This is every man’s right. Each has only one life to live. God looks down and sees that every man is incomplete. God gives a man a woman, and that woman is supposed to complete that man. If you fail to do it, it won’t be done. If he dies without ever having it, it’s because you didn’t give it to him. You have taken from him what is every man’s right. Every man’s right is to have a completer. That’s why God made you!
A lady came to my office not long ago and I gave her this truth. She said, “I’m not going to do all that stuff.”
I said, “I’ll give you an alternative suggestion.”
She said, “What?”
I said, “Go over here to the bridge over the Chicago River and jump off.”
“What?”
“Go jump in the river.”
“Why?”
I said, “You’d go to Heaven, and your husband wouldn’t have to live in hell!” Listen to me, especially you young ladies, you unmarried ladies, you ladies who haven’t been married long. I’m trying to help you. I’m not trying to take any freedoms away from you. I’m trying to give you a liberty that you’ll never enjoy unless you become what God has made you to be.
I said to that lady in my office for counsel, “Look, you are standing in the way. Your husband is a good man. He’s not going to have anybody else. You’re standing in the way of your husband ever having a completer. You’d be a lot better off, young lady, in the early days of your marriage, if you would go over and jump off the bridge so your husband can have in his lifetime someone to complete the circle.”
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I was an Independent, Fundamentalist-sin-hating, Devil-chasing, pulpit-pounding, King-James-waving Baptist preacher. I prided myself on HARD preaching, just like old-time Baptist preachers.
If people were happy with my preaching it meant I wasn’t preaching hard enough.
Cecil Hodges, an old IFB preacher from Georgia said one time:
“We hit our people over the head with the sin stick so often that they duck when we begin to preach.”
I was one of those kinds of preachers.
Preach long. Preach loud.
No subject was spared.
Preaching the whole counsel of God required preaching about EVERY sin, even the unpopular ones — such as chewing gum during church, writing notes in church, and using the bathroom during the sermon.
One young preacher I heard about was upset over people getting up to use the bathroom during his sermon. He sternly told his flock:
I don’t want anyone using the bathroom while I am preaching. If you need to use the bathroom, pee in your shoes. You can wring out your socks after the service.
He was fired several weeks later.
In IFB churches, the pastor is god. He’s the law. What he says goes. The Church CAN fire him, but it is often hard to do. After all, in many cases, the pastor started the church. He has a following no matter what he says or does.
When the pastor stands up and preaches, whatever he says is taken to be the gospel. A good IFB church member hates what the pastor hates and loves what the pastor loves. To go against the pastor usually meant you were looking for another church to attend.
Two incidents stand out for me that I think would illustrate how I preached.
Two school teachers attended the church I pastored. They were husband and wife — good people. They joined our church after the congregation they attended had a split (a common occurrence in IFB churches). I will call them The Smiths.
The Smiths taught high school. Mr. Smith was a girls’ high school basketball coach and taught English. Mrs. Smith taught business classes. Both of them were members of the teacher’s union.
One week, the teacher’s union took a policy position that was contrary to what I thought the Bible taught. I concluded that a Christian who was right with God could NOT be a member of the teacher’s union.
Sunday came, and I entered the pulpit ready to do battle with the sin of being part of the teacher’s union. I preached long and hard. I exposed the sin of belonging to the teacher’s union. I called on all teachers in the church (all two of them) to leave the teacher’s union.
They left all right.
The church.
Early in my ministry, I became convinced that the Masonic Lodge was a Satanic organization. The local Masons had come to me and asked to use our church bus to attend a Masonic function in a nearby city. I told them absolutely not, and then proceeded to let them know how Satanic the Masonic Lodge was.
On the following Sunday, I entered the pulpit ready to do battle with the sin of being a member of the Masonic Lodge. I made it very clear that a person could not be a Christian and a Mason, and no one who was a member of the Masonic Lodge could be a member of our church.
There were several members of the Masonic Lodge visiting our church.
They got the message.
We never saw them again.
I am sure some of my more liberal Christian readers are saying WOW about now. You should be.
I was taught in Bible college that God often builds a church by subtraction. Losing people could be a good thing. Ultimately, fellowship is a bunch of fellows in a ship all rowing in the same direction (often right over a waterfall).
When people left it was never my fault.
After all the Bible says:
They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. 1 John 2:19
I saw leavers as carnal, soft, weak people who had no stomach for real, hard, Holy Ghost-inspired Bible preaching.
I was wrong.
I do not have enough life left to repent of all the foolishness I did in God’s name. I ran off a lot of good people — people who had the misfortune of thinking differently from me.
I was not an oddity within the Baptist church. In Independent and Southern Baptist churches, I would have been considered typical, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. As many of the readers of this blog can testify, preachers such as I are quite common. Legalism and cultic control of people (now called spiritual abuse) is far too common, not just in Baptist churches, but in every branch of Evangelicalism.
I should note that I did not remain the preacher described in this post. Over time, I came to realize how abusive I was. In the late 1980s, I learned to preach expositionally, and doing so helped to get me away from the type of preaching with which I started my ministry. Towards the end of my ministry, I was considered a liberal by many of my Baptist preacher friends. They thought I had gone soft (and from their perspective I had).
A survey of atheists and agnostics will certainly show that a large number of them were raised in rigid, legalistic Christian environments. Fundamentalism extracts a huge price from everyone it touches.
Were you raised in a church that prided itself on hard preaching? How did this kind of preaching affect you psychologically? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Why bother, right? I have spent the past seventeen years asking Evangelical Christian apologists and zealots to give Evangelicals-turned-atheists a fair hearing. I have asked them to accept our stories at face value. Who better knows their story than the person who lived it? When a person tells me that they are a Christian, I believe them. Who am I to say that they are not one? Sadly, Evangelicals refuse to offer the same grace to people such as I and countless other Evangelicals-turned-atheists.
Today, an Evangelical apologist going by the name Charles — today anyway, since he has used other names in the past, trying to evade moderation — left the following comment on the post How to Witness to an Atheist (all spelling, grammar, and punctuation in the original):
Sorry to offend but most atheists were “intellectual Christians” before they “deconverted”. They likely never truly accepted the gift of God through Jesus Christ. Because once someone experiences the light of Christ they’re not going to run back into darkness.
Yes Bruce is a extremely rare bird. And actually reminds me of another pastor. Sam Kinison. If you don’t know who that is. He was a hellfire and brimstone holiness Pentecostal preacher in the 70’s sadly left the ministry in the 80’s and became one of the biggest foul nasty mouthed comedians of the 80’s and beginning of the 90’s. I’ve never read anything where he advertised to have become an atheist but it was kinda obvious as he would make fun of Christianity in his comedy act.
And he would also do his comic routine the same way he used to preach Pentecostal sermons. With the loud yelling speaking in tongues style.
Sam kinision was killed in an auto wreck in 1992 and witnesses said he was talking to someone they couldn’t see or hear that assured him of something and he died peacefully. So if that’s true he was still saved.
Salvation is a gift and Christ will not take back a gift if it has been truly received. I hope it’s the same for Bruce as it was for Sam and that he was truly saved.
Charles begins his comment by saying “sorry to offend.” This, of course, is what someone says when he is going say something offensive to someone or a group of people. Charles isn’t “sorry” at all. Had he been, he never would have written his comment. No, Charles had every intention of offending. He wants, dare I say, needs, his words to cause harm.
How does Charles know that “most atheists were intellectual Christians before they deconverted?” No study I am aware of affirms this claim, so I suspect that Charles knows this because it “feels” right to him. Charles is claiming that most Evangelicals-turned-atheists were never “real” Christians; that they had head knowledge of Christ, not heart knowledge. (Please see Missing Heaven by Eighteen Inches.) How he determines the difference between heart and head knowledge, Charles does not say. Wouldn’t determining one’s locus of faith be God’s purview, and not that of fallible, sinful men? Yet, Charles, as all Fundamentalist Christians do, speaks with certainty on my former Christian life and that of thousands of people who read this blog. He KNOWS they are “intellectual Christians” because if they weren’t they would still be Christians. This is, of course, circular reasoning, much like Charles’ logic “The Bible is the Word of God because the Bible says it’s the Word of God.”
Charles tries to deflect criticism by saying that “[The Evangelical-turned-atheist Bruce Gerencser] is an extremely rare bird.” Charles can’t find fault with my past beliefs, practices, and lifestyle, so he must grudgingly admit that I really was a born-again child of God. Not only does Charles think I used to be a Christian, he believes I still am. That’s right, outspoken atheist Bruce Gerencser is a Christian! Nah, nah, nah, once-saved-always-saved. Once you say the sinner’s prayer — and you really, really, meant it — you can never lose your salvation. No matter what I say or do, when I die I will go to Heaven. Sweet, right? Hell no. Why would I ever want to spend eternity with the likes of Dr. David Tee, Revival Fires, John, Steve, Charles, and a cast of thousands? No thanks.
For some reason, Charles decided to use the late Sam Kinison as some sort of object lesson. According to a story for which I could find no primary evidence, Kinison was seen muttering to “someone” before he died, and then he peacefully expired. This, according to Charles, is proof that Kinison died a believer.
Let me conclude that some Evangelicals would consider Charles’ soteriology heretical. I know I would have back in my preaching days. Charles’ gospel is what I was taught as a child and as a student at Midwestern Baptist College. I preached a similar gospel for years until I came to see that I was preaching a bastardized gospel; that faith without works is dead. For Charles to even suggest that I am presently a Christian is absurd. That Charles can’t square his theology with my life is his problem, not nine. This I know is true: I once was saved, and now I’m not.
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.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
— U.S. Constitution, First Amendment
Central to our way of life in the United States is the First Amendment of the Constitution: freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of peaceable assembly, and freedom to petition the Government for redress of grievances.
In this post, I want to briefly talk about freedom of speech (or expression).
Among other cherished values, the First Amendment protects freedom of speech. The U.S. Supreme Court often has struggled to determine what exactly constitutes protected speech. The following are examples of speech, both direct (words) and symbolic (actions), that the Court has decided are either entitled to First Amendment protections, or not.
The First Amendment states, in relevant part, that:
“Congress shall make no law…abridging freedom of speech.”
Freedom of speech includes the right:
Not to speak (specifically, the right not to salute the flag). West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943).
Of students to wear black armbands to school to protest a war (“Students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate.”). Tinker v. Des Moines, 393 U.S. 503 (1969).
To use certain offensive words and phrases to convey political messages. Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971).
To contribute money (under certain circumstances) to political campaigns. Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976).
To advertise commercial products and professional services (with some restrictions). Virginia Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Consumer Council, 425 U.S. 748 (1976); Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 433 U.S. 350 (1977).
To engage in symbolic speech, (e.g., burning the flag in protest). Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989); United States v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 310 (1990).
Freedom of speech does not include the right:
To incite imminent lawless action. Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969).
To make or distribute obscene materials. Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957).
To burn draft cards as an anti-war protest. United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968).
To permit students to print articles in a school newspaper over the objections of the school administration. Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260 (1988).
Of students to make an obscene speech at a school-sponsored event. Bethel School District #43 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675 (1986).
Of students to advocate illegal drug use at a school-sponsored event. Morse v. Frederick, 551 — U.S. — 398 (2007).
The term “hate speech” is often misunderstood. “Hate speech” doesn’t have a legal definition under U.S. law, just as there is no legal definition for lewd speech, rude speech, unpatriotic speech, or other similar types of speech or expression that people might condemn. The term often refers to speech or expression that the listener believes denigrates, vilifies, humiliates, or demeans a person or persons on the basis of membership or perceived membership in a social group identified by attributes such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or other protected status. Speech identified as hate speech may involve epithets and slurs, statements that promote malicious stereotypes, and speech denigrating or vilifying specific groups. Hate speech may also include nonverbal depictions and symbols.
In the United States, hate speech receives substantial protection under the First Amendment, based upon the idea that it is not the proper role of the government to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive. Instead, the government’s role is to broadly protect individuals’ freedom of speech in an effort to allow for the expression of unpopular and countervailing opinion and encourage robust debate on matters of public concern even when such debate devolves into offensive or hateful speech that causes others to feel grief, anger, or fear.
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However, it goes without saying that just because there is a First Amendment right to say something, doesn’t mean it should be said.
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The First Amendment does not protect illegal conduct just because that conduct is motivated by an individual’s beliefs or opinions. Therefore, even though hate speech is protected by the First Amendment, illegal conduct motivated by an individual’s hate for a particular protected group may be regulated by local, state, or federal law, and / or university policies. These laws are sometimes identified as “hate crimes.”
It is important to understand that the First Amendment restricts government from regulating speech (expression), though there are exceptions. The First Amendment does not apply to speech restrictions enacted by businesses and private citizens. Over the years, countless Evangelicals have said that I am violating their right to free speech by not letting them say whatever they want on this site. However, this blog is not connected with the government in any way. It is owned and operated by a private citizen: me. No one has the right to comment on this site unless I permit them to do so.
As a writer, I have the right to say what I want, regardless of whether people agree with me. We do have civil slander and defamation laws, but the bar is high for the prosecution of such offenses. Just because someone says something about you that you don’t like doesn’t mean he is slandering you.
Yes. Individuals, not just the media, can be held liable for defamation if they either publish (libel) or say (slander) something about someone that isn’t true and that person suffers harm as a result. If you defame a private individual, that person would have to be able to prove: 1) that you made a statement, reported as fact, to another person; 2) that the statement was false; 3) that the statement caused damage to that person; and 4) that you were negligent in making that statement. If you defame a public figure (such as a celebrity or member of government, for example), that person will have to prove: 1) that you made a statement to another person, reported as fact; 2) that the statement was false and caused damage; and 3) that you made the statement with actual malice-that is, with knowledge that the statement was false or with reckless disregard as to whether the statement was false or not.
Remember, however, that you cannot be held liable for voicing your opinion, only for making untrue factual assertions.
Sadly, many people think they have a constitutional right not to be offended. This, however, is not true.
Our right to be offensive is increasingly being seen as this pesky, little symptom of the First Amendment that must be either begrudgingly entertained or reluctantly accepted. People will casually write off being offensive as uncouth or unbecoming of a civilized society; they are, however, mistaken. The ones who are annoyed by our right to be offensive are the same ones who are likely to be ignorant of the fact that we are where we are today as result of individuals offending the orthodoxies of their day. They are also likely unaware of the consequences that limiting offensiveness can have.
One might ask themselves whether it’s worth being offensive in today’s era of wokeism, microaggressions, and cancel culture. The answer should be (and always will be) a resounding and resolute yes. Below are three reasons why we must embrace, and continue, our tradition of being offensive.
First, we owe it to all of those who came before us and who sacrificed so much in the name of giving offense. We owe it to those who were mocked and ridiculed, booed and hissed at, beaten or imprisoned, exiled and ostracized, and hanged or burned at the stake all for simply offending the doctrines and dogmas of their day. Literal blood, sweat, and tears were given by countless generations so we could be where we are today.
Secondly, giving offense has been the main driver of change over (at least) the last millennium. As pointed out above, our society has gotten to the point it is at today because individuals thumbed their noses at the norms and orthodoxies of their day.
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Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, it is imperative that we continue our long tradition of offending contemporary orthodoxies because the only other alternative is clamping down or dismissing speech and expressions that are deemed offensive. The notion that any idea that is legitimately expressed can be silenced or banned on the grounds that it is merely “offensive” is censorship, and as one of our greatest founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, put it, “Censorship is the handmaiden to tyranny.” So, if you are against tyranny, you have to be for offensiveness.
As was stated at the start, the right to be offensive, which has been affirmed to us as citizens by various Supreme Court cases (RAV v. St. Paul, Texas v. Johnson, Snyder v. Phelps) is increasingly being portrayed as a thorn in the side of modern society; as if the only thing stopping us from achieving an idyllic society is our individual right to give offense. It is time that that misconception comes to an end and we start to view this inalienable right for what it really is: the heart and soul of the First Amendment.
No religion has a right to be exempt from criticism, the security minister has said ahead of a crackdown on extremism.
Tom Tugendhat said no faith had a right not to be challenged amid concerns that some extremists have used intimidation and threats of violence against those perceived to have insulted Islam.
It follows the case of a teacher in Batley, West Yorks, who received death threats after showing pupils a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed during a religious education lesson almost two years ago and has remained in hiding ever since as he fears for his life.
Mr Tugendhat declined to comment on individual cases but he said: “There is absolutely no right for any religion to be offended, if we accepted that then we’d still be Catholic.
“Every religion has the right to be challenged and there is no religion that has the right to be immune from that for any reason at all.”
Speaking on GB News, he added: “Anybody can challenge any article of any faith, it is absolutely fundamental, and there is no right to be immune from that.
“You know very well, because it’s the fundamental tenet of your job as a journalist to have freedom of speech.”
I primarily write about religion (particularly Evangelical Christianity) and politics — two subjects never spoken of in polite company. I know my writing offends some people, but that doesn’t mean I must stop doing so. The offended are free to respond in the comment section (as long as they abide by this site’s comment policy), send me an email or social media message, write a blog post or news article in response to my offensive writing, write a letter to the editor of the local newspaper decrying my writing, or any other constitutionally protected, legal action. The offended have numerous tools at their disposal to rebut my writing. They don’t, however, have any legal grounds to force me to remove something I have written from this site.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Every year or two, I ask readers to submit questions they want me to answer. That time has arrived once again. Any question. Any subject. Please leave your questions in the comment section or send them to me via email. I will try to answer them in the order received.
I look forward to reading and answering your questions.
Jerry asked:
What was your view on the Israel vs Palestine situation when you were a Christian?
Determining my view on Israel and Palestine depends on where I was at a particular moment in my theological journey. I started the ministry as a premillennial, pretribulational dispensationalist. Israel was God’s chosen people, and all the land prescribed in the Bible belonged to them, and nations who bless or curse Israel will be blessed or cursed by God.
In the late 1980s, I left the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) and embraced Evangelical Calvinism. My eschatology changed to amillennialism and posttribulationalism. No longer a dispensationalist, I viewed the New Testament church as God’s chosen people. I saw a continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament. While I believed God had a plan for Israel, they, as a people, at this present time, have been set aside. This allowed me to view Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in a different light.
Today, I view the state of Israel — not Jews individually — as a violent bully propped up by the United States. Israel has turned Gaza into an open-air prison, depriving Palestinians of basic civil rights. I view their illegal settlements in the West Bank similarly. And I think it can be argued that the land “given” to Israel in 1948 was, in fact, violently appropriated from indigenous Palestinian people
The solution to the intractable war between Israel and the Palestinians is straightforward: the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state. Further, ALL the illegal Israeli settlements must be dismantled and the land returned to its rightful owners. Of course, these things will never happen as long as Benjamin Netanyahu and other right-wing Israelis are running the show. No amount of pressure from the United States will stop Israel from turning Gaza into a compact version of Syria. It will take decades for Palestinians to recover and rebuild. Their schools, hospitals, and infrastructure have been destroyed.
Rebuilding homes in Gaza destroyed during Israel’s seven-month military offensive could take until 2040 in the most optimistic scenario, with total reconstruction across the territory costing as much as $40bn (£32bn), according to United Nations experts.
An assessment, which is to be published by the UN Development Programme as part of a push to raise funds for early planning for the rehabilitation of Gaza, has also found that the conflict may reduce levels of health, education, and wealth in the territory to those of 1980, wiping out 44 years of development.
Expectations of a breakthrough in ceasefire talks in Cairo between Israel and Hamas have cooled in recent days, and many observers believe the conflict is likely to continue, if at varying degrees of intensity, for many months or even longer.
More than 34,500, mostly women and children have died since Israel launched its offensive, according to health authorities in Gaza, after Hamas attacked Israel in October and killed about 1,200 people. The militant Islamist organisation, which took power in Gaza in 2007, also seized 250 hostages.
More than 79,000 homes in Gaza have been “completely destroyed” in the conflict, with another 370,000 damaged, the new assessment found.
“Even under optimistic scenarios for the pace of physical reconstruction, the scale of destruction in Gaza has been such that, simply from the narrow perspective of moving in building materials, it would still take until 2040 and probably longer to restore the housing units destroyed since the start of the war,” the researchers concluded.
In addition, schools, health facilities, roads, sewers, water pipes and all other critical infrastructure have all suffered massive damage.
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“The scale of the destruction is huge and unprecedented. This is a mission that the global community has not dealt with since the second world war,” al-Dardari said.
The latest assessment found that, with the high number of casualties and the big destruction of health facilities in Gaza, life expectancy had already been reduced by a minimum of four or five years and was likely to be reduced by seven, if the war continued into its ninth month. Researchers also found that real GDP per capita in the territory could be reduced to its lowest level since the mid-1990s.
More than 37m tonnes of debris needs to be cleared in Gaza to permit reconstruction. The mountains of rubble are full of unexploded ordnance that leads to “more than 10 explosions every week”, with more deaths and loss of limbs, Gaza’s Civil Defence agency said on Thursday.
It is doubtful that a two-state solution will be achieved in the short term. Until Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is turned out of office and the United States stops funding Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians, no change is forthcoming. It is far more likely a regional or world war will break out than that a sovereign Palestinian state will be established. Netanyahu is hell-bent on destroying Gaza, and nothing the feckless Biden Administration says will stop him. President Biden is more concerned about reelection than he is about protecting innocent Palestinians.
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.
Afterward, Baptist sent me a polite email that I thought I would respond to in a post. I suspect more than a few readers will find my response interesting and, hopefully, illuminating.
Baptist first shared his experiences with Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) churches. Some of his experiences were similar to mine, though I want to make clear that I left the IFB church movement years before I left the ministry and later deconverted. I stopped self-identifying as IFB after the Jack Hyles scandal (Please see The Legacy of IFB Pastor Jack Hyles) and my adoption of Calvinistic soteriology.
What I want to focus on is Baptist’s second paragraph:
But my main point of contact was that you stated that you, one day, realized that the Bible is not infallible. Why did you come to believe that? I maintain that the Bible (K.J.V. for English readers) is fine and has no errors or contradictions, and I have spent decades answering questions on this topic. I study the Bible and a lot of ancient history. Most of the supposed errors/contradictions believed by people comes down to ignorance of ancient customs. I would like to know what it was for you, where you came to believe it was not perfect.
Evangelicals generally believe the sixty-six books of the Protestant Christian Bible are inspired, inerrant, and infallible. Inspiration is a faith claim, for which no argument for or against can be made. Either you believe, by faith, the Bible is inspired, or you don’t. I don’t. Inerrancy and infallibility, on the other hand, are empirical claims which can be tested, proved, or disproved. For much of my Christian life, I believed that the Bible was inspired, inerrant, and infallible. In the early 2000s, I stopped using the King James Bible, opting instead to read and preach from the New American Standard Bible (NASB) and English Standard Version (ESV). Devotionally, I started reading The Message. By this point, I had concluded that the Bible was faithful and reliable, but not inerrant and infallible. I never doubted that the Bible was the Word of God, but I came to see and understand the deep, fallible imprint human authors made on the original manuscripts (which do not exist).
The King James Bible was first released in 1611. The KJV was primarily a revision and update of the Bishops’ Bible. Translators primarily used Erasmus’ Greek text (Textus Receptus) for translating the New Testament, and the Masoretic text for the Old, along with the Greek Septuagint, and the Latin Vulgate.
In 1769, the KJV was updated, modernizing the English and fixing scores of errors and mistakes. Wikipedia states:
By the mid-18th century the wide variation in the various modernized printed texts of the Authorized Version, combined with the notorious accumulation of misprints, had reached the proportion of a scandal, and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge both sought to produce an updated standard text. First of the two was the Cambridge edition of 1760, the culmination of 20 years’ work by Francis Sawyer Parris, who died in May of that year. This 1760 edition was reprinted without change in 1762 and in John Baskerville’s fine folio edition of 1763.
This was effectively superseded by the 1769 Oxford edition, edited by Benjamin Blayney, though with comparatively few changes from Parris’s edition; but which became the Oxford standard text, and is reproduced almost unchanged in most current printings. Parris and Blayney sought consistently to remove those elements of the 1611 and subsequent editions that they believed were due to the vagaries of printers, while incorporating most of the revised readings of the Cambridge editions of 1629 and 1638, and each also introducing a few improved readings of their own.
They undertook the mammoth task of standardizing the wide variation in punctuation and spelling of the original, making many thousands of minor changes to the text. In addition, Blayney and Parris thoroughly revised and greatly extended the italicization of “supplied” words not found in the original languages by cross-checking against the presumed source texts. Blayney seems to have worked from the 1550 Stephanus edition of the Textus Receptus, rather than the later editions of Theodore Beza that the translators of the 1611 New Testament had favoured; accordingly the current Oxford standard text alters around a dozen italicizations where Beza and Stephanus differ. Like the 1611 edition, the 1769 Oxford edition included the Apocrypha, although Blayney tended to remove cross-references to the Books of the Apocrypha from the margins of their Old and New Testaments wherever these had been provided by the original translators. It also includes both prefaces from the 1611 edition. Altogether, the standardization of spelling and punctuation caused Blayney’s 1769 text to differ from the 1611 text in around 24,000 places.
The 1611 and 1769 texts of the first three verses from I Corinthians 13 are given below.
[1611] 1. Though I speake with the tongues of men & of Angels, and haue not charity, I am become as sounding brasse or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I haue the gift of prophesie, and vnderstand all mysteries and all knowledge: and though I haue all faith, so that I could remooue mountaines, and haue no charitie, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestowe all my goods to feede the poore, and though I giue my body to bee burned, and haue not charitie, it profiteth me nothing.
[1769] 1. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
There are a number of superficial edits in these three verses: 11 changes of spelling, 16 changes of typesetting (including the changed conventions for the use of u and v), three changes of punctuation, and one variant text—where “not charity” is substituted for “no charity” in verse two, in the belief that the original reading was a misprint.
Most people who use the KJV use the 1769 revision. The 1611 version is unreadable for most modern readers. Once I understood the changes and corrections that had been made in the 1769 revision, I could no longer say with a straight face that the KJV was inerrant and infallible. I came to the same conclusion about ALL English translations of the Bible. It is impossible to conclude that the KJV or any other Bible translation is without error. Since the original manuscripts no longer exist, the same can be said about the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. This is the position taken by virtually all non-Evangelical Bible scholars. One can still hold on to the Bible being inspired by God, but inerrancy and infallibility cannot be rationally sustained. The data is overwhelming: both manuscripts and translations have scores of errors, mistakes, and contradictions. Dr. Bart Ehrman says there are over 40,000 differences in the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. Granted, most of these differences are minor, but when you believe the Bible is inerrant, it only takes one error to bring inerrancy tumbling down.
Baptist, as all Evangelical apologists do, likely has explanations for every error, mistake, and contradiction in the Bible. That’s why I don’t get into long, drawn-out debates over Bible errancy and fallibility. Evangelicals always have answers, but are they good answers? Keep in mind, for Evangelicals, the data don’t come first. Before they even read the text, Evangelicals are guided by several presuppositions: the Bible is God’s word; the Bible is inerrant; the Bible is infallible. When confronted with obvious errors, Evangelicals must, according to their presuppositions, find ways to make the text fit in the inerrant/infallible box.
As a pastor, I had a 1,000-plus-page book that addressed all the alleged errors and contradictions in the Bible. When I came across verses that seemed contradictory, I would consult this book. Most of the time, I was satisfied with the explanation, but other times I found the book’s explanations weak, incoherent, or absurd. In these instances, I put aside intellectual inquiry and appealed to faith. I told myself, “The Bible is the perfect Word of God.” Any apparent error or mistake was due to my lack of understanding, and, in time, God would make things clear to me. And if he didn’t, I would still trust him, believing the Bible was without error.
After I left the ministry twenty years ago, I began investigating the central claims of Christianity, including the claim that the Bible is inerrant and infallible. I concluded that these claims could not be rationally, intellectually sustained. I found Dr. Bart Ehrman’s books on the nature and history of the Biblical text to be helpful in this regard. Bishop John Shelby Spong was another author I found helpful. When people want to debate me on Bible inerrancy or infallibility, the first thing I do is ask them if they have read Ehrman’s books. If not, I usually say, “Read a couple of his books, and then we will talk.”
If someone is unwilling to read Dr. Ehrman’s books, I encourage them to watch the videos produced by Bible scholar, Dr. Dan McClellan. I watch Dan’s videos almost every day, always learning something new. I wish I had been exposed to men such as Bart and Dan in my younger years as an Evangelical preacher. I suspect I would have caused a lot less harm to the people I pastored.
I appreciate Baptist’s questions. I hope I have adequately answered them.
Saved by Reason,
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Every year or two, I ask readers to submit questions they want me to answer. That time has arrived once again. Any question. Any subject. Please leave your questions in the comment section or send them to me via email. I will try to answer them in the order received.
I look forward to reading and answering your questions.
Charles asked:
Did your former congregations and Christian friends completely ostracize you after you deconverted?
The short answer is yes. However, the ostracization began before I deconverted. The last Sunday in November 2008 marks the day when I finally admitted I was no longer a Christian and stopped attending church. Before that, I still professed faith in Jesus, albeit a questioning, doubting faith. I started blogging in 2006. As I publicly worked through my questions and doubts, my colleagues in the ministry and former congregants took notice, voicing their concerns over my leftward slide into liberalism and unbelief. Some of these people broke with me, saying they could no longer support a man who held heretical beliefs. In their minds I was backslidden, or, God forbid, a false Christian; someone who never knew Jesus as his Lord and Savior. Most of my friends and acquaintances still considered me a friend or colleague, but they distanced themselves from me, praying I would repent, but ready to chuck me in the trash bin if I did not.
After publicly declaring I was no longer a Christian, I sent out a letter titled Dear Family, Friends, and Former Parishioners to several hundred people. I knew that there were a lot of rumors circulating about me, so I thought, through this letter, I would let everyone know where I was in life. Surely, my family, friends, and former parishioners would want to know, right? I wanted, most of all, for them to “understand.” I quickly learned no one was interested in understanding anything. I received emails, letters, and phone calls from people outraged over my decision to deconvert. Nobody said, “I understand” or “I wish you well.” Instead, I was told I was mentally ill (by my best friend) and/or demon-possessed ( by a woman I’ve known for 50 years). Others told me I was out of the will of God, backslidden, or other terms Evangelicals use to describe people who don’t play by the rules or believe the right things. All of them, to the person, immediately cut me off. Some of my preacher friends preached sermons about me, using me as a cautionary tale of what happens when someone rejects the one true Evangelical faith. Sixteen years later, not one friend remains. My partner, Polly, and I have had to completely start over, building friendships with people who have likeminded beliefs.
I don’t blame people for breaking fellowship with me. I came to understand that my faith-based relationships were conditioned on fidelity to certain beliefs and practices. Once I rejected these beliefs, the bond that held us together was broken. What surprised me was how ugly and nasty people were towards me — decidedly unChristian. They could have told me they were disappointed without burning our relationships to the ground. Sadly, Evangelicals are well-known for how badly they treat people who leave the in group. Only one person — the woman I had known for 50 years — ever apologized for the way they treated me. Everyone else, stood by their hateful, judgmental, disrespectful words, poignant reminders of the rot that is at the core of Evangelical Christianity.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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I attended Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan from 1976-1979. Midwestern is a diehard Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) institution. Established in 1954, Midwestern requires its professors to rigidly hold to IFB/Evangelical beliefs. Not doing so leads to firing for professors and expulsion for students. No one was permitted to deviate from the “faith once delivered to the saints” — as interpreted by Chancellor Tom Malone and the college’s administration.
These presuppositions guided every professor’s teaching:
The Bible is the very words of God.
The Bible is inspired — breathed out by God.
The Bible is inerrant — without error.
The Bible is infallible — true in all that it says,
The Bible is meant, with few exceptions, to be read and interpreted literally.
The Holy Spirit teaches us what particular verses of the Bible mean.
The Bible has no errors, mistakes, or contractions.
The Bible is internally consistent (univocality).
Further, Midwestern had particular beliefs about soteriology, eschatology, ecclesiology, and pneumatology. Only the King James Bible was used in the classroom, and only Erasmus’ text was used in Greek class. Hebrew was not taught at Midwestern. Opposing viewpoints were rarely brought up, other than to tell students, “We don’t believe that here.” Not one class was spent addressing Calvinism or any other eschatological system except dispensationalism, premillennialism, and pretribulationalism. Indoctrination, not knowledge, was always the goal.
My college education was rudimentary, at best. My real education came in my study, as I spent 20,000 hours reading and studying the Bible. I quickly learned that my professors had misled me. I suspect many of them didn’t know any better, having been raised in similar IFB surroundings as I.
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.
How do Evangelicals read and interpret the Bible? By Bible, I mean the sixty-six books of the Protestant Christian Bible. Before Evangelicals read one syllable of the Bible, they agree to the following presuppositions:
The Bible is the very words of God.
The Bible is inspired — breathed out by God.
The Bible is inerrant — without error.
The Bible is infallible — true in all that it says,
The Bible is meant, with few exceptions, to be read and interpreted literally.
The Holy Spirit teaches us what particular verses of the Bible mean.
The Bible has no errors, mistakes, or contractions.
The Bible is internally consistent (univocality).
All of the presuppositions above are faith claims. Either you believe them, or you don’t. Of course, these claims are little more than special pleading. Evangelicals don’t read any other text or book this way except the Bible. Imagine taking this same approach with an auto repair manual or a biology textbook.
Books are meant to provide us with knowledge. We read because we want to know. When Evangelicals read the Bible, they want knowledge too, but that knowledge is conditioned by the claims made above. As a result, this leads to wild, rationally indefensible interpretations of the Bible and demands for conformity of belief.
I have no doubt some of my Evangelical critics will object to this post, saying that the “natural man understands not the things of God” or unbelievers, lacking the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, cannot rightly read, interpret, or understand the Bible. In their minds, the moment I deconverted, God did a Men in Black-like mind wipe on me, and all the knowledge I had about the Biblical text was gone. This, of course, is absurd.
Anyone can understand the Bible if they are willing to read it and use widely available tools to interpret the text properly. Contrary to what Evangelicals say, the Bible is NOT so simple that a child can understand it. The Bible is a complex text written in several languages by numerous authors over many centuries. An inability to read the underlying Hebrew and Greek manuscripts hinders the ability to determine what the Bible actually says. There are tools that can be used to ameliorate this problem, but even here, Evangelical-produced tools can and do operate from the presuppositions above. Instead of letting the chips fall where they may, these tools dishonestly present the Bible as a unified text, consistent in all that it says. This is patently untrue, as any non-Evangelical Biblical scholar will tell you.
Every reading of the Bible should start with the data. Instead of letting the two creation accounts in Genesis 1-3 speak for themselves, Evangelicals try to make the conflicting accounts “fit.” This is called harmonization. There are lots of such contradictions in the Bible, yet Evangelicals will deny this, coming up with all sorts of novel explanations to turn away claims that the Bible is not infallible and inerrant. The Bible, in Evangelical minds, can’t be errant and fallible. If it is, that means their God, who wrote the Bible, is errant and fallible too.
Faith prevents Evangelicals from seeing the Bible for what it is: a fallible, errant text written by fallible, errant men. Does the Bible have value? Sure. Can the Bible provide wisdom and direction? Yes. Can the Bible lead people to God? Absolutely. These things can be true without the Bible being a supernatural text written by a supernatural God.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Every year or two, I ask readers to submit questions they want me to answer. That time has arrived once again. Any question. Any subject. Please leave your questions in the comment section or send them to me via email. I will try to answer them in the order received.
I look forward to reading and answering your questions.
Cubs Fans asks:
And if it were possible for you to time travel back to the 70’s and 80’s and talk to your younger self what would you say to him?
1. Don’t confuse your self-identity with the church. Far too many pastors allow themselves to be swallowed up by the church, losing their self-identity in the process.
2. Don’t sacrifice your children or spouse for the sake of the church. Trust me, twenty-five years later, the church will have long since forgotten you and your sacrifice will mean little.
3. Choose which battles are worth fighting. Not every hill is worth dying on, and not every challenge to your authority or leadership is worthy of a fight. Remember, the church is not your church. You, along with people who likely have been there for many years, are simply caretakers of the church.
4. Be willing to say, I don’t know. I realize this puts you at great risk of being unemployed (since church members crave certainty) but speaking with certainty when you know there is none is lying and dishonest.
5. Be aware of the traps that can destroy your ministry, especially the big two – money and women (and men). Never touch the money and never allow yourself to be put in a position where moral compromise is possible.
6. Insist that the church pays you well. Don’t be a full-time worker for part-time pay. It is okay to pastor churches that cannot pay you a living wage, but the church must understand that you have an obligation to your family and you must work a job outside the church to properly provide for them.
7. Make sure there is an annual pay review procedure in place. You should not have to beg for a raise. Make sure you have an employment contract where the job requirements, pay level, benefits, pay review period, and termination procedure are clearly laid out. If a church is unwilling to put all of this in writing, what does that tell you?
8. If at all possible, own your own home. Someday you will not be a pastor. Someday you will be old and retired. Then what? Where will you live? Churches can rent out the parsonage and provide you with a housing allowance. Remember, most of the church members are building equity in their homes and you should be able to do the same.
9. Insist that the church pays into a 401(k) that you own. Do not let anyone convince you to opt out of Social Security. It may sound okay now, but when you are old you will regret it. What happens if you are disabled and have not paid into Social Security? You are out of luck, and God isn’t going to pay your mortgage.
10. Make sure that all sacrifice is shared. Remember, it is not your church and it is not you alone who is responsible for saving the church from whatever crisis it faces.
11. Don’t use your wife and children as gophers and fill-ins every time something needs to be done at the church. Insist that church members take ownership of the church and do the work necessary to maintain the church and do what is required to keep the church functioning.
12. Don’t be in a hurry to find a church to pastor. A lot of churches that are looking for pastors don’t deserve one. They have chewed up and spit out the last five preachers before you and, trust me, they will do the same to you. Let them die.
13. If a community already has X number of churches, don’t delude yourself with thinking that if you started a new, exciting church it would be different from all the rest. It won’t. People are people, and churches are pretty much all the same. Don’t flatter yourself.
14. Focus on people that need help. Focus on the least of these. By all means, offer them Jesus, but do not neglect their physical needs. The greatest difference you can make in a person’s life is to help them when they are suffering. Above all, be their friend.
15. Visit regularly the homes of the people you pastor. Get to know them. Allow them to be honest with you and ask you whatever questions they want. Eat their food, take them out to eat, and pay the bill. Don’t smother them, but don’t neglect them either.
16. Don’t get sucked into buildings and programs that the church does not need. Rather than building a fancy new building, complete with a gymnasium, think about maximizing what you have so more money can be given to the poor. If church members want to play basketball or do Pilates, they can go to the Y.
17. Do everything you can to integrate the youth into the church. They should be stakeholders. After all, they are the future of the church. This does not mean that you must become one of them. There is nothing more embarrassing than a pastor who tries to act like a teenager. Grow up and be a good example.
18. Work hard and be honest. Don’t be the kind of preacher that gives all preachers a bad name. Just because you are the pastor of a church doesn’t mean you are entitled to special treatment. Don’t ask for discounts and don’t expect people to favor you just because you pastor X church on Main St.
19. Don’t tell anyone you are a preacher. Don’t self-promote. Don’t insist people call you Reverend or pastor. Be an authentic human being, complete with faults and frailties. Don’t be afraid to admit to the church that you are a failure, that you are no better than anyone else.
20. Don’t let people put you on a pedestal. Trust me, falls off the pedestal are nasty.
21. Above all, understand that life is more, far more, than the ministry. Stop and take time to enjoy life, to enjoy the world you say your God created.
I stand by these words today. If only someone had told me these things when I was a young, on-fire preacher, I would have avoided some of the costly mistakes I made over twenty-five years in the ministry.
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.
