This is the latest 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 If There Is A God (He’s A Queen) by Romanovsky & Philips.
I’ve been around the block I’ve seen a lot of sights From the outback of Australia To Alaska’s northern lights And I have to say I’m so impressed With the beauty of this earth And I have theory to impart For whatever it is worth
Chorus: Just think about the things you’ve seen The mountains and the oceans and the prairies in between Oh, people can’t you see It’s obvious to me That if there is a god, he’s a queen
Just drive through the Canyonlands And you, too, will believe ‘Cause there are color combinations That no straight man could conceive The striations and the textures You will see there in the land Could have only been invented by A nelly holy man
(Chorus)
Now the Bible says He did it all within a week And I’m quite impressed Thought I’ve also got a small critique He should not have taken that seventh day of rest ‘Cause he could have done a little more work On the Midwest (at least Ohio!)
Stroll through New England When Autumn’s in full force To confirm my reference to the sexual preference Of the one we call The Source And if you think I need more evidence To really validate my claim What about the guy who wrote “For purple mountains’ majesty Above the ‘fruited’ plain?”
(Chorus)
Now it seems we’ve solved one mystery Of the earth and its creator Jesus might have been a carpenter But his father was a decorator
(Chorus)
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Rarely do I have contact with anyone I knew from my campus Christian fellowship or Evangelical church. But when I do it is, to say the least, interesting.
In an earlier post, I talked about “Ivette” who, after many years, told me about something I’d long suspected: a deacon in the church raped her. Not long ago, someone else from that church, and the Christian fellowship, got in touch with me after reading something I’d written elsewhere.
“Marcus” was a kind of role model for me. Or so I wished. A few years older than I, he entered our college and Christian fellowship after serving in the Navy. He was following a family tradition, he explained. Also, being eligible for the draft, he calculated — correctly — that his enlistment and qualification for an in-demand specialty kept him from being tossed like an ember into the cauldron of Vietnam.
That wasn’t the reason I looked up to him, though. I never doubted his commitment to the Lord. He seemed to be an embodiment of something I hoped to be possible: a devotion to the intellect and the creative spirit that was entirely compatible with a love of Christ, and fellow humans.
We were in the same major, with specialties that overlapped, so we took a few classes together. Inside and outside of those classes, we debated whether John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables” (before it was turned into a musical) were actually forms of Christian “witness.” (I have to admit that part of my admiration for “Marcus” was that he read “Les Miserables” in the original French without—as I did—reading a translation first.) Naturally, since he was a bit older and thus having had life experiences most of my peers lacked, those discussions were, I felt, more interesting than the usual college bull sessions.
Much later, it occurred to me that we were having such discussions out of earshot of other fellowship and church members. Likewise for our discussions about topics like gays and women’s rights (we were in the ’70s, after all!) and abortion. While I echoed the zealotry of my peers and the rigidity of fellow congregants, I think he knew that, deep down, I didn’t thoroughly agree with them.
By now, you might have guessed that he realized I was struggling to reconcile my own sexuality and gender identity with my faith. To my knowledge, he didn’t have a similar conflict but, I suspect, his experiences—including those in uniform — brought him into contact with a wider variety of people than most people in my college, at that time, would have known.
We graduated, went our ways, came back (I, for a short-lived stint in graduate school), and went our ways again. A couple of years after moving back to New York, I bumped into “Marcus” near St. Mark’s Place where — you guessed it — I’d gone to a poetry reading and had drinks with a couple of friends.
This was not long after Ronald Reagan brought himself to utter “AIDS” publicly. “Marcus” and his wife were helping its victims and the homeless (the term in use at the time) through a faith-based organization, I forget which. Anyway, he said that he had to get away from the “Comfort-ianity” of our old church and others he’d attended. Neither he nor his wife tried to bring me “into the fold” or questioned whether I was living a “godly lifestyle.” Instead, they told me to keep on reading — the Bible and anything else — and to “ask questions and pray.”
Had I continued to believe, that last phrase could have been my mantra. But now, as a non-believer, I believe that the first part — ask questions — is one of the essences of life itself. As I suspect, it was and is for “Marcus” and “Leilani.”
That, most likely, is what led to another event in their lives. In one of his last letters (remember those?) before our recent reunion, he mentioned a son who’d been born to them. He would’ve been a college student or, perhaps, a sailor (like his dad). Note that I said “would’ve”: He didn’t make it to one of those hallmarks of adulthood, or even his high school graduation. For that matter, he didn’t attend high school, or much of any school in the sense that most of us know it. Much like my cousin who passed away three years ago, he never learned to speak, walk without assistance, or do most of the things we do without thinking.
As you might expect, they — who were still believers — heard the usual Christian platitudes about God’s “will” and his unwillingness to “put you through anything he won’t help you through.” Few who haven’t been through the trials of raising someone with severe developmental disabilities can understand how condescending or simply insulting such declarations can sound even to someone who believes them. Not to mention that like “thoughts and prayers” for them (or victims of gun violence), they do nothing to help alleviate the suffering or offer strength to carry on.
But even that wasn’t enough to shake “Marcus’” or “Leilani’s” faith. Rather, it was a question “Marcus” tried to answer through his extensive reading of the Bible, as well as various theologians and apologists. His and his wife’s faith was premised on “accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior” and gleaning the will of said Lord through prayer and Bible reading. Their son, of course, could do none of those things. So, they wondered, would he join them in the joyous afterlife that, they believed, was promised to them for their commitment and faith?
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear that one pastor, then another, and a scholar from the seminary “Marcus” attended for a time told him “No.” Their son, through no fault of his own, has no hope of eternal salvation — just like people who had the misfortune of being born in the “wrong” century or part of the world and thus missed out on the privilege of hearing the Word of God.
Oh, and if you don’t believe the “once saved, always saved” doctrine, “Marcus” and “LeilanI” are similarly doomed — for loving their child enough to abandon a belief in a God that condemns him for something he couldn’t control.
In a way, it’s ironic: Did Matthew ever consider that some people’s devotion to their faith is based on little or nothing more than the hope that they will accompany their loved ones in Heaven, or to whatever form of eternal bliss they hope to find after this life?
In any event, “Marcus” and “Leilani” did more than the God they once believed in for their son. If that isn’t reason enough for any parent to abandon their faith, I don’t know what is.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
This is the latest 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 Sam Stone by John Prine.
Sam Stone came home To his wife and family After serving in the conflict overseas And the time that he served Had shattered all his nerves And left a little shrapnel in his knees But the morphine eased the pain And the grass grew round his brain And gave him all the confidence he lacked With a purple heart and a monkey on his back
There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes Jesus Christ died for nothin’ I suppose Little pitchers have big ears Don’t stop to count the years Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios, mmhmm
Sam Stone’s welcome home Didn’t last too long He went to work when he’d spent his last dime And Sammy took to stealing When he got that empty feeling For a hundred dollar habit without overtime And the gold rolled through his veins Like a thousand railroad trains And eased his mind in the hours that he chose While the kids ran around wearin’ other peoples’ clothes
There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes Jesus Christ died for nothin’ I suppose Little pitchers have big ears Don’t stop to count the years Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios, mmhmm
Sam Stone was alone When he popped his last balloon Climbing walls while sitting in a chair Well, he played his last request While the room smelled just like death With an overdose hovering in the air But life had lost its fun There was nothing to be done But trade his house that he bought on the GI bill For a flag-draped casket on a local hero’s hill
There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes Jesus Christ died for nothin’ I suppose Little pitchers have big ears Don’t stop to count the years Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios, mmhmm
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
This is the latest 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 Wages of Sin by The Rainmakers.
I was praying last night when an angel broke the line She said “I’m gonna have to put you on hold for a time” I said “Hold like Hell, let me talk to the Boss” She said “Sorry sucker (sinner), it’s the Boss’s day off” And I realized then that the wages of sin Was two bucks an hour and working weekends
I was ignoring the thief who was lashed to the cross He cried “Help me get this son-of-a-bitch off” I said “I would if I could, I can’t so I won’t Well I wouldn’t want you messing your hair up, so don’t” And I realized then that the wages of sin Was all the lumber you can carry, all the nails you can bend
The wages of sin, the reward of fear Is worrying and fretting every second of the year If Heaven is guilt, no sex and no show Then I’m not sure if I really want to go, Oh
The wages of sin, the price that you pay Is worrying and fretting every second of the day The Church and the State, your God and Country kind One gets your body, the other gets your mind
Mary, Mary Magdalene, how ’bout a date? You’ve been wasting your time staying up so late Your boyfriend’s dead, the word is you’re a whore Just about then I heard a knock on the door And I realized then that the wages of sin Was a bad reputation and too many friends
The wages of sin (repeats)
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
This is the latest 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 If He Showed Up Now by Scott Cook.
If he showed up now, you wouldn’t know what to do He’d be flat broke as usual, filthy too And the worst thing about it when he comes to town Is the kind of people that he brings around But all of your life you have called him your friend And promised you’d stick by him right to the end So you’d say, do us the honour, have something to eat And he’d say, where were you when I was living on the street?
If he showed up now there’d be trouble, I bet He’d be talking revolution, or did you forget When you told him you’d follow him, he said, if you Were anything like me, they’d kill you too. You’d say, I’ve been calling you, haven’t you heard? I live by your name and I’d die for your word And I’d fight to defend it in every detail And he’d say, where were you when I was in jail?
If he showed up now, would you recognize him? If he came as a pauper when you expected a king Or as an illegal, scrounging for bills Or a defenceless child in the Syrian hills You’d say I’ve been fighting your cause all along I studied your pages and sang out your songs And it was in your name that I closed every prayer And he’d say, where were you when I was sick and couldn’t get care? You’d say, if I’d known it was you I’d have come I fought for your honour and all that I’ve done It was under your banner in the name of the Son And he’d say, where were you for the weakest ones? Where were you for the weakest ones?
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
This is the latest 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 isby White Wine in the Sun by Tim Minchin.
I really like Christmas It’s sentimental, I know But I just really like it
I am hardly religious I’d rather break bread with Dawkins Than Desmond Tutu, to be honest
And yes, I have all of the usual objections To consumerism To the commercialization of an ancient religion To the westernization of a dead Palestinian Press-ganged into selling PlayStations and beer But I still really like it
I’m looking forward to Christmas Though I’m not expecting A visit from Jesus
I’ll be seeing my dad My brother and sisters, my gran and my mum They’ll be drinking white wine in the sun I’ll be seeing my dad My brother and sisters, my gran and my mum They’ll be drinking white wine in the sun
I don’t go in for ancient wisdom I don’t believe just ’cause ideas are tenacious It means they’re worthy
I get freaked out by churches Some of the hymns that they sing have nice chords But the lyrics are dodgy
And yes, I have all of the usual objections To the miseducation Of children who, in tax-exempt institutions Are taught to externalize blame And to feel ashamed And to judge things as plain right and wrong But I quite like the songs
I’m not expecting big presents The old combination of socks, jocks and chocolates Is just fine by me
Cause I’ll be seeing my dad My brother and sisters, my gran and my mum They’ll be drinking white wine in the sun I’ll be seeing my dad My brother and sisters, my gran and my mum They’ll be drinking white wine in the sun
And you, my baby girl My jetlagged infant daughter You’ll be handed round the room Like a puppy at a primary school And you won’t understand But you will learn someday That wherever you are and whatever you face These are the people who’ll make you feel safe In this world My sweet blue-eyed girl
And if my baby girl When you’re twenty-one or thirty-one And Christmas comes around And you find yourself nine thousand miles from home You’ll know what ever comes
Your brothers and sisters and me and your mum Will be waiting for you in the sun Whenever you come Your brothers and sisters, your aunts and your uncles Your grandparents, cousins and me and your mum We’ll be waiting for you in the sun Drinking white wine in the sun Darling, when Christmas comes We’ll be waiting for you in the sun Drinking white wine in the sun Waiting for you in the sun Waiting for you Waiting
I really like Christmas It’s sentimental, I know
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The 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.
Scott Asalone, a former priest at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church in Purcellville, Virginia, pleaded guilty to a single count of felony carnal knowledge of a minor in December 2022. Yesterday, he was sentenced to eight years in prison.
A former Loudoun County priest has been sentenced to eight years in prison for sexually abusing a minor nearly 40 years ago.
On Tuesday, Virginia’s Attorney General Jason Miyares announced Scott Asalone, a former priest at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church in Purcellville, has been sentenced to prison on a charge of felony carnal knowledge of a minor.
“Today’s sentencing brings long, overdue justice to the brave victim who came forward and told their story. My office will continue to aggressively prosecute child offenders and I encourage anyone who has been a victim of clergy abuse to contact the Virginia State Police or local law enforcement,” said Miyares in a statement.
Asalone was convicted of sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy in 1985 when he was 29.
In 2020, when charges were first brought, D.C. Council member David Grosso came forward and identified himself as the victim in an interview with The Washington Post.
The victim in the case is former D.C. Council member David Grosso, who publicly identified himself as Asalone’s victim when the charges were filed in 2020.
Grosso previously said he wrote a letter in 1992 to Asalone, and the priest responded by admitting his misconduct. Grosso said the letter served as evidence to convict Asalone in a case that stretched back to 1985.
“I love the fact that justice never stops in Virginia,” Grosso said last December.
“Today’s sentencing brings long, overdue justice to the brave victim who came forward and told their story. My office will continue to aggressively prosecute child offenders and I encourage anyone who has been a victim of clergy abuse to contact the Virginia State Police or local law enforcement. I’d also like to commend the Virginia State Police and my Major Crimes and Emerging Threats Section for their outstanding work on this case,” said Attorney General Miyares in a statement Tuesday.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
We live on a small, insignificant rock, surrounded by countless galaxies, stars, and planets. We know very little about what lies beyond the Milky Way, and despite our progress, there is still much we don’t know about Earth and its inhabitants. Yes, we humans continue to push into the unknown, but despite our inquisitiveness, we remain insignificant creatures with itty-bitty brains living on what Carl Sagan famously called a “pale blue dot.”
It’s 2023. We supposedly live in the age of science and technological advancement. Yet, the majority of Americans believe God created the universe and the Bible is the Word of God. Young earth creationism flourishes and Evangelical Christianity dominates the political scene. How enlightened and advanced are we really if the majority of people worship as if their lives depended on a Jewish man named Jesus who died 2,000 years ago? Ponder for a moment Christian theology; the core beliefs that millions of people believe are true. (Please see The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense.) Sunday after Sunday, church houses are filled with people singing praises to a dead man; promising to obey the teachings of a Bronze Age religious text. Pray tell, how enlightened are we really?
According to a 2017 Christianity Today story, there are almost 400,000 Christian churches in the United States. Many of these churches are Fundamentalist, falling broadly under the Evangelical tent. (Please see Are Evangelicals Fundamentalists?) The farther to the right you move, the more shrill the Fundamentalists become. One group you will find on the extreme right of Evangelicalism is the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement. Numbering millions of congregants in thousands of churches, the IFB church movement is fiercely separatist, believing that they preach the One True Faith®, and all other sects are either heretical or heterodox. (Please see What is an IFB Church?)
I grew up in the IFB church movement. I attended an IFB Bible college in the 1970s, pastored several IFB churches, and was deeply invested in IFB doctrine and practice. In 1983, I started an IFB church in the southeast community of Somerset, Ohio. It wasn’t that Somerset needed another church — it didn’t. Somerset had five churches within its village limits, and countless more in surrounding communities. Somerset was, in every way, Christianized, yet Rev. Bruce Gerencser, IFB preacher extraordinaire, believed that Somerset needed one more church — a church that preached the One True Faith®. Ponder, for a moment, the arrogance it took to come to this conclusion. Every time I see a newspaper story about yet another Evangelical church coming to the county I live in, I shake my head and say, “just what we need, another fucking church.” All church planters think “God” is leading them to plant a new church, regardless of how many churches already exist. Church planters convince themselves that they are “special,” and that their churches will be different and unique. And as sure as the sun comes up in the morning, over time their churches become just like every other church in town.
Think of the arrogance and lack of awareness required for an IFB preacher — who takes up a square foot or two on this insignificant planet of ours — to think that his church is “right” and all other churches are wrong; to think that his church is a solitary beacon of light in a world he believes is filled with darkness; to think that virtually everyone outside of that particular church has wrong beliefs, worships the wrong God, and is headed for eternal damnation and Hell unless they see, know, and embrace the “truth.” Truth being, of course, the God-given beliefs of the One True Faith®.
In the grand scheme of things, we are little more than specks of dirt on a pale blue dot. We live and die, and before long are forgotten, a footnote in the history of humankind. What better way to drive away insignificance than to convince yourself that you are special; that God speaks to you and has a divine plan for your life? I planted five churches during my time as an Evangelical pastor. There’s nothing more thrilling than starting a new church. Every Sunday is filled with excitement and anticipation. Over time, you attract people who like you as a person or are drawn to your preaching or personality. As the church grows, you begin to think, “I’m special. God is really using me!” In 1986, the IFB church I was pastoring at the time became the largest non-Catholic church in the county. I proudly advertised, “Perry County’s Fastest Growing Church.” I just knew that I was right and every other church/pastor was wrong. My church was growing, and other nearby IFB churches were not, so I began to think that there was something wrong with them; that maybe there was some sort of defect in their beliefs and practices; that maybe they didn’t work as hard as I did. Isn’t that the American dream? Work hard, and good things will happen. Yet, when I resigned from Somerset Baptist Church in the spring of 1994, the glory days were long over. I had moved on from the IFB church movement, embracing Calvinism and starting a private Christian school. My credo was quality over quantity. Did leaving the IFB church movement make me more ecumenical? Not at first. You see, Calvinism is its own special club. Ironically, most of the Calvinistic Baptist — Reformed Baptist, Sovereign Grace Baptist — preachers I knew were former IFB pastors. Much as I did, these preachers had a Paul-like Damascus Road experience and converted to the One True Faith® — Evangelical Calvinism. What this merry band of predestinarians did was just move one more step to the right. Certain that they finally had found THE “truth,” these preachers of John Calvin’s gospel derided their previous beliefs, doubting that those still in IFB churches were really Christians.
The next time you drive by an IFB church or a Sovereign Grace/Reformed Baptist church, just remember that the pastor of the church and his congregation believe that their church is right and every other church is wrong. And remember most of all the insignificant part they play on planet earth. Oh, they believe otherwise, that God is doing a mighty work in and through them, but the fact remains that they are just another speck of dust on a pale blue dot.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I grew up in a dysfunctional Evangelical home. We attended church every time the doors were open, read our Bibles, invited our friends and neighbors to church, and practiced the Christian art of praying. I want to focus on the art of praying in this post. I hope what I write will resonate with readers, and provoke their own thoughts about their past prayer experiences.
As a child, I was taught to pray every night before I went to bed. The first prayer I remember praying went like this:
Dear God,
Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my Soul to keep, If I should die before I ‘wake, I pray the Lord my Soul to take.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen
As I grew older, my prayers became more extemporaneous. I would confess my sins, thank God for saving me from my sin, thank God for my parents, family, pastor, church, pray for the missionaries and lost sinners, and finish off my prayers with a few personal requests. Still waiting for that new Schwinn 3-speed bike with a banana seat and sissy bar, Lord. As a teenager, my prayers became more elaborate, often taking minutes to recite. I wanted God to know I was serious about my faith; that I was serious about making my petitions and requests known to God. In my late teens, as I became more involved with girls, I would ask God to keep me morally pure. Two serious relationships, one at eighteen and the other with the woman who is now my wife, brought frequent prayers for moral strength. I was a virgin when I married, but I suspect that had Polly and I waited much longer, we would have rounded third and slid into home. I can remember to this day, kneeling before God, still sexually aroused, and thanking him for keeping me from fornication. I know now, of course, that what kept me from sexual sin was religious indoctrination, threats of judgment and Hell, and fear.
I was also taught the importance of praying before every meal. As a child, I prayed:
Dear God,
God is great, God is good. Let us thank him for our food.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen
On more than a few occasions growing up, I started eating before the prescribed prayer was uttered. This would usually elicit a stern warning from my mom:
Mom: Did you pray for your food?
Bruce: Uh — mouth filled with food — I forgot.
Mom: You better pray right now lest God chokes you.
Bruce: (Who had never seen a non-prayer choked by God) bows his head and silently mouths a prayer of thankfulness to God.
I had drilled into my head by my mom and pastors that God gave me food to eat, and that if I wanted to continue eating beans and wieners or chipped chopped ham/gravy over toast, I better thank God for meeting my sustenance needs. This training stuck with me, and I continued to pray over meals until I was almost fifty years old.
Several years ago, we visited Polly’s Fundamentalist Christian parents. (Both of them have died over the past three years.) Polly’s dad was a retired Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) pastor. Mom was an excellent cake maker, and she had made a double-chocolate cake for us and my oldest son and his children, and my youngest son and his fiancée, who accompanied us. As we were preparing to eat the cake, my father-in-law said to my oldest son, “Are you going to pray for the cake?” We all sat there stunned, not knowing what to do. You see, desserts were never prayed over. Never made sense to me why we prayed for the pot roast, carrots, and potatoes, but never for dessert. My son quickly avoided the prayer question, and Dad decided to go ahead without it. Crisis averted. When Polly and I left Christianity, Dad would frequently ask me or one of my oldest two sons to pray for the food. Such requests were quietly and respectfully rebuffed with a “Why don’t you pray, Dad/Papaw?” Certainly, Polly and I don’t prevent anyone from praying at our table as long as they do it silently. God hears silent prayers, does he not? Yeah, I know, not really, but from an Evangelical perspective, he does. Want to pray for your food at atheist Nana and Grandpa’s table? Bow your head and silently shoot a prayer to Jesus. That’s all that matters right? If not, it would seem, at least to me, that meal prayers — especially in public settings — are meant to be statements instead of acts of piety and devotion.
These days, I am with Jimmy Stewart when it comes to praying for our food:
What were your praying experiences as a child? Did you pray over your food? Always, or did you make exceptions? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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There is a staggering lack of Biblically-based knowledge and impact in America’s public square. Secularism, Christianity’s chief competitor, thrives solely in the absence of morality, and Christians have handed over the culture and its mountains of influence to those in rebellion against God. Any casual observer will recognize that secularism’s dominance of academia, newsrooms, sports, the Courts, big business, Hollywood, and medicine isa direct result of Christians ‘not doing politics’. It would seem that modern Christianity is ‘not doing education’ either, given that the secular worldview now is being spoon-fed to 85% of America’s youth. Until Christians step into the public square, reestablishing a Biblically-based culture, the ‘sexualization’ and secularization of youth, allied and abetted by Hollywood and media cliques, will continue to bring the nation to ruin.
Evangelicals, conservative Catholics, and Mormons clamor for a Bible-based culture. In their minds, the Bible is the moral and ethical standard by which all of us should live. If only the United States were governed by the dictates of the Bible, all would be well. Several years ago, a local Fundamentalist Christian wrote a letter to the editor of the Defiance Crescent-News (behind a paywall) extolling the wonderfulness of living in a country governed by the Bible. He went on to say that no one should fear Bible-based rule. “Christians,” he said, “only want what’s best for everyone.” Sadly, there are a lot of naive believers who think just like this man; Christians only want love, joy, peace, and ice cream for everyone. However, history tells us differently; that when church and state are one, blood is shed, people die, and freedoms are lost. And make no mistake about it, theocracy is the goal. Christian apologists might hide their theocratic beliefs with flowery words and philosophical verbiage, but the naked truth is that, in their minds, there is one Lord, lawgiver, ruler, king, and potentate, and his name is Jesus. There is one perfect and infallible law book — the Bible. Knowing they believe these things to be true, perhaps we should ponder what a Bible-based culture would look like.
One need only look at the frontal assault on abortion and Roe v. Wade. The latter having been effectively overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, what has happened since? Hundreds of new state anti-abortion laws severely restrict or outlaw abortion, often without exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. The goal? A federal ban on ALL abortion.
This will not be the end of the matter either. Emboldened by their win, Evangelicals, conservative Catholics, and Mormons will demand that birth control be outlawed and public-school students be taught Bible-based abstinence-only sex education. These zealots will also tirelessly work to enact laws that give fertilized eggs constitutional rights — demanding personhood for zygotes. The culmination of their efforts will come when doctors, following the dictates of their conscience, are prosecuted for performing abortions, and mothers are arrested and imprisoned for “murdering” their unborn “children.”
Several years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. The same people who tirelessly worked to ban abortion are the same people who strived to criminalize homosexuality and deny LGBTQ people the same constitutional rights afforded to heterosexual Americans. Don’t think for a moment that these people are sitting at home licking their wounds as they watch lesbian porn. Convinced of the rightness of their beliefs and interpretations of the Bible, Evangelicals are plotting to force gays back into closets and recriminalize sodomy and other “perverse” sexual behaviors. Now that the makeup of the Supreme Court skews to the right, I have no doubt that these zealots will do their best to afford the Court another bite at the same-sex-marriage apple. Believing that the Bible condemns homosexuality, theocrats demand and work towards a Bible-based culture where the Good Book®, and not personal morality and preferences, determines who may fuck whom, when, where, and how. Failing to conjugate according to God’s Holy Word would lead to arrest and imprisonment. And if these theocrats are consistent, they will demand that “sodomites” be executed for their crimes against humanity. This, dear readers, is what a Bible-based culture looks like.
In a Bible-based culture, other sexual “sins” such as adultery and fornication would also be banned. In fact, in the Old Testament alone, there are 613 laws. Of course, no Christian has ever kept all of God’s laws. Most Christians, including those clamoring for a theocracy, regularly and with impunity ignore God-given laws. Can anyone say, HYPOCRITES?! That said, even limiting a Bible-based culture to the Ten Commandments is dangerous. In both versions of the Decalogue — yes there are two versions and they differ from one another — the Christian God demands total and absolute fealty and worship. According to numerous Bible stories, worshipping other gods was considered a capital crime punishable by death. I am quite sure that if Evangelicals ever gain the power of the state, the first people rounded up and sent to Franklin Graham Reeducation Camps will be atheists and Muslims. Fundamentalist Christians have a deep-seated hatred for the godless and worshippers of Allah. It chaps their bleached testicles that we roam free on the Internet and in public. Every time the Freedom From Religion Foundation successfully litigates a church-state issue, their email inbox is filled with vile hate mail from offended followers of Jesus. Imagine these same people having the power of the state at their disposal. In a Bible-based culture, there’s no freedom of/from religion. There’s one God — Jesus — one religion — Christianity — and one lawbook — the Bible.
The next time you hear the cacophony of Evangelicals and other conservative Christians demanding the United States adopt a Bible-based standard of behavior, ask them exactly what they mean. Peruse the list of Actions Prohibited by the Bible on RationalWiki, and then ask them if their Bible-based culture would include some or all of the listed prohibitions. I think you’ll find that few zealots really want to live by all of the laws found in the Bible. Damn, talk about a miserable life! No, most theocrats just want to legislate and criminalize the big stuff. What they want, most of all, is a return to the 1940s and 1950s — a time when women were submissive keepers of their homes, Blacks knew their place, LGBTQ people were not seen or heard, and the only fucking going on was that between monogamous heterosexual married couples. They want a culture where everyone goes to church, loves Jesus, and schoolchildren read the Bible and pray every day. In other words, Evangelicals want to roll back a hundred years of social progress. Never mind that their vision of a Mayberry-like world exists only in their Bible-sotted minds. Does anyone really believe Andy wasn’t fooling around with Helen and Gomer wasn’t smoking weed in the gas station bathroom?
Several years ago, I wrote a post detailing why Evangelicalism is dying. Let me be clear, Evangelicalism IS, most certainly, dying, but it has stage-one, not stage-four, cancer. One need only watch the machinations of Evangelical culture warriors to see that they have no intentions of going quietly into the night. There are times when I tip my cap to Christian Fundamentalists. They know what they are fighting for and are willing to metaphorically and, at times, literally, kill everyone who gets in the way of their goal of establishing God’s kingdom on earth. Far too often, liberals and progressives are way too nice and polite. We can learn something from the tactics of Christian zealots: that social progress will only be achieved by stomping the beliefs and demands of theocrats into the ground. Until we understand that we are in a battle for the soul and future of American secularism, we will continue to have our asses handed to us by those demanding King Jesus rule over us all. Way too many secularists, religious or not, sit on the sidelines shooting the breeze while Christian Fundamentalists, in White Walker fashion, wage war against our Republic.
If we don’t wage unholy war against theocrats, who will? Passivity is deadly, and if we refuse to fight, we have no one to blame but ourselves when President Billy-the-Baptist and a Christian Congress demand Americans everywhere bow and worship the one true lawgiver, Jesus.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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