My religious lineage goes something like this: Christian, Protestant, Evangelical, and Baptist. Depending on your point in my story, my lineage also includes self-identifiers such as Calvinist, Reformed/Sovereign Grace Baptist, non-cessationist, Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB), Southern Baptist, and non-denominational. The first thirty years of my life were spent in the IFB church movement.
IFB believers are known for Bible literalism, inerrancy, and infallibility. IFB pastors and congregations are particularly known for their “Biblical” rules, regulations, and church standards. These standards govern virtually every aspect of life. Believers are taught to not fellowship with unbelievers and to abstain from the very appearance of evil. The “world” — everyone except IFB Christians — is the enemy, one that must be fought and vanquished every moment of every day — month in, month out, year in, and year out. Life is preparation for the world to come (Amos 3:3). IFB adherents are reminded weekly by their pastors of the sins of the flesh and how dangerous the unregenerate world really is. Self-esteem is deemed a sin, and giving in to carnal lusts and desires brings the chastisement of God.
Ask an IFB Christian what he does for fun, and he will likely list church-related, Jesus-focused, Bible-approved practices and experiences. As an IFB pastor, I planned all sorts of fun church activities: bowling, canoeing, roller skating, lock-ins, camping trips, hiking, and dinners, along with numerous promotional events used to draw large crowds to church. We had “fun,” but never apart from the centrality of the gospel and preaching. We NEVER had fun for fun’s sake. Jesus was at the center of, or lurking nearby, everything we did as a church.
Spending three decades in this sort of religious environment caused all sorts of psychological harm. Outside of our family attending dirt track races in the 1980s and 1990s, we rarely did anything “fun” that didn’t include Jesus and/or church. My partner, Polly, and I have six adult children. We took lots of road trips with our children loaded up in the back of a beat-up station wagon. While we saw all sorts of new things and had lots of fun, there was always a religious component. I would look for a church for us to visit while we were traveling, or better yet where I could do the preaching. There were eight people in our family, but Jesus always traveled with us, making sure we stayed on the straight and narrow while away from the prying eyes of other Christians.
Last Saturday, Polly and I attended a dance recital for two of our granddaughters. We had a delightful time. As I sat there watching my granddaughters do tap and ballet, I pondered how I would have viewed their performances if I were still an IFB pastor. I likely wouldn’t have even attended the recital. Why? I considered ALL dancing a sin. Worse, the dancers wore skimpy, sexually suggestive clothing — even the preschoolers. The dance routines were all performed to “worldly” music — even wicked, evil, vile rock-and-roll songs. ABSTAIN, BRUCE, ABSTAIN!
Several weekends ago, Polly and I discussed how different life would have been for us and our family had we remained Evangelicals; had I remained a pastor. I suspect we would have fractured, strained relationships with our children and grandchildren — especially if they weren’t Christians. Fundamentalism demands your all . . . all to Jesus I surrender, all to him I freely give, the hymn goes. Duty and obedience demanded surrendering “fun for fun’s sake” for the sake of the gospel. For IFB Christians, fun will wait till they reach Heaven. Until then, “fun” is what wicked, sinful worldlings do instead of going to church three or more times a week.
These days, Polly and I have fun because we can — no strings attached. Some of our fun is sinful, or runs contrary to our IFB upbringing. Southern Baptist evangelist, the late Bob Harrington, the Chaplain of Bourbon Street, preached a famous sermon titled “It’s Fun Being Saved.” (Please see Evangelist Bob Harrington: It’s Fun Being Saved.) Maybe I need to preach a sermon “It’s Fun Being a Godless Heathen.” When I compare my former IFB life to that of my present life as an atheist and a humanist, the here-and-now wins hands down. We no longer have to measure our behavior by the Bible or the teachings of our peculiar sect or the personal proclivities of our pastor (me). We are free to do what we want.
Ask former Evangelicals what they gained by deconverting, and they will say: FREEDOM. Freedom to live life on their own terms. Freedom to have fun and enjoy life without fear of offending God, the pastor, or the church.
How has your view of “fun” changed since you deconverted or left the IFB church movement? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and 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.
During much of the 1970s, Evangelical crusades were all the rage. As a young teenager, I attended crusades conducted by Billy Graham, Bill Glass, Jack Van Impe (twice), and Bob Harrington. In the early 1970s, Jack Van Impe came to Findlay, Ohio, for a crusade held at Findlay High School. Thousands of people flocked to hear The Walking Bible preach on the soon-return of Jesus Christ. Van Impe even went so far as to predict that the Russian flag would be flying over the U.S. Capitol by 1976. Van Impe was/is what I call a “newspaper preacher.” He looked at the headlines and crafted his sermons to correspond with them. According to the Bible, false prophets are to be stoned to death. If that be the case, Van Impe would have died long before his wife Rexella had her first facial plastic surgery procedure. Van Impe has made countless predictions (prophecies) that have spectacularly failed to materialize. That said, as a recently saved, called-of-God preacher boy, I found Van Impe’s preaching thrilling and motivational, a call to win more souls for Christ before the King of Kings and Lord of Lords returned to earth.
When it came to pure entertainment, however, no evangelist could match the wit, humor, and oratory of the smooth-talking Chaplain of Bourbon Street, Bob Harrington. I was able to locate a quality recording of Harrington on YouTube. The following sermon was preached in 1966 at Landmark Baptist Temple in Cincinnati, Ohio. At the time, Landmark, pastored by Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) preacher John Rawlings, and was one of the largest churches in the country. Harrington, a Southern Baptist, frequently preached at large IFB churches, including the late Jerry Falwell’s church, Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia.
I owned many of Harrington’s recorded sermon albums. I played them over and over and over again. I loved how he effortlessly mixed humor into sermons. My favorite Harrington quote comes from a sermon of his on the second coming of Jesus. Harrington said, I’m not looking for the undertaker, I’m looking for the upper-taker. I remember telling my youth director, Bruce Turner, at Trinity Baptist Church in Findlay, Ohio, about my fondness for Harrington. Bruce tried to steer me away from Harrington, warning that his kind of preaching wasn’t Biblical and that Harrington was a fad that would soon pass away. If you listened to the recording above, you know that Harrington played loose with the “facts” of his life. For Harrington, preaching was all about telling a good story, even if he exaggerated or fibbed a bit. During college, I remember Tom Malone, the chancellor of Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan, saying during a sermon, “I’m not preaching now, I’m telling the truth.” Malone was joking, but after preaching thousands of sermons and listening to hundreds more, I have concluded that Malone was right; preaching is often an admixture of truth and exaggeration, especially when it comes to sermon illustrations. I remember reading that David Foster Wallace, when questioned about his penchant for exaggeration, said that as long as the basic facts were correct there was no harm in exaggerating a bit to tell a better story. Remember that the next time you hear a preacher use this or that sermon illustration, and if you’re thinking, this story seems to be exaggerated or too good to be true — it probably is. (Another big-name preacher who loved to tell fanciful, exaggerated illustrations was IFB luminary Jack Hyles.)
In the 1960s, Harrington moved to New Orleans to start a street ministry. Armed with a Bible and a microphone, Harrington preached at people as they passed by. According to the Baptist Standard, after several months of street preaching:
deacons at First Baptist Church in New Orleans loaned him enough money for a few months’ rent to open a chapel on Bourbon Street in the heart of the French Quarter. Harrington began witnessing and preaching in the bars and strip clubs of Bourbon Street.
In 1962, Mayor Victor Schiro proclaimed him “The Chaplain of Bourbon Street.”
Harrington’s street ministry message was bold and simple: “God loves you just as you are. He knows you are a sinner and wants to save you. Don’t figure it out. Faith it out!”
In 1968, he held a revival at Castle Hills First Baptist Church in San Antonio. During the revival, the owners of a burlesque club attended an evening service and became Christians. Guy and Evelyn Linton immediately closed the club and posted a sign: “Closed forever. See you in church.”
In the 1960s and 1970s, Harrington was one of the most popular preachers in America. People thronged to his crusades. As a young teenager, I heard Harrington at a crusade in Pontiac, Michigan. I can still remember the excitement that filled the football stadium. Every seat was occupied, and at invitation time, scores of people came forward to be saved. It seemed to me, as a young teenager, that God was pouring out his spirit on Harrington and using him to save thousands of people. In the late 70s, Harrington traveled the country with Madalyn Murray O’Hair, holding meetings that were purportedly a debate between an atheist and a Christian about the existence of God. What it turned into was a much-rehearsed circus sideshow that made a lot of money for both Harrington and O’Hair. Harrington said of the atheist, “Yes, many may say Madalyn knows the Scriptures better than I do, but I know the author.”
Here’s a low-quality video of Harrington’s and O’Hair’s 1970 appearance on the Phil Donahue Show:
Much as my youth pastor predicted, Harrington proved to be a fad. In the late 1970s, Harrington spectacularly crashed and burned, admitting he had committed adultery. He later said, “the devil threw me a pass, and I caught it and ran for defeat.” Harrington would divorce his first and second wives, marrying three times. In a 2000 SBC Life article, Harrington describes his moral failures this way:
Three things got me: fame, finance, and frolic. I was going strong with my little radio program there. Then after the mayor named me Chaplain of Bourbon Street the Governor of Louisiana named me Ambassador of Goodwill to America.
Early on I had trouble paying $500 a week rent for the office on Bourbon Street. But the next thing you know, $500 a week income was changing into $5,000 a week. The “kingdom of thing-dom” started getting more of my attention than the Kingdom of God. I was on nationwide television in four hundred and seventy cities. Everything was going good. Then, Phil Donahue had me on his pilot show. The other guest that day was Madeline O’Hare. That show took Donahue into nationwide syndication. He had us back eighteen times after that. She became a springboard toward my own national recognition, but also a witnessing tool for the Lord. Once people saw the condition of an atheist they wanted to become believers.
I challenged her to meet me in different cities. There were thirty-eight different cities where we would meet in the civic auditorium or the municipal auditorium, and have confrontations on the stage. It became quite popular. We were on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and The Merv Griffin Show.
I had fame, but when you get famous you start thinking, “Look at what I’m doing.” After I got saved, I grew too fast — I didn’t have a good, stable foundation. It’s nobody’s fault but mine, but when you get invitations to come give your testimony, you start adding more dates to it. I had to drop out of seminary because I was preaching two revivals a month. I was so caught up in being an evangelist. Money gets to flowing and you find yourself riding in a big customized bus, you find yourself flying in a Lear jet, and you find your staff members picking up your briefcases. Unless you’ve got a solid base, you can really fall into this. I started believing all my cockiness and all my press releases — and that precedes the fall.
Fame did that. And finance — you get money in your hand, and you’re the president and the treasurer. Signatures are pretty easy to come by. The folks were just giving and giving.
Frolic — after a while you got those Bathsheba’s, [sic] Delilah’s, [sic] and Jezebel’s [sic] out there in the church world – not the Bourbon Street world — that kind of temptation didn’t bother me because I knew they were notoriously wicked. But these were sweet, little ol’ church members. They start telling you how nice and neat you are, and how big and strong you are. Your wife isn’t telling you that any more because she knows what you’re turning into.
All those things — fame, finance, and frolic — led me to catch a pass that Satan threw at the peak of my success. And that pass — I caught that sucker, and ran for defeat. When you break that pass down, P. A. S. S., it’s pride, arrogance, self-centeredness, and stubbornness. That stole my first love away from me, and that’s when I fell.
After his “fall,” Harrington was out of the ministry for seventeen years. He credits Cathedral of Tomorrow pastor Rex Humbard for encouraging him to re-enter the ministry. During his time away from the Lord, Harrington was a salesman and a motivational speaker. Harrington was a once-saved, always-saved Baptist. This meant, regardless of what Harrington did during his time away from Jesus, he was still a born-again Christian.
After having served God for many years as Chaplain of Bourbon Street, I began to leave my “First Love” for the Lord. Fame, fortune and frolic got me off the track. I had been on all the major talk shows such as Donahue and Oprah, as well as having my own syndicated TV show across the country. Money got to be no object as the dollars flowed in, and the making of money began to be my focus. I began listening to the young women who bragged on how good I was and looked, and became addicted to their ego boosts. I finally left preaching altogether and went strictly into very successful years as a motivational speaker–finally leaving God completely out of my life. I was miserable; living (existing) on fun and thrills. Little happiness, no joy.
One night while in Los Angeles, CA, I was considering jumping out of a window, when the phone rang and my friend Rex Humbard asked me, “Bro. Bob, aren’t you ready to come back?” I cried, “Yes, I’m so ready!” He then lead [sic] me in reading the 51st Psalm and praying David’s prayer of restoration. Suddenly the burden of guilt was lifted and I knew that God had other plans for my life. These years since then have been a growing and rebuilding time for me, and I’m thrilled to say: “I’m back and It’s Still Fun Being Saved!”
December of 1998 was a particularly wonderful time in my life when God gave to my life a wonderful lady named Becky. We had been acquaintances for nearly 30 years, but when we found each other in August of 1997 after many years, we were both excited as God seemed to draw us together. We were married on December 5, 1998 at the Grand Palace in Branson, MO. Now we headquarter on her miniature horse ranch just south of Ft. Worth, TX, from which we continue to travel across the country doing what God called me to do in 1958…preach the Word.
Harrington died on July 4, 2017. He was eighty-nine years old. He, indeed, had fun being saved.
Did you ever attend a crusade? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and 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.
Repost from 2015. Edited, rewritten, and corrected.
Those of us raised in Evangelical churches know quite a bit about sin. Sin is the problem and Jesus is the solution. Ruined by the fall, redeemed by the blood. Sin will take you farther than you want to go and cost you more than you want to pay. Sin is the disease, Christ is the cure. Timeless, monotonous messages preached from every Evangelical pulpit. If Evangelical preachers were given degrees based on what they preach about, most of them would have sin PhDs.
Those of us who grew up in churches on the extreme right of the Evangelical spectrum heard weekly preaching against sin, with each and every sin categorized and illustrated. Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) preachers are known for having detailed lists of every possible sin humans dare to even think about let alone commit. And as these preachers get older, they add new sins to their lists, so by the time they retire, there is no human behavior that is not, in the right circumstance, a sin. I once heard an IFB preacher at a Columbus, Ohio pastor’s fellowship preach from the Bible verse that says, neither give place to the devil. After reading the text, he spent the next 45 minutes detailing every behavior he thought was giving place to the devil. His sin penis was way bigger than mine.
The late Cecil Hodges, pastor of Bible Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia for 41 years, said one time that preachers beat church members over the head with the sin stick so often that they automatically duck when the preacher starts preaching. Called hard preaching or stepping on toes — Baptist preachers are noted for verbally assaulting parishioners in hope of getting them to stop sinning. Yet, no matter how hard they preach against sin, people keep on sinning. Let’s face it, sin is good for the preaching business.The late Bob Harrington, the Chaplain of Bourbon Street, preached a sermon years ago titled, It’s Fun Being Saved. Harrington later committed adultery, so salvation was a lot of fun for him. But for most Evangelicals, their pastors do their best every Sunday to suck the fun out of everything. (See An Independent Baptist Hate List.)
Not only are there specific behaviors that are sinful, but there are also behaviors that are sinful only in certain circumstances. These are called causing-your-brother-to-stumble sins. Years ago, Nathan Rouse, lead pastor of Radiant Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, wrote a blog post titled A Caution For Every Christian That Drinks Alcohol (the page is no longer active). Here’s what the teetotaling Rouse had to say:
Something disturbing has crept into the american church and it’s not pretty.
Many Christians have allowed themselves to take drinking alcohol lightly.
Now before you start throwing the legalistic stones at me, let me first make the following clear:
I don’t believe drinking alcohol is a sin…
…But, there’s another problem:
The often overlooked sin that is rearing its ugly head are Christians displaying their love and consumption of alcohol to those around them in public and on social media, when there are many around them that struggle with this temptation and addiction.
The Apostle Paul addressed a similar situation when dealing with those in the church arguing over whether they could eat meat sacrificed to idols. Paul declared that even though they had the freedom to eat meat sacrificed to idols, they should love those that struggled with this practice enough to not do it front of them.
1 Cor. 8:9-13
But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.
We sin against other Christians and “wound their conscience” (as well as sin against Christ) when we openly act in a way that would cause them to stumble.
Now, before you say you only do this with others that are like-minded or with your spouse, let me ask the following questions:
Do you highlight or joke about your drinking in person or on social media (posting pictures of your margarita, wine or bottles of beer)?
Do you drink in public when there’s a good chance you might meet someone struggling with alcohol?
Like it or not, people hold Christians to a higher standard (as they should). Do you love alcohol so much that you’re willing to let your witness be tarnished? Do you love your “freedom” so much that you could care less how it affects another brother or sister?…
I’ve heard and preached sermons many times that echoed the words of Rouse’s post. Not only must Evangelicals not do any of the sins on their preacher’s sin list, they must also avoid any behavior that would or could cause an infantile, helpless church member to stumble — a euphemism for falling into sin.
Church women are asked to cover their cleavage and legs and wear clothing that mutes their sexuality and beauty lest they cause weak men to stumble. Want to go see a certain movie or have a glass of wine at a restaurant? Better make sure weak church members can’t see what you are doing. Don’t say anything about what you did in front of a weak church member lest your words cause them to stumble.
This kind of thinking sucks the life out of people. Every behavior has the potential of being a sin. Wouldn’t the better approach be to expect church members to be responsible for their own behavior? If Deacon Bob gets a boner during Sister Mary’s special because she is wearing a top that accentuates her bosom, is this Sister Mary’s problem? Perhaps Deacon Bob needs to grow up and own his sexuality. The same goes for any behavior that would fall under the causing-a-brother-to-stumble category.
Sin is not the problem, irresponsibility is. While my sin list now fits on a post-it note, I do accept responsibility for any behavior of mine that might harm or negatively affect others. If Polly and I get in a fight and I say something that is hurtful, whose fault is it? Should she be blamed for provoking me to anger? Dammit, she knows I have a temper! I’m a redhead, and everyone knows redheads are temperamental. If she wouldn’t do or say _________, then I wouldn’t get angry. It’s her f…. No, it’s not. I am responsible for what I say and do.
Do you have a story to tell about the preaching on sin in the church you grew up in? Did your pastor preach sermons on not causing a brother/sister to stumble? Please share your experiences in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and 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.
The Sounds of Fundamentalism is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a video clip that shows the crazy, cantankerous, or contradictory side of Evangelical Christianity, please send me an email with the name or link to the video. Please do not leave suggestions in the comment section. Let’s have some fun!
Today’s Sound of Fundamentalism is a video clip of Southern Baptist evangelist Bob Harrington preaching at the Sho-Bar Night Club in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Please see Evangelist Bob Harrington: It’s Fun Being Saved)
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.
