quickly identified them as symbols from Helldivers 2, in which elite forces battle against aliens on behalf of a fascist state. Meanwhile, more facts emerged: Tyler, his politics shifting left, was in a romantic relationship with a roommate transitioning from male to female, and he’d told them and his father he killed Kirk because he “had enough of his hatred.” All told, his views were so hazy he could be deemed a “nihilist violent extremist” (NVE), often alienated young men, desensitized to violence by gaming and right-wing subcultures, who lack a coherent political belief system but feel an inchoate rage – a reminder to a partisan world, wrote Ken Klippenstein, “of the actual diversity of the nation, and the cost of polarization that demonizes the other side.” The lack of “tidy narrative,” said Rep.Sean Casten, suggested this was merely the tale of “a young man who made a bad choice with a gun.”
Online, some declared MAGA’s civil war had been cancelled “due to shooter being demographically uncooperative.” But the regime, fired up, had no interest in leading us out of “this ugly toxic pit.” Ignoring facts, law, nuance, and their ostensible mission to unite, they’ve used the shooting to launch “the biggest assault on the First Amendment in our country’s modern history.” Pam Bondi, appearing on Goebbels’ wife Katie Miller’s malignant podcast, vowed the Justice Department would “go after” those engaging in “hate speech,” or “violent rhetoric designed to silence others from voicing conservative ideals,” aka accurately quoting Charlie Kirk. “There’s free speech and there’s hate speech,” she said. “We will absolutely target you.” Heather Lyle on the “staggering irony” of selectively outraged, right-wing grievance politics “collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions…A movement that insists mass death is acceptable collateral in the name of liberty also demands national mourning when its own suffers.”
Trump, meanwhile, has helped stifle free speech by threatening an ABC News reporter who asked about it – “We’ll probably go after people like you. You treat me unfairly – you have hate in your heart” – an Australian reporter – “You are hurting Australia right now. Your leader is coming to see me soon, I’m going to tell him about you…Quiet” – and “the degenerate” New York Times with a bizarre, “hilarious,” $15 billion libel lawsuit packed with lies, boasts and juvenile praise for his “transcendent ability to defy wrongful conventions” and “greatest personal and political achievement in American history” despite a pernicious paper that “has engaged (in) decades-long lying about your Favorite President (ME!).” Like any eight-year-old sociopath, he has a notably short attention span: Asked how he’s doing after losing his “friend” Kirk, he said, “Very good. And by the way, right there, you see the trucks just started construction of the new Ballroom…It’s going to be a beauty…one of the best in the world, actually. Thank you very much.”
Elsewhere, everyone spoke of Kirk and the havoc his death had wrought. “Pay attention,” urged Sen. Chris Murphy of moves to crush dissent: “Something dark may be coming.” A somber Bernie warned of political violence that “threatens to hollow out our public life”; many followers, citing the “paradox of intolerance,” argued tolerance is a social contract the right has already ravaged: “Charlie Kirk is a self-inflicted gunshot statistic. Kirk’s widow Erika, 36, a glossy former Miss Arizona with a “Christian clothing company” and “devotional blessings” podcast, gave an ”address to the nation” at a lectern reading, “May Charlie be received into the merciful arms of Jesus, our loving savior”; she told “evil-doers” they have “no idea what you have unleashed,” and vowed the tour, mission and “wisdom” of Charlie, “wearing the glorious crown of a martyr,” “will endure.” At a shabby Kennedy Center vigil – bad music, red caps, USA chants, shrieking pastors – regime fans and officials proclaimed, “We are all Charlie Kirk now.”
Not quite. “Grief is not a performance,” offered a therapist to those struggling to respond. “When a public figure dies, you are not obligated to manufacture sorrow (to) honor a life (that) caused harm.” “You are inheriting a country where politics feels like rage,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox told traumatized students. “Words are not violence. Violence is violence.” After the arrest, Cox said he’d been praying the shooter “wouldn’t be one of us” – a queer immigrant would be better? – “so I could say, ‘We don’t do that here.‘” But of course he was, and we do. “What the actual hell have we become?” asked Catholic writer Emily Zanotti. From another, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” White, male, home-grown, needy, beset by an inchoate animus and fury now wretchedly reflected in a regime whose leaders choose to use power only for hate. Compare and contrast with, say, Stephen Colbert, who this week spoke of love, loss, and “desperately loving” a country now unrecognizable. Even Tyler Robinson decried hate, and, to his partner, voiced love.
The same day he shot Charlie Kirk, the “uniquely American cycle” was reprised one state over when a male student opened fire at a Colorado high school, wounding two before killing himself; so much blood was already flowing it barely made the news. Two days later, also under-reported, a police SWAT team arrested a 13-year-old boy near Seattle for “unlawful firearms possession.” Evidently fixated on school shootings, the boy had amassed an arsenal of 23 guns with accompanying ammunition, including tactical style rifles mounted on the walls of his room, handguns strewn through the house and, in a backpack beneath a turtle habitat, AR assault magazines; police also found drawings of school shooters and social media posts that said, “When I turn 21 I am going to kill people” and, “It’s over! My time is almost hear!” (sic). In an interview, his mother, who home-schooled him, said the posts were an attempt by her son to “be cool,” and he had no intention of harming anyone.
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 don’t know how it is where you live, but around here, every local town has a community group on Facebook. While these groups can be a good source of information, they are also hotbeds for gossip and complaints. I find such conversations entertaining. (I also wonder if public schools have stopped teaching English.)
Yesterday, a woman took to the Bryan community page to whine, gripe, and complain about three teen boys on bicycles who gave her the middle finger as she drove by. She hoped that a big man would teach them a lesson by beating them up. Yikes! Talk about overkill.
Other offended commenters added their complaints about being flipped off to the discussion, concluding that modern youths are more disrespectful than they were back in the day; that they never would have given a stranger the middle finger. I tend to roll my eyes when boomers delusively talk about how good life was in the “good old days.” The 60s and 70s were different, to be sure, but better than today? I have my doubts. Teenagers have always been disrespectful. It is part of their rite of passage. Three boys, under the age of sixteen, flipping off someone as they drive by? Not an issue. Older man beating them up for doing so? That’s a felony.
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.
“BE WARNED — IF YOU ARE TRANSPORTING DRUGS THAT CAN KILL AMERICANS, WE ARE HUNTING YOU!”
— President Donald Trump
What’s illegal are the drugs that were on the boat, and the drugs that are being sent into our country, and the fact that 300 million people died last year from drugs. That’s what’s illegal.
— President Donald Trump
This is not a war. U.S. forces went out and committed murder. There was no armed attack on the United States that would allow for the U.S. to use force in self-defense. There is no armed conflict between the United States and any cartel group or any Latin American country. A foreign terrorist designation of any of these groups does not change that. It does not authorize force against those groups. The killing of all 11 of these men was illegal. This was a premeditated murder of suspected criminals — by definition, civilians — based on the facts provided by the administration themselves,
— Sarah Harrison, former Pentagon legal expert
The Trump administration is now murdering suspected drug traffickers without due process. It should trouble all of us that Trump is using the military to blow up boats suspected of carrying drugs, killing everyone on board. These unilateral actions against alleged traffickers are illegal and immoral. Yes, I know that Trump has declared “war” on drug traffickers, but this is not an official declaration of war. Only Congress has the power to declare war. What we currently have is a rogue state doing what it wants to kill an alleged enemy. Evidently, the rules of war do not apply to this rogue state; Trump believes might makes right.
There’s little that can be done to combat Trump’s murderous ways. It is up to a Republican-led congress to reel Trump in, but by all accounts, they have no intention of doing so. Sadly, many Republicans love Trump’s bravado. They want to see him use even more violence to advance the MAGA agenda, not less. Lest you doubt this to be true, consider the fact that a Fox News host said that the answer to our homeless problem is to euthanize them. Yep, he wants the government to commit the mass murder of homeless people. The MAGA crowd claims Christianity as their chosen faith, but there’s little in their behavior that suggests they know anything about the life and teachings of the Prince of Peace.
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.
When I write posts like Leaving the Ministry: Dealing with Guilt and Regret, I am always concerned that someone might conclude that I was unhappy while I was in the ministry or that I felt I was trapped in a job I didn’t want to be in. Neither of these conclusions would be an accurate assessment of the twenty-five years I spent in the ministry.
In October 1979, Polly and I, along with our newborn son Jason, packed up our meager belongings and moved from Montpelier, Ohio to Newark, Ohio. Polly’s parents lived in Newark. Her father was the assistant pastor at the Newark Baptist Temple, an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church pastored by her uncle James Dennis. (Please see The Family Patriarch is Dead: My Life With James Dennis.) For a few months, until we could find a place to live, Polly and I lived with her parents. Our first home in Newark was a duplex several blocks from Polly’s parents’ home. Living in the other half of the duplex was an older couple who attended the Baptist Temple. Later, we would move to a two-story home across the street from Polly’s parents. We lived there until we moved to Buckeye Lake, Ohio in 1982.
Both Polly and I agree that our time spent living in Newark was one of the most difficult and challenging times we have ever faced in our forty-seven years of marriage. Polly started working at Temple Tots — the unlicensed daycare “ministry” of the Baptist Temple. In the fall of 1980, Polly found out she pregnant with our second son, Nathaniel. By then, she had started teaching first grade at Licking County Christian Academy (LCCA) — an unlicensed, unaccredited school operated by the Baptist Temple. (Polly was paid less money than male employees because she wasn’t her family’s breadwinner.)
I busied myself working in the church’s bus ministry, hoping that Pastor Dennis would make me the director of the bus ministry. He did not, telling me that it wouldn’t be right for him to give a family member the job. (Numerous family members would later work for the Baptist Temple.) James Dennis and I spent the intervening years in a love-hate relationship, with major conflicts seemingly bubbling to the surface every few years. While Polly’s family puts the blame for this squarely on my shoulders, a fair accounting of our conflicts shows that both of us bore responsibility for our inability to see eye-to-eye. Our history is long, complex, and littered with buried secrets that, even at this late date, could prove to be embarrassing. (Please see The Family Patriarch is Dead: My Life With James Dennis.)
After working for the local cable company repairing push-button cable boxes and working at several factories, in early 1980, I accepted a managerial position with Arthur Treacher’s — a large fast-food seafood restaurant chain located in Columbus, Ohio. My starting pay was $144 a week, or about $423 a week in today’s dollars. After my training and a few months as the assistant manager of the Heath, Ohio store, I was promoted to the general manager position of the Brice Road store in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. I would spend the next eighteen months daily driving back and forth from Newark to Reynoldsburg — about 27 miles one way. I worked long hours, six, sometimes seven, days a week.
Bruce and Polly Gerencser, Sweetheart Banquet, 1985
With Polly busy raising young children and teaching at LCCA, and me working long hours at the restaurant, we found ourselves estranged from one another. For a time, Polly and I were like two ships passing in the night. Polly, ever the awesome mother, focused her attention on our two boys, figuring that our marriage would be just fine. In her mind, the kids came first. I, on the other hand, ever the workaholic, poured myself into my job, often leaving for work early in the morning and returning late in the evening. Conflict with Polly’s parents and Pastor Dennis increased during this time, so I used my long work hours as a way to avoid interaction with her family. I was able to avoid family gatherings by saying, I have to work, sorry. Polly’s family didn’t seem to mind that I was absent, believing then, as they do today, that I was “different.”
While Polly and I never talked about the dreaded D word — divorce — both of us recognized that our marriage was in trouble. We were deeply committed followers of Jesus and active in the machinations of the Baptist Temple. Despite my long work hours, I still worked in the bus ministry, went on visitation, and attended church services on Sunday. Polly helped with the nursery and sang in the choir. While we were busy, our lives were not what we expected they would be when we left Midwestern Baptist College in 1978. Both of us believed God had called us to the ministry, so as long as we weren’t in full-time service for the Lord, our lives were not in line with the will of God. Polly and I saw this as one of the reasons we were having marital troubles. Decades later, now an old married couple with grandchildren, we now know that our root problems were immaturity, fanciful expectations, and religious demands. Our focus should have been on family and building financial security. Instead, we yearned to be a Pastor and a Pastor’s wife. In our minds, Jesus and the ministry came first. Wholeheartedly believing this would plague us for much of our married life.
Late in 1981, Mrs. Paul’s bought out Arthur Treacher’s. Mrs. Paul’s made all sorts of stupid changes, and after several months of working for them, I decided I had had enough and turned in my resignation. Several weeks later, I started working for Long John Silver’s as an assistant manager. Long John’s was rapidly expanding in the Central Ohio area, and I was part of a team of managers that helped open new stores. Polly had, by then, stopped teaching and returned to working at Temple Tots. Towards the end of the year, Polly’s Dad decided to leave the Baptist Temple — a long story in and of itself — and start an IFB church in nearby Buckeye Lake. He asked if Polly and I wanted to come along and help him with the new church. We quickly agreed, and I became the assistant pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Buckeye Lake, Ohio. Finally, Polly and I thought, we are back on track, doing that which God had called us to do. Unfortunately, she was fired from her job because she was no longer a member of the Baptist Temple
Though much turmoil and heartache would await us in the years to come, we were happy to be in the ministry once again. Outside of a few months here and there when I was between churches, we would spend the next twenty or so years pastoring churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. No matter what trials and adversities came our way, we were happy to be serving the Lord. The Apostle Paul wrote that he had learned, regardless of the state of his life, to be content (Philippians 4:11). Over time, Polly and I became quite stoic about life. No matter what came our way, we smiled, put our trust in the Lord, and practiced the contentment Paul spoke of. Our commitment to Jesus gave us what the Bible calls, a “peace that passes all understanding” (Philippians 4:7). Life wasn’t easy for us, but it was satisfying. Difficult times were seen as tests from God (James 1:2-4) or loving correction (Hebrews 12:5-8) from our Heavenly Father. All that mattered was that we were in center of the perfect will of God for our lives (Romans 12:1,2). Believing that the calling of God was irrevocable (Romans 11:29), being in the ministry was what mattered most to us. Over time, the “ministry” swallowed up Bruce and Polly Gerencser, leaving us with no self-identity. We spent much of our marriage denying self and sacrificing ourselves for the cause. After leaving the ministry, and later leaving Christianity, Polly and I had no idea who we were. Our post-Jesus years have been spent reacquainting ourselves with who we really are. This process has been painful, yet satisfying. While we were happy in the ministry, our happiness was derived from “doing.” These days, we continue to learn that happiness most often comes from being, not doing.
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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Listen to the Trump Administration and MAGA talking heads, and you might conclude that Charlie Kirk was a “good man.” President Trump would have us believe that leftists are to blame for Kirk’s murder, but extant evidence suggests that Kirk’s rhetoric and bigotry likely played a big part in his death. After carefully examining what Kirk said and did, it is hard not to conclude that he was a Christian Nationalist; a man willing to say anything — even if it is a lie — to advance his agenda. A good man, he is not.
Podcaster Stephen Woodford recently released a video detailing Charlie Kirk’s character and beliefs:
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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By now, I’m sure you know right-wing shit-stirrer Charlie Kirk was murdered by Tyler Robinson. I shed not a tear for Kirk. His rhetoric and bigotry cannot be ignored as a contributing factor in his murder. While I certainly feel sorry for Kirk’s wife and children, I refuse to ignore what led to his death. (And it goes without saying, as a pacifist, I oppose all violence, including political.)
What follows is a list of hateful, bigoted things Charlie Kirk has said in the past.
[Kirk called the Civil Rights Act] “a huge mistake.”
“Black women like Joy Reid, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Michelle Obama … used affirmative action because they do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. So they had to steal a white person’s slot.”
“The perverse gift of the Chinese coronavirus is that it has given Americans an up close and personal look at the horrors of big government — and, by extension, socialism.”
“Conservatives are branded bigots and we are falsely accused of hate speech when we express traditional values and ideas that have made America the greatest country on Earth.”
“Democrats have long been the party of voter fraud.”
“We’ve been conditioned to see a video of white people in MAGA hats standing in front of a Native American and assume that the white people are racists.”
“Americans needs to understand that the election of Donald Trump has forestalled our slide into the abyss of cultural Marxism and the surrendering of our national heritage and identity to that of the global community.”
“Historically, Democrats have shown they are willing to do just about anything to win elections. Republicans must quit taking the high road and fight back with everything we have.”
“We have to teach goodness to our infants.”
“Rick Warren promoted the vaccine and BLM in 2020 while he was pastor of Saddleback. Typical modern preacher — they get mad when you get involved in conservative (biblical) issues but enthusiastically use the church for secular left-wing aims. Shouldn’t ever be called a ‘pastor.’ For the last decade he’s done serious harm to Christianity and the country.”
“I think it’s worth (the) cost of unfortunately some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal.”
“Brazil has become a key battleground in the global clash between the power of the people and the tyranny of a corrupt globalist machine. TPUSA is honored to host President Jair Bolsonaro in Miami THIS FRIDAY for his first public event following the recent Brazilian elections.”
“The higher the building, the more liberal the voter. It just is. The closer to the ground you are, the more conservative you are.”
“To all college students who have their professors switching to online classes: Please share any and ALL videos of blatant indoctrination with @TPUSA. … Now is the time to document & expose the radicalism that has been infecting our schools.”
“I can’t stand the word ‘empathy,’ actually. I think ‘empathy’ is a made-up, new-age term that does a lot of damage.”
“We have been propagandized by liars and fakers in the media to believe that America is a vicious, racist country and indiscriminate attacks on black people by whites happen all the time. But the numbers tell the truth. Black attacks on white people happen 3X more often than white on black crime, despite blacks being only 13% of the population. Why won’t the media just tell the truth? Why lie when those lies result in innocent people dying?”
“Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.”
“The American way of life is very simple. I want to be able to get married, buy a home, have kids, allow them to ride their bike till the sun goes down, send them to a good school, have a low crime neighborhood, not to have my kid be taught the lesbian, gay, transgender garbage in their school. While also, not having them have to hear the Muslim call to prayer five times a day. That’s important.”
“Democrat women want to die alone without children.”
“We don’t have enough people in prison in America. We need a lot more prisoners.”
“Ignore the geriatric haters in the US Senate. Sec. Kennedy is advancing the people’s agenda and We the People have his back 100%.”
“Thanks to chain migration, Muslims are now a majority in Michigan’s Dearborn Heights (named after a Revolutionary War general). Now, local police have rolled out the country’s first-ever police badge with Arabic script. When you get conquered, you get a new language.”
“Marriage and motherhood make women happier, because of course they do.”
“Indoctrinating 5-year-old kindergartners that they can be something other than a boy or a girl is child abuse and should be illegal.”
“If people are voluntarily leaving 6 to 7 months into a presidential term to go back to their home country, maybe they weren’t actually fleeing oppression the way they say they were.”
“The Democrat Party is the party of crime. Write it down. They have normalized the idea that our cities are dumps and violence is just part of life. This is one of their key pillars in transforming America into a third world hell hole.”
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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Bruce and Polly Gerencser, in front of our first apartment in Pontiac, Michigan, Fall 1978, with Polly’s grandfather and parents.
When I write posts like Leaving the Ministry: Dealing with Guilt and Regret, I am always concerned that someone might conclude that I was unhappy while I was in the ministry or that I felt I was trapped in a job I didn’t want to be in. Neither of these conclusions would be an accurate assessment of the twenty-five years I spent in the ministry.
I was fifteen years old when I went forward at Trinity Baptist Church, Findlay, Ohio, and informed the church that I thought God was calling me to the ministry. A few weeks before, I had made a public profession of faith and was baptized. I had no doubts about God’s call on my life. In fact, my desire to be a preacher went all the way back to when I was a five-year-old boy in San Diego, California. My mother asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I told her I wanted to be a preacher. Not a baseball player, not a trash truck driver, or a fireman. I wanted to be a preacher. Unlike many people, I never wondered about what I wanted to do with my life. God called-preacher, end of story.
In the fall of 1976, I enrolled at Midwestern Baptist College, a small Fundamentalist college in Pontiac, Michigan. Polly Shope, my wife to be, started taking classes at Midwestern in the spring of 1976 while she was finishing her senior year at Oakland Christian School. At the age of fourteen, Polly went forward at the Kawkawlin River Baptist Church, Bay City, Michigan, and let the church know that she believed God was calling her to be a preacher’s wife. When Polly enrolled at Midwestern, she had one goal in mind: to marry a preacher.
Polly in front of our apartment, Fall 1978
Polly and I were immediately drawn to one another. She was quiet, reserved, and very beautiful. I was outspoken, brash, with a rebellious spirit. According to Polly, I was her bad boy. We started dating in September of 1976, and by Christmas, we were certain that we were a match made in Heaven. Unfortunately, Polly’s parents thought we were a match made in Hell. My parents were divorced, and Polly’s mom thought that divorce was hereditary. Though she did her best to quash our love, in the spring of 1978, we issued an ultimatum: give us your blessing or we will get married without it (a few weeks earlier, we had seriously considered eloping). On a hot July day in 1978, Polly and I exchanged vows at the Newark Baptist Temple, Heath, Ohio. As Mark Bullock, the soloist for our wedding, sang the Carpenter’s hit, We’ve Only Just Begun, Polly and I had thoughts of the wonderful life that awaited us in the ministry. Little did we know how naïve we were about what being in the ministry really entailed.
Polly’s idea of the ministry was quite idealistic. In her mind, we would have two children, a boy named Jason and a girl named Bethany, and live in a beautiful two-story house with a white picket fence. She saw herself as the quiet helpmeet of her preacher husband. My idea of the ministry was a bit more realistic. Preaching, teaching, winning souls, visiting the sick, all in a church filled with peace, joy, and harmony. No one had prepared us for what the ministry would really be like. I still remember a time when I was standing in a three-foot deep hole partly filled with sewage trying to repair a broken septic line. Polly came out to see what I was doing, and I said to her, Well, they certainly didn’t teach me this in college. No one told us that the ministry would befar different from our idealistic expectations.
Two months after we were married, Polly informed me that our use of contraceptive foam had failed and she was pregnant. Not long after her announcement, I lost my job at a Detroit-area production machine shop. Financially, things quickly fell apart for us. We went to see Levy Corey, the dean at Midwestern, and told him that we needed to drop out of college. He told us we just needed to trust God and everything would work out. While I was able to find new employment, it was not enough for us to keep our heads above water. In February of 1979, we dropped all of our classes and prepared to move to Bryan, Ohio. Several of our friends stopped by before we moved to berate us for not having faith in God. One friend told us that we would never amount to anything because God doesn’t bless quitters. Years later, at a preacher’s conference hosted by Newark Baptist Temple, Dr. Tom Malone, the president of Midwestern, mentioned that I was in the crowd. He said that I had left Midwestern before graduating, but if I had stayed, they (the college) probably would have ruined me. He meant it as a joke, but I took his comment as a vindication of our decision to leave college.
Polly and Bruce Gerencser, Cranbrook Gardens, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Spring 1978, two months before wedding.
In February of 1979, we moved to Bryan, Ohio, the place of my birth and the home of my sister Robin. After living with my sister for a short while, we found a house to rent on Hamilton Street. I began working at ARO, a large local manufacturer of pumps and air tools. ARO paid well, but I still desired to be a pastor. As with every job, I viewed secular work as just a means to an end — me pastoring a church. My sister attended the Montpelier Baptist Church in Montpelier, Ohio. When we first moved to Bryan, we thought that we would attend First Baptist Church, the church I had attended before enrolling at Midwestern. Though I knew everyone at First Baptist, we decided to go to Montpelier Baptist, a young, growing GARBC church pastored by Jay Stuckey. This decision did not sit well with the people at First Baptist. One of the matriarchs of the church told me, “Bruce, you know you belong at First Baptist!” At the time, First Baptist was pastored by Jack Bennett. Jack was married to my uncle’s sister Creta.
I had previously preached at Montpelier Baptist, so I knew a bit about Stuckey and his ministry philosophy. Stuckey was a graduate of Toledo Bible College, which later moved to Newburgh, Indiana, and became Trinity Theological Seminary. After attending the church for a few weeks, Stuckey asked me to help him at the church by becoming the bus pastor and helping with church visitation.
The church had one bus route. It brought in a handful of children every week, and little was being done to increase ridership numbers. Enter hot-shot, get–it-done, Bruce Gerencser. In less than a month, on Easter Sunday, the bus was jammed with eighty-eight riders. I vividly remember arriving at the church with all these kids and the junior church director running out to the bus and frantically asking me what I expected him to do with all the children. I replied, That’s your problem, I just bring them in. Needless to say, this man was never very fond of me.
A short time later, the church bought a second bus. I recruited bus workers to run the new route, and before long, this bus was also filled with riders. On the first Sunday in October 1979, Montpelier Baptist held its morning service at the Williams County Fairgrounds. A quartet provided special music, and Ron English from the Sword of theLord preached the sermon. Five hundred people attended this service, and about 150 of them had come in on the buses. Less than two weeks later, I was gone. Polly and I, along with our newborn son Jason, packed up our meager household goods and moved to Newark, Ohio.
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 have a foreboding of America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time–when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all of the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; with our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
And when the dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites now down to 10 seconds or less, lowest-common-denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”