Daniel “Danny” Kluver, an Evangelical Christian who attends a Calvary Chapel church in California, has officially gone from a “concerned” Christian to a fake friend to a troll to a stalker. I have blocked Kluver on social media and from accessing this site (though using a different IP address would allow him to continue to read my writing). Unable to contact me personally, Kluver is now contacting my Facebook friends. Yesterday, he sent the following message to a friend of mine:
I have written several posts about Kluver’s attempts to annoy and harass me:
- Evangelical Man Messages My Wife on Facebook
- Another Facebook Message From an Evangelical Zealot
- Evangelical Man Says I am Infested with Evil Spirits
Kluver has also tried to play nice, feigning interest and friendship. Let me share several examples of this:
I am sure some readers think I should ignore the Daniel Kluvers and the “Dr.” David Tees of the world, but it is just not in me to do so. Further, I think publicly exposing Evangelical trolls helps further the cause of atheism. People need to know about the ugly, vicious side of Evangelicalism. I have been blogging since 2007. Based on almost fourteen years of interaction with Evangelical Christians, I can safely say that the Kluvers and Tees of the world are more than just a few bad apples. It seems to me that the opposite is true; that Evangelicalism is a barrel of rotten apples, with a few good apples mixed in. The very fact that more than 80% of voting white Evangelicals voted for a vicious, vile, narcissistic man in 2016 and 2020 shows me that Evangelicalism is a smelly, foul pile of dung. Not every Evangelical, of course, but perhaps it is time for thoughtful, kind, polite Evangelicals to exit stage left. Perhaps, it is time to start a denomination where the sign on the front door says, No Assholes Allowed.
Kluver’s message to my friend reveals that he either cannot read or he is choosing to deliberately distort or misrepresent my story. He is not the first person to misrepresent my story, nor will he be the last. Kluver has constructed a picture of me in his mind that is simply not true. Kluver views my life through the lens of the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement, wrongly thinking that because I started out as an IFB preacher I remained one over the course of the twenty-five years I spent in the ministry. Any cursory reading of my story shows that such a conclusion is not true. I suspect Kluver knows this, but admitting that I was not always an IFB preacher would destroy the narrative of my life he has built in his mind.
I genuinely don’t understand what Kluver hopes to achieve by trolling and stalking me. If his goal is to reclaim me for Jesus, he is failing spectacularly. I suspect, however, that Kluver can’t wrap his mind around my story; that he can’t square my life with his Evangelical theology; that deep down he has doubts about his own faith, and the way to ward off such troubling thoughts is to attack an Evangelical-preacher-turned-atheist.
At least he hasn’t threatened to murder me — yet.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 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.
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