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The Sounds of Fundamentalism: Evolution is a Lie From the Pit of Hell by Paul Broun

Bruce Gerencser 3 Comments

paul broun

This is the one hundred and eighteenth installment in The Sounds of Fundamentalism series. This 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 from a sermon preached by then U.S. Representative from Georgia, Paul Braun at the 2012 Liberty Baptist Church Sportsman’s Banquet in Hartwell Georgia.  Braun, by the way, is a medical doctor, proving yet again that Fundamentalism has the power to make smart people dumb as rocks.

Video Link

The Sounds of Fundamentalism: Why the Wicked Hate Christians by Steven Anderson

Bruce Gerencser 3 Comments

steven anderson

This is the one hundred and seventeenth installment in The Sounds of Fundamentalism series. This 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 from a sermon preached by Steven Anderson, pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona. Anderson says that wicked people hate Christians. Not so, Pastor Anderson. Speaking only for myself, I hate YOU Pastor Anderson. I hate everything you stand for. I hate your  xenophobic, bigoted, homophobic preaching. Simply put, I hate your hate.

Video Link

Here is a link to a video produced by Shawn Barnish, a product of Anderson’s homophobic ministry. As this video clearly shows, Anderson’s preaching does influence people — in a bad way.

The Sounds of Fundamentalism: Get Your Personal Demons Cast Out by Bob Larson

Bruce Gerencser 9 Comments

bob larson

This is the one hundred and sixteenth installment in The Sounds of Fundamentalism series. This 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 advertising huckster Bob Larson’s super deluxe personal demon deliverance package. In the 1970s and 1980s, Bob Larson was quite popular among Evangelicals. I listened to his radio program almost every day. Larson’s gone on to live a scandal-filled life, but he still seems to be able to con people into giving him money. Elmer Gantry lives on in the life of Larson..

Video Link

The Sounds of Fundamentalism: Dinosaurs NEVER Existed by Eric Dubay

Bruce Gerencser 7 Comments
dinosaurs never existed
Comment about Eric Dubay’s Video

This is the one hundred and fifteenth installment in The Sounds of Fundamentalism series. This 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 from dinosaur denier Eric Dubay. Dubay is a flat-earther and a consummate conspiracy theorist. You can check out his blog here. Let me give you an excerpt from Dubay’s blog:

QR – If the earth is indeed flat, then where does it start and end, and why don’t we fall off it?

I could similarly ask NASA and modern astronomers, “if outer-space is indeed real, where does it start and end, and why can’t we go beyond that?” Antarctica is not the tiny ice-continent found confined to the underside of astronomer’s globes, but is rather a gigantic ice wall/plateau 200 feet tall that surrounds the Earth and holds the oceans in 360 degrees around us. How far the Antarctic ice extends southwards and whether it terminates in an edge, barrier/firmament, or whether it is infinite is currently unknown and unknowable to the public thanks to the Antarctic Treaty which prevents ordinary people from independent exploration of Antarctica.

QR – What happens to the oceans at the ends of the earth?

The oceans are all connected, are completely flat (it’s called “sea-level” for a reason), and are held in by the surrounding Antarctic ice wall/plateau. How far the Antarctic ice extends southwards and how it terminates are still unknown to the public at this time.

….

QR – Where does the atmosphere start and finish?

This is another question which even NASA refuses to answer. They claim that at some undetermined height, “gravity” becomes weaker and weaker until it magically gives way to “outer-space” which is a vacuum which allow astronauts to free-float forever without falling back down. First of all, it is physically and philosophically impossible for “infinite non-gravitized vacuum space” to exist adjacent to and not separated in any way from non-vacuum, gravitized atmosphere. Secondly, no amateur rocket, balloon, or other technology has ever been able to reach this alleged height where instead of falling back down to Earth like a skydiver, people are able to simply free-float. This is because astro-nots are not in outer-space at all and are simply filming the free-floating effect using camera tricks, green screens, wires, dark pools, and so-called “zero-g planes.” The reality is as the old adage states, “what goes up, must come down,” and not because of “gravity” but because objects always rise/fall based on the relative densities of their surroundings. A helium balloon rises upwards because it is lighter than the oxygen, nitrogen and other elements in the air surrounding it. A rock drops right to the ground because it is denser than the air surrounding it. That is all. The helium balloon doesn’t mysteriously escape “gravity” while the rock is subjected to it, but rather, as was known for millennia before Newton’s silly theory, objects naturally rise/fall towards their own density.

….

QR – There really is some compelling evidence that the Earth is flat and that we’ve all been deceived for centuries. In your opinion who is pulling the wool over our eyes and, more importantly, why?

The Jews, Jesuits, Freemasons and other embedded secret societies in the current New World Order establishment have been lying about the Earth and many other subjects for centuries.

The following video is thirty minutes long. I know 99.9% of you won’t listen to all of it, but I hope you will listen to the first five minutes. You will learn everything you need to know about Eric Dubay.

Video Link

Songs of Sacrilege: The Frog and the Vicar by The Corries

Bruce Gerencser 0 Comments

the corries

This is the one hundred and thirty-sixth installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.

Today’s Song of Sacrilege is The Frog and the Vicar by The Corries.

Video Link

Lyrics

There once was a very very holy vicar
‘ Was walking alone the street one day,
When he heard a little voice sayin’: “Excuse me vicar,
O help me vicar”, the voice did say.
The vicar look’d about, but all he could see
Was a tiny little frog sitting on the ground.
“O my little froggie did you speak to me?
Was it you who spoke when I heard that sound?”
“Oh yes!” said the frog “Oh help me vicar,
‘Cause I am not a frog, you see!
I’m a choir boy, really, but a very wicked fairy
Put a nasty spell on me!
The only way, that I can be saved,
From this wicked spell” the little frog said,
“Is for someone to take me,
And put me in the place, where a very holy man
Has laid his head!”
So the vicar took him home,
Put him on ‘is pillow,
And there he lay till the break of day.
The very next morning: a blessed miracle!
The spell was lifted, I’m glad to say!
For there was a choir boy in bed with the vicar,
And I hope you think this all make sense,
‘Cause there, my lord, and members of the jury,
Rests the case of the Vicar.

Former Evangelical Shares Why He Can No Longer Believe in the Christian God

Bruce Gerencser 7 Comments

why

Posted with permission from Clay who blogs at Life After 40: My Journey Out of Christian Fundamentalism

It’s been more than two years since I came out as an atheist. In that time, my lost Christian faith has come up often with family and friends. It’s difficult to distill a decade-long journey into a 5 minute elevator speech. When believers ask, that’s typically all they want. They don’t want to hear a lengthy, articulate response. Instead, they hope to hear something that they can easily dismiss as invalid or untrue.

I remember being in those shoes. As a former evangelical fundamentalist, it’s incredibly hard to admit to yourself that you’re wrong. It’s especially hard when you’ve spent the better part of your life in total commitment to what amounts to a fairy tale.

With that said, here’s my 5 minute elevator speech on why I stopped believing.

The Bible
The Bible’s collection of books were penned over a long span of time, some 2000+ years ago, by a diverse group of men who lived in a relatively confined area of desert in the Middle East. Unfortunately, significant portions were written by anonymous authors, and the collective whole is riddled with contradictions, errors and logical fallacies. The canonization of the New Testament (choosing which books were inspired and worthy) was a long, drawn out process that lasted many years and was subject to much debate.1 Political powers also played an influence. It’s especially troubling that the four gospel accounts (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) are from unknown authors, dated several decades after Christ’s death, and even penned in a language not spoken by the apostles. There are discrepancies about the resurrection details, the death of Judas, and what Jesus might have said while on the cross. We also find that the oldest gospel account (Mark) is rather light on miracles, but later accounts are more generous with miraculous events (which is indicative of our human tendency to enhance or exaggerate with each telling). You can also toss in odd things like walking zombies (Matthew 27) and apocalyptic 7-headed monsters in the last book, written by someone stranded on a Greek island, known to harbor mushrooms that can induce wild and vivid hallucinations. Are these facts in dispute among evangelical pastors? No.

The Old Testament doesn’t fare better. The first five books are from unknown authors which includes Genesis — a book that begins with a grossly mistaken account of creation that is not only scientifically incorrect, it’s logically flawed. Compounding it all are bizarre tales of a talking snake, a talking donkey, a man living inside the belly of a large fish — combined with an embarrassing lack of archaeological evidence to support the significant stories of the Old Testament. For example, there’s zero evidence for the mass exodus of Israelites from Egypt and there’s little to no evidence for any of the major patriarchs.

When you read the Bible with truly open eyes (and with the above facts in mind), it’s clear that we’re dealing with a man-made tale of a god named Yahweh who is petty, jealous, vindictive, and cruel — a deity who is very unsympathetic to his own creation. Even worse, the Old Testament gives abundant and clear endorsement for human slavery, genocide, misogyny, and sexual slavery, with a generous sprinkling of blood-lust for sacrifice.

God is Silent
The God of the Bible is silent. He does not actually talk to or respond to people. Conversations are entirely one-sided, and any purported two-way conversations are merely imaginary in the mind, and those who claim to have literally heard God speak to them are routinely shown to be mentally ill folk. These same individuals often commit acts of violence, which can (and has) included killing their own children. And some even choose to run for president, convinced that God told them to!

God is Inactive
The God of the Bible is inactive. Human misery and suffering is rampant, especially in less developed parts of the planet. Disease, famine, pestilence, violence, injustice, and natural disasters demonstrate that the God of the Bible isn’t there to act or intervene. The Bible makes bold and specific promises to believers about the power of prayer, but truly miraculous events are not substantiated. No mountain has ever literally moved, nor has an amputee ever had their missing arms or legs restored via prayer. Positive action and intervention only happen when humans take action. As someone once said, “I’ve never seen faith move mountains, but I’ve seen what it can do to skyscrapers.”

The Gospel is Ineffective and its Promise Lacks Evidence
The gospel of Christ makes several audacious promises, which includes: forgiveness; transformation; peace; love; and the ultimate prize: eternal life. Unfortunately, people are routinely targeted with this promise when they are the most vulnerable — during a crisis in their life. Evangelical churches make it a point to go after young children with the intent to indoctrinate before those young ones can think for themselves. What’s especially cruel is how some evangelicals abuse youngsters by painting vivid pictures of fiery eternal torment if they don’t follow along with the adults.

But the real question is, are the promises true? Many competing religions promise peace and contentment, and their followers claim to enjoy just that. Christianity can’t claim uniqueness in that regard. But is the gospel message of Jesus truly transformational? Given that divorce rates among Christians and unbelievers are the same, I think we have our answer. Neigh, I forgot to mention that the rates are even higher among protestants. Or consider the viewing habits for pornography. Evangelicals consider porn a grave sin, and yet we see no difference between the secular populations vs. the Christian population. In fact, we find that Protestants are even more likely to view porn. And alas, we find that some of the most judgmental, hateful and intolerant people are those of the Christian faith.

Now to be fair, I know people have been truly helped and motivated by the Christian message of love and forgiveness. There are some truly wonderful people in the church. But I find similar mixes of people outside the church. Christianity isn’t really much more helpful than any other self-help programs. So it’s not the transformational panacea it claims to be.

There’s No Soul, Spirit or Eternal Abode
But what about that promise of eternal life? It’s the ultimate carrot. Some have claimed to have died, gone to heaven, and returned to tell the tale. But we frequently find these stories are attention-seeking grabs and/or publicity for a profitable book deal. Unfortunately, there’s zero evidence to support the notion of an eternal abode. What we know for certain is that who we are — our unique personalities — is solely contained in our brains. It’s not in some ethereal spirit or soul. We now have 100’s of years of research in human psychology combined with medical science about the brain’s structure and inner-workings. A person’s personality and conduct can be easily and grossly manipulated by chemicals that interact in the brain tissue. We also see the devastating effect of diseases like Alzheimer and dementia on a person. Severe head trauma can also result in significant changes to a person’s psyche — what folks originally attributed as the soul. A good question to ask yourself is, “if you’ve ever been knocked out by anesthesia for a medical procedure, did you have any knowledge of things happening during that time?”. All of us who have been knocked out can answer — we have no recollection of ANYTHING. There’s no immortal spirit hanging out to watch as wisdom teeth are extracted or to watch as Dr. Gregory House cut into our chest.

So when the brain is dead, that’s it folks. And as much as I might like a good zombie movie, it’s fictional — just like a majority of the Bible.

1 When the early church was debating about the gospel accounts for canonization, there were many other gospel accounts considered for inclusion which included The Gospel of Thomas and The Gospel of Peter. So how did they decide to go with the four we currently see? Irenaeus summed it up in the following quote: “It is not possible that the gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four-quarters of the earth in which we live, and four universal winds, … it is fitting that she should have four pillars breathing out immortality on every side, and vivifying men afresh.”  Yeah, that’s a good reason. Since the earth is flat and has four corners, there should be four gospels! It all makes sense! [Face Palm]

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Fundamentalist Man Lets Bruce Gerencser Know What He Thinks of Him

Bruce Gerencser 23 Comments

peanut gallery

What follows is a comment received today on the post Why I Hate Jesus. The man who left this comment read the following posts before he began his rant against me. These posts are listed in the order the commenter accessed them.

From these five posts, Bill, the Fundamentalist — the son of a pastor — concluded:

Bruce, I scorn you. For over 25 years, you were a Christian leader. You loved your Rolexes, Lear Jets, and expensive suits. By your own definition of yourself, you either enjoyed these things or joined in the pursuit of them and weren’t clever enough to attain them. SHAME on you! My own father, a humble pastor, has NEVER owned a new car in his life. He gave up his career in early life to pursue what you NEVER did–the Jesus of the Bible. The jesus you described is not the American Jesus. Nope. He was the Bruce-Gerencse-Jesus. And, unarguably, there are many of your type out there to be sure. In fact, the pastors that I’ve sat under have continually warned me all my life about your type of pastor that you were. Now you’ve made your pile of money and decided to get out of the American-Bruce-Gerencse-Jesus business, and mock those still in it.

By your own admission, you spent at least 25 years as a horrible fiend. You served a personal version of jesus that a normal, decent Christian would have abhorred. You claim that you saw the multitudes and turned your back on them, and you were only concerned with those who said and believed “the right things.” Buddy, you are to be scorned.

You looked at Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Atheists, Agnostics, Deists, Universalists, Secularists, Humanists, and Skeptics, and believed that they would burn forever in the Lake of Fire, yet you settled yourself down in cushy Ohio, Texas, Michigan–places where you could enjoy the praise of your fellow Gerencserites who, according to your own testimony, subjugated women, told widows it was their fault, and ignored the cries of orphans. You were one sick man.

You never left your comfy home and go to Africa or Asia or South America where you truly believed people had no access to what you believed was the only remedy that could spare them from eternal damnation. You and other “Christians” of your type disgust me. You were so heartless. Of course, you would one day cash out of enjoy your hard earned payoff and walk away from you “jesus,” now you gloat in the life you lived and lump everyone else in with you nasty old self. Your guilt and self-loathing has filled you with hate for the jesus got you your car

How could you repeatedly threaten to abandon your wife and children if they didn’t kowtow to you and your jesus? What an awful life you shoved their faces into! I couldn’t image my dad doing something to us like you did to your family. You were a monster!

Many of the ways you describe the jesus you served for over 25 years–TWENTY-FIVE YEARS!–is worthy of derision, mockery, and hate.

At your request, I shower on you the DERISION and MOCKERY you so richly deserve. Be a man, pal, and return all that money your bilked from all those widows and poor families.

Who am I? I am a little man who has spent the past decade living in a third-world country spreading the message that you refused to spread while claiming to believe that your negligence was damning precious souls to eternal fire. While you admittedly made a full career of lusting after fancy cars, palaces and cathedrals and of oppressing women, immigrants, orphans, homosexuals, and atheists, I have made a simple career of reading my Bible and trying–quite poorly–to emulate the Jesus who I found there. I have never asked anyone or any church for a penny. I work an honest job. More importantly, I am acquainted with many, many more folks who are the opposite of what you described yourself to have shamefully been for over a quarter of a century.

I hate the Gerencser jesus far more than you now claim to. Now your lifelong disingenuousness has morphed into a sly insistence that the Gerencser jesus represents all of us. You. Are. A. Liar.

I have no comment. I must go now. My Lear Jet is idling on the tarmac, ready to take me to the island where I have deposited the millions I made while in the ministry.

Black Collar Crime: IFB Church Reportedly Asks Sexual Assault Victim to Apologize To Perpetrator’s Wife

Bruce Gerencser 6 Comments
youth pastor brian mitchell
Brian Mitchell, Columbia Road Baptist Church, North Olmsted, Ohio Youth Pastor

Columbia Road Baptist Church   is an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregation of three hundred located in North Olmsted, Ohio. Pastored for 32 years by Alan Jenkins, Columbia Road is a typical IFB church: King James-only, staff members with advanced degrees from unaccredited colleges or diploma mills, and a website that hides their extremist views.

Columbia Road recently found itself the center of attention after its youth pastor — Brian Mitchell — was accused and convicted of four counts of sexual battery. Mitchell was sentenced to ten years in prison for his crimes. A 16-year-old female member of Columbia Road sought spiritual advice from Mitchell, only to find herself a target of his sexual advances. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports:

The girl [said] in a letter to the judge that she looked up to Mitchell, and that she sought him out to learn how to live a more spiritual life through religion.

Mitchell began sending her text messages that became more and more frequent. Someone brought it to the attention of church leaders and the texting stopped for a time.

He started up again, and the girl said the tone of the messages quickly turned from innocent and fun to serious. She said he complained about his wife and their marital problems.

She wrote that she wanted the texts to stop but felt scared to say anything because he was a powerful figure in the church and in her life.

One day, he drove to her home and told her to come out to his car. He kissed her and told her he wanted to see her again.

The next time he drove out to her home, he had sex with her in his car. Another time he had sex with her at her home while his wife was out of town, Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Kristen Karkutt said.

“I did not give him permission,” the girl wrote. “I clearly said ‘no, didn’t want to.’ I felt like he tricked me.”

Mitchell directed her to delete text message exchanges between the two and told her never to tell anyone. He picked her up during her lunch break from school. He sent her flowers for her birthday, then asked her mother at church if she knew who sent them.

Normally an outgoing teen who played sports and worked two jobs while going to school, she found herself unable to get out of bed. She struggled in school.

….

The girl wrote that she still has nightmares and displays what Corrigan called textbook symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

“This is a perfect example of the psychological damage caused by these types of crimes,” [Cuyahoga County Judge Peter] Corrigan said.

Friedman said Mitchell acknowledges that he betrayed the girl, her family, his own family and the church.

“The whirlwind two or three months of Snapchats and texts and the secrecy involved created an adrenaline- and lust-filled situation where he felt like there could be a future,” [defense attorney Ian] Friedman said.

According to the Plain Dealer, once Columbia Road Baptist leaders were made aware of the matter, they reported it to the police. What I want to know if this:

  • When did the church find out?
  • How much time expired between finding out and reporting it?
  • Did the church investigate the matter first, before reporting it to law enforcement?
  • Did the church consult a lawyer or their insurance company before reporting it to law enforcement?

The reason for asking these questions is that IFB churches routinely try to handle allegations of sexual conduct in-house, hoping to minimize damage to their “testimonies” (reputations).

According to the victim’s mother, Columbia Road church leaders asked the victim to apologize to the sexual predator youth pastor’s wife. In fact, according to the mother, they were told they could not come back to church until they did so. For those of us who investigate, report, and/or follow the foibles of the IFB church movement, blaming victims of sexual assault is far too common. In this case, I suspect the church believes — as many members did when Jack Schaap, pastor of First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indiana was accused of sexual assault — that a 16-year-old  church girl enticed or came on to the their fine, upstanding, married, father-of-three youth pastor. Surely, Pastor Mitchell would never, ever have had sex with this girl had she not batted her eyes, showed a bit of cleavage, and led him on.

This is nothing more than what is commonly called slut-shaming. IFB churches promote the false notion that women are responsible for weak, pathetic male church members — including pastors, youth directors, deacons, bus workers and Sunday school teachers — “falling” into sin. This line of thinking is reinforced every time women are reminded that if they don’t dress or behave a certain way, their brothers in Christ will find themselves unable to resist throwing them on the church pew and savaging them while the congregation sings What a Friend We Have in Jesus.

In typical fashion the victim was blamed, and youth pastor Mitchell received dozens of letters which were given to the judge, telling him what an awesome, loving, God-fearing man he is. While I can understand Mitchell’s mother might write a letter on his behalf, it is beyond belief that church members would make any attempt to support a man who sexually assaulted a minor who had been placed in his trust. Ohio law is clear. Mitchell had a professional relationship with the victim. He was obligated to act morally and ethically, meaning that in no circumstance could he have an intimate relationship with the victim. Simply put, she was off-limits, as were every male and female with whom Mitchell had a professional relationship . This is the law. Every pastor, doctor, dentist, social worker, and psychologist knows this — Mitchell included.

According to Columbia Road’s now-disabled Facebook page:

columbia road baptist church facebook
Columbia Road Baptist Church, North Olmsted, Ohio cached Facebook page

According to Columbia Road’s senior pastor elect (2018) Bill Giallouraskis:

I was not privy to any information where church leaders asked that of the mother. There was to my understanding, a time when the wife of Brian and the mother talked together and the wife suggested that it would do a lot to heal the relationship with the young lady ’cause of course she was involved with the youth as a mentor as well, being Brian’s wife. That it would do a lot to help, that if they could make amends with each other. Perhaps the mother misunderstood that to be more than it was.

When asked if Mitchell’s wife felt betrayed by the victim, Giallouraskis said,  “I can tell you we were all very surprised. We were all very grieved, we all felt very betrayed.”

Giallouraskis also said:

We have a pretty rigorous process that we put all of our workers through especially any of our workers who are going to work with children or youth. We run background checks, we also have an interview process that we go through that asks some pretty poignant questions about whether there are issues going on in the lives of the people” like sexual immorality or pornography.

I guess the difficulty with Brian was that there have been no prior incident that would have ever come up on a background report. He has a very good recommendation from the previous church that he worked at…He married into a family that has been in our church for four generations. There was just no red flag that came up in our process.

Surely Giallouraskis is aware that criminal background checks only show if someone has been convicted of a crime. Just because Mitchell was well thought of and came from a “good” family doesn’t mean he has not, in the past, preyed on, vulnerable teen girls. As his criminal conviction shows, he has at least preyed on one church teenager. Was he a predator virgin? Time will tell.  Virtually every day there are news reports about Evangelical pastors being accused/charged/convicted of sex crimes. I could spend the next hour detailing stories about IFB preachers who were convicted of sex crimes or were caught committing adultery. Giallouraskis ignorantly thinks that by asking prospective employees and volunteers if they are committing fornication/adultery or watching porn that they have done their due diligence. In what setting would a prospective pastor/volunteer ever say, Yo, I like having sex with teenagers and I love watching porn. Never!

For those of us who have spent much of our lives wading in the cesspool called the IFB church movement, the youth pastor’s sexual assault of a church girl and the mother’s claim that the church asked for an apology sound all too familiar. Circling the wagons, protecting the clergy, and blaming the victims have, sadly, become standard operating procedure. In classic IFB-fashion, Columbia Road Baptist Church, instead of making a full disclosure, disabled their social media accounts and posted the following on their website:

columbia road baptist church

 

People of the Book: The Bible is the Only Book we Need

Bruce Gerencser 6 Comments

michael faraday all sufficient bible

Evangelicals love to claim that they are “people of the book” — the book being the Protestant Bible. Evangelicals talk a lot about the sufficiency of Scripture. According to these followers of Jesus, all that believers need for life and godliness can be found in the Bible. Yet, these same people write books, host radio programs, and blog about how the people of the book should understand and interpret the book they say contains everything Christians need to successfully live as followers of Jesus. Calvinists, in particular, make much of sola scriptura — Scripture alone. One such person is Jon Bloom, staff writer for John Piper’s Desiring God website. Bloom writes:

We have the New Testament largely because of the theological diseases that infected and afflicted the first-generation churches. The apostles wrote to clarify and remind early believers of things they had been taught, and to correct false doctrines that were springing up.

All of church history resembles the New Testament: remarkable outpourings of the Holy Spirit, gospel advances, churches planted, outbreaks of persecution and martyrdoms, doctrinal distortions and leadership abuses and all manner of sin causing churches to be, as the old hymn says, “by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed,” followed by Holy Spirit-empowered revival and reformation movements.

To have knowledge of church history is good — really good. It helps us keep perspective. It helps us keep from being too euphoric and triumphalist in revival, too depressed and defeatist in tribulation, and too enamored of The Next Big Thing, the new method, strategy, or movement that promises to be The Answer. Church history helps us remember, “Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’? It has been already in the ages before us” (Ecclesiastes 1:10).

But it’s best to know our Bibles very well. The only proven antidote to the doctrinal and moral diseases that have always afflicted the churches of God is “holding fast to the word of life” (Philippians 2:16) and “not . . . go[ing] beyond what is written” (1 Corinthians 4:6). Church history serves to confirm this is true.

We must submit to “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27) and not allow the limits of our own understanding to place unbiblical limits on the “breadth and length and height and depth, and . . . the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:18–19). Plead with God for the strength to comprehend what is beyond our human ability to grasp (Ephesians 3:18).

And resolve not to go beyond what is written (1 Corinthians 4:6).

And at the end of Bloom’s article? Books for sale that will help Christians better “understand” the all-sufficient Word of God.

Evangelical writers continue to churn out books, radio broadcasts, YouTube videos, audio recordings, and blog posts that are meant to “explain” what the Bible teaches. Or better put, meant to “explain” what that particular Evangelical thinks the Bible teaches. Why the need for all the extra-Biblical material if the Bible is the only book Christians will ever need? Why all the Bible study books if born-again, bought-by-the-blood. Holy-Ghost-filled Evangelicals have the very Words of God at their disposal?

The bookshelves found in the average Evangelical pastor’s study are filled with all sorts of books: commentaries, Bible translations, concordances, sermon outlines, sermon illustrations, Christian biographies, theological tomes, self-help books, and one-offs dealing with politics, the culture war, and clean Christian jokes. And thanks to computers, many of these books and study helps are now available online or through purchased software. Yet, come Sunday, these same pastors — after spending 10-20 hours reading and studying books about the Bible — will say to their congregations, “We are people of the Book! The inspired, inerrant, infallible Protestant Bible is all-sufficient. Praise be to God for giving us through his Word everything necessary to live in an evil world as his chosen people!”

Al Mohler, in a January 2016 blog post, lamented the theological and Biblical ignorance of many Christians. Mohler writes:

While America’s evangelical Christians are rightly concerned about the secular worldview’s rejection of biblical Christianity, we ought to give some urgent attention to a problem much closer to home–biblical illiteracy in the church. This scandalous problem is our own, and it’s up to us to fix it.

Researchers George Gallup and Jim Castelli put the problem squarely: “Americans revere the Bible–but, by and large, they don’t read it. And because they don’t read it, they have become a nation of biblical illiterates.” How bad is it? Researchers tell us that it’s worse than most could imagine.

Fewer than half of all adults can name the four gospels. Many Christians cannot identify more than two or three of the disciples. According to data from the Barna Research Group, 60 percent of Americans can’t name even five of the Ten Commandments. “No wonder people break the Ten Commandments all the time. They don’t know what they are,” said George Barna, president of the firm. The bottom line? “Increasingly, America is biblically illiterate.”

Multiple surveys reveal the problem in stark terms. According to 82 percent of Americans, “God helps those who help themselves,” is a Bible verse. Those identified as born-again Christians did better–by one percent. A majority of adults think the Bible teaches that the most important purpose in life is taking care of one’s family.

Some of the statistics are enough to perplex even those aware of the problem. A Barna poll indicated that at least 12 percent of adults believe that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. Another survey of graduating high school seniors revealed that over 50 percent thought that Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife. A considerable number of respondents to one poll indicated that the Sermon on the Mount was preached by Billy Graham. We are in big trouble.

Secularized Americans should not be expected to be knowledgeable about the Bible. As the nation’s civic conversation is stripped of all biblical references and content, Americans increasingly live in a Scripture-free public space. Confusion and ignorance of the Bible’s content should be assumed in post-Christian America.

The larger scandal is biblical ignorance among Christians. Choose whichever statistic or survey you like, the general pattern is the same. America’s Christians know less and less about the Bible. It shows.

How can a generation be biblically shaped in its understanding of human sexuality when it believes Sodom and Gomorrah to be a married couple? No wonder Christians show a growing tendency to compromise on the issue of homosexuality. Many who identify themselves as Christians are similarly confused about the Gospel itself. An individual who believes that “God helps those who help themselves” will find salvation by grace and justification by faith to be alien concepts.

Christians who lack biblical knowledge are the products of churches that marginalize biblical knowledge. Bible teaching now often accounts for only a diminishing fraction of the local congregation’s time and attention. The move to small group ministry has certainly increased opportunities for fellowship, but many of these groups never get beyond superficial Bible study.

Youth ministries are asked to fix problems, provide entertainment, and keep kids busy. How many local-church youth programs actually produce substantial Bible knowledge in young people?

Even the pulpit has been sidelined in many congregations. Preaching has taken a back seat to other concerns in corporate worship. The centrality of biblical preaching to the formation of disciples is lost, and Christian ignorance leads to Christian indolence and worse.

This really is our problem, and it is up to this generation of Christians to reverse course. Recovery starts at home. Parents are to be the first and most important educators of their own children, diligently teaching them the Word of God. [See Deuteronomy 6:4-9.] Parents cannot franchise their responsibility to the congregation, no matter how faithful and biblical it may be. God assigned parents this non-negotiable responsibility, and children must see their Christian parents as teachers and fellow students of God’s Word.

Churches must recover the centrality and urgency of biblical teaching and preaching, and refuse to sideline the teaching ministry of the preacher. Pastors and churches too busy–or too distracted–to make biblical knowledge a central aim of ministry will produce believers who simply do not know enough to be faithful disciples.

Mohler, the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a leader in the hostile Calvinistic takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, thinks that the solution for the theological ignorance is for pastors to return to Biblical teaching and preaching. Mohler is a big proponent of expository preaching. (Expository preaching is a form of preaching that details the meaning of a particular text or passage of Scripture. It explains what the Bible means by what it says. Exegesis is technical and grammatical exposition, a careful drawing out of the exact meaning of a passage in its original context. Wikipedia) He thinks it is up to pastors to use some sort of Vulcan mind meld to impart Christian theological knowledge to church members, forgetting that many members have the attention span of a toddler and are more concerned with lunch and Sunday’s match-up between the Denver Broncos and the New England Patriots.

I thought that the only book that Christians need to the Bible. I thought that the Bible is all-sufficient. Surely, if God himself (the Holy Spirit) lives inside of every Christian and is their teacher and guide, shouldn’t every Evangelical know what the Bible says and means? Evidently not. Despite asking Jesus into to their heart and the Holy spirit living in said heart, Evangelicals still need clerics to tell them what the various books and verses of the Bible mean. For 2,000 years now, educated (and not so educated) pastors have been telling Christians what they should/must believe, going so far as to suggest that if Christians don’t believe the right things it is doubtful they will go to heaven when they die.

I was a part of the Christian church for fifty years, pastoring Evangelical churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan for twenty-five of those years. I started my preaching career as a topical/textual preacher, moving to expository preaching once I embraced John Calvin’s doctrines of grace. I took seriously my obligation to preach and teach the word of God. As an expository preacher, I preached through numerous books of the Bible, including preaching over one hundred consecutive sermons from the gospel of John. Yet, despite all my preaching and teaching, most church members were content to believe what I believed. No matter how often I challenged and berated them over their lack of diligence and theological acumen, congregants were content to dust off their Bibles on Sunday and passively sit in the pew as Pastor Bruce preached to them the wondrous truths of God’s perfect Word. While a handful of church members would read theological books, study the Bible, and listen to sermon tapes, the rest of the congregation decided to live with the guilt of not being students of the Word.

The reasons for this lack of desire are many, but let me end this post with a few of them.

First, the people I pastored had a life outside of church. While the majority of church members attended church every time the doors were open — often two to four services a week — they also had other obligations: jobs, houses, lands, and families. As a pastor, I was paid to read and study the Bible. My schedule afforded me the leisure necessary to spend hours each week reading theological books. When I wanted or needed to do some intense study, all I had to do is cloister myself away in my study and put up a closed sign on the door. Trained to be “sensitive” to the man of God’s spiritual needs, congregants left me alone, believing that it was more important for me to hear from God than them.

Try as they might, most church members simply did not have the requisite time necessary to devote themselves to reading and studying the Bible. Members often resorted to short devotional booklets such as Our Daily Bread — a better-than-nothing approach that rarely, if ever, imparted any new knowledge about the teachings of the Bible.

percentage of americans who didnt read a book

Second, due to the belief that only certain Bible versions should be read: King James (KJV), New American Standard (NASB), English Standard (ESV), many members found the text of the Bible difficult to read. What do people who have a limited amount of time do when faced with a hard-to-read book? They put the book on the shelf, choosing to either read books that dumb down the Bible or supplant reading and studying with their pastor’s Sunday sermon. The sad fact is — Christian or not — most adults rarely read books, choosing instead to read blogs, news sites, and social media. Those who do read books are likely not reading religious tomes. Most Christians read religious fiction such as The Left Behind series or Christian self-help books. (You can check out Amazon’s Top 100 Best Sellers: Religion and Spirituality here.)

Finally, many of the people I pastored either found the Bible contradictory or boring. Whether this attitude was due to reading ability, education, or desire, the fact is most church members ignored the Bible, choosing, when they read, to peruse fictional books or easy-to-digest self-help books. I pastored people who read every book in the Left Behind series, yet couldn’t find a spare minute to read the Bible. One woman, a devoted follower of Jesus and active in the church, devoted her reading time, not to the Bible, but to books on famous crime stories and serial killers. Too bad I didn’t know to tell her that the God found in the pages of the Bible was/is the greatest serial killer of all time.

Bloom and Mohler are fighting a losing battle. Not only are most Christians no longer using the Bible as the all-sufficient rule for their lives, they also aren’t even bothering to read it. Perhaps it is time for Evangelicals to write a new Bible, one that has more of a True Blood, Game of Thrones, Ray Donavan, Criminal Minds, Walking Dead feel. Sticking with a Bronze Age religious text will only cause continued angst and depression among the Blooms and Mohlers of the world. If God himself can’t get Christians to read the all-sufficient Bible, what makes Evangelicals and parachurch leaders who, if the truth be known, don’t read the Bible much either, think they can do what God can’t do?

Christian Porn: Kevin Sorbo’s Atheist Salvation Fantasy

Bruce Gerencser 17 Comments

kevin sorbo quote

In recent years, several movies marketed to Evangelicals have featured erotic scenes of Evangelical revivalism ravishing atheism. Movies such as God is Not Dead are built around the notion that the Christian gospel has the power to brings atheists to their knees. Never mind the fact that these Evangelical fantasies are about as real as the scenes found in countless porn movies. While I can point to countless Evangelicals who are now atheists, rare are atheists who become Christians. When people tell me that they were atheists before they embraced the wonderful, matchless grace of Jesus, I question them as to what they really believed. Most often these former atheists were not atheists at all. At best, they were anti-theists or indifferent to religion. These atheists-turned-Christians wrongly assume that not believing in the Christian God means the unbelievers are atheists. This simply is not the case.

Most atheists I know can give numerous reasons for why they are atheists (or agnostics). Most of the atheists-turned-Christians I have met couldn’t explain atheism if their life depended on it. Ask them what atheist writers they have read and they will likely give you a blank stare. What often happens is that Evangelical pastors and evangelistic zealots convince these new Christians that they were once atheists. What better testimony is there than that of an atheist who realized the Evangelical deity was the true and living God. Outside of being a Satan worshiper, a mob kingpin, or Pablo Escobar’s right hand man, there is no greater Christian testimony than to have once been an atheist.

Most atheists are naturalists and materialists. Most atheists put a lot of stock in the sciences. It is hard for me to imagine someone abandoning science and a naturalistic view of the world in exchange for a religious system built upon an anti-science, anti-reason foundation. I am sure, on rare occasions, it happens, but I do not personally know of one person who was once a card-carrying atheist and who is now a Bible-believing Evangelical Christian.

Actor Kevin Sorbo is working on a film about “an atheist who, upon experiencing a near-death experience, converts to Christianity.” Titled Let There be Light, the movie will feature Sorbo as the world’s greatest atheist. Think Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, or Steven Hawking. Or move way down the list to C movie atheists such as myself or other one-time Evangelical preachers. Try to fathom what possibly could happen for one of us to have a come-to-Jesus moment where we reject reason, skepticism, rationalism, atheism, agnosticism, humanism, and science and in their place embrace the mind-numbing, anti-intellectual, irrational, and anti-science beliefs of Evangelicals. Sorry Kevin Sorbo. This might be some sort of Christian porn fantasy, but in real life it is highly unlikely that a well-known atheist would reject atheism in favor of Evangelicalism.

Of course, this won’t stop Sorbo and others like him from making movies such as God is Not Dead, God is Not Dead 2, and Let There be Light. You see, these movies are not made for atheists or to be used as an Evangelistic tool to reach the godless for Jesus. These type of movies are campaign propaganda meant to stir the hearts of believers, leading them to believe that ANYTHING is possible — even the salvation of Richard Dawkins.

Yesterday, Mother Teresa was granted sainthood. This monumental event led Benjamin Wiker, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Franciscan University of Steubenville to say that Catholics  should now pray to Saint Teresa of Calcutta, asking her to heal Steven Hawking of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and convert him to Christianity Wiker writes:

I know this might be rather bold, but I’d like to ask, say, several million people out there to pray to Mother Teresa during her canonization day, and eight days thereafter, for the conversion and complete healing of the great physicist Stephen Hawking.

Why? As simply as I can put it, his conversion and cure would be a miracle that would show to the world that Christian faith and science are not opposed, but (as St. John Paul II said) “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”

Imagine what would happen to Hawking himself if God would see fit to answer this prayer through the intercession of Mother Teresa. He would not be any less a physicist. He would still know what he had previously known, from Black Holes to Quantum Mechanics, but his universe would quite suddenly become immeasurably larger and more complex.

Hawking would then be faced with an even bigger task than coming up with a Theory of Everything because the Everything he would now have to fit into the Theory would involve mysteries beyond the ken of science, but not in ultimate contradiction to them. Faith and science couldn’t be in contradiction because they in fact co-exist in a much larger harmony. There are Black Holes and there are also Albanian nuns (or at least one) whose prayers somehow bring about the divine healing of unhealable diseases like Lou Gehrig’s disease, which has for so many years afflicted Hawking.

Moreover, if these prayers were answered, Hawking would know exactly what it was like, some two millennia ago, to be healed directly by Jesus, and that would mean that the New Testament would quite suddenly be transformed from a book of fiction (as too many scientists see it) to a book of startling miraculous facts. That book would then have to be on the same shelf with his physics books.

As far as I know, Hawking never met Mother Teresa. But I have often thought, when seeing Hawking so sadly trapped in a painfully twisted body for so long, what it might have meant for him if Mother Teresa had come to him, as she had to so many like-wise broken bodies lying in the dust of Calcutta, and picked his frail body up, looked into his eyes, and spoke with him about the love of Christ.

One might say that it’s too late for such a meeting. But it just may be the perfect time, her canonization, a very busy time for saints. She could, God willing, go to him now.

I also think about this meeting for what might seem an odd reason. Stephen Hawking has lived far, far longer than anyone should who has Lou Gehrig’s disease. That in itself is a mystery. Perhaps it is a mystery waiting for such a meeting.

I pray that it is, and hope again, for several million others to do likewise. Spread the word.

St. Teresa, by the Grace of God you ministered to the poorest of the poor, the sickest of the sick, the crippled, the leprous, and the dying. We beg you please, in virtue of the Graces now bestowed upon you in canonization, to pray for the complete physical healing and conversion of Stephen Hawking. Through the same Christ our Lord you so dutifully served. Amen.

I predict, based on the evidence at hand, that no notable atheists will be converted through Sorbo’s movie. I also predict that seven days from now Steven Hawking will (sadly) still have ALS. And as a final prediction, I predict that Christian preachers, priests, and movie makers will continue to make money off Christian porn featuring straw-men atheists who do not exist in real life. From the safe corners of Christianity, God’s spokesmen will continue to tilt at the atheist windmills of their own making. Cheering crowds of Christians will rejoice, thinking their leaders have once again routed the enemies of God. Little do they know that no atheists were harmed in the making of this movie.

Bruce Gerencser