During the 1970s, I attended Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan. It was there that I met my partner, Polly. Started in the 1950s by Dr. Tom Malone, Midwestern was a school known for turning out preachers. Most women attending Midwestern were there to snag themselves a man. My partner was no exception. She believed she was called to be a pastor’s wife. I was studying to be a pastor, so I suppose you could say our divine callings matched and our marriage was made in Heaven — or something like that, anyway. (We celebrated forty-eight of marriage last July.) All we knew for sure was that God called us to build churches and evangelize the lost. Everything we were taught at Midwestern had these two things as their goal. We left Midwestern in 1979 and embarked on a twenty-five-year journey that took us to Evangelical churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Virtually everything we did was in fulfillment of God’s call upon our lives, yet, today, we are no longer Christians and it has been more than nineteen years since we darkened the doors of a church. What happened to us?
I cannot and will not speak for Polly, but I can say, for myself, that the Christian narrative no longer makes sense to me. I wrote about this in a post titled, The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense. Most readers know my story, so I won’t retell it here. New readers are encouraged to read the posts found on the WHY? page for more information about my life as a pastor and my subsequent deconversion. My story has been deconstructed by countless Evangelical zealots determined to invalidate my past. Try as they might, the fact remains that I once was a committed, devoted, sold-out follower of Jesus Christ; a man who hungered and thirsted after righteousness for his name’s sake; a man who believed every word of the Bible was true; a man who preached the Christian gospel to countless people. Them there are the facts, regardless of what my critics might say. I know what I know because I was there when it happened. Who better to know and tell my story than me? That said, I do ponder the question, Why am I Different From the My College Classmates? Some of them have moved beyond the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) training they received at Midwestern, yet they still believe. Sadly, for most of my college classmates, their beliefs have changed very little, if at all, over the years. Many of them still attend or pastor IFB churches. Oh, they might agree with me about the crazy rules at Midwestern, (please see Thou Shalt Not Touch: The Six-Inch Rule) but their core theological beliefs are decidedly Fundamentalist. (Please see Are Evangelicals Fundamentalists?) Why do they still hang on to these beliefs and I don’t?
The easy answer would be to call all of them stupid hillbillies, but that would be a cop-out. Many of my former classmates have wonderful families and ministerial careers. According to the theological and social standards of IFB Christianity, they are, in every way, successful. I have no doubt that many or even most of them are true-blue believers, completely and totally committed to IFB doctrine, thinking, and way of life. Yes, some of them now consider themselves garden-variety Evangelicals, but most of my classmates still believe the fundamentals taught to them by their pastors and their professors at Midwestern.
If I had to pick one reason for why my former classmates still believe, it is because they were taught to never, ever doubt the Bible and its teachings. All of them believe in some form of Biblical inerrancy, so the foundation of their lives is THUS SAITH THE LORD. Insulated from contrary or challenging thoughts, they see no reason to question their beliefs. Souls are lost, Hell is hot, and Jesus is coming soon. They have no time for doubting or questioning their beliefs. When Jesus comes again, they want to be found faithfully serving him, not reading Bart Ehrman’s latest book. For me, however, I reached a place in the late 1980s where I seriously questioned the doctrines I had been taught at Midwestern. I ultimately abandoned them and embraced Evangelical Calvinism. Calvinism allowed me to study theology and read books outside of the IFB rut. While the Calvinists I associated with were still quite Fundamentalist theologically and socially, they valued education and intellectual pursuit. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), the more I studied and read, the more questions and doubts I had. This is why people who knew me well told me that BOOKS were my problem, and what I needed to do is stop reading books and only read the Bible; the King James Bible. Of course, saying this to a book lover is akin to telling a cocaine addict to stop using drugs. I was addicted to intellectual pursuit, and I doggedly followed the path until it led me out of Evangelicalism, out of the Emergent church, out of progressive Christianity, and right on down the slippery slope to agnosticism/atheism and humanism. I ended up where I am today because I couldn’t stop my questions and doubts. I ended up where I am today because Christianity had no satisfactory answers for my questions. Oh, they had “answers” but I found them to be hollow, circular, and, at times, farcical; answers that might placate those within the Evangelical bubble, but unsatisfactory to anyone on the outside looking in.
There are days when I wish I could be like my former college classmates. I see much in their lives I admire. However, I am unwilling to forsake the meat and potatoes of intellectual and scientific inquiry for the pottage of Evangelical Christianity. I have read and studied too much to go back to the garlic and leeks of Egypt. I would rather be known as a Midwestern Baptist College-trained atheist than a coward who couldn’t face doubts and questions head-on. “One” may truly be the loneliest number, but I would rather stand alone for truth than embrace theological dogma. If Midwestern and Dr. Tom Malone taught me anything, it was the importance of standing for truth and principle and being willing to hold to your beliefs and convictions no matter what. So, in that regard, Midwestern played a crucial part in my deconversion from Christianity.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I have battled Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) for most of my adult life. While OCPD and OCD have some similarities, there are differences, namely:
People with OCD have insight, meaning they are aware that their unwanted thoughts are unreasonable. People with OCPD think their way is the “right and best way” and usually feel comfortable with such self-imposed systems of rules.
The thoughts, behaviors and feared consequences common to OCD are typically not relevant to real-life concerns; people with OCPD are fixated with following procedures to manage daily tasks.
Often OCD interferes in several areas in the person’s life including work, social and/or family life. OCPD usually interferes with interpersonal relationships, but makes work functioning more efficient. It is not the job itself that is hurt by OCPD traits, but the relationships with co-workers, or even employers can be strained.
Typically, people with OCPD don’t believe they require treatment. They believe that if everyone else conformed to their strict rules, things would be fine! The threat of losing a job or a relationship due to interpersonal conflict may be the motivator for therapy. This is in contrast to people with OCD who feel tortured by their unwanted thoughts and rituals, and are more aware of the unreasonable demands that the symptoms place on others, often feeling guilty because of this.
Family members of people with OCPD often feel extremely criticized and controlled by people with OCPD. Similar to living with someone with OCD, being ruled under OCPD demands can be very frustrating and upsetting, often leading to conflict. (OCPD Fact Sheet)
I have been considered a perfectionist most of my life, a badge I wore with honor for many years, and one I still wear on occasion. As we age — I am almost sixty-nine — we tend to reflect on our lives and how we got where we are today. Self-reflection and assessment are good, allowing us the opportunity to be honest about the path we have taken and choices we have made in life. (My therapist told me that I am one of the most self aware people she knows. Good? Bad? I don’t know.)
When I first realized twenty-five or so years ago that I had a problem — a BIG problem that was harming my wife and children — the first thing I did was try to figure out how I ended up with OCPD. While my mother had perfectionist tendencies, she was quite comfortable living in the midst of clutter and disarray (but not uncleanliness). I concluded that it was my Fundamentalist Baptist upbringing with its literalistic interpretations of the Bible that planted in me the seeds of what would one day become OCPD. I spent most of my adult life diligently and relentlessly striving to follow after Jesus and keep ALL of his commandments. But try as I might, I still continued to come up short. This, of course, only made me pray more, study more, give more, driving me to allot more and more of my time to God/church/ministry. In doing so, the things that should have mattered the most to me — Polly, our children, my health, and enjoying life — received little attention. Polly was taught at Midwestern Baptist College — the IFB institution both of us attended in the 1970s — that she would have to sacrifice her relationship with me for the sake of the ministry. I was, after all, a divinely called man of God. Needless to say, for way too many years, our lives were consumed by Christianity and the work of the ministry, so much so that we lost all sense of who we really were.
Perhaps someday one or more of my six adult children will write about growing up in a home with a preacher father who had OCPD. The stories are humorous now, but not so much when they were lived out in real-time. My children are well versed in Dad’s rules of conduct. Granted, some of these rules such as “do it right the first time” have served them well in their chosen fields of employment, but their teacher was quite the taskmaster, and I am certain there were better ways for them to learn these rules.
My oldest sons “fondly” remember helping me center the church pulpit, right down to one-sixteenth of an inch. Did it matter if the pulpit was slightly off-center? For most people — of course not; but, for me it did. I felt the same way about how I prepared my sermons, folded the bulletins, cleaned the church, and did countless other day-to-day responsibilities. When I took on secular jobs, employers loved me because I was a no-nonsense, time-to-lean, time-to-clean manager. (Is it any surprise that most of my adult jobs were either pastoring churches or management jobs?)
People walking into my study were greeted by a perfectly cleaned and ordered office. The desktop was neat, and the drawers were organized, with everything having a place. My bookshelves were perfectly ordered from tallest to smallest book and then by subject. Dress-wise, I wore white one-hundred-percent pinpoint cotton shirts and black wingtip shoes. My suits were well-kept and matched whatever tie I was wearing. My appearance mattered to me (and still does). Congregants knew they would never find me shopping at the local Walmart wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants.
What I have mentioned above sounds fine, right? Surely, I should have a right to order my life any way I want to. And that would be true, except for the fact that I live in a world populated by other people; people who are not like me; people who are happy with clutter, disarray, and OMG even dirt! It is in their personal relationships that people with OCPD have problems, and, in some instances, they can drive away the very people who love them.
For the first twenty-five years of marriage, my relationship with Polly was defined by Fundamentalist Baptist/patriarchal thinking. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that such beliefs play well in the minds of people with OCPD. I had high expectations not only for myself, but for my partner and children too. We all, of course, miserably failed, but all that did was increase the pressures to conform to silly (and at times harmful) behavioral expectations. It didn’t help matters that I was an outgoing decision-maker married to a passive, always-conform-to-the-wishes-of-others, woman. While we put on quite a dog and pony show for most of our time in the ministry, behind the scenes things were not as they outwardly appeared to be.
In the early 2000s, I began to see how harmful my behavior was when it came to my familial relationships (and to a lesser degree my relationship with congregants). While it would be another decade before I would finally seek out professional secular counseling, I did begin to make changes in my life. These changes caused a new set of conflicts due to the fact that everyone was used to me being the boss, with everything being according to MY plan. While Polly and the kids loved their new-found freedom, there were times where they were quite content to let me be the stern patriarch. As with all lasting change, it takes time to undo deeply-seated behaviors.
I am not so naive as to believe that I am “cured” of OCPD. I am not. My counselor is adept at pointing out to me when certain behaviors of mine move toward what she calls my OCD tendencies. I have had to be repeatedly schooled in the difference between good/bad and different. For example, young people today generally discipline their children differently from their baby-boomer parents. Read enough memes on Facebook and you will conclude that young parents have lost their minds when it comes to raising their children. What that brat needs is an ass-whipping, boomer grandparents say. What I continue to learn is that people who act differently from me, look different from me, or have beliefs different from mine are not necessarily wrong/bad. Most often, what they really are is “different.” Learning to be at peace with differences has gone a long way in muting my OCPD thinking.
Both Polly and I agree that the last twenty or so years of married life have been great. One of the reasons for this has been my willingness to realize where my OCPD is causing harm and making the necessary changes to end the harm. The first thing I learned is that everyone is entitled to his or her own space. I have every right to order my office, drawers, and space as I want them to be. I no longer apologize for having OCPD. All that I ask of others is that when they invade my space, they respect my wishes. And that works for others too. I have to respect the personal boundaries of Polly, our six children, and our sixteen awesome grandchildren. This is why I do not meddle in their lives. I give advice when asked, but outside of that, they are free to live as they please. Do my children and adult grandchildren make decisions I disagree with, decisions that leave me mumbling and cussing? Yep, but it’s their lives, not mine, and I love them regardless of the choices they make.
The second thing I learned is that it is important for Polly and me to have times of distance from each other. It is okay for each of us to do things without the other. We don’t have to like all the same things. Understanding this has allowed Polly’s life to blossom in ways I could never have imagined. If you had known Polly in 1999 and then met the 2022 version, why you would wonder if she is possessed. From going back to college and graduating, to becoming an outspoken manager at work, Polly is an awesome example of what someone can become once the chains of Fundamentalism and patriarchal thinking have been broken.
The third thing I learned is that my OCPD can be productively channeled, with my personal relationships surviving afterward. Polly loves it when she comes home and finds that I have emptied the cupboards, cleaned them, and replaced everything neatly and in order. The joke in the family is that people want me to come clean their house for them, but they can’t stand being around me when I do. 🤣 In the communal spaces where our lives collide, Polly and I have had to learn to give and take. I have learned that it is okay to leave the newspaper on the floor until tomorrow, and Polly has learned, come holidays, that I am going to clean every inch of the house, including under the refrigerator — with her help, of course. She will never understand why my underwear drawer needs to be straightened up for company, and she will likely never understand the need to clean under the stove/refrigerator four times a year. But, because she loves me, she smiles and says, what do you need me to do next?
My chronic health problems and unrelenting pain have forced me to let go of some of my obsessions. I can’t, so I don’t. I don’t find this giving in/giving up easy to deal with, but I have come to see that life is too short for me to not enjoy the moment even if everything is not in perfect order. That said, I still have OCPD moments, and I suspect I always will. Several years ago, I had a dentist appointment. The dental assistant had me take a seat in the exam room. When she returned, she found me tapping the valance on the blind with my cane. I told her, I have been sitting here for years with that crooked valance driving me crazy. There, it’s fixed! She laughed. Later, she returned and told me that all the valances in the other rooms were off-center too. She said, I never noticed that until you pointed it out to me. I likely will always have an eye for when something is crooked, especially wall hangings and sign lettering. Why can’t the doctor’s office get notices straight when they tape them on the wall, right? Dammit, how hard is it to do the job right the first time! Sigh. You see, OCPD never completely goes away, but it can be managed and controlled, allowing me, for the most part, to have satisfying and happy relationships with the people I love.
Do you have OCPD or OCD tendencies? Please share your experiences in the comment section. I am especially interested in hearing about how Fundamentalist Christianity affected your behavior.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I recently received the following question from a Christian man named Joel. My response follows.
It’s not true that you can’t be saved.
Is this a general statement or a specific one? Is Joel claiming universal salvation? How does Joel KNOW that it is NOT true that I can’t be saved?” It is clear from the Bible that apostates and reprobates cannot be saved. They have crossed a line of no return.
Further the book of Hebrews says:
For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened and have tasted the heavenly gift and have shared in the Holy Spiritand have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come and then have fallen away, since they are crucifying again the Son of God to their own harm and are holding him up to contempt. (Hebrews 6:4-6)
Let’s take a careful look at these verses.
The text says “For it is impossible.” What is “impossible?” To restore a Christian who has fallen away.
Have I been enlightened, tasted the Heavenly gift, shared in the Holy Spirit, tasted the good word of God, and power of the age to come? Yes.
It is clear from Scripture and personal testimony that I was a follower or Jesus. Yet, I am an atheist today. Why is that? The above text answers this question by saying that I have fallen away and crucified Jesus afresh, making a mockery of him.
Hebrews 10:26-30 says:
For if we willfully persist in sin after having received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sinsbut a fearful prospect of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has violated the law of Moses dies without mercy “on the testimony of two or three witnesses.”How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by those who have spurned the Son of God, profaned the blood of the covenant by which they were sanctified, and outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know the one who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrews 10:26-30)
Have I spurned Jesus, profaned the blood of the covenant, and outraged the Spirit? Have I received the knowledge of the truth? Yes, and this means there no longer remains a sacrifice for my sins. No blood atonement, no salvation.
It is clear from Hebrews 6 and 10, that I am unsaved and can never be saved again.
That verse that says about how it’s impossible for a person who was once enlightened, etc. and who has seen the powers of the come…
You haven’t seen the powers of the age to come, but a somewhat watered-down version of Christianity, where it was taught in IFB seminary that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not for today. That wasn’t your fault that you were taught that.
Sigh. Joel wrongly believes that I haven’t seen “the powers of the age of come.” Based on this faulty conclusion, Joel believes I was taught a watered-down version of Christianity. He provides no evidence for his claim. Joel just asserts his claim and expects everyone to just trust him.
I suspect Joel is either a pentecostal or charismatic Christian. What Joel does not know is that I was a non-cessationist; someone who believes the gifts of the Holy Spirit are in force and operational today. A cessationist is someone who believes the gifts of the spirit are not for today. That said, much of what goes on in Pentecostal/Charismatic churches is downright heretical. No “miracle” is out of bounds, so healing evangelists report crazy claims.
I attended Midwestern Baptist College in the mid-70s to train for the ministry. According to Joel, Midwestern taught me a watered-down version of Christianity. Maybe, but Joel is unaware of the fact that I left the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement in the 80s — 20 years before I deconverted. There goes another straw man up in smoke. I just love setting fire to straw men. 🙂
I think you just got discouraged and went AWOL for awhile.
I left Christianity almost 20 years ago. So much for going “AWOL for awhile.” In other words. my atheism is temporary, and to quote Arnold Schwarzenegger, “I’ll be back.” This is patently untrue. My atheism is not a temporary viewpoint. I will, however, get saved for $5,000,000. 🙂
Joel thinks the reason I left Christianity is because I “got discouraged.” I am sure discouragement played a part, but the primary reason I left Christianity is this: the central claims of Christianity are false. They no longer make any sense to me.
You were seeing a very lukewarm version of “church”.
How could Joel possibly know this? Did he attend any of the churches I pastored? No. Did he know I left the IFB church movement 20 years before I deconverted? No. Had Joel gone to any of the churches I pastored, he would have learned “lukewarm” was not in my vocabulary. I was a committed Christian who took seriously the teachings of the Bible and tried to put my faith into practice every day of the week,
Joel, you might want to peruse the posts on the WHY? page.
Recently, I received the following email from a Christian man named William:
NOW THAT YOU HAVE RENOUNCED CHRISTIANITY DO YOU FEEL YOU OWE IT TO THE CHRISTIANS YOU PREACHED TO AN EXPLANATION – HENCE, YOUR BLOG? AND WHEN YOU WERE A PREACHER DID YOU “TRULY” BELIEVE(AT LEAST AT THAT POINT IN TIME) WHAT YOU WERE TELLING THEM? OR WERE THERE DOUBTS FORMING EVEN THEN?
Evidently, William must think I am deaf since he SHOUTED his message to me. That aside, Williams asked three questions:
DO YOU FEEL YOU OWE IT TO THE CHRISTIANS YOU PREACHED TO AN EXPLANATION?
WHEN YOU WERE A PREACHER DID YOU “TRULY” BELIEVE WHAT YOU WERE TELLING THEM?
WERE THERE DOUBTS FORMING EVEN THEN?
No, I don’t owe former congregants an explanation for my loss of faith. Why should I, any more than anyone else, owe people an explanation for the major decisions I have made in my life? I owe my partner, Polly, an explanation, and maybe my children, grandchildren, siblings, and close friends, but everyone else? I don’t owe them anything. That said, I have spent the past eighteen years explaining why I left Christianity. Anyone, including former church members, can easily read about and understand my story. Millions of words have been sacrificed in my attempt to share my past and present experiences. A quick search of this site will answer every question a person might have.
William asks if I “truly” believed what I was preaching to church members? Of course, I did. There’s nothing in my life that suggests I was anything other than a committed follower of Jesus. You will search in vain for someone who knew me at the time that would suggest otherwise. While I am now an atheist, at the time I believed the core tenets of Christianity and did my best to follow the teachings of the Bible.
Doubts? We all have them. Did I ever have doubts as an Evangelical preacher? Sure. The difference between then and now is how I handle doubts. As a Christian, I trusted God to make all things known to me at his appointed time, according to his perfect will for my life. Instead of trusting God, I now trust my intellect and the academic skills I have developed over the years. When doubts crop up, I try to resolve them. And when I can’t, I say a prayer to Loki and put the matter away until I have better knowledge and understanding. Doubt is very much a part of the human experience.
I hope I adequately answered William’s questions.
Saved by Reason,
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
If is carrying a lot of weight in this question. How would one go about “proving” Christianity? So far, every argument I have heard from believers allegedly “proving” Christianity comes up short. Quite frankly, many of the arguments Christian apologists use are fantastical or absurd. These arguments may work with people already predisposed to Christianity, but they won’t usually work atheists. Apologists continue to churn out books defending Christianity, but these books aren’t for unbelievers. The target audience is believers, and the goal is to provide them with “evidence” to reinforce and justify their claims, along with settling their nerves after having an atheist eviscerate their beliefs. (Many atheists are former Christians themselves. They know the Bible inside and out.)
Is it possible that someone could convince me that Christianity is true? I would like to say yes, wanting to keep an open mind, but knowing all I do about Christianity, the Bible, and the various arguments used by apologists to defend the faith, I can’t imagine any Christian being able to convince me that I should return to Christianity. If you are a Christian, you are welcome to try to convert me, but I hope you can handle rejection and disappointment; that’s likely what you will experience by trying to put another notch on your gospel six-shooter.
Will this post stop apologists from trying to evangelize me? Of course not. As sure as the sun comes up in the morning, a believer will leave a comment on this site or send me an email detailing their supercalifragilisticexpialidocious argument they are sure will lead me to the light. Sorry, but I was a Christian for most of my life. I spent five decades in the “light.” I was a pastor for twenty-five years. I am confident that I have heard every possible argument for the existence of the Christian deity and the alleged veracity of Christianity. What could you possibly say that I haven’t heard countless times before? Feel free to advance whatever argument you think will reach me, but understand that there is little doubt about whether I have heard it (or used it myself) before.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
After reading my first response to him, the young Evangelical pastor sent me two follow up questions:
What interested you with Bart Ehrman?
Did something happen in your life that made you question your former reality?
I have long praised Dr. Bart Ehrman for playing an instrumental part in my loss of faith. Remember, I was an Evangelical Christian; a devout follower of Jesus and preacher of the gospel for most of my life. As an Evangelical, I believed the Bible was literally the Words of God, inerrant and infallible. Imagine spending the first fifty years of your life believing an ancient religious text is different from all other books ever written; a supernatural text written by a supernatural God. I believed the Bible was true in all that it said, containing instruction in life and godliness.
I was an Evangelical pastor for twenty-five years, pastoring Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB), Sovereign Grace Baptist, Christian Union, Southern Baptist, and non-Denominational congregations. What was the one thing these denominations and churches had in common? To the person they believed the Bible was inspired, inerrant, and infallible — both at the textual and translation level. Not faithful; not reliable; the very words of the thrice holy God.
Dr. Ehrman (and others such as John Spong) educated me about the nature and history of the Bible. I came to the conclusion that Bible inerrancy and infallibility cannot be rationally sustained. All one needs to do is show one mistake or contradiction in the Bible, and inerrancy collapses. If Ehrman’s books taught me anything, they taught me that my pastors and professors lied to me about the Bible, as did countless Evangelical authors I read whose books/sermons claimed the Bible was a supernatural text in both its formation and message. These beliefs about the Bible were shattered by Ehrman’s thoughtful dismantling of inerrancy and infallibility. Once the Bible lost its divine authority over me, I was free to question, challenge, and, if warranted, repudiate its teachings.
I spent most of life adult life with my nose in the Bible. All told, I spent over 20,000 hours reading and studying the Bible. I preached 4,000 sermons. I breathed in and breathed out the Word of God, so imagine my shock to learn that the Bible was not what I claimed it was; that it was a book that contained wisdom and moral teachings here and there, but it was a collated religious text written by mostly unknown authors, who made thousands of textual errors (most of which are insignificant, but some, if believed, contradict the beliefs and moral values held by most Evangelicals).
Knowing these things forced me to reexamine my sincerely-held theological beliefs. Over time, I reinvestigated the central claims of Christianity and found them to be false. I recognize that Evangelical apologists can and do have explanations and justifications for alleged errors and contradictions in the Bible. Christians have had 2,000 years to explain and justify what I call their “Book of Claims.” Not evidence, claims. As I was going through the deconversion process, I found the arguments of apologists for the claims of the Bible to be intellectually lacking, if not outright dishonest. Worse, apologists are forced to defend God’s violent, immoral behavior because to do otherwise causes people to question and doubt the Bible. Can’t have that, right?
Let me be clear, I read dozens of books during the deconversion process, written by mainline Christians, atheists, agnostics, and humanists. I didn’t need to read Evangelical authors, because I had already done so. Sadly, some Evangelical apologists think that if I just read or listened to the pablum of men such as Lee Strobel, C.S. Lewis, Josh McDowell, or William Lane Craig, to name a few, I would, in short order, return to Christianity. This is laughable, to say the least. I have read these authors and others, so there’s no reason for me to re-read their books. Worse are Evangelicals who claim that I am an atheist because I read too many books; that I should stop reading books and only read the Bible — preferably the King James Version.
Granted, millions of Christians don’t believe the Bible is inerrant and infallible, but they still worship Jesus. I have dinner once a month with three friends of mine: a retired United Church of Christ pastor, a former Lutheran pastor, and a Buddhist. The concept of inerrancy is foreign to them. Errors and contradictions in the Bible don’t faze them as they do Evangelical Christians. Thus, learning that the Bible was not what I claimed it was caused the collapse of my house of faith. How could it be otherwise?
Let me conclude this post by answering this young pastor’s second question: Did something happen in your life that made you question your former reality?
The short answer to this question is “no,” but I want to address the motive behind asking this question. I have been blogging since 2007. I have repeatedly answered questions about why I deconverted. The Why? page contains numerous posts detailing how and why I left Christianity. If I make one thing clear it is this: I divorced Jesus for primarily intellectual reasons. I didn’t deconvert because the church hurt me or I had bad experiences. Was I ever hurt or did I ever have bad experiences? Sure, as all of us do, but these things had little to do with my loss of faith.
When this young pastor and other Evangelicals ask me this question, he is really asking me, “What is the REAL reason I left the ministry and deconverted?” Unable to wrap their minds around my story and the stated reasons for deconversion, Evangelicals wonder if there is some sort of secret reason for me being an atheist today. Let me be clear, I am an atheist because I no longer believe the central claims of Christianity. Simply put, Christianity no longer makes any sense to me. I find the Bible’s supernatural claims to be irrational and absurd. (Please see The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense.)
It is true that emotions played a part in my deconversion, as they do in all decisions I make, but I can’t point to one hurt or emotional experience that provided grounds for walking away from everything I held dear. That said, my experiences with Evangelicals post-Jesus have largely been negative, causing more than a little emotional hurt. Evangelicals routinely lie about me, distort my story, threaten me with judgment and Hell, and go out of their way to discredit me. Worse, they threaten me with violence, and even murder. These lovers of Jesus attack my partner and our six children. Preachers preach sermons about me and use me as a cautionary tale, an illustration of what happens when you no longer believe the Bible is true. While these experiences are not sufficient to justify my deconversion, they are enough for me to conclude that Evangelicalism is morally bankrupt. Why would I EVER want to become a Christian again?
The aforementioned pastor concluded his email with the following: I pray that this conversation can go in the right direction of the Lord’s will.
What, exactly, is the “right direction of the Lord’s will?” This suggests that there is some sort of agenda, other than knowledge and understanding. My only agenda is to openly and honestly answer his questions. It is up to this pastor to declare his motivations. I am more than happy to answer whatever good faith questions he might have, but if there is some sort of ulterior motive lurking in the shadows, I can quickly become an arsonist.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Recently, a young Evangelical pastor emailed me and asked me two questions:
What made you leave the faith?
Why [would] you would leave a faith that you defended for a long time?
I am frequently asked these or similar questions. Usually, I refer people to the WHY? page for answers to their questions, but there’s something about this pastor — maybe it is his age or proximity to where I live — that interests me, so I thought I would attempt to answer his questions.
I was raised in an Evangelical Christian home. From the time I was a child until I was fifty years old, I attended church every time the doors were open. Saved at the age of fifteen and called to preach two weeks later, I was a devoted follower of Jesus Christ. Imperfect, to be sure, the bent of my life was towards holiness (without which no man shall see God).
At the age of nineteen, I moved to Pontiac, Michigan to enroll in classes at Midwestern Baptist College — an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) institution. While at Midwestern, I met Polly, and two years later we married. Polly and I spent the next thirty years faithfully serving Jesus. Whether between churches or pastoring them, our lives revolved around the ministry (for good or ill). If I counted my entrance into the ministry from the first time I preached to when I deconverted, all told I preached for thirty-three years. (Unlike most of my fellow college students, I regularly preached all through school at a drug rehabilitation center in Detroit.)
After leaving Midwestern, I began a ministerial journey that took me to churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. While I entered the ministry as an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist, my path later led to ministry opportunities at Southern Baptist, Christian Union, Sovereign Grace Baptist, and Non-denominational churches. Along the way, we were blessed with six children, including a daughter with Down syndrome.
Fast forward to 2004. I decided that I was done with the ministry. The reasons were many, but not the focus of this post. Suffice it to say, these reasons played an insignificant part in my loss of faith. Polly and I decided that we were at a place in life where we wanted to help a congregation without being its pastor. We spent the next four years visiting churches in Ohio, Arizona, California, Michigan, and Indiana. We cast a wide theological net, but after visiting over one hundred churches, — attending some of them for months — we concluded that the only difference between the churches was the name over their doors. After buying in home here in Ney in 2007, we primarily attended mainline churches — a sign of our increasingly liberal politics.
As my politics and theology evolved, I asked myself what it was I truly believed? What were the non-negotiables of my life? This led to me carefully and comprehensively reexamining my political and theological beliefs — a process that continues to this day. Polly and I spent countless hours talking about our beliefs. I read aloud to Polly passages from books written by men such as Dr. Bart Ehrman. We talked about what it was we really believed about the Bible. These discussions, and my continued investigation of core Christian doctrines, led me to conclude that the central claims of Christianity were false. Teachings that were once dear to me, no longer made sense. (Please see The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense.) On the last Sunday in November, 2008, Polly and I attended church for the last time.
These days, I self-identify as an agnostic atheist. Polly is an agnostic, indifferent, and, at times hostile, to organized religion. Our life experiences were very different — even in the ministry — so it should come as no surprise that what motivated our deconversions might be different. Same zip code, to be sure, but different journeys. I am the intellectual of the family. I spent most of my life reading, studying, and preaching the Bible. My experiences are necessarily different from Polly’s, and that’s why our reasons for leaving Christianity vary.
Let me conclude with answering this pastor’s second question: Why [would] you would leave a faith that you defended for a long time?
I am sure this young preacher struggles to understand why I would leave something I dedicated my life to for so many years. Makes sense, right? Most men or women who leave the ministry do so when they are young or youngish. They enter the ministry and find out it is not what it is cracked up to be (and boy, it’s not!) or they had some sort of crisis of faith, and after a few years they decided the pastorate was not for them.
It is rare for men or women to leave the ministry in their 50s. It happens, but not very often. Why are older people hesitant to leave the ministry? Two things come to mind:
Commitment bias, also known as the escalation of commitment, is the tendency to remain loyal to a previous decision, behavior, or course of action, even when it leads to negative outcomes. This often occurs as a result of a desire for consistency with one’s past words and actions, especially when that commitment was made publicly.
Sunk Cost Fallacy, the phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they have invested heavily in it, even when it is clear that abandonment would be more beneficial.
I struggled with these things too. I had spent my entire life in the church. I had spent most of my adult life pastoring churches. Polly, a Baptist preacher’s daughter, and I had committed ourselves to the work of the ministry, regardless of financial renumeration. Both of us, at one time or another, worked outside of the church to provide for our family. Not one time did we doubt that this was God’s will for us — until we did. How could we throw everything away? For what? Atheism?
Only those who have walked in our shoes can understand and appreciate our emotional struggles with leaving the ministry and our later deconversion. Many a tear was shed before we walked away. We asked ourselves, Are we sure? What if we are wrong? Do we really want to throw in the towel and walk away? Does this mean we wasted our lives in the ministry? Wouldn’t it be better for us to fake it — it’s not hard — for the sake of family and social connections? What would we do if we weren’t in the ministry?
While the struggles in the dark of night were painful and real, I eventually concluded that I had to be honest: I no longer believed the Bible was the Word of God. I no longer believed the central claims of Christianity. This meant I wasn’t a Christian in any meaningful sense of the word. (Some Baptists think I am just backslidden, and I am still a Christian. This is absurd.) Truth mattered more to me than the ministry and our Evangelical way of life. This was true when I was a Christian, and it is true today. I am open to having my beliefs challenged, albeit I haven’t heard a new or persuasive argument for Christianity (or any other religion) in years. Ecclesiastes says that there is nothing new under the sun, and that is especially true when it comes to Christianity. I am confident that no new evidence will be forthcoming; so much so, that I am, when it comes to the Christian deity, an atheist. To paraphrase the book of Daniel, I have weighed Christianity in the balance and found it wanting.
Do I miss the ministry? You bet. I miss preaching, teaching, and ministering to others, but whatever yearning I may have, it cannot overcome my desire to know and live the truth. While there was certainly an emotional component — how could there not be? — to my deconversion, the primary reasons for my loss of faith were intellectual in nature. I desperately looked for a place to stop on the proverbial slippery slope, but I slid all the way to the bottom, and, in the end, I concluded I was no longer a Christian. And seventeen years later, I remain an unbeliever. Labeled an apostate, reprobate, or follower of Satan, I am routinely pilloried by God’s chosen ones, ever present reminders of Evangelicalism’s ugly underbelly. If I had any doubts about the veracity of Christianity, I no longer do, having experienced seventeen years of character assassination, threats of violence, and attacks on my family.
Please leave any questions you might have or email them to me. I will do my best to answer them.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I have been blogging for seventeen years. I have had several blogs over the years. This one has been live since 2014. Titled The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, this blog focuses on my journey from Evangelicalism to atheism, with a lesser focus on sex crimes committed by Evangelical preachers and critiques of Christianity in general.
While this blog has a biographical bent, it is not, strictly speaking, a biography. Over the years, I evolved theologically and changed my beliefs on all sorts of social issues. For example, I entered the ministry as a hardcore, King James-only, Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB). Over time, my beliefs have evolved, so much so that the Bruce Gerencser of 1983 would not recognize the Bruce Gerencser of today.
When new readers frequent this site, they rarely read all of my biographical writing. Brought by a search engine to this site, they might read one, two, four, or even fifty posts, thinking that is sufficient to understand by story and beliefs. It’s not, and this leads readers to reach wrong conclusions about me. For example, countless Christian readers have told me that my problem is that I was raised and schooled in the IFB church movement. Is this claim true? No. I left the IFB church movement in the mid-80s, twenty years before I deconverted. Sadly, pigeon-holing me this way allows critics to dismiss my story out of hand. “No wonder he’s an atheist. He was an IFB preacher.” Lost on my critics is the fact that I only pastored three IFB churches; that I also pastored Sovereign Grace, Christian Union, Southern Baptist, and non-Denominational churches. The last church I pastored was a Southern Baptist congregation in Michigan. One Sunday, a young man who was a member of a church I pastored for eleven years in southeast Ohio came to hear me preach at this Southern Baptist church. Afterward, he told me that my preaching had changed; that I was now preaching a “social gospel.” And to some degree, He was right. My beliefs had changed, a reflection of my deep immersion in Mennonite and progressive Christian theology.
Many readers pick a point on my timeline and judge me accordingly. What they fail to see and understand is that I was no longer at that point, belief-wise; that my theology had changed, as had my understanding of social issues. Today, I am an atheist, secular humanist, liberal, progressive, socialist, and pacifist. Twenty-five-year-old Bruce would have despised sixty-eight-year-old Bruce.
With these thoughts in mind, let me address several false judgments Evangelicals and other Christians make about my life.
First, some critics say that I left the ministry (2005) and Christianity (2008) because I was unhappy as a pastor. This idea is not anywhere in my writing, but taking disparate stories and putting them together, critics often conclude that I was unhappy was a pastor. This claim is patently untrue. I was generally happy as a pastor. I loved preaching and teaching the Bible and helping those in need. Did I battle with depression as a pastor? Sure, but that doesn’t mean I was unhappy. My depression — as it is today — was driven by perfectionist tendencies, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD), and a Type A personality. When I couldn’t meet impossible expectations put on me by church members and myself, depression ensued. This is true to this day, though years of therapy have helped me see myself in a different light. I still find myself “driven” to perform, but one thing serious health problems have done is make it impossible for me to meet my lofty self-imposed standard.
Second, some critics think I deconverted because of how poorly churches paid me over the years. This assertion reveals that they really haven’t read much of my biographical writing. Had they done their homework, they would have learned that I would have pastored churches for free; that I was bivocational on and off during the twenty-five years I spent in the ministry. I was never a part-time pastor. Instead, I often pastored full-time while working outside the church. As a result, I worked long hours, often six or seven days a week. If there is one thing I would never do again, it is giving the ministry priority in my life. Both Polly and I devoted ourselves to every church I pastored, regardless of the time and effort it took. We felt, at the time, that this was God’s calling for us. In college, Polly was reminded by professors that she would have to accept playing second fiddle in Bruce’s ministerial orchestra. The same went for our children. The church always came first. It took me twenty years to change my ways.
Third, some critics claim that I deconverted because the “church” hurt me. When asked for evidence for their claim, none is provided. How, then, do they know the church hurt me? Supposedly, they can read the “hurt” in my writing or by looking into the eyes of a photograph of me. I have not once suggested that “hurt” was a reason I deconverted. This claim is an assumption made without evidence for the truth of it.
Have I ever been “hurt” by church members? Sure, but never to the degree that I wanted to leave Christianity. Most of the hurt came after I deconverted; when lifelong friends and colleagues in the ministry turned on me after I left Christianity. From nasty emails and letters to sermons especially about me, I quickly learned that fidelity to certain theological beliefs was the glue that held our relationships together. Once this fidelity evaporated, I was branded an apostate; a tool of Satan; a false prophet; an enemy of the one true faith.
Okay, Bruce, why DID you leave Christianity? I deconverted because Christianity no longer made sense to me. I came to believe that the central claims of Christianity were false — especially its supernatural claims. I no longer believe the Bible is inerrant and infallible. I no longer believe that Jesus was in any way supernatural. Jesus was an apocalyptic Jewish preacher who lived and died — end of discussion. I concluded that I couldn’t believe these things and still be a Christian. Unlike many Christians, I was unwilling to close my eyes to errors and contradictions in the Bible and the harm caused by its teachings. Once I started treating the Bible as I did other books, everything changed. Sure, I could have faked it as many Christians do, but I’m not one to lie about what I believe.
I hope this clears up the misunderstandings readers have about my story. If you still have questions, please ask them in the comment section. If you have not read the posts on the Why? page, I encourage you to do so. Still have questions? Email me and I will try to answer them.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Recently, a reader sent me several thoughtful questions that I would like to answer in this post:
Dear Bruce,
I admire how you bravely stood up by writing that letter to make the points you made. Years later, after the firestorm, do you still think writing it was the best way to let everyone know about your deconversion? Any regrets over the firestorm?
Also, I wonder if any old friends who are evangelicals remained friends with you afterward?
I wonder all this because I am unsure about whether I should come out publicly or not. Our personalities are quite different, but I value your perspective.
My partner, Polly, and I, along with our three youngest children — then ages 18, 16, and 14 — attended church for the last time on the last Sunday in November 2008. We had been attending the Ney United Methodist Church on Sundays, though occasionally we would visit other churches. For months prior, Polly and I had been talking about our experiences as Evangelical Christians. Both of us had spent our entire lives in Evangelical churches. After marrying in 1978, we spent twenty-five years pastoring Evangelical churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Our last pastorate (2003) was a Southern Baptist church in Clare, Michigan. We spent the next five years visiting over one hundred churches (Please see But Our Church is DIFFERENT!) in five states looking for a place to call home. Instead, we became increasingly disillusioned by what we saw, heard, and experienced, in both Evangelical and mainline churches.
During these five years, we spent countless hours talking about our experiences and beliefs. By the time we reached 2008, Polly and I had serious doubts about the Bible and the bedrock beliefs we held dear. Both of us feared where the path we were on would lead, but we couldn’t stop. Indeed, we were on the slippery slopes our pastors warned us about — the downward slope that led to unbelief.
I’m not sure that either of us thought our last Sunday at Ney United Methodist was the end of the road for us, but after we came home from church, with tears in my eyes, I said to Polly, “I’m done. I can’t do this anymore.” Polly replied, “I’m done too.” Discussions, of course, about the Bible, religion, and church, in general, continued for some time. We weren’t atheists, but we weren’t Christians either. Our identities were so wrapped up in the ministry as pastor and pastor’s wife, we were uncertain about what the future held for us — including whether God was going to punish us or strike us dead for walking away from Christianity.
Rumors had been swirling among Evangelical friends, colleagues in the ministry, and former church members for some time. To put an end to all the gossip, I decided to write an open letter, and send it out to family, friends, and former parishioners. Sent out to a hundred or so people, here’s what I wrote:
Dear Family, Friends, and Former Parishioners,
I have come to a place in life where I can no longer put off writing this letter. I have dreaded this day because I know what is likely to follow after certain people receive it. I have decided I can’t control how others react to this letter, so it is far more important to clear the air and make sure everyone knows the facts about Bruce Gerencser.
I won’t bore you with a long, drawn-out history of my life. I am sure each of you has an opinion about how I have lived my life and the decisions I have made. I also have an opinion about how I have lived my life and the decisions I made. I am my own worst critic.
Religion, in particular Baptist, Evangelical, and Fundamentalist religion, has been the essence of my life from my youth up. My being is so intertwined with religion that the two are quite inseparable. My life has been shaped and molded by religion, and religion touches virtually every fiber of my being.
I spent most of my adult life pastoring churches, preaching, and being involved in religious work to some degree or another. I pastored thousands of people over the years, preached thousands of sermons, and participated in and led thousands of worship services.
To say that the church was my life would be an understatement. But, as I have come to see, the church was actually my mistress, and my adulterous affair with her was at the expense of my wife, children, and my own self-worth. (Please see It’s Time to Tell the Truth: I Had an Affair.)
Today, I am publicly announcing that the affair is over. My wife and children have known this for a long time, but now everyone will know.
The church robbed me of so much of my life, and I have no intention of allowing her to have one more moment of my time. Life is too short. I am dying. We all are. I don’t want to waste what is left of my life chasing after things I now think are vain and empty.
I have always been known as a reader, a student of the Bible. I have read thousands of books in my lifetime. The knowledge gained from my reading and studies has led me to some conclusions about religion, particularly the Fundamentalist, Evangelical religion that played such a prominent part in my life.
I can no longer wholeheartedly embrace the doctrines of Evangelical, Fundamentalist Christianity. Particularly, I do not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, nor do I accept as true the common Evangelical belief of the inspiration of Scripture.
Coming to this conclusion has forced me to reevaluate many of the doctrines I have held as true over these many years. I have concluded that I have been misinformed, poorly taught, and sometimes lied to. As a result, I can no longer accept as true many of the doctrines I once believed.
I point the finger of blame at no one. I sincerely believed and taught the things that I did, and many of the men who taught me were honorable teachers. Likewise, I don’t blame those who have influenced me over the years, nor do I blame the authors of the many books I have read. Simply, it is what it is.
I have no time to invest in the blame game. I am where I am today for many reasons, and I must embrace where I am and move forward.
In moving forward, I have stopped attending church. I have not attended a church service since November of 2008. I have no interest or desire to attend any church regularly. This does not mean I will never attend a church service again, but it does mean, for NOW, I have no intention of attending church.
I pastored for the last time in 2003. Almost six years have passed by. I have no intentions of ever pastoring again. When people ask me about this, I tell them I am retired. With the health problems that I have, it is quite easy to make an excuse for not pastoring, but the fact is I don’t want to pastor.
People continue to ask me, “What do you believe?” Rather than inquiring about how my life is, the quality of that life, etc., they reduce my life to what I believe. Life becomes nothing more than a set of religious constructs. A good life becomes believing the right things.
I can tell you this . . . I believe God is . . . and that is the sum of my confession of faith.
A precursor to my religious views changing was a seismic shift in my political views. My political views were so entangled with my Fundamentalist beliefs that when my political views began to shift, my beliefs began to unravel.
I can better describe my political and social views than I can my religious ones. I am a committed progressive, liberal Democrat, with the emphasis being on the progressive and liberal. My evolving views on women, abortion, homosexuality, war, socialism, social justice, and the environment have led me to the progressive, liberal viewpoint.
I know some of you are sure to ask, what does your wife think of all of this? Quite surprisingly, she is in agreement with me on many of these things. Not all of them, but close enough that I can still see her standing here. Polly is no theologian. She is not trained in theology as I am. (She loves to read fiction.) Nevertheless, I was able to get her to read Bart Ehrman’s book Misquoting Jesus and several others. She found the books to be quite an eye-opener.
Polly is free to be whomever and whatever she wishes. If she wants to start attending the local Fundamentalist Baptist church, she is free to do so and even has my blessing. But, for now, she doesn’t. She may never believe as I do, but in my new way of thinking, that is okay. I really don’t care what others think. Are you happy? Are you at peace? Are you living a good, productive life? Do you enjoy life? Answering in the affirmative to these questions is good enough for me.
I have six children, three of whom are out on their own. For many years, I was the spiritual patriarch of the family. Everyone looked to me for answers. I feel somewhat burdened over my children. I feel as if I have left them out on their own with no protection. But, I know they have good minds and can think and reason for themselves. Whatever they decide about God, religion, politics, or American League baseball is fine with me.
All I ask of my wife and children is that they allow me the freedom to be myself, that they allow me to journey on in peace and love. Of course, I still love a rousing discussion about religion, the Bible, politics, etc. I want my family to know that they can talk to me about these things, and anything else for that matter, any time they wish.
Opinions are welcome. Debate is good. All done? Let’s go to the tavern and have a round on me. Life is about the journey, not the destination, and I want my wife and children to be a part of my journey, and I want to be a part of theirs.
One of the reasons for writing this letter is to put an end to the rumors and gossip about me. Did you know Bruce is/or is not_____________? Did you know Bruce believes____________? Did you know Bruce is a universalist, agnostic, atheist, liberal ___________?
For you who have been friends or former parishioners, I apologize to you if my changing beliefs have unsettled you or has caused you to question your own faith. That was never my intent.
The question is this: what now?
Family and friends are not sure what to do with me.
I am still Bruce. I am still married. I am still your father, father-in-law, grandfather, brother, uncle, nephew, cousin, and son-in-law. I would expect you to love me as I am and treat me with respect.
Here is what I don’t want from you:
Attempts to show me the error of my way. Fact is, I have studied the Bible and read far more books than many of you. So what do you really think you are going to show me that will be so powerful and unknown that it will cause me to return to the religion and politics of my past?
Constant reminders that you are praying for me. Please don’t think of me as unkind, but I don’t care that you are praying for me. I find no comfort, solace, or strength from your prayers. So be my friend if you can, pray if you must, but leave your prayers in the closet. As long as God gets your prayer message, that will be sufficient.
Please don’t send me books, tracts, or magazines. You are wasting your time and money.
Invitations to attend your church. The answer is NO. Please don’t ask. I used to attend church for the sake of family, but no longer. It is hypocritical for me to perform a religious act of worship just for the sake of family. I know how to find a church if I am so inclined: after all, I have visited more than 125 churches since 2002. (Please see But Our Church is DIFFERENT!)
Offers of a church to pastor. It is not the lack of a church to pastor that has led me to where I am. If I would lie about what I believe, I could be pastoring again in a matter of weeks. I am not interested in ever pastoring a church again.
Threats about judgment and Hell. I don’t believe in either, so your threats have no impact on me.
Phone calls. If you are my friend, you know I don’t like talking on the phone. I have no interest in having a phone discussion about my religious or political views.
Here is what I do want from you: I want you to unconditionally love me where I am and how I am.
That’s it.
Now I realize some (many) of you won’t be able to do that. My friendship or familial relationship with you is cemented with the glue of Evangelical orthodoxy. Remove the Bible, God, and fidelity to a certain set of beliefs, and there is no basis for a continued relationship.
I understand that. I want you to know I have appreciated and enjoyed our friendship over the years. I understand that you cannot be my friend anymore. I even understand you may have to denounce me publicly and warn others to stay away from me for fear of me contaminating them with my heresy. Do what you must. We had some wonderful times together, and I will always remember those good times.
You are free from me if that is your wish.
I shall continue to journey on. I can’t stop. I must not stop.
Thank you for reading my letter.
Bruce
— end of letter
After this letter was received, the response of Evangelical family members, fellow preachers, and former church members was immediate. Letters. Emails. Books. Personal visits. Worse, the gossip didn’t stop. Now people were wondering if I was under the influence and control of Satan or whether I was even a Christian. Several pastor friends said I was mentally ill or that I was destroying my family. Not one person tried to understand where I was coming from. All they seemed to care about was that I left the cult.
Now to the questions.
Years later, after the firestorm, do you still think writing it was the best way to let everyone know about your deconversion?
I still think that writing the letter above was the best way to let everyone know that I was no longer a Christian. I genuinely thought that if I was just honest and open with people about where I was in life, everyone would understand. I was, of course, naive. I grossly underestimated how people would respond to the letter. Former church members, in particular, had a hard time reconciling my unbelief with the sermons they heard me preach and the part I played in leading them to salvation. If I could lose my faith, what about them? Several members told me that they found my deconversion so troubling that they could no longer be friends with me or even talk to me. (Please see Dear Greg, A Letter to a Former Parishioner: Dear Wendy, Dear Terry — Part One, and Dear Terry — Part Two.) Former colleagues in the ministry were far more hostile towards me. Their words cut me to the quick. These were the same men I preached for, prayed with, counseled and supported when they were going through tough times, and fellowshipped with, yet now I was a pariah, a man worthy or ridicule and judgment. (Please see Dear Friend.)
Any regrets over the firestorm?
I regret the pain I caused people who couldn’t reconcile my deconversion with what they knew about me. They knew me as a devout, committed follower of Jesus; a man who gave his all to the work of the ministry. “How was it possible that I was no longer a Christian?” they wondered. Of course, over the years, as I have shared on this blog more and more about my life as a pastor, and the contradictions between my aspirations and reality, their high regard for me lessened. And that’s fine. As a pastor, I was a fallible, frail man, prone to the same struggles others had. As I spoke about my decades-long struggle with depression, people wondered if I was fit to be a pastor. It took me losing my faith for people to see me as I was. Do I regret this? No, but I do wish I had received love, kindness, and understanding instead of being treated like their enemy.
Are any old friends who are evangelicals remained friends with you afterward?
All of my former colleagues in the ministry distanced themselves from me. It’s been years since I heard from any of them. I suppose this was to be expected. The glue that held our relationships together was fidelity to the Bible and Evangelical doctrine.
Former church members largely went on with their lives. I will run into a few of them at the grocery or doctor’s office. We share pleasantries, talk about our children and grandchildren, and part with a handshake and a smile. Two former congregants remained friends with us, but one of them has since died from COVID, and the other, a man I have known for almost sixty years, and I are not as close as we used to be. He texted me recently about getting together for lunch. I’m not sure whether I want to do this.
The email writer wonders whether she should come out publicly about her loss of faith. She is wise to carefully ponder doing so. Once a person publicly declares their atheism or agnosticism, they can no longer control the narrative. And as I learned, you can set your world on fire by doing so.
The Bible gives some pretty good advice about counting the cost in Luke 14:28-30:
For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish.
Who starts a building project without first counting the cost? The key phrase here is counting the cost. Every choice we make has a consequence. I think a loose definition of Newton’s Third Law of Motion applies here: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Foolish is the person who does not consider the consequences of saying for the first time to family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, I AM AN ATHEIST.
When I left Christianity and the ministry in 2008, my wife came along with me. Polly was a few steps behind, but close enough that we could hold hands. We spent many hours reading books and having long discussions about the past, the Bible, and Christianity in general. Dr. Bart Ehrman was nightly pillow talk for many months. When we finally came to the place where we said to one another “We are no longer Christians,” we knew that telling our family, friends, and acquaintances would cause a huge uproar. What should we do?
Polly decided to take the quiet approach, keeping her thoughts to herself. When asked, she would answer and try to explain, but if people didn’t ask, she felt no obligation to out herself. She still operates by that principle. There are people she works with who likely think she still goes to church on Sunday and is a fine Christian woman. Several years ago, a woman Polly had worked with for 20 years asked her if she was going to church on Easter. Polly replied, no. Her co-worker then asked, So do you go to church? Polly replied, No. And that was that. I am sure the gossip grapevine was buzzing. Did you know Polly doesn’t go to church? Why, her husband was a pastor! And they don’t go to church? Never mind that the woman asking the questions hadn’t been to church in over a decade. She stays home, watches “Christian” TV, and sends money to the TV preachers she likes.
I took the nuclear approach. I wrote an open letter to my friends, family, and former parishioners.
….
If I had to do it all over again, would I do it the same way? Would I write THE letter? Probably. My experiences have given me knowledge that is helpful to people who contact me about their own doubts about Christianity. I am often asked, what should I do? Should I tell my spouse? Should I tell my family, friends, or coworkers?
My standard advice is this: Count the cost. Weigh carefully the consequences. Once you utter or write the words I AM AN ATHEIST, you are no longer in control of what happens next. Are you willing to lose your friends, destroy your marriage, or lose your job? Only you can decide what cost you are willing to pay.
I know there is this notion that “Dammit, I should be able to freely declare what I am,” and I agree with the sentiment. We should be able to freely be who and what we are. If we lived on a deserted island, I suppose we could do so. However, we are surrounded by people. People we love. People we want and need in our life. Because of this, it behooves (shout out to the KJV) us to tread carefully.
I hope some of you will find this post helpful. My deepest desire is to help you on your journey. I am hoping that my walking before you can be of help to you as you decide how best to deal with and embrace your loss of faith.
This blog is here to remind those struggling with leaving Christianity or who have already left Christianity, YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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I had been wondering about this question and since you touched on it in this blog I wanted to ask, and it is about your wife’s stand on Christianity in general and her standing today for herself.
You mention that she walked away from church when you did. So my questions are:
Has she turned towards atheism as well? If she did, was it at the same time as you or later on?
If she did turn away from Christianity, how much of an influence were you with her denying her faith in Christ?
If she has become an atheist, doesn’t it seem odd that two completely committed Christians in the same family like this would just walk away and become atheists? I can see one, but I think the odds of two would be very high. I’m thinking this only because of the depth of commitments people make to their Christian faith. Walk away from church? Yes. But both turn to atheism?
These questions are only being asked if she has become an atheist.
Also, where do your kids stand with Christianity at this point?
Typically, I don’t answer questions about what my partner and children believe about God/Jesus/Christianity/Atheism. This blog is simply one man with a story to tell — and that’s me. Where the lives of my family intersect with telling my story, I am comfortable writing about them. However, when it comes to what they specifically believe and how they live out those beliefs, I leave it to Polly and our children to tell their own stories. (The same applies to our older grandchildren.) And the same goes for me too when they are asked about or confronted over something I have said or written. My family has been accosted at work, college, and while shopping by Christian zealots demanding that they answer for something I have written on this blog or for the local newspaper. Typically, my family tells such people that they don’t answer for me, and the best way to get their questions answered is to contact me directly.
That said, I would like to answer Bob’s questions briefly.
Yes, Polly and I walked away from Christianity together. This should come as no surprise since Polly and I have been doing virtually everything together for the past forty-eight years. We not only love one another, we also really like each other, 98.9 percent of the time, anyway (inside joke).
We have been married for more than forty-six years. I can count on two hands the days we have been apart. While each of us has hobbies and the like that the other isn’t interested in, for the most part, we have shared interests. Polly is my best friend. Why would I want to spend time with anyone else? Our marriage certainly isn’t perfect. Stick around for a fight and you’ll think we really don’t like each other. 🙂 However, disagreements quickly come and go, and then we sit down, eat dinner, drink a glass of wine, and watch whatever TV show is our favorite. The Bible says to not let the sun go down on your wrath, and we have practiced this maxim for almost five decades.
Thus, when we began to seriously question the central claims of Christianity, we spent countless hours talking about our beliefs and the Bible. I would read passages from books and we would discuss what I had read. While I certainly read a lot more books than Polly did — which has, until recent years, always been the case — she did a good bit of reading herself.
Our discussions were honest, open, and forthright. No demands were made of the other. Neither of us, at first, knew exactly where we were headed. We knew we were done with organized Christianity, but the future remained volatile and uncertain.
A week or so after we left the Ney United Methodist Church, we gathered our children together to talk with them about where we were in life. Remember, our six children were raised in a devout Evangelical Christian home. Their father and mother had been in the ministry their entire lives. Their father was the only pastor they had ever known. When we told our children that we were leaving Christianity, they were aghast over what that meant. I had been the family patriarch. Our children never had the freedom to decide whether or not to go to church. It was expected. Now they were being told that there were no expectations; that they were free to go to church, not go to church, worship God, not worship God, etc. In other words, I cut my children loose from their ties to their patriarchal father (though our three oldest sons had already begun to move away from the control I had over their lives).
I must admit that those first few months after this meeting were difficult, as our children tried to imagine life for their parents post-Jesus. Seventeen years later, everyone has gone their own way spiritually, and there’s little contention over matters of religion or lack thereof.
I have come to a place in life where I can no longer put off writing this letter. I have dreaded this day because I know what is likely to follow after certain people receive it. I have decided I can’t control how others will react to this letter, so it is far more important to clear the air and make sure everyone knows the facts about Bruce Gerencser.
I won’t bore you with a long, drawn out history of my life. I am sure each of you has an opinion about how I have lived my life and the decisions I have made. I also have an opinion about how I have lived my life and decisions I made. I am my own worst critic.
Religion, in particular Baptist Evangelical and Fundamentalist religion, has been the essence of my life, from my youth up. My being is so intertwined with religion that the two are quite inseparable. My life has been shaped and molded by religion and religion touches virtually every fiber of my being.
I spent most of my adult life pastoring churches, preaching, and being involved in religious work to some degree or another. I pastored thousands of people over the years, preached thousands of sermons, and participated in, and led, thousands of worship services.
To say that the church was my life would be an understatement. As I have come to see, the Church was actually my mistress, and my adulterous affair with her was at the expense of my wife, children, and my own self-worth.
Today, I am publicly announcing that the affair is over. My wife and children have known this for a long time, but now everyone will know.
The church robbed me of so much of my life and I have no intention of allowing her to have one more moment of my time. Life is too short. I am dying. We all are. I don’t want to waste what is left of my life chasing after things I now see to be vain and empty.
I have always been known as a reader, a student of the Bible. I have read thousands of books in my lifetime and the knowledge gained from my reading and studies have led me to some conclusions about religion, particularly the Fundamentalist, Evangelical religion that played such a prominent part in my life.
I can no longer wholeheartedly embrace the doctrines of the Evangelical, Fundamentalist faith. Particularly, I do not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture nor do I accept as fact the common Evangelical belief of the inspiration of Scripture.
Coming to this conclusion has forced me to reevaluate many of the doctrines I have held as true over these many years. I have concluded that I have been misinformed, poorly taught, and sometimes lied to. I can no longer accept as true many of the doctrines I once believed.
I point the finger of blame at no one. I sincerely believed and taught the things that I did and many of the men who taught me were honorable teachers. I don’t blame those who have influenced me over the years, nor do I blame the authors of the many books I have read. Simply, it is what it is.
I have no time to invest in the blame game. I am where I am today for any number of reasons and I must embrace where I am and move forward.
In moving forward, I have stopped attending church. I have not attended a church service since November of 2008. I have no interest of desire in attending any church on a regular basis. This does not mean I will never attend a church service again, but it does mean, for NOW, I have no intention of attending church services.
I pastored for the last time in 2003. Almost six years have passed by. I have no intentions of ever pastoring again. When people ask me about this I tell them I am retired. With the health problems that I have it is quite easy to make an excuse for not pastoring, but the fact is I don’t want to pastor.
People continue to ask me “what do you believe?” Rather than inquiring about how my life is, the quality of that life, etc., they reduce my life to what I believe. Life becomes nothing more than a set of religious constructs. A good life becomes believing the right things.
I can tell you this…I believe God is…and that is the sum of my confession of faith.
A precursor to my religious views changing was a seismic shift in my political views. My political views were so entangled with Fundamentalist beliefs that when my political views began to shift, my Fundamentalist beliefs began to unravel.
I can better describe my political and social views than I can my religious ones. I am a committed progressive, liberal Democrat, with the emphasis being on the progressive and liberal. My evolving views on women, abortion, homosexuality, war, socialism, social justice, and the environment have led me to the progressive, liberal viewpoint.
I know some of you are sure to ask, what does your wife think of all of this? Quite surprisingly, she is in agreement with me on many of these things. Not all of them, but close enough that I can still see her standing here. Polly is no theologian, She is not trained in theology as I am. She loves to read fiction. I was able to get her to read Bart Ehrman’s book Misquoting Jesus and she found the book to be quite an eye opener.
Polly is free to be whomever and whatever she wishes. If she wants to start attending the local Fundamentalist Baptist church she is free to do so, and even has my blessing. For now, she doesn’t. She may never believe as I believe, but in my new way of thinking that is OK. I really don’t care what others think. Are you happy? Are you at peace? Are you living a good, productive life? Do you enjoy life? Yes, to these questions is good enough for me.
I have six children, three of whom are out on their own. For many years I was the spiritual patriarch of the family. Everyone looked to me for the answers. I feel somewhat burdened over my children. I feel as if I have left them out on their own with no protection. But, I know they have good minds and can think and reason for themselves. Whatever they decide about God, religion, politics, or American League baseball is fine with me.
All I ask of my wife and children is that they allow me the freedom to be myself, that they allow me to journey on in peace and love. Of course, I still love a rousing discussion about religion, the Bible, politics, etc. I want my family to know that they can talk to me about these things, and anything else for that matter, any time they wish.
Opinions are welcome. Debate is good. All done? Let’s go to the tavern and have a round on me. Life is about the journey, and I want my wife and children to be a part of my journey and I want to be a part of theirs.
One of the reasons for writing this letter is to put an end to the rumors and gossip about me. Did you know Bruce is/or is not_____________? Did you know Bruce believes____________? Did you know Bruce is a universalist, agnostic, atheist, liberal ___________?
For you who have been friends or former parishioners I apologize to you if my change has unsettled you, or has caused you to question your own faith. That was never my intent.
The question is, what now?
Family and friends are not sure what to do with me.
I am still Bruce. I am still married. I am still your father, father in-law, grandfather, brother, uncle, nephew, cousin, and son-in-law. I would expect you to love me as I am and treat me with respect.
Here is what I don’t want from you:
Attempts to show me the error of my way. Fact is, I have studied the Bible and read far more books than many of you. What do you really think you are going to show me that will be so powerful and unknown that it will cause me to return to the religion and politics of my past?
Constant reminders that you are praying for me. Please don’t think of me as unkind, but I don’t care that you are praying for me. I find no comfort, solace, or strength from your prayers. Be my friend if you can, pray if you must, but leave the prayers in the closet. As long as God gets your prayer message, that will be sufficient.
Please don’t send me books, tracts, or magazines. You are wasting your time and money.
Invitations to attend your Church. The answer is NO. Please don’t ask. I used to attend Church for the sake of family, but no longer. It is hypocritical for me to perform a religious act of worship just for the sake of family. I know how to find a Church if I am so inclined, after all I have visited more than 125 churches since 2003.
Offers of a church to pastor. It is not the lack of a church to pastor that has led me to where I am. If I would lie about what I believe, I could be pastoring again in a matter of weeks. I am not interested in ever pastoring a church again.
Threats about judgment and Hell. I don’t believe in either, so your threats have no impact on me .
Phone calls. If you are my friend you know I don’t like talking on the phone. I have no interest in having a phone discussion about my religious or political views.
Here is what I do want from you:
I want you to unconditionally love me where I am and how I am.
That’s it.
Now I realize some (many) of you won’t be able to do that. My friendship, my familial relationship with you is cemented with the glue of Evangelical orthodoxy. Remove the Bible, God, and fidelity to a certain set of beliefs and there is no basis for a continued relationship.
I understand that. I want you to know I have appreciated and enjoyed our friendship over the years. I understand that you can not be my friend any more. I even understand you may have to publicly denounce me and warn others to stay away from me for fear of me contaminating them with my heresy. Do what you must. We had some wonderful times together and I will always remember those good times.
You are free from me if that is your wish.
I shall continue to journey on. I can’t stop. I must not stop.
Thank you for reading my letter.
Bruce
This letter, of course, caused a firestorm of epic proportions, one that is smoldering to this day. My life and career went up in smoke, with countless Evangelical friends, family members, and colleagues in the ministry, standing on the sidelines cheering as I burned. Polly’s Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) parents have both died since I first wrote this post, so the tensions with them no longer exist. What does remain is sadness over being unable to reconcile with them before they died. We were willing, but their Fundamentalist beliefs kept them from doing so. In the end, Jesus won.
As you can tell from the letter, I still believed in some sort of deity — a deistic God, perhaps? However, by the end of 2009, I was calling myself an atheist. Polly, on the other hand, embraced agnosticism. Her reasons for leaving Christianity are very different from mine, but that story is hers to tell.
I read in Bob’s question an accusation of sorts, one I have heard countless times: that Polly doesn’t think for herself; that she is an unbeliever today because I am. Out of all the things people have said about us over the past seventeen years, this by far is the most offensive (and perhaps Bob didn’t mean to be offensive, so I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt). For the record, Polly is a college-educated woman. She graduated second in her high school class. To suggest that she is a lemming following in my footsteps is absurd. Granted, Polly is quiet and reserved, and I am not. This fact might lead people to false conclusions. Here’s what I know: Polly knows exactly why she no longer believes in the Christian God. Her reasons for deconverting are somewhat different from mine, but she is far more hostile towards organized religion than I am. Again, perhaps she will share why this is so someday.
We have six children and sixteen grandchildren. One son attends the Catholic church with his family, and the rest of our children are largely indifferent towards religion. I suspect the NONE label best describes them. While none of our children has publicly said they are agnostics or atheists, they are certainly anti-Evangelical and generally adverse to the machinations of American Christianity. Politically, most of our children are progressives and liberals, with a smidge of conservatism and libertarianism stirred in. This is as specific as I can be without trampling on their right to control their own storyline. I respect the boundaries we have set, and if one of them ever decides to tell their story, I hope they will let me publish it here.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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