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 pastor Bob Gray, Sr. saying that interracial marriage is wrong.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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 pastor Jack Hyles saying that if women dress immodestly and get raped that they are asking for it. The story told by Hyles is likely a bald-faced lie.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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.
Jordan Webb, an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) missionary to the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia, was convicted of one count of second-degree sexual abuse with persons under the age of 12, a Class B felony; incest, a class D felony; and child endangerment, an aggravated misdemeanor. Webb was sent out as a missionary by Harvest Baptist Church in Fort Dodge, Iowa. The church also operates Harvest Baptist Bible College.
It took a Webster County jury just under two and a half hours late Friday afternoon to convict a former Christian missionary of sexual abuse.
Jordan Dee Andrew Webb, 30, of Fort Dodge, was found guilty of one count of second-degree sexual abuse with persons under the age of 12, a Class B felony; incest, a class D felony; and child endangerment, an aggravated misdemeanor.
“We are pleased with the outcome and that the jury provided justice in this matter,” Assistant Webster County Attorney Bailey Taylor told The Messenger.
Taylor, along with Assistant Webster County Attorney Brad McIntyre, prosecuted the case.
Webb was arrested in April 2022 following an investigation by the Webster County Sheriff’s Office and Webster County Attorney’s Office that was prompted by “some health concerns involving a juvenile,” the WCSO reported at the time.
During the investigation, a search warrant was executed at 1940 225th St. in Webster County, which is owned by Harvest Baptist Church and is used for its Harvest Baptist Bible College.
From 2019 to February 2022, Webb served as a missionary in the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia. According to a now-deleted Facebook page and website for Webb’s “Christ in the Caribbean” missionary work in St. Lucia, Harvest Baptist was the “sending church” for his mission work.
Webb’s alleged victim, who will be known as Jane Doe, was diagnosed with gonorrhea in early April 2022. The Messenger does not identify victims of sexual assault. Just days before Jane Doe was diagnosed, Webb was also diagnosed with gonorrhea, Taylor said during trial. The state alleged that Webb committed a sex act on the victim, infecting her with the STD.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gonorrhea is a “very common” sexually transmitted disease that infects the mucous membranes of the reproductive tract, mouth, throat, eyes and rectum.
Over the course of the three-day trial, the jury heard testimony from a range of witnesses, including Dr. Regina Torson, an expert in child abuse pediatrics with UnityPoint Health — St. Luke’s Child Protection Center in Hiawatha. On Friday afternoon, the jury heard the closing arguments from the parties.
Taylor began her closing argument acknowledging that the state did not have any direct evidence of how the defendant allegedly infected the victim with an STD, but that she believes the sheer volume of circumstantial evidence proves Webb’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Among that circumstantial evidence is the timeline of when Webb was infected with gonorrhea and when the victim would have become infected.
Taylor poked holes through the defense’s suggestions that the infection could have been spread in a non-sexual manner — through using the same towel, or taking a bath together or helping a child clean up after using the toilet.
During Torson’s testimony, she stated that it is possible to contract gonorrhea by non-sexual means, but it is extremely rare.
“It’s possible, but is it reasonable?” Taylor asked the jury in her closing. “If this is so possible, why aren’t we seeing it more? … There is absolutely nothing reasonable about getting gonorrhea from a bathtub. That’s not a thing, because if it was, there’d be a lot more cases of gonorrhea. It wouldn’t be a sexually-transmitted disease, but it is.”
During his closing argument, defense attorney Dean Stowers challenged Torson’s credibility as a witness.
“She is a child abuse advocate,” he said. “She is not a neutral, unattached witness. Let’s get that straight.”
Stowers also emphasized that Torson’s expertise is not in infectious diseases and that she used words like “generally” and “typically” when describing how gonorrhea is spread.
“This case is a walking, talking, living, breathing reasonable doubt,” he said. “Every one of their witnesses is a reasonable doubt.”
In her rebuttal, Taylor again highlighted the amount of circumstantial evidence the state has presented.
“You put those pieces together to come to a conclusion,” she said. “Don’t ignore what happened to this child. Don’t ignore all of the evidence that you have seen.”
Just prior to the jury announcing its verdict, Stowers motioned for a mistrial based on something Taylor had said during her final rebuttal. After a brief conference, District Court Judge Christopher Polking denied the motion.
A sentencing hearing has been scheduled for June 5 at the Webster County Courthouse. Webb is facing a maximum of 32 years in prison if all three counts are ordered to be served consecutively.
On June 9, 2023, Webb was sentenced to up to 25 years in prison for his crimes.
A former Christian missionary has been sentenced to up to 25 years in prison after being convicted of second-degree sexual abuse, incest and child endangerment.
On Friday, District Court Judge Christopher Polking sentenced 31-year-old Jordan Webb, of Fort Dodge, to 25 years for the sex abuse charge, five years for the incest charge and two years for the child endangerment charge. Polking cited the charges stemming from the same offense as part of the reason for ordering the sentences to be served concurrently, or all at the same time.
The sex abuse charge does carry a mandatory minimum of 70 percent of the sentence, or 17.5 years, to be served in prison before Webb can be deemed eligible for parole. He must also successfully complete a sex offender treatment program before he can become eligible for release.
“The state is pleased with the outcome and sentence in this matter,” Assistant Webster County Attorney Bailey Taylor told The Messenger. “We’d like to thank law enforcement, medical professionals involved and the Webster County community’s help to ensure justice in this matter.”
Taylor, along with Assistant Webster County Attorney Brad McIntyre, prosecuted the case.
Webb was convicted by a Webster County jury on April 28. A year before, he was arrested following an investigation by the Webster County Sheriff’s Office and Webster County Attorney’s Office that was prompted by “some health concerns involving a juvenile,” the WCSO reported at the time.
From 2019 to February 2022, Webb served as a missionary in the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia. According to a now-deleted Facebook page and website for Webb’s “Christ in the Caribbean” missionary work in St. Lucia, Harvest Baptist Church in Fort Dodge was the “sending church” for his mission work.
Webb’s alleged victim, who will be known as Jane Doe, was diagnosed with gonorrhea in early April 2022. The Messenger does not identify victims of sexual assault.
Just days before Jane Doe was diagnosed, Webb was also diagnosed with gonorrhea, Taylor said during trial. The state alleged that Webb committed a sex act on the victim, infecting her with the STD.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gonorrhea is a “very common” sexually transmitted disease that infects the mucous membranes of the reproductive tract, mouth, throat, eyes and rectum.
In a motion for a new trial filed last week, Dean Stowers, attorney for Webb, argued that Polking’s decision to admit statements the victim made to a nurse practitioner at the Allen Child Protection Center in Waterloo violated the confrontation clause under the U.S. and Iowa constitutions. Because the victim was not called to testify at trial, Stowers argued, statements she made were hearsay and did not fall under a medical exception to hearsay.
Stowers also argued that the victim’s statements were “fundamentally ambiguous and capable of causing the jury to speculate as to what [the victim] meant.”
In his motion, Stowers also attacked the circumstantial evidence on which the state’s case is based.
“When one looks at the evidence in this case, we have a bunch of speculative inferences and conclusions that would have to be drawn to get to the verdicts we have today,” he wrote. “The weight of the evidence does not support these verdicts.”
On Friday afternoon, following brief oral arguments from the parties, Polking denied the defense’s motion for a new trial and proceeded to the sentencing.
Before Polking handed down the sentence, he gave Webb an opportunity to speak on his own behalf.
“I would just like to say that I still maintain that I did not do this,” Webb said.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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.
In October 2020, Sean Higgins, a youth pastor and music director at Harbor Baptist Church in Hainesport, New Jersey, and a teacher at Harbor Baptist Academy (located in the church), was accused of posing as a teen girl and persuading 13 boys on social media to send him nude pictures and videos of them masturbating. Harbor Baptist is an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregation, pastored by Pat Higgins. The church was started by Higgins’ father. Sean Higgins may be related to Pastor Higgins, but I could not verify this information.
A Burlington County teacher and youth pastor has been indicted for coaxing underage boys on social media to send him nude pictures and videos, then using that material to blackmail his victims into performing sexual acts on themselves for his enjoyment, authorities said.
A grand jury indicted Sean Higgins, 31, of Palmyra on 75 total counts that included charges of aggravated sexual assault, criminal sexual contact, cyber harassment, child endangerment, and obscenity to a minor, they said.
Thirteen of the counts were first-degree charges, according to Burlington County Prosecutor LaChia L. Bradshaw.
Higgins is accused of committing these crimes in 2020 while serving as the youth pastor and music leader at Harbor Baptist Church in Hainesport, and serving as a teacher at the Harbor Baptist Academy, a private K-12 school that is housed in the same facility.
The indictment includes 13 victims, ranging in age from 12 to17, who resided in Alabama, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Tennessee, Bradshaw said.
….
The investigation revealed that Higgins would adopt the persona of a teenage girl and utilize Snapchat and Instagram to begin a conversation with a juvenile male, introducing himself as Julie Miller. After establishing a rapport, he would suggest that they trade photos. Higgins would then send pictures of an unidentified female teenager, the prosecutor said.
In return, Higgins would often receive nude photos that the victims took of themselves. Immediately upon receiving those images, he would take a screenshot of the victim’s friends list that was visible on the forward-facing social media platform. Higgins would send that screenshot back to the victim and threaten to send the nude photos he had just received to the list of the victim’s friends unless the victim did exactly what Higgins demanded, Bradshaw said.
In most of the cases that were investigated, Higgins then demanded that his victims go into the bathroom at their residence and place the phone on the floor, or at an angle looking up, and would instruct the victims to masturbate or perform sexual acts on themselves. Higgins would record what was transpiring.
According to the videos made by Higgins that were obtained during the investigation, victims would often beg Higgins to be allowed to stop engaging in sexual conduct, but Higgins would demand that they complete his instructions, or face the consequences of having the recordings he was making of the incident be sent to their list of friends.
….
The investigation began after a youth in Berks County, Pa., contacted Snapchat and reported that he sent nude photos of himself to someone he believed to be an unknown female. The unknown female, who in actuality was Higgins, had threatened to expose his nude photographs after they exchanged pictures. An underage male in Alabama also reported his communications with Higgins to law enforcement authorities.
In January 2023, Higgins pleaded guilty to four counts of endangering the welfare of children.
A former youth pastor has admitted he tricked boys on social media into sending him nude pictures, then used the photos to blackmail the youths into performing sex acts on camera.
Sean Higgins, 32, of Palmyra faces a 27-year prison term under a plea agreement, said the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office.
An investigation found Higgins would pose as a teenage girl, Julie Miller, to begin conversations with boys on Snapchat and Instagram, the prosecutor’s office alleged in a statement.
Higgins would suggest they trade photos and would send a picture of an unidentified teenaged girl. The boys often responded by sending nude photos of themselves, the statement said.
Higgins then would threaten to send the boys’ photos to people on their friends lists “unless the victim did exactly what Higgins demanded.”
In most of the cases that were investigated, Higgins ordered the boys to perform sex acts on camera.
“Higgins would record what was transpiring,” the prosecutor’s office said.
Videos made by Higgins showed victims often begged to be allowed to stop engaging in sexual conduct, the prosecutor’s office said.
But, it said, Higgins would tell the boys to follow instructions “or face the consequences of having the recordings he was making of the incident be sent to their list of friends.”
The offenses did not include physical contact with the victims.
An investigation began after a victim in Berks County, Pennsylvania, contacted Snapchat. A boy in Alabama also reported his experience to law enforcement authorities.
“Multiple state and local agencies assisted in confirming the identities of additional victims,” the statement said.
Higgins allegedly committed the crimes in 2020 while serving as the youth pastor and music leader at Harbor Baptist Church in Hainesport. He also taught at Harbor Baptist Academy, a private K-12 school in the same facility.
The crimes to which he admitted guilt did not involve members of the Hainesport church or students at the school, the statement said.
Higgins pleaded guilty Tuesday to four counts of endangering the welfare of children, the prosecutor’s office said.
Today, Higgins was sentenced to 25 years in prison for his crimes.
A youth pastor at a New Jersey church who previously pleaded guilty to blackmailing four underage boys into performing sex acts online was sentenced Monday to 25 years in state prison, officials said.
Sean Higgins, 32, of Palmyra in Burlington County, pleaded guilty in January to four counts of endangering the welfare of children, but he was not charged with having physical contact with his victims, and none of the charges involved members of his church’s congregation or students at a school where he worked, according to a statement from the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office.
Higgins committed the crimes in 2020 while serving as the youth pastor and music leader at Harbor Baptist Church in Hainesport, and he also worked as a teacher at the Harbor Baptist Academy, a private K-12 school that is housed in the same facility, the office said.
The investigation began in 2020 after a youth in Berks County, Pennsylvania, contacted Snapchat and reported that he sent nude photos of himself to someone he believed to be an unknown female, detectives said. The unknown female, who in actuality was Higgins, had threatened to expose the youth’s nude photographs after they exchanged pictures.
An investigation revealed that Higgins would adopt the persona of a teenage girl and utilize Snapchat and Instagram to begin a conversation with a boy, introducing himself as Julie Miller, authorities said. After establishing a rapport, he would suggest that they trade photos. Higgins would then send pictures of an unidentified female teenager.
In return, Higgins would often receive nude photos that the victims took of themselves, investigators said. Immediately upon receiving those images, he would take a screenshot of the victim’s friends list that was visible on the forward-facing social media platform. Higgins would send that screenshot back to the victim and threaten to send the nude photos he had just received to the victim’s friends list unless the victim did exactly what Higgins demanded.
In most of the cases that were investigated, Higgins then demanded that his victims go into the bathroom at their residence and place the phone on the floor, or at an angle looking up, and would instruct the victims to perform sexual acts on themselves, the office said. Higgins allegedly would record what was happening.
Higgins has been held in the Burlington County Jail in Mount Holly since he was arrested at his home in October 2020, officials said.
“The crimes committed by this defendant are among the cruelest, most depraved ever prosecuted by this office,” Burlington County Prosecutor LaChia L. Bradshaw said in a statement. “Some of these victims contemplated suicide to get out from under the extreme anguish that accompanied the defendant’s debauched, unrelenting demands. I cannot emphasize strongly enough how important it is for parents to routinely discuss with their children the dangers that lurk in cyberspace.”
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Evangelicalism teaches the followers of Jesus that they are to live lives devoted to the teachings of the Bible. What teachings believers are expected to follow varies from church to church, pastor to pastor, and congregant to congregant. Whatever standard Evangelicals follow, they are expected to practice Biblical separation. They are expected to separate from sin, the “world,” and false teaching.
2 Corinthians 6:14-17 says:
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.
I John 2:15-16 adds:
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
Note that John says that if someone loves the “world” the love of God is not in him. In other words, he is not a Christian. According to 1 Thessalonians 5:22, Christians are to “abstain from all appearance of evil.” If a behavior even looks sinful, believers are supposed to abstain from it. Christians are supposed to avoid circumstances where their actions might cause unbelievers and other Christians to think they are sinning.
Peter reminds the followers of Christ in 1 Peter 1:14-16 that they are to be holy, just as their Father in Heaven is holy:
As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance:But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation;Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.
It’s clear, at least to me, that the Bible teaches that Christians are to practice separation; that they are to be in the world, but not of the world. My wife, Polly, and I took separation seriously. We viewed the “world” as people, things, and institutions that were aligned against Christians, the church, and the teachings of the Bible. That’s why we homeschooled our children or sent them to a Christian school. We didn’t want them tainted by the world. There were times, of course, when contact with the world was unavoidable, but we tried our best to avoid getting cooties on us and our children. The church became a safe enclave for us to hide from the “world,” and we only left when absolutely necessary.
Christians are also commanded to separate from churches, preachers, and parachurch organizations that promote heresy or heterodoxy. Early in the ministry, I was quite strict in this regard — not fellowshipping with anyone outside of the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement — but as I got older, I was willing to fellowship with preachers and churches that held different beliefs from me, as long as we were in agreement on the essentials. From 1995-2002, I pastored Our Father’s House in West Unity, Ohio. We had an advertising slogan we used that said: The church where the only label that matters is Christian. Churches and pastors I wouldn’t associate with in 1980, I was happy to fellowship with in 2000. My tent became larger the longer I was in the ministry.
Many Evangelical churches and pastors practice what is called “secondary separation.” Got Questions describes “secondary separation” this way:
The Bible teaches personal separation—the commitment of an individual believer to maintain a godly standard of behavior, separating from those who are living an ungodly lifestyle. The Bible also teaches ecclesiastical separation—the commitment of a church to maintain the purity of the gospel message, cutting ties with those who have compromised their doctrine. Secondary separation takes things a step further: not only does one separate from an individual or group due to sin or heresy, but one also separates from anyone who does not likewise separate from those individuals or groups.
This is how secondary separation works:
Peter Ruckman is a thrice-divorced, racist IFB pastor who teaches heresy about the nature of the Bible.
I separate from Ruckman.
John R. Rice is Ruckman’s friend and continues to support and platform him despite his divorces, racism, and heresy.
Secondary separation requires that I separate from Rice and anyone else who refuses to separate themselves from Ruckman.
As non-Evangelical readers might imagine, practicing separation and secondary separation require constant vigilance and judgment. I found it wearying, always forced to be on the lookout for the “world’s” encroachment. I thought, at the time, that if I gave an inch to the world, it would take a mile. Satan wanted nothing more than to destroy my witness, harm my marriage, and corrupt my children. In the late 90s, I was so focused on avoiding the world that I considered moving my family to a Bruderhof — an intentional AnaBaptist community.
Eventually, I came to the conclusion that it was impossible to totally separate oneself from the world; that secondary separation was little more than Phariseeism. For the next decade, I became more and more worldly, even going so far as to watch R-rated movies and listen to secular music. We even went to a drive-in movie theater as a family to watch two sex-filled, violent movies, George of the Jungle and Air Bud. Both Polly and I, and our children, embraced things that would have been “sins” years before. Certainly, we still had standards and we avoided behaviors and practices deemed “worldly,” but we took the starch out of our collars, realizing that separation was just a way for Evangelicals to say to the world and other Christians that we were not only different from them, but better — more holy and sanctified.
Of course, my critics will point to the post as yet more evidence that I was on a slippery slope; that the more worldly I became, the less I loved Jesus. This, of course, is patently untrue. What I had learned is that a lot of the shit that I thought was life and death didn’t really matter; that it wasn’t my place to judge the lives and associations of other Christians; that none of us is perfect. Jesus said, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.” I stopped chucking rocks at not only myself but others.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
By now, regular readers of this blog who follow the Black Collar Crime Series know that Evangelicalism has a Catholic church-sized problem with sexual assault, sexual abuse, and rape. For years, Evangelical churches and pastors pointed fingers at the Great Whore of Babylon — the Roman Catholic Church — condemning its ever-growing sexual abuse scandal, all the while ignoring the increasing number of sex-related scandals in their own ranks. It is clear, at least to me, that Evangelicals have no high moral ground when it comes to sex crimes; that Evangelical pastors, evangelists, missionaries, youth pastors, deacons, elders, Sunday school teachers, Christian school teachers, bus drivers, worship leaders, and choir directors can and do rape, assault, and abuse children, teenagers, and vulnerable adults. Add to this the consensual affairs, cavorting with prostitutes, and being “addicted” to porn, and it seems, despite all the preaching against sexual sin, that so-called men of God are not practicing what they preach.
I am in no way suggesting that a large number of Evangelical pastors are sexual predators. I have no doubt that many pastors are true to their marital vows, don’t prey on children, and generally try to practice what they preach. (Please read Is Clergy Sexual Infidelity Rare?) That said, many Evangelical churches do a poor job of keeping congregants — especially children and teenagers — safe from abuse at the hands of men given the responsibility and authority to lead them. Churches wrongly think that if they do a one-time background check and it comes back clean, they have done their due diligence. However, background checks only show past criminal convictions, and if not done regularly, such checks would not catch convictions after the original background check was performed. Churches should annually run thorough background checks — both state and federal. When interviewing men for open pulpits, churches should call the candidates’ previous churches to see if there were any whispers of sexual misconduct. It is astounding how many churches hire men with checkered pasts, not bothering to check on whether they have left behind at their previous jobs allegations of sexual impropriety or other criminal misconduct.
Evangelical churches are often quite sensitive to how they are viewed in their communities, knowing that rumors about sexual scandals could damage their reputations. This is why, instead of obeying reporting laws and putting the needs of victims first, many churches, when they hear of sexual misconduct, investigate it themselves and try to cover it up. In doing so, churches often violate state sexual abuse reporting laws. Sadly, prosecutors have been hesitant to prosecute pastors and church leaders for not reporting abuse. Imagine how different things might be if a few pastors were sentenced to a year in the county jail for failing to report sexual abuse. I bet that would get their attention, and result in more churches following the law. (Please read How Should Churches Handle Allegations of Abuse?)
Many Evangelical churches are independent or part of loosely affiliated sects such as the Southern Baptist Convention. Since each church governs itself, there is no central authority that handles claims of abuse or disciplines pastors accused of criminal behavior. Every church is its own final authority, and far too many churches have been willing to shove clergy sexual misconduct under the proverbial rug rather than see their pastors criminally prosecuted and victims receive justice. Even worse, victims are often shamed into silence. Jesus forgave us, shouldn’t we forgive others? victims are told. Pastor said this was all a big misunderstanding, and he promises, before God himself, that he will never, ever do anything like this again! Will you forgive him? And by doing this, churches abuse victims all over again and predator pastors are free to continue trolling the church membership (or a new church’s membership) for fresh victims.
The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in America, yet, as of this date, they refuse to establish a centralized database that tracks allegations and prosecutions of pastor/church leader criminal conduct. Southern Baptist leaders say that they must protect pastors from false allegations, and developing a database of accusations would “convict” pastors without the benefit of a trial. While false allegations are always possible, they are actually very, very rare. At the very least, a database of allegations would help when looking for patterns of misconduct. Using the “where there is smoke there is fire” approach, when a pastor has several accusations lodged against him, it is likely that he is up to no good.
An overarching problem in Evangelical congregations is that people are naïve and too trusting. I have posted numerous Black Collar Crime reports detailing congregations who refused to believe that their pastors could ever do such terrible things. Often, they will defend their pastors, accusing me of trying to smear or discredit their churches. After all, I am an atheist, a tool of Satan, so anything I write can’t be trusted. However, the content for the Black Collar Crime Series comes from news and police reports. I only report what can be verified. As a result, offended church members, in time, learned my reports were correct and their pastors were indeed capable of everything from rape to murder to theft. Pastors are not above the fray morally or ethically, and as long as the sheep think they are, predator clergy will continue to prey on and fleece the flock.
Six years ago, I posted an article about Mitch Olson, pastor of Grace Ministry Center in Kimball, Michigan, being accused of sexually assaulting a woman during an anointing ritual. When confronted by church leaders, Olson said his hand must have slipped in the anointing oil. (Please read Black Collar Crime: Evangelical Pastor Mitch Olson Accused of Sexually Assaulting Church Member.) The woman Olson allegedly abused is an adult who had been a member of Grace since sixth grade. When people read stories such as this one — especially readers who were never Evangelicals — they often wonder why the woman just didn’t say NO or fight back. Surely, as a grown woman, she knew that it was wrong for her pastor to be “anointing” her breasts, buttocks, and genitals. Shouldn’t she bear some culpability in what happened? Isn’t this really just a matter of consensual behavior gone awry? (Olson was never charged with a crime, but his victim sued him and won an undisclosed amount of money.) I can hear the defender of sexual predators Dr. David Tee shouting a loud AMEN!
Pastors are, by law, considered authority figures, and as such are held to a high standard of moral and ethical conduct. Because pastors are often intimately involved in the lives of their parishioners — much like doctors, lawyers, and counselors — there is always a danger of people being manipulated and controlled, leading to abusive behavior and sexual misconduct. Pastors often know the dark, deep secrets of their parishioners, and this gives them power over their congregants. Professional lines can quickly become blurred, resulting in criminal misconduct. While pastors can and do have consensual sexual affairs with women in their churches, often these affairs are actually abuses of authority and should be treated as such.
In the case of Mitch Olson and Justine Morden, the victim had spent her formative years in Grace Ministry Church, with Olson as her pastor. Morden deeply respected and trusted Olson. I am sure she never thought that Olson would sexually take advantage of her. Remember, most Evangelicals are taught that their pastor/pastors/elders are their spiritual leaders and guides. Called “men of God”, these divinely chosen pastors are often viewed as the rulers of their churches. Given great power, authority, and control, Evangelical pastors can, with impunity, misuse and abuse their congregations. In some Baptist circles such as the Southern Baptist Convention and the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement, pastors often have absolute control over their churches, acting more like kings and potentates than humble servants.
It should not come as a shock to the reader to learn that, because congregants are often raised in such authoritarian, controlling churches, many of them lose their ability to discern harm or misbehavior. Why, Pastor Bob would never, ever harm me. He loves and cares for my soul and prays for me daily! When congregants lose discernment abilities, it is not hard, then, for a pastor to manipulate church members into doing whatever it is he wants them to do. This is especially the case for women who have spent their lives being taught that God commands them to be submissive to male authority — their fathers when they are young, their husbands when they are married, and their pastors when it comes to spiritual matters. Totally disarmed and subservient to men, women become easy targets for pastors to take advantage of.
It is clear that many sexually abused Evangelical women didn’t “let” their abusers do anything. Thanks to their immersion in cult-like teachings and behaviors, along with misogynistic, patriarchal views of the fairer sex, it is evident that many women are like lambs to the slaughter, easy marks for those out to take advantage of them. As Justine Morden and countless other Evangelical women have learned, just because a man calls himself a pastor doesn’t mean he should be trusted. While scores of predatory clergy are exposed and convicted every year, countless others fly under the radar, using their positions of power and authority to take advantage of trusting, unsuspecting women. Until churches and sects are willing to out these predators and publicly burn them at the stake — so to speak — they will continue to wreak havoc and destruction.
Note
This post is focused on women because the overwhelming majority of Evangelical clergy sexual abuse consists of male pastors abusing female teenagers and women. This does not mean I am ignoring male-on-male abuse or child sexual abuse. Those too are a problem, but for this post alone, I have focused on the question raised in the title.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Been thinking quite a bit this month about why we change beliefs.
So often I release a horrific story of abuse within a church and it seems to have no effect within IFB circles. They simply deny it’s part of a larger problem and move right along until the next case happens, or the next case happens.
No matter how much effort I throw into putting a story together — it can feel like a drop in a bucket when it comes to actually moving any sort of needle.
I’m curious, if you’ve left a toxic church environment you used to blindly submit to, what was the catalyst?
What finally opened your eyes?
I want to be more thoughtful in crafting content to persuade people who legitimately don’t see these issues to open THEIR eyes.
Those of us who are neck-deep in the waters of Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) abuse and scandal often wonder how anyone could still be an IFB church member. We said the same thing about Roman Catholics. Can’t people see the perversion and evil all around them? How can they justify continuing to support these institutions and pastors with their attendance and money?
While some people do exit IFB churches stage left, never to return, most members stay committed to the cause. Some of them will change churches, but hold on to the same core beliefs that fueled the scandals. My wife’s uncle, the late Jim Dennis, (please see The Family Patriarch is Dead: My Life With James Dennis) pastored the Newark Baptist Temple in Newark, Ohio for fifty years. A strident IFB congregation, the Baptist Temple had several major sexual abuse scandals during Dennis’ tenure. In each instance, the scandal was not talked about from the pulpit. Church members were told to trust that their pastor and deacons had everything under control. Polly’s parents attended the Baptist Temple during the time of these scandals. When I asked about what exactly happened — I had a general idea — Mom and Dad told me they didn’t know. And here’s the thing, Jim Dennis was their brother-in-law. He never told them what happened. There should have been a public meeting on these scandals so there were no questions about who did what, where, when, and how, and what the church was doing to make sure that such criminal behavior never happened again. One man went to prison for his crimes, but today? He is faithfully serving Jesus in another IFB church.
Many IFB adherents think that sexual misconduct by pastors, evangelists, missionaries, youth directors, deacons, Sunday school teachers, nursery workers, bus drivers, and janitors, to name a few, is rare. Thus, they use the “few bad apples” argument to justify their continued support of the IFB church movement. Of course, for those of us who regularly report on IFB scandals, we know there are a hell of a lot more rotten apples than eyes-closed believers are willing to admit.
Many IFB adherents believe that their sect/church/pastor has the corner on truth. In fact, they are absolutely certain that their church is the right church; their pastor is a supernaturally called man of God. That is, until their pastor says something they disagree with, then they are ready to leave and find a church that preaches the truth; one that “feeds” them. Such lateral moves are common, with people entering through the front door, and others leaving — often with the pastor’s boot in their ass — through the back door.
When you believe your church and your pastor are the repositories of truth, you are often more willing to justify bad behavior within the church, thinking that “God” will sort everything out. Of course, one thing is for certain, God never sorts anything out. It is up to people of courage and conviction to do what is right, regardless of how it affects the “testimony” of the church. I would rather be known for being the church that swiftly dealt with a child molester than one that covered his crimes up and protected him. The late Jack Hyles, pastor of First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indiana, upon learning of his son David’s serial sexual predation, covered things up and sent him off to pastor an IFB church in Texas. David Hyles continues to minister in some corners of the IFB world. Why? Well, Jesus forgave him, so shouldn’t everyone else do the same? Hyles refuses to own his past criminal behavior, and has not attempted to make restitution to teen girls and adult women he harmed. Hyles has repeatedly stated that God has forgiven him and that’s all that matters.
IFB churches are often multi-generational institutions. When you are born into a church and a belief system, it is hard to walk away, even when you know you should. When your parents, siblings, grandparents, and in-laws attend the same IFB church, it is difficult to move on to another church or stop attending church altogether. I know several atheists who, for the sake of their families, still attend IFB churches. I couldn’t do it, but I do understand why they do.
I was an Evangelical Christian for fifty years. Thirty-two of those years were spent in the IFB church movement. I attended IFB churches as a youth. I was saved, baptized, and called to preach in an IFB church, Trinity Baptist Church in Findlay, Ohio. I attended an IFB college, married an IFB preacher’s daughter, and pastored three IFB churches and two IFB adjacent churches. IFB blood coursed through my veins for much of my life. I was totally committed to IFB beliefs and practices. Yet, here I am today, an unrepentant atheist; a man labeled a heretic, false prophet, and apostate. What happened?
Certainly, the Jack and David Hyles scandals in the 1980s certainly made me wonder about the moral foundation of the IFB church movement, but that wasn’t enough to make me walk away. The constant internecine wars among IFB churches, pastors, and institutions caused me to wonder about the movement too. So much ugliness, hatred, judgmentalism, and finger-pointing. How can we call ourselves followers of the Prince of Peace and act like this?
By the late 80s, I abandoned the IFB moniker and embraced a different form of Baptist Fundamentalism, Sovereign Grace, and Reformed Baptist. While this move delivered me from some of the worst excesses of the IFB church movement, its poison remained to some degree until I pastored my last church in 2003. After leaving the IFB church movement, I pastored a Sovereign Grace Baptist church, a Christian Union church, a non-denominational church, and a Southern Baptist church. All of these churches had IFB tendencies theologically, but less so when it came to social strictures.
Stepping away from the IFB church movement allowed me to question and doubt. Not big questions, at first, but questions, nonetheless. As an IFB pastor, I was the answer man, not the question man. Congregants expected me to be some sort of oracle, a library of divine truth. Thus saith the Lord? Nah, thus saith Bruce what saith the Lord. Most congregants were infrequent students of the Bible. Were they bad Christians? Of course not. They had jobs, families, and homes to tend to. I, on the other hand, could spend hours a day and days each week reading and studying the Bible. I had the leisure time that they did not to devote myself to God, the Bible, and the ministry.
The first crack in my Christian facade came when I started reading books outside of the Evangelical rut; authors considered mainline, progressive, liberal, emerging church, or even secular. With knowledge came more questions and doubts. I determined to follow the path wherever it led. I met truth in the middle of the road, refusing to back up or go around. This journey ultimately led me to conclude that the central claims of Christianity were untrue; that the Bible was not divinely inspired, inerrant, or infallible.
Ultimately, it was the freedom to ask questions, read books from any author, and wander the path of life that led to my deconversion. Come the last Sunday in November, it will be fifteen years since Polly and I walked out the door of the Ney United Methodist Church, never to return.
Over the past decade and a half, I have learned that arguing with devoted IFB believers doesn’t work. They think they are “right” and you are “wrong.” Dr. David Tee continues to rage against me and the readers of this blog. One claim he has made countless times is that unbelievers have nothing to offer to the world; that they don’t know anything about the Bible; that their words should be ignored. While Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, wasn’t IFB, he was part of a sect, the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA), that had IFB tendencies. That’s why he exhibits IFB tendencies in his writing, comments, and emails. No amount of arguing with Tee will change his mind. None. Until he dares to consider that he might be wrong, there’s no hope for him or anyone else who thinks like him, for that matter.
I need to frequently remind myself that most of the people who read this site never leave a comment or send me an email. I do know that my articles about the IFB church movement are frequently accessed, so I am confident that I am either irritating the hell out of a lot of IFB believers, or my words are quietly making a difference. I get enough email from people who left the IFB church movement to know that my writing is reaching people and helping them to see that there are better expressions of faith than IFB churches; that it is even okay to have no faith at all.
Fundamentally, I am a storyteller. The byline for this site says: One Man’s Journey from Eternity to Here. I tell people, I am just one man with a story to tell. Eric is a storyteller too. His videos and interviews have reached countless people, and, if nothing else, say to people who are struggling with their IFB pasts that they are not alone. It is by these testimonies we should justify and judge the success of our work, and not the angry, hateful attacks of self-righteous, arrogant IFB preachers. If these so-called men of God want to have honest, open discussions, I am more than willing to do so. I have nothing to hide. I should warn them, however: talking to me can be dangerous. Several IFB preachers ended up deconverting after lengthy discourse with me; finding that they were not as “right” as they thought they were; that their Fundamentalist Baptist beliefs could not be rationally sustained.
I don’t evangelize. All I know to do is tell my story and let the words fall where they may. Last year, I spoke via Zoom with an Amish-Mennonite group in Pennsylvania. I had a delightful time sharing my “testimony” and answering their honest, sincere questions. The pastor told me later that none of the men became atheists — no surprise, right? — but they were talking among themselves about what I shared with them. Who knows what may come of our interaction with each other? Isn’t that all any of us can do? (And if you would like me to come and speak at your church, I am more than happy to do so.) 🙂
Change comes when open ourselves up to the possibility of being wrong; that possibly, just maybe we might have wrong or distorted beliefs. Make no mistake about it, change is hard. I didn’t deconvert until the age of fifty, and neither did my wife. MY counselor told me years ago that it is rare for someone my age to walk away from their faith; that sunk costs, family, and social connections make it hard for someone like me to blow up their life and walk a different path (and that’s why I don’t criticize people who can’t do so. To quote the old gospel song, “I’ver come too far to turn back now.” But turn back I did, and I couldn’t be happier. I paid a heavy price for doing so — the loss of community still beats down on me — but if I had to do it all over again, I would. I am a better man, husband, father, and neighbor than I was before, and for that I am grateful. (I talk extensively about these things in the posts posted on the Why? page.) Will your life turn out as mine has if you deconvert? We can’t possibly know. I know people who have paid a heavy price for walking away from their tribe’s religion, often being cut off from their families and even their inheritances. Others have been kicked out of their homes or had their cars repossessed. That’s why I tell people to carefully consider the cost before saying out loud you are no longer a believer, that you are an atheist, or even that you are attending a nicer, gentler Christian church or another religion altogether. (Please see Count the Cost Before You Say “I am an Atheist.”)
Eric asked,
If you’ve left a toxic church environment you used to blindly submit to, what was the catalyst? What finally opened your eyes?
Please share your thoughtful answers in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Several years ago, I received numerous emails from an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) man too afraid to use his real name and email address. Here’s what he had to say in three of them:
Email number one
Bruce,
You are filth to it’s core:
You have about 50 brainwashed followers. Not the “thousands” that you claim to have. I have read about 50 percent of the content on your website. I also listened to the interview that you gave to the demon on YouTube (congratulations on your (1) thumbs up . Very Sad!
Which brings me to my topic. It would normally be your favorite…yourself! Look into a mirror and behold your idol: You do not really care about anyone other then yourself. I know deep down you’re thinking…he’s right. You never loved the Lord, or anyone else. As a fat, lazy, alt-left, anti-Christian, bigoted grub you “now” embrace socialism! How convenient. You couldn’t wait to send your wife out to work. How convenient. You can’t work because you are depressed. How convenient. You have (6) children and (11) grandchildren, and now you love the slaughter of the unborn (children)! How convenient. You claim that you need to have, all of the “maltreatment” that you have suffered at the hands of The Church “documented”, because you are now writing a book (I hope that it does better than your first big interview)! How convenient. One would need a good measure of “faith” too believe you! How inconvenient!
You know who should be writing a book. All the folks that trusted and PAID you, because they thought that you were representing The LORD Jesus Christ! They are the real victims…you disgusting fat pig! NOT YOU BRUCE! Not you.
Why don’t you write a blog titled “Why I hate Mohammad”??? I think you (we) know why Brucey! Because you are a COWARD! You pick on our counties weakest citizens! You put my IP address out there publicly? Too what end? Then one of your brainwashed, brain dead, sycophants, puts up a map, of a liberal “church” a 100 miles away! You are such a reckless, foolish putz!
I will pray for your family! Their husband, father and grandfather, is a little girl…in a man’s body!
Get on your knees and beg Jesus Christ for Forgiveness! REPENT! Get Baptized! Join a FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIAN CHURCH! After your conversation (God willing)…beg your family for FORGIVENESS, and for once in your life, get an honest job!
You truly have nothing to lose.
Very Sincerely, A worm who Christ died for.
Email number two
Bruce,
You are a fat, lazy and pathetic COWARD! I been on your Facebook page, which by the way, is a complete failure, much like your YouTube channel. Why no posts about fundamental Islam? Are you afraid Bruce?Surely a big mouth like yourself, must dislike something about a militant form of their religion???
You like picking on people that you KNOW are peaceful Bruce! Because of you, Christian children are mocked in school Bruce! You send your low I.Q. wife out to work, while pretending to have a photography “business”! Why is this “businesses” website stagnant Bruce? You may fool your dumb wife, but most of your poor family knows who and what you are! This no-show job, gives you plenty of time to write your filth about our counties weakest citizens while stuffing your fat face, ALL DAY–BRUCE!
You think that it is funny…smearing the LORD JESUS CHRIST’s HOLY NAME! I have some advice for you Bruce. I know that you hate advice and correction. You have more rules on your anti-Christian, alt-left, fake news blog, then any church does:
Get down on your face, and BEG the LORD, Jesus Christ for forgiveness! REPENT! Get Baptized! Join a Fundamentalist, Christian church! Tell your wife and family that you DESERVE HELL, and so do they (so do I)! Publicly apologize to the thousands of people that you have HURT !
You truly have nothing to lose!
Very Sincerely, A worm who Christ died for!
Email number three
You are a disgrace to your country, family and yourself! I know that you hate too hear it but… you were NEVER, EVER, Saved! Your god is your belly!
You are the most selfish person that I never met! You desperately need to really get Saved! Fall down on your face and beg Jesus Christ for Forgiveness! Repent! Get Baptized! Join a Fundamentalist Christian Church! You are a slob, and have been your entire sad life! Get out of the wagon and help the rest of us pull it!
Give back the money that you stole: pretending to be a “pastor”! I Will be praying for you, but your family, really needs the prayers much more! How can you look your children in the face! You are SATANIC for the misery that you have caused them!
Think about it…you truly have nothing to lose!
Very Sincerely,
Just another day among God-loving, sin-hating assholes for Jesus.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
We live on a small, insignificant rock, surrounded by countless galaxies, stars, and planets. We know very little about what lies beyond the Milky Way, and despite our progress, there is still much we don’t know about Earth and its inhabitants. Yes, we humans continue to push into the unknown, but despite our inquisitiveness, we remain insignificant creatures with itty-bitty brains living on what Carl Sagan famously called a “pale blue dot.”
It’s 2023. We supposedly live in the age of science and technological advancement. Yet, the majority of Americans believe God created the universe and the Bible is the Word of God. Young earth creationism flourishes and Evangelical Christianity dominates the political scene. How enlightened and advanced are we really if the majority of people worship as if their lives depended on a Jewish man named Jesus who died 2,000 years ago? Ponder for a moment Christian theology; the core beliefs that millions of people believe are true. (Please see The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense.) Sunday after Sunday, church houses are filled with people singing praises to a dead man; promising to obey the teachings of a Bronze Age religious text. Pray tell, how enlightened are we really?
According to a 2017 Christianity Today story, there are almost 400,000 Christian churches in the United States. Many of these churches are Fundamentalist, falling broadly under the Evangelical tent. (Please see Are Evangelicals Fundamentalists?) The farther to the right you move, the more shrill the Fundamentalists become. One group you will find on the extreme right of Evangelicalism is the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement. Numbering millions of congregants in thousands of churches, the IFB church movement is fiercely separatist, believing that they preach the One True Faith®, and all other sects are either heretical or heterodox. (Please see What is an IFB Church?)
I grew up in the IFB church movement. I attended an IFB Bible college in the 1970s, pastored several IFB churches, and was deeply invested in IFB doctrine and practice. In 1983, I started an IFB church in the southeast community of Somerset, Ohio. It wasn’t that Somerset needed another church — it didn’t. Somerset had five churches within its village limits, and countless more in surrounding communities. Somerset was, in every way, Christianized, yet Rev. Bruce Gerencser, IFB preacher extraordinaire, believed that Somerset needed one more church — a church that preached the One True Faith®. Ponder, for a moment, the arrogance it took to come to this conclusion. Every time I see a newspaper story about yet another Evangelical church coming to the county I live in, I shake my head and say, “just what we need, another fucking church.” All church planters think “God” is leading them to plant a new church, regardless of how many churches already exist. Church planters convince themselves that they are “special,” and that their churches will be different and unique. And as sure as the sun comes up in the morning, over time their churches become just like every other church in town.
Think of the arrogance and lack of awareness required for an IFB preacher — who takes up a square foot or two on this insignificant planet of ours — to think that his church is “right” and all other churches are wrong; to think that his church is a solitary beacon of light in a world he believes is filled with darkness; to think that virtually everyone outside of that particular church has wrong beliefs, worships the wrong God, and is headed for eternal damnation and Hell unless they see, know, and embrace the “truth.” Truth being, of course, the God-given beliefs of the One True Faith®.
In the grand scheme of things, we are little more than specks of dirt on a pale blue dot. We live and die, and before long are forgotten, a footnote in the history of humankind. What better way to drive away insignificance than to convince yourself that you are special; that God speaks to you and has a divine plan for your life? I planted five churches during my time as an Evangelical pastor. There’s nothing more thrilling than starting a new church. Every Sunday is filled with excitement and anticipation. Over time, you attract people who like you as a person or are drawn to your preaching or personality. As the church grows, you begin to think, “I’m special. God is really using me!” In 1986, the IFB church I was pastoring at the time became the largest non-Catholic church in the county. I proudly advertised, “Perry County’s Fastest Growing Church.” I just knew that I was right and every other church/pastor was wrong. My church was growing, and other nearby IFB churches were not, so I began to think that there was something wrong with them; that maybe there was some sort of defect in their beliefs and practices; that maybe they didn’t work as hard as I did. Isn’t that the American dream? Work hard, and good things will happen. Yet, when I resigned from Somerset Baptist Church in the spring of 1994, the glory days were long over. I had moved on from the IFB church movement, embracing Calvinism and starting a private Christian school. My credo was quality over quantity. Did leaving the IFB church movement make me more ecumenical? Not at first. You see, Calvinism is its own special club. Ironically, most of the Calvinistic Baptist — Reformed Baptist, Sovereign Grace Baptist — preachers I knew were former IFB pastors. Much as I did, these preachers had a Paul-like Damascus Road experience and converted to the One True Faith® — Evangelical Calvinism. What this merry band of predestinarians did was just move one more step to the right. Certain that they finally had found THE “truth,” these preachers of John Calvin’s gospel derided their previous beliefs, doubting that those still in IFB churches were really Christians.
The next time you drive by an IFB church or a Sovereign Grace/Reformed Baptist church, just remember that the pastor of the church and his congregation believe that their church is right and every other church is wrong. And remember most of all the insignificant part they play on planet earth. Oh, they believe otherwise, that God is doing a mighty work in and through them, but the fact remains that they are just another speck of dust on a pale blue dot.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Evangelicals believe the words printed in red in the New Testament were uttered by Jesus himself. Thus, in John 14:13, Jesus says to his followers: whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. Jesus’ unambiguous statement makes it clear that whatsoever Christians prayerfully ask in his name, he will do. Awesome, right? Mark 11:24 records Jesus saying: Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. Jesus’ statement in Mark 11:24 is even more extreme. Whatsoever Christians desire and pray for, if they will really, really, really believe that God will give it to them, Jesus will affirmatively and fully answer their prayers. If only this were true, why I might become a Christian again. I have a lot of things that need fixing in my life. I am more than happy to let Jesus take the wheel! But, alas, the Jews buried the steering wheel with Jesus in an undisclosed location, so I am on my own.
Decades ago, Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) evangelist John R. Rice wrote a book titled, Prayer: Asking and Receiving. Rice, the long-time editor of the Sword of the Lord newspaper, believed that “getting” what you wanted from God was as simple as praying and asking God to deliver. Granted, Rice, and others who followed in his footsteps, had all sorts of explanations for “why” God failed to come through, but these Fundamentalist men of God sincerely believed that getting what they needed in their ministries and personal lives was but a prayer away. Rice believed that the primary hindrance to answered prayer was “sin.” He advocated praying for forgiveness as soon as you become aware that a behavior or action is a sin. “Keep your sin lists short,” Rice said. The Bible says in 1 Thessalonians 5:17: Pray without ceasing. Rice believed that Christians should always be in a spirit of prayer, ever-ready to shoot a prayer up to God. In Asking and Receiving, Rice wrote:
The normal Christian life is a life of regular, daily answer to prayer. In the model prayer, Jesus taught His disciples to pray daily for bread, and expect to get it, and to ask daily for forgiveness, for deliverance from the evil one, and for other needs, and daily to get the answers they sought.
For many years, IFB churches, parachurch ministries, and education institutions grew numerically and financially. In the minds of many IFB Christians, this proved Rice’s contention that prayer was believers asking and God delivering. Today, the vast majority of these churches, ministries, and schools are shells of what they once were. Many of them have closed their doors. What are we to make of their precipitous decline? Did Rice’s prayer formula no longer work? Or, perhaps, it never did work, and answered prayers came from and through human instrumentality, not God.
In the 1980s, I pastored a rapidly growing IFB congregation. Starting with 16 people, in four years the church grew to 200. I thought, at the time, that God had answered my prayers. I pleaded with God to save the lost, stir the saints, and cause Somerset Baptist Church to be a lighthouse in the community. And for five or six years, it seemed God was coming through every time I asked him to do so. Not that I was ever satisfied. I remember Rice saying, “It is not wrong to have a small church — for a while.” I attended numerous IFB preacher’s conferences and Sword of the Lord conferences in the 1970s and 1980s. The theme was always the same: building large churches for the glory of God. I was never, ever happy with the numbers. I took it personally when people skipped church. How dare they miss out on what Bruce — uh, I mean God — was doing at Somerset Baptist. I would learn, over time, that it wasn’t God that “blessed” my ministry, it was me and a handful of dedicated volunteers. One day, I looked behind the vending machine IFB preachers called God, and I noticed it was unplugged. Prayer wasn’t asking and receiving. At best, it was asking, asking, and asking, and then acting accordingly. I found that it was humans, not God, who answered prayers; that I was asking “self” for this or that, and “self” gave me what I asked for.
Rice went to his grave believing: “According to the Bible, a genuine answer to prayer is getting what you ask for.” If he had any doubts, he never uttered them in public. While John 14:13 and Mark 11:24 are clear – that if Christians ask, they will receive – evidence on the ground is clear: God doesn’t answer prayer. Either God can’t answer prayer because he doesn’t exist, or Christians live such sinful lives that their God has turned a deaf ear to their petitions. My money is on the former.
The next time an Evangelical says to you, THE BIBLE SAYS __________, ask him about John 14:13 and Mark 11:24. Does your own version of THE BIBLE SAY __________? Ask him if Jesus meant what he said in these verses. The answer that comes next will likely prove to be long on obfuscation and theological gymnastics and short on, The B-i-b-l-e, yes that’s the book for me. I stand alone on the Word of God, the B-i-b-l-e. BIBLE!
How did your pastors and churches handle verses such as John 14:13 and Mark 11:24? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
