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Tag: Evangelicalism

What Makes Public Schools Think Evangelical Preachers Are Qualified Grief Counselors?

Bruce Gerencser 7 Comments
preacher

Florida, Texas, and other Republican-controlled states are considering giving public school access to preachers under the guise of them providing counseling services. The Satanic Temple, recognizing that doing so is a serious violation of the separation of church and state, has asked the state of Florida to allow their chaplains to be part of the program.

The Christian Post reports:

Two bills recently introduced in the Florida Legislature that would allow volunteer chaplains to provide counseling services in public schools have prompted The Satanic Temple to threaten legal action if its members are barred from participating.

Senate Bill 1044 and its companion House Bill 931, which already passed the Florida House of Representatives last month, would also mandate that principals in schools with volunteer chaplains tell parents about it and offer them a list of the volunteers, all of whom will be subject to a background check.

Parents will be allowed to choose from the list of chaplains and allow their children to receive counseling with written permission, though representatives from The Satanic Temple have expressed a desire for their chaplains to be included in such offerings.

“Any opportunity that exists for ministers or chaplains in the public sector must not discriminate based on religious affiliation,” Penemue Grigori, who serves as The Satanic Temple’s director of ministry, told The Tallahassee Democrat.

“Our ministers look forward to participating in opportunities to do good in the community, including the opportunities created by this bill, right alongside the clergy of other religions.”

Lucien Greaves, co-founder of The Satanic Temple, spoke out against what he described as the legislation’s attempt to allow a back door for religious instruction and “proselytizing evangelism” in Florida’s public schools, according to Fox News Digital.

“In an effort to dismiss concerns about bringing religious viewpoints into schools, advocates for chaplain bills have a scripted response that insists their interest is in merely providing additional ’emotional support’ for potentially troubled youth,” Greaves told the outlet.

“If that were true, they could simply be calling upon volunteers who hold licensure as counselors to offer their services in the schools in their communities.”

Greaves also said that school districts can expect legal action if satanic priests are prohibited from participating in the chaplain program, which would go into effect on July 1 and largely be left for individual districts to govern, according to local Fox 35.

“They should also not want to waste public funds on a lawsuit that’s certainly going to lose because of some superfluous effort to put chaplains in schools on a false rationale,” Greaves told the outlet.

Florida state Sen. Erin Grall, a Republican who represents Vero Beach, did not immediately respond to The Christian Post’s request for comment but said she is concerned about the potential of satanic priests taking advantage of the legislation she sponsored.

“But I think that as soon as we get in the middle of defining what is religion and what is not, and whether or not someone can be available and be on a list, we start to run up to constitutional problems,” Grall said, according to The Tallahassee Democrat.

“So I think that us making sure that it’s open and available to anybody who wants to put themselves through the background screening, and let parents know they’re available for that service, is the best way to go,” she added.

The Satanic Temple, of course, doesn’t want chaplains in schools, at all. Only educated, credentialed people should be counseling students, especially during times of grief and tragedy. Why is it that Evangelical preachers rush to schools every time there is a mass shooting or other tragedy that causes the loss of student or teacher lives? What makes them qualified to provide counseling services?

Most Evangelical preachers are not educated, licensed counselors. Oh, they took a class or three in college about counseling or the evils of secular counseling or nouthetic (Bible-based) counseling, but lack the comprehensive training licensed social workers and psychologists have. Simply put, they are not qualified to be school counselors/chaplains.

The bills in Florida and Texas are attempts to infiltrate public schools with Evangelical dogma; to evangelize children and indoctrinate them in the teachings of the Bible. Much like Lifewise Academy’s infiltration of public schools with their Evangelical release time program, the goal is evangelization, and not genuinely helping people who are grieving or have other mental health needs. Certainly, some preachers are qualified to provide such services, BUT, it must be made clear to them that they must check their theology at the door. Help can be provided without preaching, quoting the Bible, or invitations to church on Sunday.

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Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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The Resurrection of Jesus From the Dead: Fact or Fiction?

Bruce Gerencser 65 Comments
resurrection of jesus

Repost from 2015. Edited, rewritten, and corrected. 

Several years ago, Wefo, one of my readers, asked:

What do you make of 1 Corinthians 15, which is an early Christian creed held by the majority of biblical scholars (with a few exceptions like Robert Price) to be written no more than five years after Jesus’ death and it being held as proof of a belief in the resurrection? Also what changed your mind on the resurrection?

While the majority of biblical scholars think Paul was quoting an oral tradition in 1 Corinthians 15, it is not at all clear who Paul actually received this tradition from or whether it was some sort of vision. I certainly understand the importance of the gospel creed in 1 Corinthians 15 to those who base their entire worldview on the death and resurrection of Jesus from the dead, but this singular record is not enough to convince me that the claims the Bible makes for Jesus are true.

1 Corinthians 15:1-8 states:

Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: after that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.

Paul says that the death and resurrection of Jesus were “according to the Scriptures.” What Scriptures is Paul referring to? There is no record of the death and resurrection of Jesus in the Old Testament, and 1 Corinthians was likely written several decades before the gospel of Mark. (Biblical scholars generally think Mark was the first written gospel, and Matthew and Luke use Mark as a source.) In Galatians 1:11-12, Paul states he received the gospel, not from any man, but by direct revelation from Jesus Christ. Which is it?

In his book, How Jesus Became God, Bart Ehrman details what we can historically know about the resurrection of Jesus:

In the previous chapter I argued that there are some things, given our current evidence, that we can not know about the resurrection traditions (in addition to the big issue itself—whether God raised Jesus from the dead): we cannot know whether Jesus was given a decent burial, and we cannot know, therefore whether his tomb was discovered empty.  But what can we know?

We can know three very important things: (1) some of Jesus’s followers believed that he had been raised from the dead; (2) they believed this because some of them had visions of him after his crucifixion; and (3) this belief led them to reevaluate who Jesus was, so that the Jewish apocalyptic preacher from rural Galilee came to be considered, in some sense, God. [page 174]

While some of Jesus’ followers believed he had been raised from the dead, this doesn’t mean he actually was. Belief does not equal fact. People believe many things that are untrue. Did they believe his resurrection was bodily? Spiritual? Since Gnosticism deeply influenced the early church, perhaps Paul thought Jesus’ resurrection was spiritual. There is no way for us to know.

It’s been a long time since I looked at the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. As I read various articles and blogs, I came away thinking that there’s no possible way to know, from history, if Jesus resurrected from the dead. If a person presupposes there is a God and that the Bible is God’s revelation to humanity, then they are likely to believe that Jesus resurrected from the dead. For those of us who are not Christian, we are left with determining whether the Bible accounts of the resurrection should be considered factual.

According to the Bible, Jesus was buried in a grave belonging to Joseph of Arimathea. There is no evidence for the existence of a man named Joseph or a place called Arimathea. Since Jesus was executed as a criminal, it is unlikely he was given a proper burial.  The Godless Skeptic writes:

More interesting are the two things Dr. Ehrman says he has changed his mind on regarding what we cannot know about the resurrection. Like his colleague John Dominic Crossan, Professor Ehrman now believes that the tradition of an honorable burial of Jesus is doubtful. He makes note of the suspicious backstory of Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the same Jewish council that condemned Jesus to death, absent from the early Christian creeds, and a figure who is progressively portrayed across the four gospels as more and more of a sympathizer to the Christian cause. Citing a handful of ancient examples, he observes that Roman crucifixion victims were not usually given proper burials because humiliation was an important part of the practice, intending to deter potential criminals from committing acts of rebellion against Rome. Those who were crucified were often laid in common graves or left to decay and be eaten by scavenging animals.

It is sometimes remarked that Jesus was buried by Joseph in accordance with Jewish law, since the Sabbath was close at hand. Deuteronomy 21:22-23 gives instruction in this vein, but as Dr. Ehrman points out, it’s an open question of whether or not the Romans, particularly Pilate, would have respected such a rule. Though the Pharisees and the Jewish Sanhedrin had accused Jesus of blasphemy, the charges brought against him in front of Pilate were more political – inciting crowds, forbidding payment of taxes to Caesar, and claiming to be king (Luke 23:1-3). If Jesus was executed as an insurgent, under certain circumstances perhaps he would have been left unburied. If, however, he was executed in accordance with Jewish law, it’s not so obvious where he was buried. In a chapter of the anthology The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave, Peter Kirby writes that there is some evidence for a dishonorable burial tradition in passages like Mark 12:8 and Acts 13:27-29, which allude to Jesus being buried by his enemies rather than by his followers.

While I find all the back-and-forth debate over what the Bible does or doesn’t say about the resurrection of Jesus from the dead quite informative and entertaining, the reasons why I reject the resurrection of Jesus are quite simple.

First, there is no record outside of the Bible for the resurrection of Jesus. I find it astounding that no historian recorded anything about the life, execution, and resurrection of Jesus. We are left with the Bible and its accounts of the life of Jesus; accounts which contradict one another. The fact that they contradict one another is not proof that Jesus did not resurrect from the dead, but the contradictions do cause me to wonder if I should put much stock in what the Bible says.

Since history is silent on many of the “historical” events and figures in the Bible, why should I accept as factual what it says about the resurrection of Jesus? For me, accepting the resurrection of Jesus from the dead ultimately requires faith, a faith I do not have.

Second, accepting the resurrection of Jesus from the dead requires believing in miracles. According to John 14:12, Jesus said

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.

According to the Bible, Jesus worked many miracles, including turning water into wine, walking on water, walking through walls, healing the sick, and raising the dead. Jesus told his followers that they would do greater works than he did. Yet, everywhere we look we see a lack of the miraculous. In fact, many Christians argue that the miracles of the Bible were only for a certain time, and once the canon of Scripture was completed, there was no longer a need for the miraculous. However, this isn’t what Jesus said. He clearly stated his followers would do greater works than he did, yet we have no historical evidence that his followers were in any way super-duper miracle workers. Where can I find a modern-day miracle worker? Where I can I go to see the dead raised back to life?

Third, if there is one thing I know it is that living people die and do not come back to life. Every time I drive by a cemetery, I see the evidence for once dead, always dead. This alone is sufficient evidence for me to say that Jesus lived and died, end of story.

But, Bruce it is possible that a miracle of some sort could happen. Sure, anything is possible, but now we are talking about probabilities. Based on the evidence, is it probable that humans die and come back to life? No. Once dead, always dead. Is it more likely Jesus lived and died or Jesus lived, died, resurrected from the dead, and is currently alive sitting at the right hand of God, the Father in Heaven? The latter requires a suspension of reason and the exercise of faith. I am not willing to do this. I know what I see with my eyes and what history tells me: once someone dies they stay dead. Since, outside of the Bible, we have no record of someone dying and miraculously resurrecting from the dead, it is safe for me to say that the resurrection of Jesus is improbable.

In the last part of Romans 14:15, Paul stated, “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.”  After looking at the evidence, I am persuaded that Jesus did not resurrect from the dead. Whatever he may or may not have been, he was a man who lived, died, and was buried in a nondescript grave. Everything else Christians say about Jesus requires faith, a faith I do not have. When new evidence becomes available, I will look at it, but, for now, count me one who does not believe.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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We Love People and Are the Friendliest Church in Town

Bruce Gerencser 18 Comments
we love people

Repost from 2015. Edited, rewritten, and corrected. 

Have you ever read an Evangelical or Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church advertisement or sign that says, First Baptist Church, The Friendliest Church in Town or We LOVE People? No one ever bothers to ask, so are all the other congregations in town churches that hate people and are unfriendly?

Churches who talk about their love for people and how friendly they are sincerely think these advertising slogans are true. To them, shaking hands with visitors, making them feel at home, and letting them know where the nursery and bathrooms are shows that they are a people-loving, friendly church. The question I ask is this: WHY does this or that church love people and befriend newcomers? What is their motive for being so loving and friendly?  Most often, their motive is to win lost souls to Jesus, resulting in increased attendance. And more people=more money in the offering plate. Like any business, their goal is to gain customers, increase revenues, and expand the business.

Ask any Evangelical pastor or church member if their church loves people and they will say, Of course we do! We love people like Jesus loved people. We love our neighbors just like we love ourselves. But this is no disinterested love. This is a love that has an ulterior motive. It is a love that has conversion and assimilation as its goal. Just ask them if a lesbian woman in a same-sex marriage can join their church or teach Sunday school and you will find out quickly how little they actually love other people.

Their Jesus is a Jesus who loves people so much that he does not leave them where they are or as they are. Their Jesus changes and transforms people, so their objective is to love and befriend people so that they might be saved (changed and transformed) and become a part of their church. That’s what their Jesus is all about, making more church members. (Matthew 28:19,20)  Sounds crass, but any Evangelicals pastor who tells you church attendance numbers don’t matter is lying.

Compare Evangelical love for people to love that accepts people as they are, where they are. There’s a big difference between the Evangelical love for people and loving and befriending people with no expectation of return. In some liberal/mainline churches such an approach to love and friendship exists, but I’ve never seen it in Evangelical or IFB churches. And I just know a commenter is going to scream that THEIR church is different. Sure it is.

Once an unaware newcomer is friended and loved to Jesus and made a part of the church, it is on to new people to pretend-friend. For those taken in by the friendliest church in town advertising campaign, they quickly learn that the church is no more or less friendly than any other church or social group. In every church there are kind, decent, friendly people. There are also people, sometimes the pastor, who are mean, nasty, and unfriendly. Sadly, in churches that are Fundamentalist, their initial friendliness quickly dissipates and is replaced with legalism, demands to conform, and a quick unfriending if you do not fall in line. Ask anyone who has deconverted: what happened to all the friends they had while attending the friendliest church in town? Once people leave their churches, they often find out how unfriendly their churches really are. They find out that friendship was a lure, a scam. The true nature of a church is revealed by how it treats those who leave the church, regardless of their reason for leaving.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Should We Execute A Woman Who is Not a Virgin on Her Wedding Day?

Bruce Gerencser 30 Comments
stoning

Repost from 2015. Edited, rewritten, and corrected. 

According to Evangelicals, the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible, timeless Word of God. The Bible is God’s road map for life, the divine blueprint for living. From Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21, the Bible is one long letter from God to us. While Evangelicals use various hermeneutics, interpretive tools, and schemes to interpret the Bible, all agree that the text is the words of God.

Evangelicals also believe that God is immutable, that he does not change his mind. Malachi 3:6 says, For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed, and Hebrews 13:8 says, Jesus Christ (God) the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever. Ask Evangelicals if God changes his mind and they will emphatically say NO! God is perfect in all his ways, Evangelicals say, and his Word, the Bible, is truth.

How then, based on what I have written above, should Evangelicals interpret Deuteronomy 22:13-21?

If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her, and give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid: then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel’s virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate: and the damsel’s father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her; and, lo, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter’s virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him; and they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days.But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father’s house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.

The gist of the story is this: if a man goes into his wife on their wedding night and has intercourse with her and finds out that she is not a virgin, then his bride is to be brought to the door of her father’s house and stoned to death by the men of the city. There’s no ambiguity in the text. The soiled bride is to be considered a whore and executed. (If you have not read Deuteronomy 22, I encourage you to do so. God prescribes stoning for a variety of sexual sins.)

What say ye, oh believer that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible words of God?

Well Bruce, the Evangelical says, this is in the OLD Testament, and we now live according to the NEW Testament. So, God changed his mind? Were his words in Deuteronomy 22 imperfect, lacking in some way? If God’s law is perfect and true, why change it? All would agree that Deuteronomy 22 is the law of God. If it is, wouldn’t God’s law be preferable to man’s law? If God’s law was good enough for Israel, shouldn’t it be good enough for the United States, a nation Evangelicals claim is Christian? Why would any Christian want to be governed by the inferior laws of man?

Evangelical hysteria over same-sex marriage is rooted in the belief that God’s word/God’s law has the final say on the matter. Shouldn’t God’s law also have the final say on female virgins having sex before they are married? Where can I find in the Bible the verse that says one law is applicable today, but not the other?

Jesus said in Matthew 5:17-18:

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

Jesus said that he did not come to destroy or do away the law. In fact, according  to Jesus, until heaven and earth pass away, the law of God is valid and in force. Till all be fulfilled, he said. Has everything been fulfilled? Has Jesus come back to earth? Has God made a new heaven and new earth as prophesied in Revelation 21 and 2 Peter 3? No, no, and no. Thus, the law of God, particularly Deuteronomy 22:13-21, is in force.  Every Evangelical is duty-bound to support the execution of women who are not virgins on their wedding day. The unchanging holy God has spoken!

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Bruce’s Ten Hot Takes for March 3, 2024

Bruce Gerencser 9 Comments
hot takes

Spring is sneaking up on far northwest Ohio. Starlings, grackles, robins, and cowbirds have returned to our feeders.

Ohio State fired its men’s basketball coach a few weeks ago. Since then, the team has only lost one game. A win against Rutgers and a win or two in the Big Ten tournament and the team should make the NCAA tournament.

In 1979, I worked an entry level union job that paid $8 an hour with zero cost health insurance. If this job’s pay rate had kept up with inflation, it would be $33 an hour today. A similar job today starts at $15 with exorbitant insurance costs. Real wages have been flat or in decline for decades, especially when counting benefit cost increases.

It is clear that the U.S. Supreme Court is trying to keep Trump from being tried for his crimes. By delaying the trial date, the Court is making it impossible to hold Trump accountable for fomenting the 1-6 insurrection — yet another reminder that rich people are held to a different standard of justice than poor people.

It’s embarrassing to watch the Biden administration air drop food into Gaza. It’s hard to watch Israel neuter the United States, knowing we could get their immediate attention by cutting off aid and ending arms shipment — but we won’t.

The “undecided” vote in Michigan is a blaring warning siren to Biden and his handlers; one that says, “Put an end to the war crimes in Palestine, or come November, we will not vote for you.” So far, it seems Biden is deaf.

Abortion will be a deciding factor this November, and Republicans know it. That’s why these liars for Jesus are trying to distance themselves from the Alabama IVF ruling — pretending they don’t know IVF results in “murdered babies.”

A writer for the Toledo Blade warned Ohioans that buying cannabis in Michigan and taking it over the state line is a federal crime. I’ll be sure to watch for FBI and DEA agents the next time I break the law. I’m sure busting recreational marijuana users is their top priority.

It’s been thrilling to watch Iowa guard Kaitlin Clark play basketball this year. Today, she broke Pistol Pete Maravich’s all-time NCAA scoring record.

I heard a dumbass on MSNBC say that Mitch McConnell was an “old-time” Republican, not like the MAGA Republicans today. McConnell did more to harm our nation than all the Trump worshippers combined. Incalculable harm that left deep, lasting scars, that’s McConnell’s legacy.

Bonus: Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist, as his words at the border this weekend clearly show. Yes, the U.S. (and Mexico) has a border problem, but the men, women, and children trying to immigrate are, for the most part, decent people. Trump’s words are racist, no different from those uttered by other race baiters.

The Wire: Six-Inch Rule Strictly Enforced

Bruce Gerencser 8 Comments
orlandos the wire 2

Polly and I are re-watching The Wire on MAX — arguably the best series of all time. One episode featured a scene from Orlando’s Gentlemen’s Club — a strip club operated by Orlando, but owned by Baltimore drug dealer Avon Barksdale.

The scene under discussion took place in Orlando’s dressing room for the strippers. On the wall was a sign that reminded me of my days as a dorm student at Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan:

orlandos the wire

As you can see, someone marked out the six and wrote a one. 🙂 If you have ever been to a strip club, you would see that the one-inch rule better reflects reality, and in venues where lap dances are given, the distance number is actually zero. (Please see Short Stories: The Preacher Goes to the XXX Movie House.)

The sign got me thinking about my days as a dorm student at Midwestern. The college had a six-inch rule too. Dorm students were forbidden from getting closer than six inches to the opposite sex. Breaking this rule could result in expulsion from college. Please read Thou Shalt Not Touch: The Six-Inch Rule, if you have not already done so.

six inch rule midwestern baptist college 1970s

Much like the sign at Orlando’s Gentlemen’s Club, the six-inch rule (the width of a hymnbook) was universally ignored by dorm students. The rule was strictly followed when at school or in public dorm spaces. However, away from the college, say on a double date, the rule was cast aside for normal, healthy heterosexual experiences. Polly and I did not kiss each other until we had been dating for four months. We did the dirty deed during Christmas break while I was visiting Polly at her parent’s home in Newark, Ohio. And once we tasted the forbidden fruit, there was no going back. While we were virgins on our wedding day, more than a few students couldn’t wait, rounding third and sliding into home before saying “I do.”

I don’t know of a dorm couple who didn’t break the six-inch rule. Some got caught and were either campused (lost dating privileges) or expelled, but most couples learned how to play the game (and who to double date with) and escaped punishment. Polly and I certainly feared getting caught and being expelled, but the six-inch rule was no match for raging hormones.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Connect with me on social media:

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Blacks

Bruce Gerencser 5 Comments
black sin colors

Race is a social construct used to sort people into groups according to skin color, birth parents, geography, melanin levels, and DNA. As a child in an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) Sunday school, I was taught with the song Jesus Loves the Little Children to categorize people as red, yellow, black, and white. Later, the brown skin tone was added to the ditty.

Video Link

Recently, MSNBC host Joy Reid educated a C-Span caller about the use of words such as negro and Black.

The caller asked:

Around the time of Medgar Evers, you know, you had the signs of, you know, Negroes and colored people, this and, you know, all of that. Why are we still using the synonym Black? There are no Black people. If we’re going to start calling immigrants that come through the border brown people, let’s call the brown people, all the brown people, brown people and, like, really take hold of the narrative instead of, like, I don’t know if people have actually looked up the color black in the dictionary, It’s not something, why would you want to call your children that?

The caller also argued that black means “darkness, void,” saying “You know, that’s part of the discrimination. We are not black people. We are brown.” (It seems to me the caller was Black.)

Reid, who is Black, replied:

Because the term Negro was, is a made up term that was made up by white supremacists in order to label Black people who came from multiple ethnic groups and throw them all together. So when Africans were taken in slavery to America, you’re mixing tribes that had no genetic relationship other than all being Negro. And so the idea of whiteness and blackness was invented in America. It didn’t exist before the 16th century. No white people in Europe who are all different ethnicities, whether they’re Italian or Greek or British or German, they didn’t call themselves white.

And so when people reclaimed the term black in the 1960s, it was because they had decided to empower themselves. It was a term that felt to them more powerful than simply using the term Negro, which had been invented by enslavers. So I don’t see any problem with black. Black is a term that can mean power. It can mean beauty. It doesn’t have to mean darkness and horror.

Much like with preferred pronouns, when I want to know how a person wants to be identified, I ask them. Now, that’s a novel thought, right? 🙂 I don’t assume how they self-identify. I grew up in a home and a generation where it was normal to call Blacks negroes or niggers. Mexicans were called spicks and Asians were called slant eyes or mongoloids. My parents were Jesus-loving, John Birch-supporting racists, and so was I well into adulthood. I regret being so, my only justification being that was how I was raised, that was what was modeled to me, and it was the only thing I knew. When you know better, you do better — or you should anyway.

As a writer, I want to properly and accurately identify people. Years ago, a gay person educated me about how the words homosexual or homosexuality, much like words such as sodomy and sodomite, are generally viewed as slurs. Knowing this, I stopped using the words unless I’m describing the views of Evangelical bigots. I now use the LGBTQ acronym or what the individual letters mean.

As far as I can ascertain, I have never had a lot of Black readers. Some, but not many. When I wanted to know whether I should use the terms African-American or Black, I contacted my Black readers and asked them what they preferred. To the person, they said they preferred to be identified as Black. Several of them yearned for a world where we didn’t divide people according to skin color, but as long as they were going to be identified in this way, they wanted to be called Black. And that’s what I have done going forward.

Black when referring to someone’s race should be capitalized. Carolyn and I discussed this issue, concluding that if we are going to capitalize Black we should also capitalize White. And so it is. The goal is to not only accurately identify people, but to also identify them as they personally self-identify or in the manner that their community as a whole self-identifies.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Sorry Coach Chris Goodwin, the Real Issue is Bigotry, Not Basketball

Bruce Gerencser 5 Comments
basketball

Chris Goodwin is the girl’s basketball coach at Mid-Vermont Christian School in Hartford, Vermont. Mid-Vermont is an Evangelical institution.

In a February 2023 game, Mid-Vermont played a team with a transgender player. Rather than infect his players with transgender cooties, Goodwin forfeited the game.

When asked about why he forfeited the game, Goodwin said:

The team was not on our schedule during the year but we did see we might have the possibility of playing them in the playoffs,” he said. “As the season came to an end, that is the scenario that worked itself out. After discussions with our administration and players and parents, we decided that instead of going against our religious beliefs, … we decided to forfeit that game and withdraw from the tournament.

I’ve got four daughters. I’ve coached them all at one point in their careers playing high school basketball. I’ve also filled in for the boy’s coach when he can’t make a practice, and I run those practices, and boys just play at a different speed, a different force … than the girls play.

Goodwin also said that he was worried that one of his players could be hurt if they played against a biological boy.

Vicky Fogg, the head of Mid-Vermont, stated:

Allowing biological males to participate in women’s sports sets a bad precedent for the future of women’s sports in general.

While Goodwin wants people to think that he forfeited the game out of concern for player safety, the real issue, as Goodwin himself stated, is the school’s beliefs about transgender people. In other words, the real issue is religiously motivated bigotry, not basketball. Having watched girl’s high school basketball since the 1980s, I can tell you that the girl’s game is every bit as physical and violent as the boy’s game. Yes, the boys can run faster and jump higher, but when considering physicality itself, the girls’ game is quite physical — especially when players hit the floor over a loose ball or when playing aggressive full-court man-to-man defense.

There’s an argument to be had about transgender girls/women in sports. Many transgender people agree. However, the place to have that discussion is not the gymnasium, right before the start of a game. Goodwin thoroughly embarrassed the transgender player and her teammates — was that his intent? — and robbed his own players of the opportunity of playing in a tournament game. Why? The Bible says ___________.

And people such as Goodwin wonder why an increasing number of people think Evangelicals are bigots.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Is Taylor Swift a Satanist?

Bruce Gerencser 7 Comments

I think when you’re looking at a lot of the artists out there, a lot of their stage shows are satanic rituals live in front of 20,000 people without them realizing and recognizing.

You’ll see a lot of hoods up and masks on and fire ceremonies. Even down to Taylor Swift — one of the biggest artists in the world — you watch one of her shows and she has two or three different demonic rituals to do with the pentagrams on the ground, to do with all sorts of stuff on her stage. … But to a lot of people it’s just art and that’s how people are seeing it, unfortunately.

When it comes to a lot of the music that’s out there at the moment — more of the hip-hop side of things — there is a lot of hidden satanic and a lot of evil within them, including down to the beats. It’s very real.

Music attaches to your emotions. It has a connection to your spirit and how you feel. That’s why I’ve stopped listening to those types of music myself because it doesn’t suit my spirit.

It 100 percent has an effect on society. I think our society has never been worse in many areas, and it starts from our children.

It’s coming in right at our children from the very beginning to get them to sway away from anything Godly, anything controlled or disciplined. It’s getting wilder and wilder out there for a reason. … Music is dangerous.

— Shane Lynch, Irish Christian Musician

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

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Bruce Gerencser