Many of these programs are call-in shows that encourage Christians to call in and defend their faith or answer questions about various teachings of the Bible. The answers upchucked by many of these Evangelical zealots are usually shallow, contradictory, and, at times, heretical. These defenders of the faith attend church multiple times a week, hearing the Word of God taught and preached. Some of the people who call in are pastors, evangelists, missionaries, and college professors. Sadly, many of their arguments and explanations are just as bad as people with no Bible college or seminary training. Some of these preachers need to quit preaching and go back to college to get a real education. Of course, a “real” education can and does lead to a loss of faith.
It is not uncommon for those who call these shows to complain about all the atheist programming on YouTube and TikTok. “Can’t you just keep your beliefs to yourself? Why do you have to cause people to doubt (or lose) their faith? Of course, when I put the shoe on the other foot and apply the same standard to Evangelicals, they stupidly think that only atheists should keep their mouths shut; that Evangelicals are commanded by God to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth. However, what is good for the proverbial goose is good for the gander.
One apologist bitterly moaned and complained that atheists were using the Internet to target children. Guilty, as charged, though most social media providers have rules that prohibit young children from using their services. If your eight-year-old son is watching The Atheist Experience on Sundays, that’s on you, parents. Or you might question why your children are watching atheist programs like the ones mentioned above. If Christian children are watching atheist shows, it is a sign that they are not getting the answers they need from their parents, pastors, and churches. Children are Internet savvy. They know that the answers to their questions are a few clicks away. I have had numerous Christian teenagers and young adults contact me. I have had a few youthful readers send me questions to answer for a Christian school project of theirs. I always politely and honestly answer their questions, planting seeds that I hope will sprout and grow in time. I don’t press, push, or evangelize. I’m content to answer their questions, hoping that they develop rational, skeptical thinking skills.
I have been repeatedly asked over the years to stop publicly telling my story; that I was causing people to lose their faith. Here’s what I know: if the mere telling of my story directly causes Evangelical Christians to deconvert, their faith was on shallow ground to begin with. Many people already have one foot out the church door before they stumble upon my content. Regardless, I have no intention to stop telling my story or critiquing Evangelical Christianity.
Unlike many Evangelical churches, questions are always welcome on this site. I will do my best to answer them, and if I can’t, I will point questioners to authors and websites that can. More times than I can count, I have recommended readers read one or more books by Dr. Bart Ehrman. I know that doing so is the cure for Christian Fundamentalism and Bible inerrancy. Sadly, most people whom I recommend Ehrman to refuse to read his books. Why? Their pastors warned them about reading Bart’s books lest they lose their faith. It is a shallow faith, indeed, if one book can cause you to lose it. No single book caused me to deconvert. It took numerous books and podcasts to lead me out of the doors of the church. I suspect many of the readers of this blog will say the same thing.
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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“Dr.” Arv Edgeworth, an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) evangelist, sent me another email. Here’s what he had to say
I have a question for you. I saw the list of IFB pastors and their sexual sins. I didn’t read any of the information, it would be too depressing. I know of a number of incidents like that in churches I have been associated with, sad to say. However, in your opinion, which should be considered worse: an IFB preacher who was guilty of sexual misconduct; or an IFB preacher who did a complete turn around and denied Christ, and tried to get others to do the same thing? Sexual misconduct, or spiritual misconduct? In your opinion, which would do the most damage?
I assume that Edgeworth is talking about the Black Collar Crime series. Edgeworth wants to know which is worse: an IFB preacher who raped church children or an IFB preacher (me) who deconverted and now tries to get others to do the same? What’s worse, Edgeworth asks, sexual misconduct or spiritual misconduct? I assume he thinks “spiritual” misconduct is worse because it leads to eternal consequences.
Let me be clear, sexual misconduct in all its forms is morally wrong and often leads to lifelong consequences. IFB churches are notorious for ignoring or covering up sex crimes. Worse, offenders often leave the churches where the offenses occurred and move on to other churches. More than a few IFB churches are pastored by preachers who have committed sex crimes. God has forgiven them of their sin. How dare anyone keep them from their calling! God forgives and forgets, and so should we. Or so the thinking goes, anyway.
Edgeworth’s claim that I committing spiritual misconduct is absurd. Am I taking advantage of people? Am I fulfilling the lusts of my flesh by spiritually assaulting and raping people? Of course not. I am just one man with a story to tell. I am not an evangelist for atheism. All I do is share my story and carefully examine the central claims of Evangelical Christianity. I write, people read. I have never forced myself or my beliefs on another person.
How is it spiritual abuse to encourage people to rationally think for themselves? Shouldn’t that be the goal for Christians and unbelievers alike? Edgeworth will search in vain for one post that remotely suggests that I tried to get Christians to deny the Messiah. Have some people said that my writing played an instrumental part in their deconversion? Sure, but all I did was answer their questions. Or maybe my personal testimony resonated with them. Regardless, I have never forced anyone to deny Jesus and become an atheist.
Should I not tell my story, Arv? You came to my blog and told yours. Why is it okay for Evangelicals to go from IP address to IP address, preaching the gospel, even to people who have no interest in what they are peddling? I have been told several times that I should shut up and keep my story to myself. One preacher told me he feared that if people read my story that they would deconvert. Really? Am I so powerful that my words carry such power — more powerful than God — that they can cause people to lose their salvation? Trust me, I am not that powerful. More often, my writing is just one step in the process of deconversion.
Instead of worrying about Evangelical-preachers-turned-atheists leading IFB church members astray, I would worry more about sexual predators who have infiltrated churches, using the love, kindness, and forgiveness of congregants to hide their evil actions. Sadly, church members can be naive, thinking a man of God would never, ever commit a sex crime. This is a delusion, one that leads to harm, both to church members who are abused and to vulnerable adults who are taken advantage of.
I should add that if anyone is committing spiritual abuse, it is IFB preachers. I could spend months talking about preachers who spiritually abused the churches — myself included. That’s what cults do.
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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I have been in a better place mentally and emotionally since I left my religious beliefs behind me. I’ve had more peace as well. I’m not saying that I don’t have problems, down days, or worry. It’s just that I have fewer worries, fewer down days, more effective methods of dealing with life’s problems, and a little more peace overall. Looking back at my life, I realize that I’ve gone through bouts of depression here and there, probably since I was a child. I grew up in an abusive home where I rarely felt safe. I never got any counseling or was put on any medication that might have helped deal with that stress. It just wasn’t something that was widely accepted back in the 70s. So, I developed whatever coping skills I could. I stayed busy with hobbies like reading, art, music, and martial arts. We considered ourselves Christians in my home, but we didn’t attend church regularly, read the Bible, or pray.
One thing that often bothered me growing up was the question: What am I supposed to do with my life? I got through college and worked a couple jobs that I really hated. I lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the time, surrounded by Christians, many of whom were Bible college students. They seemed happy and excited about life, so eventually, I started attending a large church there. This church told me that God has a good plan for my life, and all I have to do is ask him what he wants me to do and follow his directions. For a rule follower like me, that sounded great!
I wound up going to Bible school and eventually in part-time ministry as an associate pastor and youth pastor and traveling minister. Things were great for a while. I had arrived at a place where I thought God wanted me to be. Eventually, I became unhappy and depressed. I went through the worst depression of my life during this time. I prayed, spoke in tongues, read the Bible constantly, and was prayed for in every way you can imagine. And nothing helped. I finally found a good psychiatrist who diagnosed me properly and got me on some medicine that helped. During this time, I started noticing things in the Bible that just didn’t line up. I started asking questions. Also, during this time, a friend of mine sent me a short booklet on how the brain works and how to get out of the rut of depressing thoughts all the time. Basically, I had to retrain my brain. Another friend recommended a book called Living Buddha, Living Christ. I was hooked! I started learning more about mindfulness and meditation. I studied secular Buddhism and Taoism. I started seeing more improvement in my life doing a few simple things than I ever did with all the prayer and Bible study. There is no more magic in any of these practices than there is in me eating healthier and exercising to lose weight.
Fast forward to where I had left my Christian beliefs behind. I’m still mostly a closeted agnostic/atheist; not even my wife knows the extent of my deconversion. She is still a very devout Christian. Maybe more so than ever. I have not attended church in years. So far, we’ve made it work. I used to hate the jobs I worked, thinking they were just temporary until I could go full-time in the ministry. Now that I no longer believe that I have some sort of divine calling on my life, I can focus on where I am now and how good I really have it. My job gets pretty stressful sometimes, but I’m good at it and mostly enjoy it. I used to be pretty uptight. Depending on my mental and emotional state, little things could easily stress me out. But now that I use the tools available to me, I’m much more chill. I try to apply Buddhist principles like the understanding that there is suffering in this life, but there are ways to not add to my suffering. I know that the only constant in this world is change. I still don’t like change, but I’m getting better. Less attachment. Seeing situations as not good or bad, just as they are (as much as I can). I still take medication that helps me, but without the guilt of “If I just had more faith” bullshit. These things help me so much, where religion left me high and dry, so to speak. I also have much less fear in my life. Religion is so full of fear! Life is not perfect, but it’s better without religion. My wife asked recently, “How do you stay so calm now?” I mentioned the practices that I wrote about above. She gets confused because these things are “ungodly” — basically meaning that god doesn’t seem to be in these practices. I get that. When I was full on drinking the Kool-Aid, I wouldn’t have understood how those things help someone either. Or, I would think that yes, they might help, but they still need Jesus on top of that.
Nope. Not anymore.
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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I have listened to several podcasts and read blog posts by Christian apologists asserting that people who leave Christianity are weak; that if they had more character, backbone, and strength they would have remained Christians. Long-time readers have witnessed Evangelical preachers such as Dr. David Tee frequently suggest that I am weak, a quitter. Such false accusations certainly sting, but I have learned that folks who hurl such things my way are only trying to disparage and hurt me.
Evangelical critics know that it’s anything but easy for committed believers to walk away from Christianity. Such people were not nominal Christians who infrequently attended church. Thus, these critics are gaslighting people when they say that former Christians were weak, and that’s why they deconverted. I contend that most people who deconvert have great strength and courage; and that there was nothing easy about them walking (or running) away from everything they held dear.
In my case, I had been part of the Evangelical church for fifty years, a pastor for twenty-five of those years. As a person of deep faith and love for Jesus, I devoted my entire life to following Jesus and doing the work he called me to do. My partner of forty-six years can say the same. God wasn’t something we just did on Sundays. God, Jesus, the Bible, the church, and the work of the ministry dominated our lives seven days a week. We were not nominal, half-hearted believers, as any former church member and ministerial colleague will attest. Simply put, if we weren’t Christians, nobody was.
Thus, when we walked away from Christianity, it wasn’t because we were weak. If we were weak, we would have remained in the church. If we were weak we would have continued to play the game. Instead, we made the hardest decision in our lives. With much angst and psychological pain, we left all we held dear. we lost our church community, family, and social connections. Overnight we were ostracized and treated as if we were tools of Satan. People we had known all our lives, met in college, or labored together in God’s vineyard, abandoned us overnight. I received nasty, hateful emails, letters, and blog comments from people who previously loved and respected me. Several preachers used my deconversion as sermon fodder, spreading half-truths and lies about me.
Weak, we were not, and neither were others I know who deconverted. How much strength would it have taken for us to stay in the church? Not much. It is always easier to go along than it is to stand up for what you really believe. I don’t fault anyone who takes a different path, but to suggest that I was somehow “weak” because I dared to act upon my beliefs and convictions is untrue. Those who suggest otherwise are guilty of character assassination.
Former Evangelical Christians are some of the strongest people I know; people willing to be true to their convictions and beliefs; people who put intellectual honesty above perception; and people who are willing to make great sacrifices to maintain and practice their beliefs. Many of them have forsaken all to follow reason, skepticism, and rational inquiry. I applaud their commitment to truth. To call such people “weak” is just a cheap attempt to smear their character.
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.
Every year or two, I ask readers to submit questions they want me to answer. That time has arrived once again. Any question. Any subject. Please leave your questions in the comment section or send them to me via email. I will try to answer them in the order received.
I look forward to reading and answering your questions.
Charles asked:
Did your former congregations and Christian friends completely ostracize you after you deconverted?
The short answer is yes. However, the ostracization began before I deconverted. The last Sunday in November 2008 marks the day when I finally admitted I was no longer a Christian and stopped attending church. Before that, I still professed faith in Jesus, albeit a questioning, doubting faith. I started blogging in 2006. As I publicly worked through my questions and doubts, my colleagues in the ministry and former congregants took notice, voicing their concerns over my leftward slide into liberalism and unbelief. Some of these people broke with me, saying they could no longer support a man who held heretical beliefs. In their minds I was backslidden, or, God forbid, a false Christian; someone who never knew Jesus as his Lord and Savior. Most of my friends and acquaintances still considered me a friend or colleague, but they distanced themselves from me, praying I would repent, but ready to chuck me in the trash bin if I did not.
After publicly declaring I was no longer a Christian, I sent out a letter titled Dear Family, Friends, and Former Parishioners to several hundred people. I knew that there were a lot of rumors circulating about me, so I thought, through this letter, I would let everyone know where I was in life. Surely, my family, friends, and former parishioners would want to know, right? I wanted, most of all, for them to “understand.” I quickly learned no one was interested in understanding anything. I received emails, letters, and phone calls from people outraged over my decision to deconvert. Nobody said, “I understand” or “I wish you well.” Instead, I was told I was mentally ill (by my best friend) and/or demon-possessed ( by a woman I’ve known for 50 years). Others told me I was out of the will of God, backslidden, or other terms Evangelicals use to describe people who don’t play by the rules or believe the right things. All of them, to the person, immediately cut me off. Some of my preacher friends preached sermons about me, using me as a cautionary tale of what happens when someone rejects the one true Evangelical faith. Sixteen years later, not one friend remains. My partner, Polly, and I have had to completely start over, building friendships with people who have likeminded beliefs.
I don’t blame people for breaking fellowship with me. I came to understand that my faith-based relationships were conditioned on fidelity to certain beliefs and practices. Once I rejected these beliefs, the bond that held us together was broken. What surprised me was how ugly and nasty people were towards me — decidedly unChristian. They could have told me they were disappointed without burning our relationships to the ground. Sadly, Evangelicals are well-known for how badly they treat people who leave the in group. Only one person — the woman I had known for 50 years — ever apologized for the way they treated me. Everyone else, stood by their hateful, judgmental, disrespectful words, poignant reminders of the rot that is at the core of Evangelical Christianity.
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 have listened to your sermons, read your blog posts, or perused your articles in Christianity Today or The Gospel Coalition about why so many Evangelical church members are “deconstructing.” I have carefully noted your excuses and justifications for why people are fleeing Evangelical churches in droves. I have snickered and rolled my eyes as you blame anyone and everyone except yourself and your church for the decline in attendance and income. It’s the culture, or Hollywood, or postmodernism, or LGBTQ rights, or socialism, or atheism, or countless other things you blame for why Evangelicalism is rotting on the vine. And if all of these “blames” ring hollow, you label those who deconstruct as “cultural” Christians; trotting out the No True Scotsman Fallacy. Those who deconstruct and ultimately leave Evangelicalism aren’t True Christians®. Never mind the fact that many of the people exiting stage left from Evangelical churches were committed followers of Jesus; people who faithfully attended church, supported the church financially, and lived according to the teachings of the Bible. Lots of former Evangelicals frequent this blog. Few of them were cultural or nominal believers. Instead, they served the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, and might. Yet, one day, or over many days, months, and years, they took a careful, painful look at Christianity and its attendant beliefs and practices. They decided they were no longer believers in the Evangelical sense of the word. Many of them became atheists, agnostics, pagans, or nones — people indifferent towards organized religion.
Instead of talking to these disaffected Evangelicals, Pastor __________, you marginalized them, ignoring their honest, open questions and concerns. You labeled them as worldly, carnal, backslidden, or some other pejorative label. And finally, you asserted, without evidence, that those who deconstructed lacked spiritual maturity and Bible knowledge. In other words, they just didn’t know any better. (Who taught them all those years, Pastor? Aren’t you to blame for their lack of knowledge?) Had they known better, they would have remained in the church. After all, doesn’t the Bible say, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.” (I John 2:19) End of discussion, right?
If you really want to know why people are deconstructing (and deconverting), Pastor _________, let me suggest a few reasons that come to mind:
The politicization of the pulpit and the church. Evangelical churches have become the propaganda wing of the Republican Party.
Donald Trump. Eighty-two percent of voting white Evangelicals voted for Donald Trump — twice. Trump is morally repugnant, and an evil man, yet Evangelical pastors and churches promote him as God’s candidate — even going so far as to say that he is a Christian.
Evangelical churches largely ignore environmental concerns, especially global warming, and catastrophic species decline. Why worry about the environment — Jesus is coming soon!
Evangelical churches generally demonize LGBTQ people — especially transgender men and women.
Evangelical churches tend to promote complementarianism, encouraging treating women as “less than.” Misogyny is common.
Evangelical churches are anti-abortion (pro-life), while at the same time supporting capital punishment, killing immigrants, and war.
Evangelicals generally ignore what the Bible about caring for the least of these: the poor, marginalized, sick, hungry, widows, orphans, and people of color.
Pastors and churches over-emphasize certain “sins,” ignoring others. Sexual sins are given far more attention than other sins — especially icky homo sins.
Church scandals and sexual misconduct by pastors are legion, routinely ignored or swept under the rug.
Hypocrisy. People who deconstruct often say that they became weary of the “Do as I say, not as I do” hypocrisy by church leaders.
While none of these reasons prove that Christianity is false, they do show that there is a huge disconnect between what pastors and True Christians® say they believe and how they actually live their lives. This often leads, as it did for me, to a reexamination of sincerely held beliefs. One need only read the emails, blog comments, and social media messages I receive from Evangelicals to see that Evangelicalism is a barrel of rotting apples. Sure, there are a few edible apples in the barrel, but not many.
Pastor __________, if you want to really know why people in your church are deconstructing, may I kindly suggest that you stop making excuses and justifications and look in the mirror. You are to blame for the sheep jumping over the fence, never to be seen again. You value political power and social control over meeting people where they are. You choose to point fingers instead of actually asking doubters and questioners why they are deconstructing. And after they left the church, you made sure to call them out and lambast them from the pulpit — even if you, wink, wink, didn’t mention them by name. You made sure that the sheep still in the pen knew these black sheep were sinful or deficient in some way, even going so far as to say that they were never, ever Christians.
If you really want to talk about deconstruction, I am game. Send me an email or have me on your podcast. There’s no reason for you to continue in ignorance one day longer. Or maybe you are not ignorant. You know why people are deconstructing, but you have an earthly kingdom to preserve, so you lie or misattribute motivations. The cure for your dishonesty is to actually talk to — not at — people who are deconverting or who have gone through the deconstruction process.
It’s been almost sixteen years since I walked out the doors of the Ney United Methodist Church, never to return. Not long after, I sent out my infamous letter, Dear Family, Friends, and Former Parishioners, to several hundred family members, friends, former church members, and colleagues in the ministry. For a time, I self-identified as an agnostic, but after months of “explaining” what I meant by the term, I decided to call myself an atheist. Strictly speaking, I am an agnostic atheist.
I naively believed that letter recipients would “understand” my deconversion; that they would appreciate hearing my story straight from my mouth, and not third and fourth hand as the Evangelical/IFB rumor mill raged. Boy, was I wrong. To the person, every one of them abandoned me, and many of them personally attacked me in letters, emails, and sermons. One former church member asked me to “explain,” but after I kindly and gently did so, she told me she could no longer be friends with me or talk to me. Another dear friend told me that he found my deconversion too unsettling to continue to be my friend. I saw nothing in their treatment of me that suggested they understood Jesus’ teachings on how to treat your “enemies” or how they should treat people in general. Their responses gave me a bird’s-eye view of how Evangelicals treat people who dare to leave their club. No kindness. No love. No compassion. No respect. Just judgment and condemnation.
Sixteen years later, I have only had one person walk back their words — a lifelong friend who said I was demon-possessed. That’s it. As for the rest of them, their words and behavior were un-Christian, to say the least. You would think that the Holy Spirit might have convinced them of their sins and called on them to apologize for their awful words. No apologies have been forthcoming. I concluded, then, that my former friends, family members, and parishioners believed that the teachings of Christ didn’t apply to them when it came to dealing with an Evangelical preacher-turned-atheist.
As a result, I lost my entire social network. Fifty years of relationships went up in smoke, and it is doubtful I will ever regain an atheist/agnostic/humanist version of what I lost. I paid a heavy price for daring to deconvert. I was penalized for being honest. Sixteen years on, Evangelicals continue to shit on my doorstep. I can’t remember the last time I received a polite, thoughtful, kind comment or email from an Evangelical Christian. Why is that?
I will never understand why people responded to me the way they did. I learned that my relationships were conditioned of me believing the right things. Even though we had lots of other things in common, all that mattered was shared religious beliefs. Once I said I no longer believed, I became their enemy. Yet, they treated me differently than they treated unsaved family, friends, and neighbors. I suspect they believe that I have committed the unpardonable sin or crossed the line of no return. How they could possibly know this is unknown. Evidently, I am no longer worthy of saving. 🙂
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.
While writing The Deconstruction of Christianity with Alisa Childers, we discovered some fundamental beliefs that undergird the deconstruction process. Moreover, these ideas are antithetical to the Christian worldview. This helps explain why so many who deconstruct their faith end up leaving the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3). Here are three reasons why I changed my mind about deconstruction.
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First, deconstruction has no correct destination.
A defining feature of deconstruction is that there’s no right way to do it and no right destination.
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Why isn’t there a right place to land in deconstruction? The answer is that deconstruction is a postmodern process. What I mean is, deconstruction isn’t about objective truth. It’s about personal happiness.
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Notice how deconstruction assumes there is no objective truth when it comes to religious beliefs. That’s why it doesn’t matter how you do it or where you end up as long as you’re happy.
I want you to notice two things. First, Jesus mentions two ways. There is a narrow way and a broad way, a right way and a wrong way. Second, Jesus mentions two destinations. The right way leads to a good destination: life. The wrong way leads to a bad destination: destruction. According to Jesus, there is absolutely a right place to land, and he tells us how to get there.
Second, the deconstruction process never ends.
Imagine you deconstruct your beliefs. Now what? Well, you construct new ones. However, once you construct new beliefs, you have to deconstruct those too. See how this works? There’s no finality to this process. Deconstruction requires a never-ending skepticism about your beliefs and the beliefs of others.
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Third, deconstruction has no biblical authority.
In deconstruction, there is no external authority to tell you what your faith should look like. You are the ultimate authority.
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Deconstruction isn’t about submitting to biblical authority; it’s about choosing to be your own authority.
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I changed my mind about deconstruction. After researching this topic, I’ve come to see that deconstruction isn’t merely asking questions or a synonym for doubt. Rather, it’s a process with no correct destination, no ending, and no biblical authority.
As you can easily see, Barnett is against deconstruction because it can and does lead to what he believes is a bad outcome — deconversion. Left unsaid is that Barnett is likely against deconversion because it leads to people leaving Evangelicalism for kinder, friendlier, more hospitable churches and faiths. In other words, since deconversion results in Evangelical churches hemorrhaging members — many of whom were committed followers of Jesus — the answer is to ignore WHY that is, informing restless, thoughtful Evangelicals, “God says, thou shalt not deconstruct.” And with proof texts uttered, deconstruction has been put to bed. Or so Barnett thinks, anyway.
My correspondence with deconstructing people suggests far different reasons for their deconstruction than postmodernism, or, Loki-forbid, the desire to think for themselves and be happy. Their emails suggest that Evangelical churches and preachers need to look in the mirror if they want to see why people are deconstructing (and deconverting). Many of the people deconverting have gotten a whiff of Evangelicalism’s rotting corpse and want nothing to do with it. They see the hatred of LGBTQ people and immigrants. They see the racism, bigotry, and misogyny. They see the extreme politics and social views — especially support of Donald Trump. They see the news stories about sex crimes committed by Evangelical preachers, yet never hear their pastors say a word about the abuse scandal. They see the fancy suits, designer clothes, and Rolex watches as their pastors preach about the humble Jesus who had no place to put his head. They hear the rumors and know what goes on in secret in the homes of their pastors and other church leaders. Worse, many of them are preacher’s kids. They have seen the hypocrisy firsthand.
Barnett is against skepticism when it comes to the claims of Christianity. I suspect he doesn’t take this same approach when it comes to non-Christian religions. In other words, be skeptical about all the other religions of the world, but when it comes to Christianity, just believe; read the Bible, pray, and trust that your pastor will tell you the truth. (Can you really trust anyone who hasn’t or won’t deconstruct their beliefs?)
Barnett is right in one regard; deconstruction can be driven by a desire for happiness –as if that is a bad thing. You bet. Once you leave Egypt and break the bonds of Evangelicalism you have a newfound freedom. That freedom can lead to increased happiness. Sounds like a pretty good selling point for skepticism and rationalism. 🙂
As Evangelical apologists are wont to do, Barnett reminds those considering deconstruction that HELL awaits those who follow this path. Only those who “question” their faith within the safe confines of the Evangelical box shall be saved! Deconstruction leads to Hell, just look at that Bruce Gerencser guy.
Checkmate. 🙂
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.
Dr. David Tee’s Massive Library, Including Ben Berwick’s Favorite Book, Meerkat Mail 🙂
Dr. David Tee, who is neither a doctor nor a Tee, recently decided to let the readers of his blog know why the Evangelical-pastor-turned-atheist Bruce Gerencser deconverted. Tee, whose legal name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, has blamed all sorts of things for my loss of faith, but now he has decided that “books” are my problem; that if I had only read the “right” books I would still be a Christian.
Thiessen is not alone in his assertion. One former church member told me that books were my problem; that if I would just start reading the Bible again, all would be well. I had a preacher friend, who prided himself in not reading anything except the Bible, tell me that I needed to get rid of my library and just read the King James Bible. He proudly was an ignorant man of one book. He was certain that if I would just start reading the Bible again, my faith would return.
BG [Bruce Gerencser] often complains that we write about him more than any other topic. That is not true, of course, as we rarely write directly about him. We do write about what he has said on his website, which is totally different.
However, this article is about him directly as he is an example of what not to do. While we are writing mainly for pastors, missionaries, and church leaders, what happened to BG can also happen to the layperson in the congregation.
These words apply to you, your children, and your friends as well. Protecting your faith is essential if you want to hear those treasured words, ‘Well done thou good and faithful servant’. But BG did not protect his faith and he is no longer part of God’s family.
The way that he did that was to open his mind and heart to unbelievers. Here is was, a pastor for 25 years, knowing and preaching the truth for 4000 sermons, yet he still let evil take him down. Instead of following the Bible correctly and discerning between right and wrong words, true and false teaching, he may have slowly let false teaching destroy him.
The Bible tells us that the secular world does not have the truth and lives in a dark world. They truly have nothing to offer the believer. When we were young it was said that the church was about 10 years behind the secular world and that statement applied to a variety of issues.
What we have seen in the last 40+ years is that the church seems to be equal to the secular world in adopting sinful teaching. We are not talking about the use of technology in the sermons although that should be dispensed with, we are talking about accepting secular psychological ideas for counseling, theology, as well as life in general.
When that happens we are not shining our light unto a dark world and not only do we put ourselves as Church leaders in jeopardy, we are doing the same for our congregations. Sadly, BG led his family to destruction as well as many people he can through his website and interviews.
He came to this fallen state by doing the following:
“I decided I would go back to the Bible, study it again, and determine what it was I REALLY believed. During this time, I began reading books by authors such as Robert Wright, Elaine Pagels and Bart Ehrman, These three authors, along with several others, attacked the foundation of my Evangelical beliefs: the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible. Their assault on this foundation brought my Evangelical house tumbling down. I desperately tried to find some semblance of the Christianity I once believed, but I came to realize that my faith was gone.”
Instead of going to God like Billy Graham did when he felt the call to ministry, BG went to unbelievers. he opened the door to his destruction by ignoring what the Bible says about evil men and accepting their words over God’s.
Evil will use a variety of people to try to take you down. It can be through books, movies, t.v. shows, sexy men and women, as well as questionable situations. having God protect you is the way you need to run the race and finish the course.
“During this time period, I read countless books written by authors from a broad spectrum of Christendom. I read books by authors such as Thomas Merton, Robert Farrar Capon, Henri Nouwen, Wendell Berry, Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, John Shelby Spong, Soren Kierkegaard, and NT Wright. These authors challenged my Evangelical understanding of Christianity and its teachings.”
There is no instruction in the Bible to challenge your faith. Jesus simply said ‘ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free’. Both Paul and Peter warned us about false teachers, false prophets, and that evil men go from bad to worse.
What those verses are telling us is that we do not need to challenge our faith but look for the truth. What we do is put all authors into their proper categories. Is he or she a true Christian writing the truth or are they bringing a different gospel and are false teachers, etc?
That is the question every church leader needs to ask when reading books from all types of authors. if you are in doubt about an author, find their biography and read up[ on their beliefs. That information will help you make the correct determination and how you should be viewing their words.
Non-Christian authors may provide insight into how non-believers think and believe, but that is about all they have to offer a believer in Christ. They do not offer any insights on how to live life because they oppose God who has given us his instructions on how to live life.
We follow God over man, something BG failed to do.
“I turned to the internet to find help. I came upon sites like exchristian.net and Debunking Christianity. I found these sites to be quite helpful as I tried to make sense of what was going on in my life. I began reading the books of authors such as John Loftus, Hector Avalos, Robert M. Price, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Jerry Coyne, and Richard Dawkins.”
This is another thing that should not have been done. Instead of going to Christian websites for help, he went to those who left the faith. What we do not read in his words is if he asked for evidence to support the words of those former Christians and atheists?
He does ask for evidence from Christians yet nothing seems to be asked from those people he read. He simply took their word for it and started down his slippery slope. What BG also did wrong was what Deut. 21:21 says:
“Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death; so you shall eliminate the evil from your midst, and all Israel will hear about it and fear.”
Instead of moving away from those evil people, he embraced them and their words. Disobeying God has consequences and BG has certainly paid for his disobedience. Also, like Bill Mahr who cherry-picked the believers he would highlight in his film Religiosity, BG cherry-picked the churches he would visit:
“I tried, for a time, to convince myself that I could find some sort of Christianity that would work for me. Polly and I visited numerous liberal or progressive Christian churches, but I found that these expressions of faith would not do for me. My faith was gone.”
Liberal and progressive Christianity is not Christianity and should not be given the label of being Christian. Why not go to true Christian churches and get the truth? This action sounds like what Bill Mahr did, and that was to protect his atheism, not find the truth.
BG seems to have wanted to deconvert and went to places that would help him do just that. When in doubt, you do not go to unbelievers or those who bring a different gospel. You go to true believers who have love, compassion, and wisdom and tell you the truth.
….
As Sodom, Gomorrah, Noah’s Flood, and the Tower of Babel are examples of what not to do, so are the life and decisions of BG and every other former Christian. Keep your eyes on Christ and you will never fail.
According to Thiessen, when I began questioning my beliefs, I should have ONLY read books by Evangelical authors. Evidently, he forgot that I had already read these books. I know what Evangelicals believe and practice, inside and out. Why would I waste my time reading books that repeated the same apologetics arguments over and over again? I know all I need to know about Evangelical Christianity.
I am still on a journey of discovery, following the path wherever it leads. I will become a Christian once again if and when I am presented with evidence to warrant me doing so. My “conversion” will take new evidence, not the same-old-shit-new-day stuff. Of course, Evangelicals don’t have new evidence. Their religion is a closed system of thought. Evangelicals pride themselves on allegedly having the same beliefs that Jesus and the apostles had 2,000 years ago. Of course, they don’t actually have the same beliefs, but they think they do. Evangelicals would know better if they bothered to read books outside of their peculiar rut, but such reading is discouraged and, at times, condemned. Thiessen is the norm in Evangelical circles, not the exception.
There’s much I could say in response to Thiessen, but I will refrain from doing so. I have no idea why he decided to use an eight-year-old post, Why I Stopped Believing, to continue his deconstruction of my life. He makes numerous false statements, including “cherry-picking” the churches Polly and I visited after we left the ministry. Here’s a list of the churches we visited. As you will see, we attended a variety of churches and sects; everything except IFB churches. No need to visit IFB churches since that was our background. Most of the churches were Evangelical theologically, though no church was off limits. We were on a journey, willing to follow the path wherever it led. Sadly, Thiessen is stuck in the religion of his childhood, holding on to his tribe’s deity. Now a senior citizen, Thiessen has no real-world experience with any other religion or system of belief but his own. He does not know what he doesn’t know.
Thiessen says I wanted to deconvert, that I was looking for a way out of Christianity. Nothing in my story remotely suggests that this claim is true. In fact, the truth is the exact opposite. I did everything possible NOT to deconvert. I wanted to keep believing. However, I value truth over “want.” I became an atheist because I had no other choice.
Thiessen is free to show what I have “missed” about Christianity, but I am confident no evidence will be forthcoming.
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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I am Facebook friends with several notable players in the Evangelical deconstruction market. They present themselves as enlightened folks, people who have found a way — supposedly — hang on to Evangelicalism (or Christianity in general) without all its social, cultural, and political baggage. In their minds, one can believe the central claims of Christianity about God, Jesus, and salvation without accepting and believing the stuff in the Bible that makes one feel uncomfortable. As every Christian does, they pick and choose what they want to believe, rejecting or ignoring anything that offends their sensibilities.
Deconstruction means tearing down your beliefs and rebuilding them. According to these gurus, deconstruction always leads the deconstructee back to some sort of recognizable Christian faith. This means that former Evangelicals-turned-atheists did deconstruction wrong. Their journey should have led them to a restored, vibrant faith. In their minds, deconstruction can never to deconversion — the loss of faith. Their pronouncements about following the path wherever it leads have conditions. Faith in Jesus is the end game, and not facts, truth, and evidence.
You can’t expect people to reexamine their beliefs without risking that they might, for good reason, conclude that their beliefs were false; that Christianity is a false bill of goods. When confronted with the reality that scores of people are not only deconstructing, but deconverting, these gurus often resort to the same tactics as Fundamentalist Christians, questioning whether these former believers did deconversion right or truly understand the essentials of faith in Jesus. Or they resort to suggesting that hurt feelings or trauma are the real reasons people deconvert rather than deconstructing and rebuilding.
I am an agnostic atheist because I concluded that the central claims of Christianity are false; that they cannot be rationally sustained. What I am supposed to do? Fake it until I make it? That’s not how I live my life. Deconstruction leads in many directions, including right out the door of Christianity. Are we somehow less than if we reject Christianity altogether? What else would you have us do? Believe what we know to be not true?
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.
