Polly and I are re-watching The Wire on MAX — arguably the best series of all time. One episode featured a scene from Orlando’s Gentlemen’s Club — a strip club operated by Orlando, but owned by Baltimore drug dealer Avon Barksdale.
The scene under discussion took place in Orlando’s dressing room for the strippers. On the wall was a sign that reminded me of my days as a dorm student at Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan:
As you can see, someone marked out the six and wrote a one. 🙂 If you have ever been to a strip club, you would see that the one-inch rule better reflects reality, and in venues where lap dances are given, the distance number is actually zero. (Please see Short Stories: The Preacher Goes to the XXX Movie House.)
The sign got me thinking about my days as a dorm student at Midwestern. The college had a six-inch rule too. Dorm students were forbidden from getting closer than six inches to the opposite sex. Breaking this rule could result in expulsion from college. Please read Thou Shalt Not Touch: The Six-Inch Rule, if you have not already done so.
Much like the sign at Orlando’s Gentlemen’s Club, the six-inch rule (the width of a hymnbook) was universally ignored by dorm students. The rule was strictly followed when at school or in public dorm spaces. However, away from the college, say on a double date, the rule was cast aside for normal, healthy heterosexual experiences. Polly and I did not kiss each other until we had been dating for four months. We did the dirty deed during Christmas break while I was visiting Polly at her parent’s home in Newark, Ohio. And once we tasted the forbidden fruit, there was no going back. While we were virgins on our wedding day, more than a few students couldn’t wait, rounding third and sliding into home before saying “I do.”
I don’t know of a dorm couple who didn’t break the six-inch rule. Some got caught and were either campused (lost dating privileges) or expelled, but most couples learned how to play the game (and who to double date with) and escaped punishment. Polly and I certainly feared getting caught and being expelled, but the six-inch rule was no match for raging hormones.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.
Midwestern Baptist College Freshman Class 1976. Polly Shope, first person on left, first row. Bruce Gerencser, eighth person from left, third row. Weren’t we cute?
In late August, 1976, I packed up my meager earthly goods, put them in my Plymouth Valiant, and trekked two-and-a-half hours north from Bryan, Ohio to Pontiac, Michigan so I could enroll for ministerial classes at Midwestern Baptist College. I parked my dilapidated car in front of the dorm (which housed two floors of men and one of women) and unloaded my clothing, books, food stuffs, and a few pictures. My first roommates were Toby Todd and an older man named Dale Wilson. Several months later I moved to another room. My roommates were the only Black man in the dormitory: Fred Gilyard, Jack Workman, and Wendell Uhl — who was a rambunctious, thrill-seeking man who would later be expelled from school for writing his unique initials in a school monument’s freshly poured cement.
I had three goals I hoped to achieve while attending Midwestern:
Prepare for the ministry
Date a lot of girls
Play sports
Now, when I say play sports, I am not talking about college sports as most readers think of when thinking about collegiate sports. The enrollment at Midwestern was around four hundred students. The college had an astronomical drop-out rate — over seventy percent. There was a constant stream of new talent for the college’s basketball program. I was one such player. I was six feet tall and weighed one hundred sixty pounds. I loved playing basketball, having played high school city league basketball three years for Trinity Baptist Church in Findlay, Ohio. The team was coached by the chairman of the drama department. He was fired during my sophomore year of college for having an affair with the wife of the dean of men.
The coach was a player-coach. Many of the players were older men, some in their thirties. Midwestern’s basketball team was very much a collection of misfits — at best an intramural team. Regardless of the quality of the team, I very much wanted to play basketball for Midwestern Baptist College. The college’s founder, Dr. Tom Malone, was an avid basketball player. He was in his 60s at the time. I played many a pick-up game with Dr. Malone. He was a hard-nosed player. He sent many a student packing over complaints about fouls. No blood, no foul, was Dr. Malone’s style of play; a style, by the way, that agreed with me. I loved playing rough, physical basketball.
Midwestern’s team was made up of all comers. I expressed my interest in playing and began attending practices. I thoroughly enjoyed playing with my fellow teammates, and I was looking forward to helping Midwestern vanquish other nearby Fundamentalist Baptist college basketball teams. Unfortunately, something happened that would permanently derail my college basketball career.
My 1970 (I think) Plymouth Valiant.
One early evening at practice, I jumped up to block the shot of a fellow teammate. As I forcefully slapped the ball, I dislocated the middle finger of my left hand, jamming the finger into my knuckle. I was taken to the emergency room where the doctor attempted to reset my finger. After several careful attempts to do so, the doctor said, well, this is going to hurt! He made sure the bed wheels were locked, put his foot on the bar along the bottom of the bed, and with my mangled finger in his hand, forcefully yanked my dislocated finger back into place. He was right about the pain. I screamed and said a few Christian swear words (See Christian Swear Words), but I was grateful my finger was back in place. I left the hospital with a splint on my hand. This injury put an end to my college basketball career.
Midwestern had a strict dress code. Male students were required to wear ties to classes. One early morning, I met Polly in the dorm common room and asked her to tie my tie for me. No big deal, right? One fellow Christian helping another one, I thought at the time. I found it impossible to tie my tie with one hand, and I didn’t think anyone would mind if my girlfriend helped me out. Boy, was I wrong. Sitting in the common room was a pharisaical couple who deemed our tie-tying endeavor a violation of the college’s six-inch rule — a decree that said unmarried male and female dorm students couldn’t have any physical contact. (See Thou Shalt Not Touch: The Six-Inch Rule)
Come the following Tuesday, Polly and I were called before the college’s disciplinary committee to answer for our “sin.” There were three men on the disciplinary committee, Gary Mayberry, the dean of men, Don Zahurance, and another man whose name I can’t remember. Polly and I were excoriated for breaking the six-inch rule. Zahurance, in particular, grilled us, asking if we “enjoyed” touching one another; if we got a “thrill” out of physical contact. Today, I would have said, YES, DUMB ASS, WE DID! However, not wanting to be expelled, Polly and I endured their intrusive, offensive inquisition. We were given fifty demerits and told that if we had any physical contact again we would be expelled.
Their attempt to put the fear of the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) God into us failed. We would spend the next eighteen months finding ways to engage in damnable sins such as holding hands, kissing, and hugging. On weekends, we would double-date with like-minded students. I won’t tell if you won’t, was the rule. We hugged and kissed our way to July 15, 1978, our wedding day. Finally, no more demerits for getting too close to the love of my life!
I know this story sounds almost unbelievable to some of you, but it did happen. Attending Midwestern Baptist College was like living in an alternate universe. Polly and I now laugh about our days as Midwestern students, but there was a time when we feared being exposed for behaving like normal, heterosexual humans. We feared being reported to the disciplinary committee for daring to touch one another. The cruelty of Midwestern’s disciplinary system was that it allowed anonymous students to report offenders. There was a box outside of the dean of men’s office for disciplinary slips. Only certain students were allowed to write someone up. Generally, freshmen were not permitted to write anyone up. Ironically the upperclassmen who reported us for breaking the six-inch rule? It was later rumored that they were going all-in on breaking the six-inch rule and having sex. Hypocrisy abounded at Midwestern. The couple who reported us is now faithfully pastoring an IFB church. I am sure they preach against teens and unmarried adults having physical contact with each other before marriage, conveniently burying their own sexual indiscretion in the dust of the past.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.
Gary Keen, Bruce Gerencser, Mike Fox, Greg Wilson, Midwestern Baptist College, 1978
I have been accused of not having anything good to say about my alma mater, Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan. It is certainly true that I have been a harsh critic of Midwestern’s doctrinal beliefs and practices; and of their cult-like control of student behavior. I make no apology for saying that Midwestern’s founder, professors, and administrators caused psychological harm with their Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) extremism. That said, I had a lot of fun times at Midwestern, as a nineteen- to twenty-one-year-old dormitory student.
Midwestern had four dormitory wings: the pit (basement), the spiritual wing, the party wing, and the women’s wing (the whole second story). I spent two years living in a shared room on the party wing. Every room had two to four students, including one room monitor. I lived in two rooms as a freshman and sophomore student. My first room assignment was not a good fit; Toby (strict and spiritual), Greg, and an older man named Dale. I wanted the “party” in party wing, so I asked to be moved to a different room. My new roommates were Wendell, Fred (a Black man), and Jack. Sadly, only Wendell had the party spirit I was looking for. Boy, did we have fun! Well as far as IFB fun goes, anyway.
I really enjoyed Sunday night devotions that were held in the dorm common room. After attending church three times, working in the bus ministry, teaching Sunday school, or some other ministry, and going out on a double date after evening church, most students were filled with energy by the time they gathered for devotions.
The program was simple: prayer, singing, and a sermonette. The sermonette was often given by the dorm supervisor, Ralph Bitner. He and his wife, Sophie, lived on the same floor, adjacent to the common room, and across the hall from the snack room. Ralph was a dreadful speaker, as were many of the students asked to give a devotion. I sat there hoping the pain would soon subside, knowing that my favorite part of devotions, singing, was next.
Students lustily sang modern choruses and hymns — all a cappella. I loved to sing, using my tenor voice to praise and glorify God. One of my favorite songs was the HASH chorus — a mash-up of different songs.
After devotions, dating students would say their non-physical contact good night to their boyfriend or girlfriend. For me, devotions were the perfect end to a busy, stressful week.
I was quite temperamental. Quick to rise, quick to recede, people knew to steer clear of me when I was angry. One day, as I came into my dorm room, Greg was lying in wait for me with an oversized plastic bat. He planned on pummeling me with the bat. Fun times, to be sure, but when Greg swung the bat he hit me in the kidneys, knocking me to the floor, breathless and in pain. I quickly became enraged, planning to do harm to Greg when I got up off the floor. Greg sensed my anger, dropped the bat, and ran for the hills. He didn’t return until the next night. By then, I was cooled down, and all was right with the world. Greg loved to horse around, as did I, but he wisely retired from his career as a baseball player.
One evening, Wendell and I were horsing around in our room. Wendell was quite the jokester. You had to be on your toes when Wendell was around lest you fell prey to his wily devices. On this night, we were going back and forth when I decided to pick up a work boot and chuck it at Wendell. Unfortunately, I missed my target, and the boot hit the wall, going through the drywall. We briefly laughed, but knew we had to immediately fix the wall lest we end up in line for DC (disciplinary committee) on Monday. Fortunately, Wendell knew how to repair and paint drywall. We repaired the wall, and the dorm supervisor was none the wiser. Crisis averted.
One early morning, several of my friends and I came home from working at a factory that made bolts. We decided to play a joke on our sleeping roommates. We bumped up the alarm time on their clocks, changing 6 am wake times to 3 am. And then we waited. As the alarms went off, our roommates arose, stumbled to the bathroom, dressed, gathered their books, and headed off to classes, none the wiser that they were three hours early. One by one, as they walked up the drive between the dorm and the school, they realized that they had been punked and made their way back to the dorm. We, of course, met them with hilarity and laughter.
Jack was one of my roommates. He was a Pharisee, writing people up for minor infractions of Midwestern’s code of conduct. Once written up, you had to appear before the discipline committee to answer for your heinous crimes. One day, Jack wrote Polly and me up for breaking the “no borrowing rule.” Polly had loaned me her unisex parka. This crime against humanity landed us in hot water. I believe we got ten demerits.
Afterward, I decided to get even with Jack. No turning the other cheek. I knew he had been going to a local restaurant to visit with a waitress he was sweet on. This was a violation of Midwestern’s rules. One night, I had a friend of mine, Peggie, call Jack on the pay phone in the party wing hallway, pretending to be the waitress. I made sure Peggie called after curfew. Sure enough, Jack fell for the ruse, telling the “waitress” he would come to see her right away. Hormones raging, Jack didn’t have a car, so he had to borrow someone else’s automobile, breaking the no-borrowing rule. Off Jack went in a borrowed car after curfew to see the waitress. Of course, she was not working that night. Perplexed, Jack returned to the dorm, only to find the dorm supervisor waiting for him. Mission accomplished, another Baptist Pharisee humbled and chastised. Jack never wrote me up again after this experience.
I have many other fun times I could share: playing Rook and UNO in the snack room; bowling in the dorm hallway, playing basketball with Dr. Malone, hanging bras on Ralph and Sophie’s door, and spending several days stranded in the dorm without electricity during the Blizzard of ’78. While I cannot absolve Midwestern for the harm it caused, I must not forget all the good times I had while living at 825 Golf Drive in Pontiac, Michigan. While I eventually matured into a man better suited for the spiritual wing, I never lost my love for playing practical jokes and having fun times.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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 day before our wedding on July 15, 1978, I picked up the baby-blue tuxedos at the wedding apparel shop, met my groomsmen, and we caravanned southeast from Pontiac, Michigan to Newark, Ohio. The trip should have taken about four hours, but I decided we would take the scenic route instead. This little detour added two hours to our trip. My groomsmen, soloist, and ushers were NOT happy with me. 🙂
Finally, we arrived in Newark. I had rented two rooms at a cheap motel, two blocks from Polly’s parent’s home. After settling in, I decided it would be a good idea to try on our tuxes — which should have been done while we were still in Pontiac. We quickly found out that one of my groomsmen’s pants was the wrong size. Panicked, we drove to Polly’s parent’s home, hoping Mom could let out the seat of the pants. She was able to do so, but the pants had a single stitch line holding them together — a precarious situation to say the least.
Polly and I got into some sort of argument while we were there. The subject has long since been forgotten, but the picture in my mind of Polly stomping up the stairs is not. Mom said Polly was quite stressed out and suggested we avoid each other until the rehearsal dinner. Good advice.
We had an expensive catered rehearsal dinner, KFC, at Moundbuilder’s Park — a Native American burial ground (Newark Earthworks). The highlight of the dinner was one of my groomsmen, Mike, singing the first two stanzas of the Battle of New Orleans, complete with physical animation:
In 1814 we took a little trip Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississipp’ We took a little bacon and we took a little beans And we caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans
We fired our guns and the British kept a coming There wasn’t nigh as many as there was a while ago We fired once more and they began to running Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico
Mike also sang a song about Daniel Boone, you know the song that says “Daniel Boone was a man, was a big man, But the bear was bigger so he ran like a nigger up a tree.” It was the 70s. I doubt many in our party would have been okay with this song today.
Afterward, we drove to the Newark Baptist Temple for our wedding rehearsal. No memory of significance comes to mind about the rehearsal. Polly and I said good night to one another, anticipating with joy and excitement our big day.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.
In late August 1976, Polly Shope and Bruce Gerencser moved into the Midwestern Baptist College dormitory. Polly planned to catch her a preacher boy and I planned to prepare for the ministry. Polly hailed from Bay City, Michigan, but had spent the previous four years in Pontiac while her father completed his education. After graduation, Polly’s father moved his family to Newark, Ohio so he could begin a new job as the assistant pastor of the Newark Baptist Temple. The Baptist Temple was pastored by Polly’s uncle James “Jim” Dennis, a 1960s graduate of Midwestern. Polly’s parents moved into an apartment after moving to Newark, and it was from here that Polly packed up her meager belongings in a 1972 AMC Hornet and drove four and a half hours north to Midwestern’s dormitory.
I was living at the time with my mother and her drunkard husband near Edgerton, Ohio. The previous year, after a tumultuous break-up with my girlfriend, I moved from Sierra Vista, Arizona to Bryan, Ohio. I spent the next year working as the dairy manager for Foodland, with the intent of going off to college in August 1976.
On the appointed day, I packed my belongings into a late-1960s Plymouth and drove two hours and thirty minutes northeast to Pontiac. I had two goals: study for the ministry and date lots of girls. As this story unfolds, you shall see that the latter goal never came to fruition.
The flirting between Polly and I began almost immediately. I was nineteen, and she was seventeen. While I had dated a lot before college, Polly had no dating experience. Both of us dated someone else for a week or two before our flirtations turned into me asking her out on a date.
Midwestern had strict rules about dating and physical contact between couples. (Please see Thou Shalt Not Touch: The Six-Inch Rule.) We had been dating for almost four months before we kissed for the first time.
It was not long before our relationship took a serious turn. “I love you” first came from my lips, but Polly quickly reciprocated. I had no doubt that Polly was the one for me, and Polly believed the same about that fiery redheaded country boy from Ohio. We spent as much time as we could with each other. Polly learned I loved to talk, and I discovered that she was quiet, shy, and reserved — traits both of us have to this day.
Six months in, we talked about getting married, knowing we would have to wait until the summer of 1978 to tie the knot. (Midwestern forbade freshmen from marrying.) I bought Polly a 1/4-carat diamond engagement ring at Sears and Roebuck for $225. I decided I would ask Polly to marry me on Valentine’s Day. Dating students were required to double date, so I asked fellow rule breakers John and Sandy to go out on a date with us. We planned to seal our engagement with a kiss, so we didn’t want to choose the wrong dating partners lest we end up getting campused or expelled for breaking the six-inch rule.
On the second Saturday night in February, we ate at a now-forgotten restaurant and then drove to a multi-story parking garage in Birmingham — a place frequented by dorm couples due to its dim, secluded environment. We drove to the top of the garage, and it was there that I asked Polly to marry me. She said yes! and we embraced and kissed, sealing our commitment to one another.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.
My wife, Polly, and I attended Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan from 1976-1979. Midwestern, founded in 1954 by Dr. Tom Malone, the pastor of a nearby megachurch, Emmanuel Baptist Church, was known for its tenacious defense of Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) Christianity. Calling itself “a character-building factory,” Midwestern churned out male pastors, evangelists, and missionaries. Women attended Midwestern too, but their educational opportunities were limited: church secretaries or Christian school teachers. Many single female students went to Midwestern to look for a preacher boy to marry. Polly was one such woman. She believed that God wanted her to be a preacher’s wife; all she wanted to do in life was be a helpmeet to her God-called preacher husband.
Both Polly and I came of age in IFB churches. We attended churches that had strict codes of conduct, especially when it came to dating and sex. Physical contact between boys and girls was forbidden. No handholding, no kissing, no embraces. Frequently reminded from the pulpit and in youth group that petting, oral sex, intercourse, and even masturbation were wicked sins against God, teens feared God’s judgment and public exposure of their “sin.” Of course, this didn’t stop teens from breaking the rules. Raging hormones always win over God. 🙂
When Polly and I arrived at Midwestern in August 1976, we were already conditioned and indoctrinated to believe that Midwestern’s Puritannical, anti-human rules were “normal.” Polly never had a boyfriend before me, so the rules seemed normal to her. I dated a few girls in high school and had one serious relationship before arriving at Midwestern. I was definitely the more experienced of the two of us, but that’s not saying much. I was still quite naive about sex. I thought that the rules were just godly older adults looking out for me; that they knew best. Both Polly and I would later learn that not only didn’t they know best, but that their rules actually caused us harm; harm that would carry through into the first decade of our marriage.
Dorm students were required to follow a strict code of conduct. Failure to obey resulted in a student being given a demerit slip. This required a face-to-face appearance at the weekly disciplinary meeting. Students were also allowed to snitch on other students. They could write an offending student up, and then put the demerit slip in a box outside the dean’s office. This led to all sorts of retaliatory snitching.
Virtually every aspect of life was strictly regulated. One time, I got written up for borrowing a unisex parka from Polly. Students were not allowed to borrow from one another. When I appeared before the disciplinary committee, I thought I would use the Bible to plead my case:
[Jesus said] Give to him that asketh thee, and from him. that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. (Matthew 5:42)
That didn’t go very well. I received a stern rebuke and ten demerits.
The most severe punishment was reserved for those who broke the six-inch rule. Couples were not permitted to be closer than six inches to each other. Breaking this rule could result in expulsion. During our sophomore year, Polly and I broke the six-inch rule. I played on the college’s basketball team. Don’t think too much of that. Think intramural basketball. One practice, I slapped at a basketball and severely dislocated the middle finger on my left hand (I’m lefthanded). I had to go to the emergency room to get the finger reset. For several weeks I had a hard time tying my tie for classes. One day, Polly was waiting for me in the dorm common area, so I asked her to tie my necktie for me. Sitting nearby was a couple known for being Pharisees. They secretly turned us into the disciplinary committee for breaking the six-inch rule. Polly and I both received 50 demerits for our “crime.” I had other demerits on my record, so I was close to being campused for the semester.
Polly Shope and Bruce Gerencser, February 1977, Midwestern Baptist College Sweetheart Banquet, the only time we were allowed to be closer than six inches apart.
As I told my therapist today about my experiences at Midwestern she got that look on her face; you know THAT look; the one that says “this is nuts.” We had a lengthy discussion about how decades of legalistic indoctrination and conditioning affected not only me personally, but also my marriage and children. My therapist appreciated me telling her these things, saying doing so gave her better insight into my past and how it affected my psychology.
However the IFB church movement is labeled — is it a cult? — one thing is certain, long-term exposure to IFB beliefs and practices can and does cause psychological harm, and at times, can cause physical harm. Sexual dysfunction is rife among IFB adherents. Is it any wonder? It took Polly and me years to understand, appreciate, and experience healthy sexual practices. It took kicking God, the church, and the Bible out of our bedroom before we could truly enjoy sexual intimacy. It’s not that we had a bad sex life as much as we had a dysfunctional one; one infected with legalism and Bible prooftexts.
As mentioned above, Midwestern was started by Dr. Tom Malone, a powerful orator who was raised in rural Alabama. In the 1920s, Malone attended Bob Jones College. It was here that he was exposed to rigid, cultic, legalistic Fundamentalism. Many of the rules at Midwestern were imported from Bob Jones. And therein lies the danger of IFB theology and practice. Both are like a virus that spreads from generation to generation, infecting everyone that it touches. I don’t blame Malone and my professors for the harm they caused. They too were indoctrinated in the “one true faith.” They did what they know to do, not out of malice, but because they thought doing so was godly and right. One of the hardest things for me to come to terms with is that not only was I a victim, but I was also a victimizer. Yes, IFB churches, pastors, and professors led me astray, causing untold harm, but I also did the same. I passed on to Polly, our children, and the people I pastored the only things I knew about life, faith, sexuality, and Christianity. What I “knew” was ignorant and harmful, but it was all I knew. It took a crisis of faith for me to realize that what I had been taught and what had been modeled to me was not merely wrong, it was harmful, not only to me personally, but also to the love of my life, our six children, and the people who called me preacher.
This blog is, if anything, an act of penance; my way of atoning for my sins. I may not have known any better, but I still must account for my behavior. And in telling my story, others who were swallowed whole by the IFB church movement, will hopefully hear my words and find them helpful.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.
I came of age in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement. IFB preachers are known for their staunch, unflinching views on human sexuality. Only sexual behavior between married, monogamous, heterosexual couples is ordained by God. Some preachers believe that certain sexual behaviors within marriage are sinful too: anal sex, oral sex, and mutual masturbation. In their minds, the primary goal of sexual intercourse is procreation. In this regard, their beliefs aren’t different from those of the Roman Catholic Church.
These preachers, in particular, focus on the sex lives of unmarried teenagers and young adults; no physical contact before marriage, including kissing. Some IFB preachers forbid dating couples from even holding hands or putting their arms around each other. Holding hands is considered the first step on the slippery slope that ends in immorality. As a young IFB preacher, I remember telling church teens that no girl ever got pregnant who didn’t hold hands with a boy first. And unmarried young people better not use their hands to find sexual gratification sans a partner either. Masturbation is considered an act of lust, one in which the person is only concerned with pleasuring one’s self. IFB preachers remind unmarried teens and young adults that the Bible commands them to deny themselves. Of course, many of these preachers didn’t practice what they preach when they themselves were hormones-raging young people.
My wife and I were virgins on our wedding day. Two decades of IFB indoctrination and conditioning made sure of that. We were true believers. Several years ago, I had a discussion with two women who were friends of mine during high school. The three of us were part of the same youth group at an IFB church in Findlay, Ohio. During our delightful time of reminiscing, I quickly learned that there was a whole lot of sexual activity going on among church teenagers; that I may have been one of the few virgins in the youth group. This did not surprise me. Now an old man and having pastored scores of teenagers and young adults over the twenty-five years I spent in the ministry, I know premarital sex is common; that all the rules in the world won’t staunch raging hormones.
At the age of eighteen, I had a torrid six-month relationship with a twenty-year-old woman from the Conservative Baptist church we both attended. I was naive when it came to sex, whereas she had already had a sexual relationship with a previous boyfriend. We spent a lot of time together, often taking evening drives in the southeast Arizona desert. We would park along back roads and enjoy the clear, star-studded skies. We would, of course, make out. It’s a wonder that we didn’t have sex, but I suspect “fear” of disobeying God and being labeled fornicators by the church kept us from doing so.
In the fall of 1976, I left northwest Ohio and moved to Pontiac, Michigan to enroll in classes at Midwestern Baptist College — an IFB institution. My plan was to play the field, but it was not long before I met a beautiful, dark-haired preacher’s daughter who would later become my wife. Midwestern had strict no-contact rules for unmarried students. Students of the opposite sex were required to stay at least six inches from each other at all times. No handholding, no kissing, no embraces. “Thou shalt not touch the opposite sex” was the eleventh commandment, etched in stone.
For the first five months of our relationship, Polly and I played by the rules. Breaking the no-contact rule was a serious offense that could lead to being campused (unable to leave the college campus except for work and church) or expulsion.
Bruce and Polly Gerencser, May 1978
Christmas 1976 found me driving to Newark, Ohio to spend Christmas with Polly. For the first time, we were not under the watchful eyes of college and dorm leaders and rules keeping, turn-you-in-if they-see- you-breaking-the rules Pharisees. Polly’s parents were living in an apartment at the time. Her mom asked Polly to go down to the laundry room to get their laundry. I, of course, went along with her to “help.” It was in that nondescript, out of the way laundry room that we had our first embrace and kiss. For obvious reasons, it took us a long time to bring the laundry back to the apartment.
A week later, both of us returned to Midwestern and its no-contact rule. The problem for us was that we had enjoyed the forbidden, and putting the genie back in the bottle was impossible. What were we to do?
Students were permitted to double-date on weekends. Some couples were rigid Fundamentalists, keepers of the letter of the law. Others, not so much. We quickly learned which couples were “safe.” We spent the next eighteen months breaking the rules, fearing getting caught and kicked out of school. Love and hormones won the day. Our virginity survived — barely — until our wedding day.
A week before our wedding, I drove to Newark to spend the day with Polly. We decided to go out to The Dawes Arboretum to spend the afternoon before attending church that night at the Newark Baptist Temple. We had a wonderful day, and as a soon-to-be-married couple, we did a lot of kissing and walk here and there arm in arm. Our passion, for two sexually unaware young adults, was palatable, so much so that I feared we were going to lose our virginity before our special day. We didn’t, but we did lose track of time, arriving home late. Boy, did Polly’s mom give us a tongue-lashing for breaking curfew. Here were were a nineteen-year woman and twenty-one-year-old man and we were being treated like children. We said nothing, changed our clothes, and headed to church. Seven days later, we said “I do.”
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.
People raised in Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) churches have heard countless sermons on what the Bible says about sex. Teenagers are warned about the dangers of petting, and many IFB churches forbid unmarrieds from having any physical contact with each other. Young men are characterized as weak horn-dogs and young women are viewed as gatekeepers who are responsible for any untoward sexual advances made by sexually aware men. Young women are given strict orders concerning how to dress and behave to ward off young men from having sex with them. One thing is certain: if a young IFB woman has sex with a man, it is almost always her fault.
IFB churches often have lengthy and complex rules that are used to keep unmarrieds from having sex. These rules follow young adults to the IFB colleges they attend. Here we have institutions filled with eighteen- to twenty-five-year-old men and women who, with hormones raging, are expected to refrain from physical contact with the opposite sex. This includes: no holding hands, no kissing, no hugging, no putting one’s arm around another, or sitting too closely to someone of the opposite sex. My wife and I attended Midwestern Baptist College in the 1970s. We were expected to maintain a six-inch distance from each other at all times. Even after we married, we were expected to refrain from public displays of affection lest we cause unmarried dorm students to “sin.” (Please see Thou Shalt Not Touch: The Six-Inch Rule.)
One would think that IFB pastors and college leaders would approve of masturbation as a way of dealing with pent-up sexual frustration. Unfortunately, masturbation is also a sin. As an IFB teenager, I heard pastors who warned church teens about the dangers of masturbation, including, — oh yes they did! — warning that masturbation will make you blind. Now lest you think it’s just crazy IFB preachers who have a problem with masturbation, consider this quote by Evangelical pastor Mark Driscoll:
First, masturbation can be a form of homosexuality because it is a sexual act that does not involve a woman. If a man were to masturbate while engaged in other forms of sexual intimacy with his wife then he would not be doing so in a homosexual way. However, any man who does so without his wife in the room is bordering on homosexuality activity, particularly if he’s watching himself in a mirror and being turned on by his own male body.
And then there’s this excerpt from The Village Church’s website:
If one was [sic] to scan the horizon of current evangelical thought he or she would find a number of conclusions on the matter of masturbation. There are some who would claim that it is inherently neutral or even innately good and thus would teach that it is an appropriate way to express gratitude for sexual desire. Others would say that it is a veiled form of homosexuality, or that it is a clear violation of God’s law and thus always sinful. The spectrum is wide and the positions are quite varied.
Scripture never overtly addresses the issue of masturbation and thus any non-careful treatment of this topic must be avoided. If we define sin merely as transgression of God’s law then we might conclude that since Scripture does not explicitly prohibit the particular act of masturbation, it must therefore be non-sinful. However, sin is not merely transgression of the Scriptures, but also a transgression of the character and intent of God. As marriage is the only God-ordained means of expressing sexual intimacy, it would seem perfectly acceptable to declare masturbation a sinful act. This paper will seek to specify some common wisdom regarding masturbation and then commend a few questions which must be considered to faithfully examine the act.
Sexual immorality is specifically declared to be sinful.
Lust is specifically declared to be sinful.
Masturbation does not typically quench sexual desire, rather it intensifies it. As with most things, the more you feed it, the more it grows. In general, masturbation becomes habit forming and enslaves us to desires for greater sexual relief through greater self-indulgence rather than greater self-control. While the Spirit produces in us the fruit of self-control, the flesh desires indulgence and release. Self-control is not ascetic discipline, but is instead the response of a proper understanding of God’s creative design for our bodies.
Masturbation is outside of God’s intended design for sexual relations. Sex was created to be experienced between a man and woman who are joined together into the one flesh relationship of marriage; masturbation is taking the sexual desire reserved for this relationship and seeking to fulfill it through our own means. Masturbation sets a very destructive pattern for marriage. It places the emphasis on self pleasure rather than the desire for two to experience the fulfillment of sexual union together.
Masturbation is typically lustful – whether that be overt lust direct toward another or a lustful desire for relief.
Masturbation does not typically stir our affections for the Lord, rather it robs them.
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It seems to the pastors and elders of The Village Church that masturbation is prohibited for a couple of reasons. First, we would prohibit the act based upon the provision of marriage as the only appropriate institution in which to express sexual intimacy. If you burn with lust or desire sexual intimacy, get married (1 Corinthians 7:9). Such is the gracious and holy prescription for sexual desire, the only prescription afforded by the Creator of all good desire. Second, we would counsel abstinence due to the overwhelming and innate relationship between masturbation and lust. Lust is extremely serious and not to be taken lightly, dismissed, or played with.
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The Village Church is a Southern Baptist megachurch pastored by Matt Chandler. Chandler is also part of The Gospel Coalition — a Fundamentalist group with Calvinistic leanings. Men such as Danny Akin, Alistair Begg, Bryan Chapell, Mark Dever, Kevin DeYoung, Ligon Duncan, Kent Hughes, Erwin Lutzer, Albert Mohler, Russell D. Moore, David Platt, John Piper, Philip G. Ryken, and Sam Storms are/were members, as were the infamous Mark Driscoll and C.J. Mahaney. I can safely say that all of these men likely approve of Chandler’s anti-masturbation message. Ironically, Chandler is currently on “leave” from his church for having an inappropriate online relationship with a woman.
Many medical professionals treat masturbation as a natural part of human development, and some church leaders have attempted to supply practical and theological reasons to masturbate. From a biblical perspective, however, I do not believe this approach pleases God, and I have seen the devastation that such a practice brings to both singles and marrieds alike.
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When people reach orgasm outside the covenant-confirming act of lovemaking in marriage, the act becomes solely self-seeking, divorced from its purpose of creating intimacy. Sexual expression through orgasm should be an overflow of a desire for a spouse, not merely for a feeling or experience.
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As noted, orgasm outside the marriage bed removes the relational, intimate nature of sexual expression, which is at the core of its purpose (1 Corinthians 7:2–3, 5). Refraining from masturbation helps to purify one’s appetites (1 Corinthians 9:27). It helps to ensure that a person’s desire to make love with his or her spouse is for nurturing covenantal intimacy through service and honor, and through receiving love from him or her (Matthew 20:28; John 13:14–16). It reminds couples that their spouse is not given as an object to be exploited, but rather as a covenant partner to be provided for, protected, and respected (Ephesians 5:25, 28, 33; see also Genesis 2:24).
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Masturbation outside the marriage bed does not glorify God because evil desire always fuels it.
Whatever we do — including all forms of sexual expression — we are to “do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Whether tagged as covetousness, lust, or sensuality, misplaced and mistimed desires do not glorify God, and failure to glorify God is always sin (Romans 3:23; 14:23). Paul thus charges, “Glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:20).
In God’s good design, marital love is the only justified context for one to enjoy a sexual craving for orgasm, for only in this sphere does one glorify God by pointing to the beautiful union of Christ and his church (Ephesians 5:31–32). From this perspective, evil desire fuels all sexual expression outside the marriage bed, including masturbation, so we must treat all such acts as sinful and as deserving of hell (Matthew 5:29–30; Mark 7:20–23; 1 Corinthians 6:9–10; Galatians 5:17, 19–21; Ephesians 5:5; Colossians 3:5–6).
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Jesus urged his followers to guard themselves from lustful masturbation, and Paul called Christians to control their sexual parts in holiness and honor.
Only “the pure in heart . . . shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). Jesus appears to link masturbation with lust when he declares that looking at a woman with lustful intent is sin, and then charges his disciples to take extreme measures with their eyes and hands, so that they will preserve themselves unto life (Matthew 5:27–30). Similarly, Paul stressed that holiness seen in sexual purity was God’s will for every person, and then he urged believers to control their sexual parts in holiness and honor rather than in lust.
Masturbation outside the marriage bed witnesses a lack of self-control and is therefore sin.
Self-control is a new-covenant fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23), a discipline that pleases God, nurtures hope for eternal life, and frees one from fear of future punishment (Romans 8:6–9, 13; 2 Timothy 1:7). Lack of self-control is sin and enables greater influence by the evil one (Proverbs 25:28; 1 Corinthians 7:5). Intentional orgasm outside the marriage bed through masturbation witnesses a lack of self-control and is therefore sin.
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In light of these realities, I believe that anyone who masturbates outside the marriage bed sins and insults God’s glory in Christ. As men and women of God, therefore, may we not engage in it. Instead, may we look to our Lord for help and seek to honor him with our bodies by allowing our only outlet for sexual desire to be the covenant-nurturing intimacy of marital lovemaking (Job 31:1). May we also intentionally lead our children in such paths of righteousness for Christ’s name’s sake.
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Please look up all the Bible verses given by De Rouchie. I’m sure you’ll want to immediately refrain from masturbating lest God tosses you in Hell for doing so.
And finally, here’s what Focus on the Family has to say about masturbation:
The point, as we see it, is the larger meaning and purpose of human sexuality. The Bible has two important things to say about this: first, sex is central to the process by which husband and wife become one flesh (Genesis 2:24); and second, sex and marriage are intended to serve as a picture or symbol of the union between Christ and His Church (Ephesians 5:31, 32). Sex, then, isn’t intended to be “all about me.” Rather, it’s designed to function as part of the give-and-take of an interpersonal relationship.
These theological perspectives should inform and shape our approach to the practical problem of masturbation. It’s important that we avoid heaping guilt on teenagers who find the urge to masturbate almost uncontrollable, and who might be driven to spiritual despair as a result. At the same time, we should do everything we can to help adolescents, young adults and married couples see that self-gratification is inconsistent with the purpose, goal and basic nature of sex. We shouldn’t condemn anyone for masturbating, but neither should we encourage them to continue in the habit. Why not? Because God has created men and women to experience sexual fulfillment on a much higher level – within the context of a marital relationship – and we don’t want anything to jeopardize their chances of knowing that joy to the fullest extent.
In connection with this last thought, it’s important to add that masturbation, due to the powerful hormonal and psychological components of human sexual behavior, can often become extremely addictive. Individuals who fall prey to this addiction may end up carrying it with them into adult married life, where it can become a serious obstacle to healthy marital intimacy. Further, masturbation is frequently involves indulging in sexual fantasy; and fantasy, if we are to believe the words of Jesus (Matthew 5:28), does represent a very serious breach of a person’s mental and spiritual purity.
What can be done to break this pattern? In many cases, masturbation originates as a self-soothing behavior. In other words, it’s a way of coping with pressures and seeking to meet the basic human need for peace, security, comfort and reassurance. If you have a problem with masturbation, you may want to keep this in mind and ask yourself whether it might be possible to replace this negative behavior with a more legitimate method of addressing the underlying need. For example, by talking things over with a friend, reading an engaging book, listening to music, pouring yourself into a constructive project or serving other people. Ultimately, the pain a person is trying to anesthetize through the practice of masturbation is just another manifestation of the “God-shaped vacuum” that exists at the center of every human heart. Only a relationship with the Lord can fill that empty space in a deep, lasting and satisfying way.
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Yet, for all their preaching against the sin of Onanism, virtually all Evangelical teens, young men, and even married men, masturbate. I can’t speak to the level of masturbation among Evangelical women, but I suspect there is a lot more ringing of the devil’s doorbell going on than church leaders think there is.
Being raised in an anti-masturbation church environment caused quite a bit of problem for me as a teen and unmarried adult. Despite all the preaching against touching the opposite sex, when given the opportunity to make out with my girlfriend (or fiancée), I did so lustily. While I was a virgin when my wife and I married, I found myself rounding third and heading for home not only with Polly, but also with a girl named Anita. (The rest of my dating relationships were casual and of short duration.)
I was eighteen years old when I started dating Anita. She was twenty, a college student at a Conservative Baptist college in Phoenix, Arizona. Anita and I, for five short months, had a torrid relationship. She was much more experienced sexually than I was. On more nights than I can remember, we would park along a dark, rarely-travel back road and watch the night sky. Of course, we also did a lot of necking. Our intimacy stirred my sexual passions to such a degree that I would go home after dates and spend time praying to God for forgiveness, thanking him for not allowing us to give into our sexual desires. For me, not giving in included not masturbating. Anita and I later went our separate ways, but I’ll never forget the time we spent together.
Polly and I met as freshmen at Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan. I was nineteen, she was seventeen. I planned on playing the field at college, but meeting Polly changed everything. I was quickly smitten by her beauty and quiet demeanor, and thus began our two-year battle with Midwestern’s Puritanical dating and physical contact rules. We refrained from breaking the rules for a time, that is until I went to visit Polly at her parent’s home in Newark, Ohio over Christmas break (1976). It was there, in Polly’s parent’s apartment complex laundry room, that we had our first kiss. Dating students were expected to keep the rules even during Christmas and summer break. No one, and I mean no one, did so.
Once back at Midwestern, Polly and I were faced with a dilemma. We wanted to continue touching and kissing each other; you know, as dating teens and young adults are wont to do. This meant we would have to secretly break the rules. We sought out couples to double-date with who were not averse to physical contact on dates. The vast majority of dating students — with but a handful of exceptions — broke the rules. Some students even slid into home and had sexual intercourse.
The Midwestern dorm was a den of raging hormones. With masturbation forbidden and touching the opposite sex grounds for expulsion, what were dating students to do? Why, they broke the rules with impunity, causing a repeating cycle of “sin,” guilt, repentance, and promises to God. I don’t know of anyone who successfully stopped breaking the rules once they started. IFB young adults were very much like their counterparts in the world — 1960s-1970s world. We, like our peers, wanted sexual intimacy without fear and guilt.
Masturbation, then, was common among male students in the Midwestern dorm. Each dorm room had two or three students, so “secretly” masturbating was out of the question (and there were enough dysfunctional Pharisees around that doing so would have been reported to the dean of men). With masturbating in their rooms out of the question, many male dorm residents used the privacy of the men’s showers to get sexual relief. More than one IFB luminary suggested quick, cold showers to ward off masturbatory temptations. Each dorm room had a periodic responsibility to clean the dorm bathrooms, including the showers. We used to joke about the sticky, slimy “stuff” in the showers. Yuck, I know, but have you ever been in a male dormitory shower room? You don’t want to go there!
IFB preachers and their Evangelical counterparts continue to preach against the sin of masturbation. Despite all their preaching, masturbation remains widely practiced. Why? Masturbation is a harmless, effective way to find sexual release. Wanting to obey God (and their preachers), Evangelical unmarrieds do their best to refrain from sexual intercourse before marriage. It’s cruel to say no sex before marriage and, at the same time, say masturbating is a sin.
What really should happen, of course, is for Evangelical churches and colleges to begin endorsing safe, responsible sexual intimacy among unmarrieds. With the average age for young people marrying reaching twenty-seven, it is absurd to expect them to refrain from sex for ten to fifteen years before they tie the knot. Bruce, that’s FORN-I-CAT-ION, a horrible sin in the eyes of the thrice holy God. Whatever “it” is or isn’t, preaching abstinence doesn’t work. Much like non-believing young adults, Evangelical unmarrieds, more often than not, have had sex before marriage. Instead of heaping guilt upon their heads, preachers, how about teaching young adults to embrace their, as you say, “God-given” sexuality? Maybe then, young adults might be less likely to flee the confines of Evangelical Christianity. I know, I know, the Bible says. Perhaps, it is time to rewrite or update the Good Book, striking from its pages all the sexually repressive rules and regulations. Imagine how much more attentive young adults might be on Sundays if they were able to have guilt-free sex the night before. And you too, Preacher Man. Think of how much easier your job will be if you don’t have to spend time railing against normal human sexual behavior — you know the behavior you engaged in back when you were a virile young man.
Were you raised in the IFB or Evangelical church? How did your church/college handle the subject of masturbation? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and 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.
Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. (I Corinthians 7:1-2)
The Apostle Paul told the church at Corinth that unmarried men should not touch women. Touch not, want not, right? If men couldn’t contain their sexual desires, then to avoid fornication, they were to marry. In other words, marriage was a considered a cure for horniness. Countless Evangelicals have been taught that if they cannot contain their sexual desires — remember masturbation is a sin — then they should seek out someone of the opposite sex to marry. Hey Betty, I am horny. Will you marry me?
Many Evangelical preachers use I Corinthians 7:1-2 as justification for the Puritanical rules they use to regulate physical contact between unmarried teenagers and young adults. I came of age in the late 1960s and 1970s. I was a member of Trinity Baptist Church in Findlay, Ohio — an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregation affiliated with the Baptist Bible Fellowship (BBF), and First Baptist Church in Bryan, Ohio, also an IFB congregation. Public displays of affection were forbidden. This prohibition forced church teens to turn to secretive means to show their “love” to their boyfriend or girlfriend. We learned how to hold hands in church or on the church bus so no one could see us. There was something exciting about flaunting the rules, even more so when we spent time necking in out-of-the-way church hallways or in the shadows of the parking lot. My favorite necking time was Wednesday evenings when the adults were having choir practice. Church teens were left to their own devices, and many of us used the time for fornication-lite. One girl I dated for a short time told me recently that I was the first boy who kissed her — in the back of the church while the adult choir was practicing Bill Gaither’s song, He Touched Me. 🙂
I had many such dalliances, but that is as far as they went. I was a true believer, so I limited my physical intimacy with the opposite sex to hand-holding and kissing. I was one of the few summer-of-love children who didn’t get laid before marriage. Conversations in recent years with people who were in the youth group with me have revealed that there was a lot of fucking and sucking going on, but none involving preacher boy Bruce Gerencser. I assumed, at the time, that everyone was on the straight and narrow as I was. I now know that their spirits were willing, but their flesh was weak. 🙂
In the fall of 1976, I entered Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan to study for the ministry. A dark-haired beauty by the name of Polly also enrolled for classes. Polly’s goal was to find herself a preacher boy to marry. I thought of college as being a place of plentiful dating opportunities, and I planned to play the field. I dated a girl by the name of Peggy for several weeks and then turned my romantic interest towards Polly. We quickly hit it off, even though we had little in common. She was a quiet, shy preacher’s daughter. I was a motormouth with a bit of a rebellious streak. Polly would tell me later that she thought of me as her “bad boy.” Polly’s parents saw me as a bad boy too; bad as in not good for their innocent daughter. They spent the next eighteen months trying to discourage our relationship, even going so far as to tell Polly that she couldn’t marry me. A short time after this papal edict, Polly informed her parents that we were going to get married with or without their blessing. This was the first time Polly stood up to her parents. If my mother-in-law had to sum up her son-in-law in one sentence, I suspect she would say, Bruce is “different” and he ruined our daughter.
Midwestern was an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist institution. Established by Dr. Tom Malone in the 1950s, Midwestern had a strict code of student conduct. Single students were required to live in the dormitory, and every aspect of dorm life was strictly regulated. Students could only date on the weekends and had to double-date. Dating couples were not permitted to touch each other — no hand-holding, kissing, snuggling, or other displays of affection. Keep in mind, most of the dorm students were ages 18-30 — the raging hormones years. And it was the 1970s, the freaking 1970s!
Single students were expected to keep at least six inches distance from the opposite sex — six inches being the width of a church hymnbook. (Please read Thou Shalt Not Touch: The Six Inch Rule.) Breaking the six-inch rule brought severe punishment. Repeated infractions resulted in expulsion. While there were a handful of couples who self-righteously obeyed the letter of the law, most students quickly learned who they could double-date with without getting in trouble for holding hands with or kissing their date. More than a few students rounded third and slid into home, with several girls becoming pregnant — or so it was rumored anyway. Students caught fornicating were immediately expelled from school.
Polly and I married after our sophomore year. A year later, we left Midwestern and moved to Bryan, Ohio — the place of my birth. A few weeks after our move, I became the assistant pastor at Montpelier Baptist Church — a young, growing IFB church. After spending seven months at Montpelier Baptist, I resigned and we moved to the Central Ohio community of Newark. Polly’s dad was the assistant pastor of the Newark Baptist Temple. Her uncle, the late James Dennis, was the pastor. (Please see The Family Patriarch is Dead: My Life With James Dennis.) We joined the Baptist Temple, and when Polly’s father decided to start a new church in nearby Buckeye Lake in 1981, we joined him. I became his pastoral assistant (primarily working with the youth of the church), a position I held until June of 1983.
In July of 1983, I started a new IFB church in Somerset, Ohio — thirty miles south of Newark. I would pastor Somerset Baptist Church until March of 1994. At every stop during my young ministerial career, I was exposed to and worked with men who believed it was a grave sin for unmarried teens and young adults of the opposite sex to touch each other. I carried this belief into my first full-time pastorate. Church teens likely remember Pastor Bruce preaching against all forms of physical/sexual intimacy between unmarried people. I am sure they remember me famously saying — oh how I wish I could forget — “no girl ever got pregnant who didn’t hold hands with a boy first!” (Yes, I really did say this, and I did so many times!)
I viewed hand-holding as a sexual gateway drug. I thought that if I could shame teens and young adults into not touching one another (or not touching themselves), then there would be no fornicating going on and no teen pregnancies. I pastored Somerset Baptist for eleven years. During that time, no unmarried church female became pregnant. Does this mean that none of the church unmarrieds was having sex? Of course not. Having talked with a handful of church teens who are now in their 30s and early 40s, I now know that they were lustily ignoring my preaching. I am grateful that there were no unwanted pregnancies that I knew of, though I suspect several girls might have gotten pregnant and secretly had abortions.
Is it any wonder that so many IFB married couples have sexual dysfunction? What in my preaching taught these couples a healthy, scientific, rational view of sex? Nothing that I can think of. Instead, I used guilt and shame in my attempts to get them to conform to an anti-human, irrational view of human sexuality. Thousands of Evangelical preachers continue to preach the Thou Shalt Not Touch gospel to church teenagers. Ironically, these preachers didn’t heed this gospel when they were teens, and they surely have to know that neither will their church teenagers. Hormones, need, and desire win every time. Wouldn’t it be far better to teach unmarrieds how to own their sexuality, preparing them for the day when they engage in sex for the first time? I know, the Bible says, the Bible says, the Bible says, but Christians have been trying to live by Puritanical beliefs about sex for centuries. How is that working out? Perhaps it is time to shelve the Bible with its archaic sexual prohibitions and embrace a healthy, natural view of sex. Sorry preachers, but everyone IS doing it. You can live in denial all you want, but the fact remains that by age twenty-one, eight out of ten teenagers have had sex, including teens in your congregation. And now that people are waiting until their mid-twenties to marry, I can safely say that most of the singles listening to your antiquated sermons have likely engaged in some form of sexual activity.
Were you raised in an Evangelical/IFB church? How did your pastor handle I Corinthians 7:1-2? What do you remember your pastor saying about necking and premarital sex? Did you feel shame and guilt when your pastor preached about sex? Please share your experiences in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and 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.
Every day, without fail, women somewhere in the world search for “is it a sin to kiss my boyfriend?” Thanks to the post, Hey Girlfriend: Is it a Sin to Kiss Your Boyfriend?, this blog is the number one Google search result. I can’t remember the last time I looked at search logs and didn’t see a handful of visitors coming to this site to find out whether it is okay to swap spit with their boyfriends. I say female visitors, because I’ve never seen a male come to my site as a result of a “is it a sin to kiss my girlfriend” web search. It seems that women have a lot more angst about kissing their boyfriends than boyfriends do about kissing them. I’ve often wondered what it is that drives women to seek out anonymous Internet advice about boyfriend-kissing. Are these women being pressured by their boyfriends to be physically intimate? Probably. Kissing is very much a part of the human experience. Sadly, as with most things that are pleasurable, Evangelicals have deemed kissing between unmarried men and women to be a sin. Let me explain how Evangelicals come to this “Biblical” position.
First, Evangelicals believe that, thanks to Adam and Eve’s eating of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden 6,024 years ago, the human race is, by nature, sinful. Born into sin, every human being is at variance with God. The Bible says that infants come forth from the womb speaking lies. We don’t become sinners, we are sinners. The Bible says human hearts are deceitful and wicked, so much so that none of us can truly know our hearts. Because of our fallen nature, we desire to fulfill the lusts of the flesh. At the top of the Evangelical lust list are a variety of sexual sins: fornication, adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, incest, masturbation, petting, spooning, and looking at a woman with lust in your heart. Believing that inappropriate physical contact with the opposite sex (there are no gays in the Evangelical church) is a gateway to serious sexual sins such as fornication and adultery, many Evangelical sects, churches, pastors, and families adopt strict rules governing physical intimacy between unmarrieds. For those not raised in Evangelical churches, they will likely find the remainder of this post beyond belief, but rest assured that what I share next can be found in countless Evangelical churches and homes.
I attended Midwestern Baptist College in the 1970s — the era of free love. While hippies were smoking marijuana, listening to rock music, and exploring their sexuality, the unmarried students at Midwestern were expected to maintain a six-inch distance from each other at all times. If you have not read the post, Thou Shalt Not Touch: The Six-Inch Rule, I encourage you to do so. It goes into great detail explaining how the puritanical leadership at Midwestern made sure students kept their distance from each other. Most of the students at Midwestern came from Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) churches that also had some sort of prohibition against physical contact. During my teenage years, I was a member of Trinity Baptist Church, Findlay, Ohio, and First Baptist Church, Bryan, Ohio. Both churches frowned on teenagers and young adults touching one another. Violating the no-touch policy resulted in scoldings and separation during church services from your boyfriend or girlfriend. Sometimes, the pastors would spend time during their sermons rebuking sexually aware unmarrieds for their inappropriate touching. Time was also spent during youth group meetings drilling it into the heads of teenagers that God did not approve of them intimately touching each other. It should come as no surprise then that when unmarrieds were unable to abstain from acting on their normal, healthy sexual desires, they were often filled with guilt and fear. And I’m not talking about having sexual intercourse. More than a few teenagers found themselves ridden with guilt over holding hands with their girlfriend during church services or putting an arm around their boyfriend when no one was looking. Of course, there was certainly plenty of rounding-third and sliding-into-home sexual activity going on. In recent years, I’ve had the privilege of becoming reacquainted with several friends from my high school days. The stories they tell about their own sexual experiences during our youth group years are certainly different from mine. I’ve concluded that pretty much everybody in the youth group was sexually active except me. I was a good Baptist boy who played by the rules. While I certainly held hands with girls, put my arms around them, and kissed them, I (barely) maintained my virginity until my wedding day.
There are several verses in the Bible that Evangelical preachers use to justify their hands-off rules. 1 Corinthians 7:1-2 states:
Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.
It is good for an unmarried man to NOT touch a woman, God says. Didn’t Jesus himself warn that just an inappropriate look at a woman can cause men to commit adultery in their hearts? From these verses, Evangelical preachers justified their no-touch rules; rules, by the way, that most of them didn’t keep when they were young unmarrieds.
Preachers also used what I call the kitchen-sink verses to prop up their preaching against sexual sin:
Abstain from all appearance of evil. (1 Thessalonians 5:22)
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. (1 John 2:15,16)
Young women in particular were psychologically abused by Evangelical preachers who felt it was their duty to make sure that the women were virgins on their wedding day. Preachers shared horror stories about women who engaged in premarital sex. Virtually all the preaching was directed towards women. After all, they were the gatekeepers. It was up to them to keep their legs closed when horn-dog young men came sniffing around. Men are weak, the thinking goes, so it is up to Susie to make sure that both Johnny and Susie are virgins on their wedding day. And the best way to do this is to not have physical contact with each other before marriage. Just remember, the preacher says. No girl has ever gotten pregnant without holding hands or kissing a boy first! I kid you not, handholding was viewed as some sort of gateway, a gate which, once unmarrieds walked through, would lead directly to them being given over to fornication. I know this sounds crazy, but this line of thinking is still quite prominent today. This is why so many unmarried women do Google searches for “is it a sin to kiss my boyfriend?” They likely attend churches that prohibit physical contact between unmarrieds. Yet, when they are away from the prying eyes of their pastors and parents, these sexually aware young adults engage in various forms of sexual intimacy. Fear and guilt follow, so they seek out “help” for dealing with their “lustful” desires.
Here’s my advice to those who are psychologically and spiritually troubled over holding hands with their boyfriend or girlfriend. Your feelings and desires are normal. Sexually aware people naturally desire physical intimacy. The key is to embrace your sexuality and act responsibly. This means you will have to ignore what your windbag preacher is telling you. It’s highly unlikely that any of the adults who are telling you that physical contact is a sin practiced what they preach. These hypocrites should spend their time teaching unmarrieds sexual responsibility. Most young adults will have sexual intercourse before they are married. While your church may consider this a sin, those outside of the Evangelical church view sexual intimacy as a normal part of the human experience. Educate yourself about sex and make sure you always use birth control. I realize your preacher likely has said that using birth control is you preparing to sin, but I think we would all agree that unwanted pregnancies are a bad idea, and the only way to avoid them is to use birth control. Don’t allow the puritanical sexual standards of others to dictate what you will do. It’s your body, your life. And as far as kissing your boyfriend is concerned? Kiss away. A kiss is just a kiss. It can lead to more intimate behavior, but it also can be just that — a kiss. Remember, you — not your church, parents, or preacher — are in control of what you do sexually. Those who demand that you maintain your distance from the opposite sex are stunting your development.
Part of growing up is the exploration of our sexuality. This includes masturbation. Anyone who tells you that masturbation is a sin is someone you need to stop listening to. Much like the desire for physical interaction with the opposite sex, masturbation is normal, healthy behavior. I guarantee you that most of the married adults in your church masturbated before they were married. And I think I would be safe in saying that many of them still do. Masturbation is a great way to release sexual tension, especially when one is not ready to have sexual intercourse. What I’m saying here is that it is all good. Sexual want, need, and desire are very much a part of the human experience. I encourage you to embrace your sexuality and enjoy all the pleasure that comes from doing so.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.
