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Tag: Evangelicalism

Halloween Hysteria

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halloween

Beginning in the 1980s with the Satanic Panic, Halloween has been a culture war target for ignorant, hysterical Evangelicals. In their minds, Halloween is a Satanic holiday; a high holy day when Satanists kidnap and sacrifice children to Lucifer. And if it is not the Satanists, it is pedophiles who are kidnapping children off the street and molesting them. And don’t forget warnings about Halloween candy. This year, law enforcement is stirring up parents over rainbow-colored fentanyl tablets and marijuana-laced gummies. Ask yourself, what drug dealer or user gives their expensive drugs to children? Years ago, it was razorblades in candy, resulting in parents having their children’s candy x-rayed at local hospitals. All nonsense, for which there is not a shred of proof.

I can only think of four dangers children face while trick-or-treating:

  • Teenagers stealing candy from younger children
  • Bellyaches from eating too much candy
  • Automobiles
  • Grandpa eating their candy 🙂

These four things are REAL threats. The rest of the Halloween “dangers” you read about this time of year in the news and on social media are hysterical nonsense. Halloween is a holiday that is meant to be enjoyed by children and adults alike. Don’t let fearmongers and conspiracy theorists ruin the day.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Eleven Reasons Why Celebrating Halloween is a Sin

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pastor jamie morgan
  1. God is a God of life, but Halloween focuses on death. Should I celebrate a holiday where people decorate their front yards with tombstones?
  2. The Scriptures tell us to put away deeds of darkness (Rom.13:12) and that light has nothing in common with darkness (2 Cor. 6:14). Is celebrating a dark holiday something a child of the light should be doing?
  3. I had been delivered from fear and panic attacks and knew that fear comes from the enemy. Should I participate in a holiday that has fear as its very foundation?
  4. Witchcraft is clearly detestable to the Lord (Deut. 18:10-13). Shouldn’t something that glorifies witchcraft (just take a walk through the Halloween store) be detestable to me as well?”
  5. Halloween is a sacred, high holiday for Wiccans (the official religion of witchcraft). Is this a holiday Christians should celebrate alongside Wiccans?
  6. Is it cute when we dress our kids like the devil (or witches, ghouls, scary characters, etc.)? Isn’t it, well, demonic?
  7. What if my child dresses in a wholesome fireman costume? Romans 16:19 says that we need to be wise to what is good and innocent of evil. If I let him participate in Halloween, even while dressed as a fireman, aren’t I sending him a mixed message by allowing him to participate in a celebration of evil?
  8. The Lord said in 2 Cor. 6:17, “Come out from them and be separate … Touch no unclean thing …” Doesn’t God want His children to be set apart from the world and from sin and evil? Aren’t we supposed to be peculiar people?
  9. My extended family thinks it’s ridiculous that we not allow our son to dress up for Halloween. Should their opinions matter to me more than God’s? Shouldn’t pleasing God be my utmost concern?
  10. If there is even a question in my heart and mind that it might be wrong, shouldn’t that be my first clue? Why would I continue to do so with even a lingering thought that it is wrong?
  11. Does Halloween bring glory to God? No! It glorifies the devil! Nuff said.

….

Halloween is the one day a year when neighbors come to your door expecting to receive something. So give them JESUS! Our family chose to give God the glory and the devil a black eye by reaching out to our neighbors with the gospel of Jesus Christ! “You are the light of the world … let your light shine among men that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:14-16).

So stop justifying why it is fine to celebrate this demonic, worldly, evil holiday. There are no muddled lines or gray areas about it. A committed follower of Jesus Christ should not celebrate Halloween.

— Jamie Morgan, Charisma News, 11 Reasons Why Christians Absolutely Should Not Celebrate Halloween, October 12, 2018

Jamie Morgan is the pastor of Life Church (Assemblies of God) in Williamstown, New Jersey

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Save the Zygotes!

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human zygote

Several years ago I did an interview with a friend shortly after his wife gave birth to a ‘snowflake baby’- an affectionate and mildly tragic moniker given to children created in a lab who were frozen and then thawed before being implanted and ultimately born.

Their baby was conceived and fertilized several years ago, but was abandoned by his parents, He was placed in a laboratory freezer where for nearly a decade he wasted away with his siblings, the same fate as an estimated 600,000 more precious souls.

My friend and his wife sacrificed much to rescue him through an “embryo adoption”, where they saved the child from certain death and implanted the embryo in her womb, bringing forth renewed life after years of frozen purgatory.

It garnered much interest, and many people contacted me with poignant stories and pointed questions. Some folk were extremely grieved, having friends and family who had participated in IVF and now were waking up to the horror of realizing that their loved ones had abandoned their babies to be killed- that they had discarded their nieces and nephews in this unholy pursuit.

One woman spoke of how her daughter-in-law had created a child using IVF, leaving the rest of their babies in limbo. She asked if we knew anyone who would consider an embryo adoption so she could see her grandchildren one day. She lamented that she would give birth to these herself if she could, but being in her 50s it was no longer possible, and her helplessness was palpable.

Still, others were incensed. They were upset that I would dare hint that they had done anything wrong and vigorously protested the notion that their embryos were real human beings with souls. These were professing Christian women, specifically, and they refused to acknowledge the weight of what they had done.

— Protestia, The Christian Art Of Adopting Frozen Babies- And Why You Might Want to Consider It, October 23, 2022

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Listen to My Interview on the Q-Dropped Podcast, Hosted by Courtney Simmonds

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podcasting

Recently, I was interviewed by Courtney Simmonds for the inaugural episode of the Q-Dropped Podcast. The Q-Dropped Podcast focuses on:

telling the stories of families that have been torn apart by the Qanon cult and Qanon-adjacent ideas. Most of us know someone who has been affected by the deeply concerning beliefs of Qanon adherents. Many of us have had rifts form between us and people we care about. Unfortunately, however, not many of us are talking about the toll Qanon is having on average, everyday families in countries all over the world. This podcast aims to raise awareness about this issue by telling the stories of people who have lost someone they care about to Qanon.

Give it a listen and let me know what you think.

Video Link

Listen to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, and other podcast providers.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Listen to My Interview on the Mindshift Podcast, Hosted by Former Evangelical Pastor Clint Heacock

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podcasting

Recently, I was interviewed by former Evangelical pastor and professor Clint Heacock for his Mindshift Podcast. Clint and I had a delightful time, sharing stories from our days in God’s coal mine. Give it a listen and let me know what you think.

Video Link

You can also listen to the podcast on iOS and Android here.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: If God Tells You to Kill Someone, You Should do It

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abraham and isaac

Well, I’m going to say something controversial that will absolutely delight atheists, ’cause they like to take… not all atheists… some internet atheists… like to take things out of context and use it to make me look bad. I don’t care… You’ve already hated me anyways. It’s not like anything changed. If anything, I’m just glad people, like, hate-follow me. Like, at least that’s there. You know, maybe they’re hearing the Gospel. Maybe, God willing, there’s, like, some truth of Christ that will eke through there…

So I’m gonna say something here: If God really told them to do it, then they were right. 

If God didn’t tell them to do it, then they were wrong. And they were just a murderer. And a delusional murderer who’s blaming God, which just makes it worse. 

God does have a right to tell… now, let me now let me give an analogy that might help people swallow this better, because I feel the rejection that people would have to this naturally. 

Let’s say that… America gets involved in a… just war… Or… let’s just say that you have a police officer who is getting involved in… some kind of, like, school… horrible school shooting-type thing, right? And he gets permission from the government, and from the local police department and all that, that when he sees a person on campus with a gun, he just opens fire. 

And so he shoots them. And then someone’s, like, “How dare you shoot that person?” And he goes, well, like, “The government told me to.” There’s an element of this that… really is the facts, like the government actually just gave him a badge and a gun and approved him and gave him policies that he’s supposed to operate by. And so, in a sense, the government just told him to, and that is an actual defense. Like, if that wasn’t in place, then you’d have to have other legal justifications other than… the government told him. 

Maybe in court, they would say “No, no, this was urgent enough” or “We would we would break the normal rules,” that kind of thing. Military is the same way. 

Now, the government’s flawed. So the government might tell you to do something, and they’re wrong. Like in military, there could be a war that’s unjust, and saying the government told you to isn’t a good enough excuse, because there is a God in Heaven who disapproves. 

But if God Himself actually tells you, and He’s like, “Hey, I am the ultimate governor of all of life, and I have judicially said that person is going to die, and I’m telling you to do it,” yeah. 

Now, historically, as a Christian, do I expect this to happen? Not really. 

Biblically, does it happen? Do we have, like, is the Apostle Paul, like, every few years, he’s just, like, turns into Jason Bourne and he’s, like, “God told me to kill Simon the Sorcerer”? No. No, the worst thing the apostles have done was to tell someone you’re not part of our church anymore if you’re going to keep living in sin like that. You know, God takes care of them. 

Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world, otherwise my servants would fight, so we don’t fight to establish the Christianity… to establish the kingdom.” Like, this is “God told me not to.” In other words, I don’t, because God told me not to. 

So, as a Christian, in principle, if God tells you to kill someone, yes, you should. It’s God. 

But in practical reality, I really don’t expect this to happen. Not that there could never be an exception, but if anybody comes up to me, and says, “God told me to kill so-and-so,” my default is to think they’re probably wrong, because there’s a lot more weirdos out there than there are people that God is telling to do something like that. There’s my answer.

— Evangelical Apologist Mike Winger via Hemant Mehta, October 7, 2022

You can listen to Winger’s comments in the video below, starting at the 1:28:45 mark.

Video Link

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Crazy Stories From the Church House: No White Dress for You

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bruce-and-polly-gerencser-1981
Bruce and Polly Gerencser with son #2, 1981

In February of 1979, Polly and I moved from Pontiac, Michigan to Bryan, Ohio. When I moved away in 1976 to study for the ministry at Midwestern Baptist College, I planned to never return to Bryan. However, marriage, an unexpected pregnancy, and job loss turned my “never” on its head.

Not long after we first moved to Bryan, Polly and I began attending my sister’s church, Montpelier Baptist Church in Montpelier, a community ten minutes north of Bryan. Jay Stuckey, a graduate of Toledo Bible College, was the pastor, and after a few weeks, Jay asked if I would be interested in becoming the church’s bus pastor (an unpaid position). I quickly told Jay yes!

Jay Stuckey was a typical Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) preacher in the 1970s. Sermons on salvation, sin, and prophecy. Church teens were expected to refrain from all sexual activity before marriage. Despite Jay’s moralizing from the pulpit, one of the church’s teens got pregnant. Shock! Sermons are ineffective birth control. She was expected to immediately marry the boy before she started showing. Even worse, Stuckey forbade her from wearing a white dress. White was reserved for “virgins.” She was dirty goods in his (and God’s) eyes. Stuckey also told the girl that she could only invite immediate family to her wedding. No friends. No schoolmates. Of course, the goal was to sweep this girl’s shameful crime against humanity under the rug.

Plenty of “virgin” women walked down the aisle over the years at Montpelier Baptist Church. Fortunately, for them, they didn’t have to “prove” their purity. For this teen girl, all she likely remembers from her wedding day is the shame heaped upon her head by her pastor and church.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

When the Shit Hits the Fan with IFB Family

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bruce and polly gerencser 1978
Bruce and Polly Gerencser, in front of first apartment in Pontiac, Michigan, Fall 1978 with Polly’s Grandfather and Parents

There come seminal moments in your life as an atheist when you learn what your Evangelical family really thinks of you. Often precipitated by a crisis, the truth comes spilling out for all to see. Such a moment happened recently . . . and now I know what one extended family member — a member of an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregation in Newark, Ohio attended by Polly’s mom — really thinks of me and my wife.

Polly’s mother is dying from terminal cancer. Her death is imminent — days, weeks, or a month or two, at best. She is now living with our nephew and niece. While I won’t go into the details of what precipitated the shit storm, I can tell you my nephew — who reads this blog — recently spent twenty minutes screaming at me; repeatedly cursing at me; calling me names, including lazy fat ass, and threatening me with physical violence — twice. Of course, my atheism and this blog came up. Polly’s family doesn’t like the fact that I write about the IFB church movement and its intersection with family. When I mention family, I never use their names or any identifiers (unless they are public figures). Evidently, I have no right to tell my story. I was told several times to shut up; that I’m a “victim”; that I need to move on; that I need to mind my own business. And what I write next will only reinforce my nephew’s view of me.

As I have mentioned before, Polly’s mom has always treated our family differently from family members in Newark, where Polly’s late sister lived and raised three boys. Even when I was a pastor, we were treated differently; as outsiders; as people who didn’t quite “fit.” This led to all sorts of conflicts over the years, beginning days after our wedding day. For example, as I recently went over Mom’s finances, I noticed that she gave substantial amounts of money to her Newark great-grandchildren for their graduations, birthdays, and special events. She does not do this for our grandchildren. Granted, we live four hours away from Newark, but proximity (or lack thereof) should not preclude Mom from buying a card, writing a check, and mailing it to our grandchildren. It is literally the least she can do.

Let me give you another example. I was a pastor for twenty-five years. Every family holiday one of the preachers would give a short devotional as we all gathered in one family member’s home in Newark. Even the grandchildren from Newark were asked to give the devotional. Do you know who wasn’t? Me. Not one time. It is hard not to take such things personally. I have known my mother-in-law for almost forty-seven years. She opposed Polly and me dating, tried to break us up, attempted to derail our wedding, and voiced her disapproval and disappointment more times than I can count over the years. Out of respect for Mom, I loved her, but I didn’t like her.

In 2005, we finally had a showdown. Mom and Dad came up for Thanksgiving. As soon as Mom entered our home, she started doing her thing: moving furniture, ordering Polly around in the kitchen, and telling her how to cook this or that (Polly is a superb cook, by the way). Things got so bad that I told Mom to STOP; that she was a guest in our home. Mom called the next day and apologized, saying, “we always knew you were different.” Ah, there it is. Our relationship got better in the sense that Mom knew she could no longer bully us. In fact, Polly told her mom, “if you force me to choose between you and Bruce, I am going to choose Bruce.” Since then, Mom has taken a passive-aggressive approach to interacting with us.

Polly is widely viewed by our IFB family as an innocent, passive lamb; the submissive wife. Thus, I am always to blame for what happens in our life. Take our atheism. When we deconverted, we went from being barely a part of the in-group to being in the out-group; the group reserved for heathens, apostates, and reprobates. Over the past fifteen years, not one family member has had a meaningful conversation with us about our loss of faith. Not one . . . So my nephew’s phone call was the first time anyone has said anything to me about our atheism. Oh, they gossip about us, “pray” for us, mention us at church, and use us as sermon illustrations. But, talk to us? Naw, they leave that to God.

Until yesterday, Polly and I had been responsible for Mom’s finances. (We have since legally removed ourselves as agents.) We worked diligently to make sure her house was in order; so all her bills would be paid upon death. And then, for no good reason, Mom decided she didn’t want us to do these things anymore. She had our niece put on her account and moved all her money, $14,000, into her checking account. A large check was written to our niece. All of these decisions were made without our knowledge and consent. We had no choice but to end our legal duty to her. Over the years, Mom (and Dad when he was alive) has repeatedly asked for our help. When things don’t go as she thinks they should, she does her own thing and blames us for what happened. I have a business background. Twice, Mom and Dad, for a plethora of reasons, got themselves into serious financial straits. I helped them get their house in order. When things didn’t go as planned, she “fired” me, and blamed me when everything went south. Just remember, “Bruce is always to blame.” I am her scapegoat. This has happened so often, that we should have known not to involve ourselves in her end-of-life decisions. We did so because we love her and want what’s best for her. (According to my nephew, we are just poor people who want her money, just one of many accusations he hurled my way while verbally assaulting me.)

I am sure some of you will conclude I am leaving things out of this story. I am. I just can’t bear to rehash some of it. Maybe, someday I will. The drama and pain run deep. I was barely able to address these things with my therapist today. Here’s what I do know: this was the last straw; the period at the end of the sentence. We have done all we can do to be a loving, kind, helpful daughter and son-in-law. You can only be shit on so many times before you say ENOUGH.

I have never seen Polly so hurt, broken, and angry. As she left for work, she said “fuck all of them.” I concur. (And then she came home from work and drank beer — a first.) We have crossed the point of no return. Mom has made her bed, so to speak, with her “real” family. We have come to accept that we are not wanted; that we are outsiders; that Mom doesn’t trust or respect us due to our atheism. Polly was the dutiful, loving daughter, yet Mom could never accept and love her as she is. Mom simply could not accept that we were going to walk our own path in life. Every move away from the IFB church movement brought criticism, judgment, and estrangement. My children grew up, married, and had children. They also left Evangelicalism, got college educations, and are gainfully employed in managerial positions. Along the way, some of them got divorced, started drinking alcohol, and picked up colorful language. Recently, my youngest son came out as gay. Polly and I are proud of our children, and what they have done with their lives. We are grateful that the IFB curse has been broken; that none of our grandchildren will ever have to experience what Nana and Grandpa and their Moms and Dads experienced in the IFB cult. Yet, all my mother-in-law sees is sin, disobedience, and disappointment. From beer in the fridge to rock music on the stereo to “revealing” clothes to someone saying shit or damn, all Mom sees is what happens when people disobey her peculiar version of God and her peculiar interpretation of the King James Bible. She has no capacity to accept people as they are or love them unconditionally. Only her “real” family, her church family, are deserving of such things.

And you know who is to blame for all the choices our children have made? I am. If Bruce had only stayed in the ministry. If Bruce had only pastored the “right” churches. If Bruce had only done this or that, all would be well. Of course, one need only to look at our extended IFB family and Mom’s church family to see that such thinking is fantasy. Dysfunction and sin abound. They are every bit as fucked up as the rest of us. People are who they are, and the best way to get along in life is to accept people as they are. Polly and I have, without reservation, loved and accepted our IFB family. We would love to have meaningful relationships with them. Of course, that will never happen. Why? They are unable to compartmentalize their religious beliefs. It is. for them, a zero-sum game.

We are done with our IFB family. I am grateful that my nephew finally spoke out loud what the family has long thought about us. And when I say we are done, I mean in every way. As it stands today, we will not attend Mom’s funeral. She’s will be dead, so she won’t care. The funeral service will be all about Jesus and getting saved. The graveside service will be more of the same. The viewing will be a torturous night of dealing with Mom’s self-righteous church friends and people who despise us for daring to share secrets out of school; exposing the IFB church movement for what it is: a cult that causes untold psychological (and at times, physical) harm. (Wait until they see my upcoming podcasts about the IFB, including appearances by the former pastor’s wife, Polly Shope Gerencser. May the shit gloriously hit the proverbial fan.)

I am sure some readers may disagree with our decision to not attend the funeral. I know several of our children do. All I ask is that people understand that this is a story forty-seven years in the making. So much pain and dysfunction; so much heartache and loss. This is us saying no more, we are done. This is what is best for us. And at the end of the day, this is all that matters. We can’t control what people will think about this decision. All we can do is what will best help us sleep at night. I hope you will understand.

Have you had a messy breakup with your Fundamentalist family? Please share your experiences in the comment section. Better yet, share your story in a guest post.

Thanks for Reading,

signature

And then we are done.

Bruce, By Which Gospel Were You Saved?

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saved or lost

Recently, a commenter asked on the post titled Kent Hovind Says Evangelical-Turned-Atheist Bruce Gerencser is Still a Christian!:

May I kindly ask which Gospel where you saved by?

Snarky Bruce wants to reply “the one found in the Bible.” Curmudgeon Bruce wants to answer the question with a question “are you looking for a way to discount my personal testimony of faith in Jesus”? Since I cannot discern the reader’s motivations, I will answer his question openly, honestly, and directly. Then he (or she) can “judge” my salvation accordingly.

Several years ago, I wrote a post titled My Baptist Salvation Experience. Here is how I described my salvation experience and subsequent life as a devoted, committed follower of Jesus Christ:

In the spring of 1972, my parents divorced after 15 years of marriage. Both of my parents remarried several months later. While my parents and their new spouses, along with my brother and sister, stopped attending church, I continued to attend Trinity Baptist Church in Findlay, Ohio. In the fall of 1972, a high-powered IFB evangelist named Al Lacy came to Trinity to hold a week-long revival meeting. One night, as I sat in the meeting with my friends, I felt deep conviction over my sins while the evangelist preached. I tried to push aside the Holy Spirit’s work in my heart, but when the evangelist gave the invitation, I knew that I needed to go forward. I knew that I was a wretched sinner in need of salvation. (Romans 3) I knew that I was headed for Hell and that Jesus, the resurrected son of God, was the only person who could save me from my sin. I knelt at the altar and asked Jesus to forgive me of my sin and save me. I put my faith and trust in Jesus, that he alone was my Lord and Savior. (That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. Romans 10:9-11)

I got up from the altar a changed person. I had no doubt that I was a new creation, old things had passed away, and all things had become new.  (Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

The next Sunday, I was baptized, and several weeks later I stood before the church and declared that I believed God was calling me to preach. For the next thirty-five years, I lived a life committed to following after Jesus and the teachings of the Bible. While I failed many times as a Christian, there was never a time where I doubted that Jesus was my Lord and Savior. I loved him with all my heart, soul, and mind, and my heart burned with the desire to preach and teach the Word of God, evangelize the lost, and help Christians mature in their faith. No one doubted that I was a Christian. Not my Christian family; not my Christian friends; not my colleagues in the ministry; not the people who lovingly called me preacher. I was, in every way, a devoted Christian husband, father, and pastor. As all Christians do, I sinned in thought, word, and deed, but when I did, I confessed my sin to the Lord and asked for his forgiveness. (If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)  And then I got up from my knees and strived to make my calling and election sure. (Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall. (2 Peter 1:10)

This is my testimony.

Christians often find my story perplexing. Unable to square my devoted commitment to Jesus — evidenced by good works — with their peculiar theology, some Christians comb through my life looking for some sort of discrepancy that will allow them to dismiss my story out of hand. “Oh, you believed the wrong gospel. You never were a “real” Christian,” countless Evangelicals have told me. Personally, I find such an assessment to be silly and ludicrous. Ask any Christian family member, church member, or colleague in the ministry whether they believed, at the time, Bruce Gerencser was a Christian, and all of them would say yes. One distant family member, upon learning of my loss of faith, said, “if Butch (family nickname) isn’t saved, nobody is!” Much like the Apostle Paul, I could say for much of my life, “I know whom I have believed.” After all, I was there when Jesus saved me. Who better to know if I was a Christian than me? The fact that I am an atheist today plays no part in determining whether I was a Christian from the age of fifteen through age fifty. Either I was the greatest deceiver since Satan himself, or I was Christian.

I have written numerous posts about the various plans of salvation found in the Bible and believed by sundry Christian sects, churches, and individual Christians. (Please see Is There Only One Plan of Salvation? and Can Anyone Really Know They Are Saved?) I have also eviscerated the cheap grace, one-two-three-repeat-after-me, decisional regeneration gospel preached in many Evangelical churches; a gospel that requires nothing but assent to a list of Bible propositions; a gospel that expects and demands nothing except belief. This gospel is little more than Fire Insurance.

Of course, not everyone who is saved in churches that preach this bankrupt gospel live lives of indifference toward the teaching of Christ. Many of the readers of this blog were saved in churches that preached cheap grace, yet they took their confessions of faith seriously and devote their lives to serving their Lord. I was saved in a church that preached this gospel, but my testimony of faith suggests that I truly believed.

I spent twenty-five years pastoring Evangelical churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Over the years, my thinking about the Christian gospel changed from the easy-believism gospel of my Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) upbringing to the Calvinistic gospel of perseverance to the social gospel of good works. In the end, I came to believe that the only measure of a Christian is his or her works; that faith without works is dead. Sadly, many Christians believe that salvation is measured by the right beliefs. “Believe the right things and thou shalt live,” this gospel says. This is NOT the gospel taught by Jesus in the gospels.

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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