The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
Doug McDaris, pastor of New Beginnings Baptist Church in Six Mile, South Carolina, and former pastor of Oakview Baptist Church, stands accused of two counts of molestation of a juvenile.
A South Carolina pastor with past ties to Livingston Parish is being held without bond at the Livingston Parish Detention Center on two counts of molestation of a juvenile.
Doug McDaris, 74, was arrested in Pickens County, S.C., after the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office issued a warrant. He was extradited to Louisiana and booked March 27, according to the parish jail roster.
McDaris served as pastor at Oakview Baptist Church in Livingston Parish from May 2005 to May 2006, according to his LinkedIn profile. He later became pastor at New Beginnings Baptist Church in Six Mile, S.C., where he was serving at the time of his arrest.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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 first 10 seconds of this video, I Am Willing to Cause Division in the Church over This, show a ‘Christian’ leader denouncing Young Earth Creationists. We are not sure who the speaker is, but we have heard of him. [The video was produced by Ken Ham.]
….
The man is dead wrong, of course, because anything but Young Earth Creation is wrong and telling everyone God lied not once but several times throughout the Bible. People may argue that God cannot change the biblical content, yet that is a mistaken idea.
God can change his word if it were wrong, and if you have noticed, God has not changed the Bible in over 2000 years. If YEC were wrong, do you not think that God would have raised up someone to make the corrections in time so that everyone had the truth?
But as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Silver Scrolls, and other ancient archaeological biblical discoveries have proven, God did not do that. YEC has remained in the Bible ever since God had man put his words to paper.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
Imagine in Iran that instead of spending their wealth, billions of dollars, supporting terrorists or weapons, had spent that money helping the people of Iran, you’d have a much different country.
— Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as reported by Snopes
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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 started blogging in 2007 — almost twenty years ago. Since then, I have engaged countless Evangelicals in discussions, debates, arguments, and intellectual fist fights over their beliefs and my disagreements with them. On occasion, genuine progress is made, but more often than not, my interlocutors refuse to budge, regardless of my argumentation and evidence. This should not be surprising. No one is argued into faith or persuaded by evidence alone. Think of your own past salvation experience. Did you catch the operative word: experience? You see, religious conversions are fundamentally emotional experiences. People rarely, if ever, profess faith in Jesus because someone shared with them the five points of Calvinism or the transcendental arguments for the existence of God. I know it took years for me to admit that my deconversion had an emotional component. Not the primary motivator, but certainly a factor. I didn’t want the motivation for my loss of faith to be dismissed as nothing more than me being emotional. Eventually, I came to understand that our emotions are never far from our decision-making. That said, I desire to the best of my ability to use sound reasoning skills to make decisions about what to do or believe.
Instead of trying to argue people out of faith in Jesus, I try to challenge their sincerely held beliefs. I know if I can poke a hole in one of their cherished dogmas, they might be willing to ask themselves what else they are possibly wrong about. The first chink in my Evangelical armor came when I determined the Bible was not inerrant and infallible. I asked myself, “If I am wrong about the nature and history of the Bible,” what else I am wrong about?” As I learned, virtually every theological belief I had as an Evangelical pastor was intellectually lacking or not as theologically certain as my pastors and professors led me to believe. Did these men of God lie to me? Probably not. Like me, they were products of the religious environment and culture they grew up in. You can only teach and preach what you think you know, and that was likely the case for these men.
Sadly, many Evangelicals I interact with will not be moved off their Fundamentalist beliefs. They know in whom they have believed; they know what they know, end of discussion. Unfortunately, few of them seem to understand what they don’t know.
Have you ever had an Evangelical tell you, “We are just going to have to agree to disagree?” I have, more times than I can count. This is their way ending conversations; a dodge as they prepare to claim victory while actually suffering defeat.
Last week, a local Evangelical man in his thirties posted a meme that said, “Jesus is King” on a few Facebook groups I follow. I typically ignore religious voyeurism, but on this post, I decided to click the laughing emoji; my passive-aggressive way of saying your comment is bullshit.
As you might have guessed, I infuriated the poster. How dare I attack him and criticize his beliefs. He got all this from a laughing emoji? Amazing discernment, right? I took a few moments to explain the difference to him between respecting people and respecting beliefs. He ignored me. I generally respect people regardless of their religious and political beliefs. I do make exceptions for Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, Franklin Graham, James Dobson, and others of their vile, disgusting ilk. Outside of these degenerates, I generally respect other people. I do not, however, respect their beliefs. If you drag your beliefs into the public square or try to evangelize me for your cause, I am going to push back.
I don’t let people off the hook with the “We are going to have to agree to disagree” cop-out. Beliefs matter. Beliefs have consequences. The beliefs of others can negatively affect my life and the lives of those I love. So, no, I am not going to treat your beliefs with undeserved respect. And when you tell me, “We are going to have to agree to disagree, ” I will take that as you admitting defeat. Running to the house of faith is what people do when they lack evidence and argumentation for their beliefs. I won’t follow them into their “safe space,” but I will be waiting for them when they return to the battlefield.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
Most people would agree that they desire purpose, meaning, and happiness in their lives. While these terms can and are defined and used in various ways, I think it is safe to say that most of us want to live a good life while on this mortal coil.
Sadly, millions of Evangelicals believe that only Jesus gives them meaning, purpose, and happiness in their lives. Without Jesus, their lives have no value. Without Jesus, they are but brute sinners deserving eternal punishment and suffering in a lake filled with fire and brimstone. This is what they are told by Evangelical preachers, anyway. Congregants are reminded that their existence depends on Jesus — the second person in the Godhead. They are reminded that most humans are headed for a Christless Hell; that atheists, agnostics, humanists, Buddhists, Muslims, pagans, and others live aimless, helpless, hopeless lives on their slog towards eternity. Never mind the fact that how these people live their lives are repudiations of Evangelical lies about them. Evidence suggests that unbelievers can and do have happy, fulfilling lives without Jesus. Making their own purpose and meaning in life, non-Evangelicals live life on their own terms, often understanding that the journey is far more important than the destination. When gaining Heaven or avoiding Hell is no longer the grand objective, it’s amazing how much more satisfying life can become.
As a certified atheist and humanist, I struggle greatly every day of my life. There’s no escaping pain, suffering, and death, so while I am among the living, I intend to live life to its fullest, even if “fullest” means some days brushing my teeth, eating a bit, and resting. Every day I hope to write, but all the hope in the world doesn’t change the suffering that often keeps my pen in the proverbial inkwell. Thus, living life to its fullest, for me, is on any given day, is doing what I can. Anyone who struggles with chronic pain and suffering understands where I am coming from. To loosely quote the Bible, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Years ago, my Independent Fundamentalist Baptist mother-in-law would tell me that I just needed to put mind over matter. I would bristle when she said such nonsense. My partner eventually got her mother to understand that when I said things like “I can’t” or “I need to rest” or “my pain is off the charts today” or “I’m too nauseous to eat” I was stating the fact of the matter. When I can’t, I can’t. That should be enough for people, but sometimes the people closest to you think if they just cheer you up or encourage you to do more, that you will suddenly arise from near death and clear your to-do list. This, of course, is fanciful, and, at times, hurtful thinking.
At whatever point I find myself in life, I try to live a meaningful life. I recognize and understand that I am on the short side of life. Death stalks me, reminding me that before I know it, I will be his. I long ago determined that I would not quietly go into the dark night. I will do what I can, write what I can, trying to be the best possible person I can possibly be. It matters how we die, so I want to die openly and honestly. cherishing every moment until that day comes. To suggest that my life has no meaning, purpose, or happiness is not only absurd, it’s offensive. I have never said such a thing to a person. If you need Jesus, religion, or the church to make it through life, fine. I don’t give a shit. Just leave me alone. I don’t need Jesus, your religion, and or your club. Why is it that Evangelicals rarely, if ever, grant me the same space to freely live my life? Instead, they feel obligated to tell me how worthless I am or how I will soon spend eternity being tortured by God.To what end, I ask? I know all I need to know about Evangelical Christianity. I know what the Bible says about me. I don’t need believers to remind me of these things. Few Evangelicals seem willing to live and let people live, content to let non-Christians live their lives on their own terms. Surely, this is not too much to ask.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
As an atheist, I believe in the afterlife. Yes sir, I sure do. Not in Christian sense of spending eternity in Heaven or Hell. That sort of thinking is nonsense. I have yet to have a Christian successfully defend their afterlife beliefs. There’s no scientific or empirical evidence for its existence. All Christians have is the Bible, with its contradictory pronouncements about the afterlife. Belief in the Christian afterlife requires faith; a faith I do not have. That said, I do believe in the afterlife, just not the Christian kind.
Someday soon, I will die. Maybe today, tomorrow, or two years from now, but there’s no question that I will someday soon cease to exist. So, then what? Nothing. When you are dead, you’re dead. I will one day go the way of all people.
What a minute, Bruce, I thought you said you believe in the afterlife. I do, but the afterlife is for the living. After-my-life-ends, my partner, children, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren will live on. That’s the afterlife I speak of. The life that is lived by everyone but you after you die. That’s why it is important to leave behind good memories for family and friends to remember. Long after you are buried or cremated, those who matter to you will have pictures and memories to remember you by. I don’t know about you, but I want those I love and behind to have a good afterlife.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
Evangelicalism is a somewhat broad tent, with sects ranging from hardcore Fundamentalists to liberals who are Evangelical in name only. It is that last group that often emails and messages me, complaining I am wrongly lumping all Evangelicals together. These are the folks who should be mainline or liberal church members, but for some reason they like being Evangelicals or they remain in the cult because of family, employment, or familiarity. I don’t care one way or another, but I am not inclined to modify the word Evangelical just to satisfy their need to differentiate between themselves and the rest of Evangelicalism. Regular readers know that I never mean “all Evangelicals.” In fact, I never mean “all” anything. There will always be exceptions to the rule.
That said, the core doctrines that bind Evangelicals together are generally held by one and all, with allowances made for soteriological, eschatological, and practice differences. The same can be said for differences regarding Calvinism, Arminianism, Oneness, and cessationism/noncessationism. Worship practices can be very different too, yet core doctrinal beliefs are what bind these disparate sects together.
The Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement is a subset of Evangelicalism. They too have a broad spectrum of beliefs and practices, yet most of them agree that there is a set of core doctrines that must be believed to be IFB. There are countless subsets within Evangelicalism, so it takes a good bit of effort and expertise to truly understand to understand the depth and breadth of Evangelicalism.
Within Evangelicalism, there are sects, pastors, and congregants working hard to reform the sect, but much like the Southern Baptist Convention, I am convinced that significant reform will not happen unless the structure is burnt to the ground. Sadly, Evangelical churches are content to start new programs, spice up their worship services, and hire pastors who are hip, cool, and sexy; men who dress in designer jeans with holes, $300 tennis shoes, and Rolex watches. Further, megachurches are the bane of Evangelicalism; churches that breed passive church members who attend one service a week, hoping their felt-needs are met.
Are there Evangelical churches out there truly following in the steps of Jesus? Sure, I am certain they exist. I just don’t know of any. The plot has been lost, and I see no way to get it back unless radical deconstruction takes place. This is unlikely since Evangelicals are known for certainty and arrogance. Deconstructing would require admitting you are wrong, and that is not how Evangelicals typically roll.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
Reverend is a title people should look down on, not up to.
— Christopher Hitchens
I am an ordained Baptist preacher. I am also ordained through the Universal Life Church, and the Church of the Latter Day Dude. I have every right to claim and use the “Reverend” title. However, I never used the title. I despised the attention the title gave me. I just wanted to be an everyday Joe; a first among equals in the church.I asked congregants to call me by my first name, Pastor Bruce, or Preacher. I preferred the latter. If I was anything. I was a preacher. Besides, it saved me from hearing people horrifically butcher my Hungarian last name — Grr-IN-sir (though there are a few Gerencsers who pronounce their surname Grincer.
Years ago, I wrote a letter to the editor of the Bryan Times. When my letter was published, it showed my name as The Reverend Bruce Gerencser. Give me a break. A call to the editor let him know that I preferred no title. He was somewhat surprised since many local pastors wanted or demanded the Reverend (and/or Doctor) title be used.
I was content to blend into a sea of working-class people, ministering to their needs without nary of thought about what they called me.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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 am a diehard Cincinnati Reds fan. Come hell, high water, or a losing season, I watch or listen to every Reds game. Currently, John Sadak and Jeff “Cowboy” Brantley call most of the games on TV. Every Sunday fans are treated to the singing of God Bless America. I either mute or fast forward through the sound — a minor annoyance, to be sure, but an annoyance, nonetheless.
Today, Sadak called the singing of God Bless America a “Sunday Tradition,” to which I politely 🙂 replied bullshit! The singing of “God Bless America” is a post 9-11 innovation. This sound may have had a unifying effect twenty-five years ago, but today it is song glorifying militarism and imperialism; complete with military planes or helicopters flying overhead.
The same goes for unfurling a field-sized U.S. flag while a soloist or group belts out the un-singable war song, The Star Spangled Banner. More flyovers too, an ever-present witness to our military might. Little do younger adults know that there was a time when we didn’t worship nationalism and Christianity. Today, we wave the flag of American exceptionalism with nary a thought. Sadak furthers this narrative by implying that singing God Bless America during the seventh inning of Reds game is a Sunday tradition. It is not, and never has been. Singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh inning six days a week . . . now that’s a baseball tradition.
When I turn on the Reds, I want to watch the game, not listen to masturbatory worship of American nationalism. Sadak might want to consider that many people in the stands and at home aren’t supporters of decades of military interventions and deaths across the globe; people who recognize the need for self-defense, but not wars over natural resources, communism, regime change, and geography; or even worse, wars fought solely based on lies
Count me as a patriotic Reds fan who wants military-free ballgames. I don’t believe for a moment that soldiers are dying in the Middle East so we can enjoy Sunday baseball games at home. Not in my name, I say. I don’t want one drop of innocent blood shed for the “American Dream”, another barrel of oil, or Donald Trump’s war fantasy.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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 came of age in the 1960s and 1970s Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement, attended an IFB Bible college in the late 70s, married an IFB pastor’s daughter, and pastored IFB congregations for a decade before realizing how bankrupt my religious heritage really was — though the IFB indoctrination and conditioning affected me long after I stopped associating with IFB churches and colleges. In some ways, IFB poison still lies deep in the recesses of my mind, requiring frequent therapy to root out the disease.
IFB churches and preachers are known for what they are against. Lots of rules, called church standards. These rules dictate virtually aspect of life, especially in matters of sexuality. I have come to the conclusion that it is nigh impossible to be a true-blue IFB believer and have healthy attitudes towards sex. IFB preachers are modern day Puritans and legalists, demanding sexual purity from everyone except themselves. (And don’t get your knickers in a bunch preacher. I know the cult’s secrets.) Nudity, in particular, was expressly forbidden, especially on TV, the Internet, and the printed page. NO NUDITY, IFB preachers demand, all the while perusing porn sites and visiting strip clubs to do “research.” 🙂
Let me conclude this post with three stories from our days as IFB parents.
Remember the Sears and Roebuck catalog? When the catalog arrived at the Gerencser home, Polly and I would tear out all the lingerie ads before our children could view it. We felt it our duty to protect our older boys from scantily clad catalog models! Another generation of boys saved from lust, right?
From 1989-1994, the church I pastored at the time operated a tuition-free private school for church children. The school had a library of sorts, made up of castoffs and books purchased at library sales and garage sales. I donated to the library my past copies of National Geographic. Before allowing students to check out the magazines, we went through them and blacked out the nudity. Can’t have boys staring at Aborigine breasts. Another generation of boys saved from boobies.
Finally, I used to subscribe to Sports Illustrated. Every week, my older boys would read the newest issue; well, except for one: the annual swimsuit edition. This edition came at the same time every year, so I would intercept the magazine to keep my sons from seeing it.
One year, the swimsuit edition never arrived — or so I believed. I thought no more of it until I was working on a cabinet light in our bathroom. Guess what I found “hiding” on the top of the cabinet? The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition! One of my sons had hidden the magazine so he could “lust” later. He will remain unnamed. None of us should be judged for what we did as teenagers.
Crazy shit, right? However, these stories are quite normal in IFB churches. Jack Hyles, pastor of the largest church in America at one time, wouldn’t allow women wearing pants to attend worship services. Those wearing pants were required to put a paper dress over their clothing — the mark of shame at First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indiana. Shocking? Just another day in the IFB.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
This cookie is set by X to identify and track the website visitor. Registers if a users is signed in the X platform and collects information about ad preferences.
2 years
personalization_id
Unique value with which users can be identified by X. Collected information is used to be personalize X services, including X trends, stories, ads and suggestions.
2 years
external_referer
Our Website uses X buttons to allow our visitors to follow our promotional X feeds, and sometimes embed feeds on our Website.
