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Tag: Evangelicalism

Black Collar Crime: IFB Pastor John Martin Charged with Sexually Abusing Children

pastor john martin

The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.

John “J” Martin, father of five and pastor of Lighthouse Baptist Church in Florence, Alabama, stands accused of sexually abusing several children. Lighthouse Baptist is an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregation.

AL.com reports:

John Martin, a 41-year-old from Florence, is held in the Lauderdale County jail with bail set at $60,000. Martin recently resigned after nine years as the pastor of Lighthouse Baptist Church in Florence.

On June 23, Martin resigned and admitted to church members that he had inappropriate relationships with young men, said Angie Hamilton, an assistant district attorney in Lauderdale County. Church members told the authorities about the admission, and a criminal investigation began.

….

“We have identified several potential victims,” Hamilton said. “We believe other charges are forthcoming.”

Martin is charged with four counts of first-degree sexual abuse, records show. Hamilton said those charges involve a victim younger than 16. Court records weren’t yet publicly available Monday afternoon.

Prosecutors and investigators are asking anyone with information to come forward. They say Martin worked as a pastor in other states before joining Lighthouse in Florence.

“We believe there may be other young people that he may have had contact with,” Hamilton said.

Kudos to the church for reporting Martin to law enforcement. Sadly, it is not uncommon for IFB churches to fire offending pastors and shove allegations under the proverbial rug. That the church acted immediately and decisively deserves praise, albeit I am not sure how much praise is necessary for doing what decent, caring people should do.

According to the church’s doctrinal statement:

Human Sexuality

1. We believe that God has commanded that no intimate sexual activity be engaged in outside of a marriage between a man and a woman. We believe that any form of homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, bestiality, incest, fornication, adultery, and pornography are sinful perversions of God’s gift of sex. We believe that God disapproves of and forbids any attempt to alter one’s gender by surgery or appearance. (Genesis 2:24, 19:5, 13, 26:8-9; Leviticus 18:1-30; Romans 1: 26-29; 1 Corinthians 5:1; 6:9; 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8; Hebrews 13:4)

2. We believe that the only legitimate marriage is the joining of one man and one woman. (Genesis 2:24; Romans 7:2; 1 Corinthians 7:10; Ephesians 5:22-23)

Evidently, Martin didn’t practice what he preached. I know, I know, shocking, right? (That’s sarcasm, by the way.)

Church Facebook page

The Sounds of Fundamentalism: IFB Evangelist Phil Kidd Gives Vaccination Advice

phil kidd

The Sounds of Fundamentalism is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a video clip that shows the crazy, cantankerous, or contradictory side of Evangelical Christianity, please send me an email with the name or link to the video. Please do not leave suggestions in the comment section.  Let’s have some fun!

Today’s Sound of Fundamentalism is a video clip of IFB evangelist and pastor Phil Kidd telling a church congregation that vaccinations turn boys into emasculated, crossdressing homosexuals. Kidd is the pastor of Emmaus Baptist Church in Kingsport, Tennessee.

Video Link

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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: Libraries Are Dangerous Places, Says Creationist Ken Ham

library

Increasingly (sadly) so, but public libraries are becoming dangerous places for kids (of all ages). And sadly, the majority of kids from church homes have already had their hearts & minds captured by the enemy through public schools, TV etc. Christian…

parents need to be reminded:  “You shall teach them [God’s Word] diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 6:7)

— Ken Ham, Twitter, June 23, 2019

Bruce, What was Your View on Homosexuality When You Were a Pastor?

god hates lgbtq people

I came of age in the early 1970s — an era when LGBTQ people were savaged if they dared to step out of their closets. The Stonewall riots, June 28-29, 1969, outraged my parents and their fellow Fundamentalist Christians. How dare the queers/faggots/sodomites/dykes/homos/perverts show their faces in public. How dare they demand to be treated as humans? Don’t they know that the Bible condemns sodomy? Why it even says in Romans 1 that God has given homosexuals over to reprobate minds. My pastors and other Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) preachers deeply influenced what I believed about LGBTQ people. Supposedly, all sins were the same, but their preaching betrayed the fact that they believed homosexuality was a sin above all others. I can’t tell you the times I heard preachers rail against homosexuality, calling for the arrest, incarceration and, in some cases, execution of such “sinners.” LGBTQ people were widely considered child molesters — the worst of the worst.

In 1976, I packed up my meager belongings and headed off to train for the ministry at Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan. Nothing I heard in my classes or from the chapel pulpit changed my view of homosexuals. I lived in the college dormitory. I was shocked to learn that one of my teachers — a single man who lived in the dorm — was a homosexual. Not only that, one student who had effeminate tendencies was his roommate. Why didn’t the college do anything about this? I wondered at the time. As I now look back on the two years I spent in Midwestern’s dorm, I have concluded that there were more than a few gay men and lesbian women. Deeply closeted, these devoted followers of Jesus suffered all sorts of indignities at the hands of heterosexual Jesus-lovers. I wish I could say that my hands are clean, but they are not.

In the early 1980s — as I was busy pastoring IFB churches — I heard that a high school acquaintance of mine had died of AIDS. I remembered the “rumors” about him. His employment and close friendship with his deeply closeted gay boss troubled me, but I thought, “John seems ‘normal’ to me. He’s not a faggot.” John, not his real name, was indeed gay, and sadly, he was one of the early casualties of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This angered me, and along with several of my friends, we blamed his gay boss for his death. “He preyed on John and turned him into a queer,” we thought at the time.  I now know differently. John was a gay man, not because of his boss, but because that’s who he was.

I entered the ministry as a homophobe. I preached against homosexuality, labeling it as my pastors and professors had done: a heinous crime against human nature and God. My view of homosexuality was only reinforced by a pedophile gay man who started attending our church so he could prey on young boys. I was unaware of his predatory ways until a church member told me that the man was inviting church boys to spend the weekend with him out on his farm. I went nuts when I heard this, and in short order, I confronted the man and told him that I knew what he was and he was no longer welcome at our church. In retrospect, I should have called law enforcement. Instead, Pastor Bruce, the moral enforcer, took care of things.

In the late 1980s, I started a private, tuition-free school for the children of church members. Bruce, the moral enforcer, made sure that Biblical morality was taught to every student. It was bad enough that these children had to listen to my moralizing on Sundays, now they had to put up with it Monday through Friday too. Of course, I failed in my mission. Years later, I learned that some of the students were “fornicating.” I know, shock, right? Teenagers, with raging hormones, having sex! Here’s the kicker, out of fifteen students, today two of them are gay men and one woman is a lesbian. That means the twenty-percent of the study body was gay. WTF, Bruce, all that anti-homo preaching, and they STILL turned out gay? Since de-converting, I have had the privilege of reacquainting myself with several of these students. I apologized to them for what they heard me say about LGBTQ from the pulpit. My words were hurtful, yet they quietly suffered, knowing that the day was coming when they would escape the grip of preacher.christians condemn gays

My view of LGBTQ people began to change in 1995. I was between pastorates, so I took a job with Charley’s Steakery as the general manager of their Zanesville, Ohio location. Located in Colony Square Mall, we offered mall employees free refills on their soft drinks. Several times a week, a gay man would come to the restaurant to get a free refill. The first time he handed me his cup, I panicked, thinking, I am going to get AIDS! For the first few times, after I refilled his cup, I would vigorously wash my hands after doing so. Had to wash off the cooties, I thought at the time. After a few weeks of this, I began being more comfortable around this man. He and I would chat about all sorts of things. I found out that he was quite “normal.” This, of course, messed with my view of the world.

While I am sure numerous LGBTQ people came through my life before I refilled this man’s drink cup, he was the first gay man I had really engaged in friendly, meaningful discussion. And it was at this point in my life that my view about homosexuality began to change. I didn’t stop being a homophobe overnight, but step by step over the next decade, I stumbled away from the homophobic rhetoric that had dominated my life for many years.

Today, I am loathed by local Evangelicals for my support of LGBTQ rights and same-sex marriage. I am sure former congregants hear of my pro-gay views and they wonder what happened to hellfire and brimstone homophobe Pastor Bruce? All I can say is that a chance meeting at a fountain machine in a fast food restaurant between Bruce, the moralizer, and a gay man changed my life forever. And isn’t that how most moralizers become more temperate? When you personally know a gay person, it’s hard to condemn him to the fires of Hell. It’s easy to preach against homosexuality when everyone — as far as you know, anyway — is heterosexual. It’s when you have some skin in the game, when you actually know an LGBTQ person, that things change. Exposure to people different from you and cultures different from yours remains the best cure for Fundamentalist Christianity.

How about you? Are you a former homophobe? What caused you to change your mind? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.

Beware of Evangelicals Who Come Bearing Offers of “Free” Coffee

free-coffee

Many Evangelicals have a pathological need to evangelize others. Born with the salesman gene, these Hucksters for Jesus® use all sorts of evangelistic techniques and psychological manipulation to snare unwary “souls.” One such huckster is  Steve Sjogren, pastor emeritus of Vineyard Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Sjogren practices what is commonly called “servant evangelism.” People into servant evangelism seek out people in public places whom they can be kind to, and once the mark’s defenses are lowered, they put in a good word for Jesus.

Recently, Sjorgen crowed on Charisma News about “reaching” a hurting Jewish couple with his version of the Christian gospel:

As I gave the barista my drink order that Sunday morning, I noticed a couple behind me who looked a little haggard. The woman had a legal-sized yellow pad and Bic pen in hand. I asked what they were having and put all three drinks on my card. As we waited in line for the drinks to arrive, all I could think about was that I might be late to speak at my friend’s church there in Columbus, Ohio.

As we waited for our drink to arrive, the man asked, “So what’s up with the coffee? Why’d you buy ours?”

I responded, “I like to buy coffee for people in line behind me—it’s a small way to say, ‘God is in love with you.’ If Jesus were at Starbucks this morning, he’d be showing His love, not just talking about it!”

At that, the woman let out a loud, guttural cry—almost a groan but at high volume. It was loud enough that the dozens of people suddenly got quiet and looked at me as though I had caused this to happen. The woman was so spent from her wailing she was winded—as though she’d finished an aerobic workout. As she quieted down, he put an assuring hand on her back and said, “It’s going to be OK, honey. It’s going to be OK.”

He continued with me. “Last night, our 19-year-old daughter went to a party. She took the drug Ecstasy. For whatever reason, the drug stopped her heart. She fell to the ground and died. We are here to plan her funeral service. As we pulled into the parking spot, my wife said, ‘We are Jewish but aren’t religious. We aren’t faithful to go to temple. Still, I want to know where God is in all of this!’

“Then five minutes later, we stand in line, and you tell us this coffee is on you to show us God’s love in a practical way. Wow! We don’t know what to say. Who are you? What do you believe?”

I directed him to my web site and assured him he could further connect the dots at Kindness.com.

….

Doing kindness in a practical way opens a door to the heart of not-yet-believers (the ones on their way to personal faith but not there yet). I used to try to engage those folks in a “spiritual conversation” (code for arguing) about the good news of Jesus. The problem was, my approach to engaging actually felt like bad news to people.

….

At lunch today or tomorrow, drive through Taco Bell during a busy time. Make sure there is a car or two behind you in line. When you go to pay for your order, tell the window person that you are also going to cover the meal of the person behind you. Tell that person what to tell that driver: “This is free as a way to show you God’s love in a practical way.” Often that person will write all of that down and ask if they can repeat it to me. It’s as if they are evangelizing someone else though maybe they don’t get the message themselves quite yet!

Kindness brings encounters. Not only will the person behind you be nudged, your “designated” evangelist at the window might just come toward the Lord as well. To boot, it’s easy to imagine that both the window person and driver end up telling the story of God’s kindness to someone else later the same day. It’s not every day that someone foots the bill for your Mexican food.

Sjorgen is no different from smiling, gift-giving door-to-door salesmen or pedophiles offering candy to unsuspecting children. Instead of being kind to people just because it’s the right thing to do or doing so makes you feel good, Evangelicals such as Sjorgen have ulterior motives for their kindness. Granted, their religion commands them to take the gospel to the whole world, so I understand Sjoegen’s methodology from a theological perspective. However, it’s less than honest to be kind to someone or befriend him using methods and cons that obscure or hide the real reason for the kindness/friendship.

Sjorgen should have told his marks the truth: I bought your coffees because I want an opportunity to preach the Christian gospel to you. I suspect that Sjorgen would have received a far different response had he been upfront and honest about his motivations.

I have long argued that most Evangelicals have ulterior motives for being kind to unbelievers or trying to befriend them. It’s in their theological DNA. Evangelicals believe there is a literal Hell with fire and brimstone; a place of eternal punishment for everyone who refuses to repent of behaviors Evangelicals deem “sins” and who refuses to worship Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Are you a happy, content unbeliever? Sorry, but you can’t be! Only through believing in Jesus can you find “true” happiness and contentment. Do you love your parents, spouse, and children? Sorry, but you have a worldly, superficial love.  Only through believing in Jesus can you find “true” love. Do you live a life of meaning, purpose, and direction? Sorry, but only bought-by-the-blood-of-Jesus Christians have lives of meaning, purpose, and direction. Unbelievers are just going through the motions, living lives of emptiness and quiet desperation. Or so Evangelicals think, anyway. And because Evangelicals think this way, they feel justified in using whatever means necessary to evangelize people they deem “lost.”

Just remember these things the next time an Evangelical tries to be “kind” to you. Ask yourself, what is it that they really want?

Why Evangelicals Can’t See People as They Are

Just Remember, Evangelicals Always Have an Agenda

As an Unbeliever, Is it Possible to Have Christian Family and Friends?

Dear Christian Friend and Former Parishioner, Am I a Good Person?

Bruce, I Want to be Your Friend — Part One

Bruce, I Want to be Your Friend — Part Two

About Bruce Gerencser

Bruce Gerencser, 62, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 41 years. He and his wife have six grown children and twelve 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. For more information about Bruce, please read the About page.

Thank you for reading this post. Please share your thoughts in the comment section. If you are a first-time commenter, please read the commenting policy before wowing readers with your words. All first-time comments are moderated. If you would like to contact Bruce directly, please use the contact form to do so.

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Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Porn Causes Brain Damage, Turns People Into Serial Killers

jesse morrell

Did you know that Pornography Causes Brain Damage?

It’s neuroscience. There are lots of reports on it.

The brain compensates for the over indulgence of a porn addict by creating less dopamine receptors in his brain.

The result is that it takes more to arouse him.

Addicts go from soft porn, to hard porn, to eventually things like rape porn, bestiality, child porn, etc.

To compensate for less dopamine receptors in their brain, they start to wire in their “aggression drive” into their “sex drive” and start doing things like choking, spitting, slapping, bondage, etc, to get aroused.

That is why the path of pornography has created many rapists and even serial killers.

— Jesse Morrell, Biblical Truth Resources, Pornography Causes Brain Damage | Neuroscience Report, June 27, 2019

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Homosexuals are Vermin Scum, Says Baptist Dave 1611

baptist dave 1611

The sodomites, the homos, they do all their filthy acts in the dark of night where no one can see them. When you get these perverts on their own, they flee like cockroaches, like the roaches they are, the vermin scum, the pedophiles that they are.

….

If you’re making your son, for example, dress up as a woman and go dance at a sodomite bar, that’s hip, that’s cool, that’s trendy. But if you just believe the Bible, and you take your kid to church, that’s child abuse, right?

— Baptist Dave 1611, an unnamed Air Force Airman on his YouTube videos

This unnamed airman sure sounds like a follower of IFB homophobe Steven Anderson.  For those who don’t speak IFB, 1611 stands for the 1611 King James Bible — the preferred translation of homophobes everywhere.

Air Force Times article on Baptist Dave 1611

Black Collar Crime: ‘Biblical Flat Earth Society’ Founder Phillip Stallings Accused of Child Porn Crimes

phillip stallings

The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.

Last Friday, Phillip Stallings, a Fundamentalist Calvinist and the founder of the Biblical Flat Earth Society, was arrested and charged with 56 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. ABC-11 reports:

A Durham man faces 56 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor after officials found him in possession of child pornography.

During a joint investigation by the Durham County Sheriff’s Office and U.S. Department of Homeland Security, officials found 40-year-old Phillip Stephen Stallings downloaded media that involved minors engaging in sexual activities.

He was arrested on Wednesday and charged with 28 counts of second-degree sexual exploitation of a minor and 28 counts of third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor.

He was also served with outstanding warrants for financial card theft and cyberstalking.

Stallings was booked into the Durham County Detention Center.

On Thursday, the judge raised his secured bond to $500,000.

WRAL-5 adds:

Stallings was arrested at his home Wednesday morning by Durham County deputies as part of a U.S. Department of Homeland Security investigation.

“[It’s] part of an investigation across the nation right now for possession of child pornography and creation of child pornography,” Durham County Assistant District Attorney Kendra Montgomery-Blinn said during a brief court hearing Thursday morning. “They had information that Mr. Stallings was sharing his materials on a social media platform.”

Authorities searched his computer and found sexually explicit images, Montgomery-Blinn said. The search is ongoing, and more charges could be filed, she added.

….

A judge raised Stallings’ bond from $341,000 to $500,000 because of the number of charges against him and the nature of the charges. If Stallings posts bond, he is prohibited from any contact with children and from using any computers or other devices that would allow him to collect any photos or videos.

Stallings was convicted of several offenses between 1996 and 2008, including assault on a female, false imprisonment, credit card fraud, theft, assault on an officer and impaired driving, according to state Department of Public Safety records.

According to Stallings’ personal website, he is a “reformed Christian Apologist, Theonomist, Kinist and a former seminary student.” In a March 2016 post, Stallings cryptically wrote:

I have sinned. Even more, I have sinned online regarding my actions towards others in private messages. I have never denied my sin in acting disgracefully online. The sinful and wicked actions I committed are without question a horrible blight upon the name of Christ, the Church, and were harmful to the families and those that are my brothers and sisters in the Lord.

One thing became clear to me when I was not able to reach the ones I had offended and twas to make a public statement regarding this. This is now offered to those that were hurt and offended by my sinful actions and should serve as a public statement that I have openly acknowledged my sin. I openly confess that my actions were sinful and sincerely would ask for those that were offended by me for their forgiveness. Ultimately, I have sinned against God and I am ashamed of how I have acted towards Him.

While there is little I can do today regarding my past wickedness outside of this public apology, I can admit it was wrong and sincerely ask for forgiveness. I have repented and I need your prayers for me going forward. My life is not over and I wish to only do that which is right now. That is all I can do and hope that for those that have been offended by me, you will read this, forgive me, and seek to pray for me.

….

Stallings doesn’t mention what it was that he was sorry for. I will leave it to readers to make their own conclusions about Stallings’ “sins.”

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Satan Uses Birth Control to Kill Babies

nancy-campbell

I am sure your heart yearns to stop the holocaust of abortion, the dismembering and burning alive of living babies in the womb.

However, I think that the devil, who is the mastermind behind abortion, has hoodwinked those of us who say we are prolife. The devil, who comes to “rob, kill, and destroy,” hates life. His plan goes beyond abortion. The trio he uses to rob, kill, and destroy are contraception, sterilization, and abortion. His first aim is to eradicate life before it is born. Abortion is his back-up plan.

Statistics tells us that clinic abortions are decreasing, but the aborting and stopping of life is increasing. Americans are now being introduced to “mail-to-your-home abortion pills” so mothers can freely annihilate their babies.

The American Life League states that “Using formulas based on the way the birth control pill works, pharmacy experts project that about 14 million chemical abortions occur in the United States each year.” That’s more babies killed through the Pill, and its various associated methods, than through abortion!

….

The devil does not have the power to give life. He cannot give conception. And therefore, He seeks to undermine God’s power to give life. We, as God’s people of life must be truly pro-life. We must think pro-life. We must have God’s mind about pro-life. If we have the mindset to stop life by our own decision, or the pill, or other contraceptive devices, that’s not pro-life. It’s pro-choice.

— Nancy Campbell, Above Rubies, The Heart of the Matter, June 10, 2019