Menu Close

Tag: Pulpit & Pen

How Discernment Ministries Use Statistics to Distort the News and Inflame Christians

faithwire headline
Headline and Graphic from Faithwire Article

We live in a time where we are inundated with statistics. We also live in a time where the average American lacks a basic understanding of statistics and how to interpret them. For example, imagine me writing that there’s been a 200 percent increase in deaths from the flu vaccine (this is a made-up stat). Why, many people would lose their collective minds, thinking that the flu vaccine is killing millions of people. Most people are headline surfers. Few would actually read my article so they could gain a proper understanding of the statistics behind the headline. If they had read my article, they would have learned that, historically, two out of every 100,000 vaccinated people annually die from the flu vaccine. In 2020, one out of every 100,000 vaccinated people died from the vaccine. In 2021, the death rate jumped to two out of 100,000 vaccinated people. Is this an alarming increase? Of course not. Yet, many people will read the headline and think that the flu vaccine is killing people in droves.

Some websites and blogs love to use statistics to advance their political, social, and religious agenda. Evangelicals — a group of Christians who generally believe we are living in the end times; that the return of Jesus is imminent; that the world will become worser and worser 🙂 until Jesus raptures them off the face of the earth — love to use, misuse, and distort statistics to advance their Fundamentalist agenda.

Take Protestia, a “discernment” site originally operated by disgraced Calvinistic pastor J.D. Hall. Discernment ministries came of age in the 2000s. I have been following Evangelical sites such as Protestia (previously Pulpit and Pen), The Dissenter (previously Reformed Charlotte, operated by Jeff Maples), Christian Research Network (started by the late Ken Silva, an arch-nemesis of mine), Michelle Lesley, Lighthouse Trail Research, Way of Life Literature (David Cloud), and others since their inception. Initially, these groups focused on rooting out and attacking perceived heresy and heretics in their midst. They pride themselves in calling out by name preachers, colleges, denominations, and churches who fail their theological and social purity tests. Over time, their “discernment” has become more extreme; more political; more hysterical. They have now become sites that are “keepers of the flame” or “keepers of the book of life.” These gnostics — people who think they have some sort of elevated or inside knowledge about and experience with God — now routinely decree who is and isn’t saved. They are the Pharisees of Evangelical Christianity.

The current king of the discernment hill is Protestia. Known for their hateful anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, the boys at Protestia published a post today with a headline that stated: ‘Gender-Affirming’ Mastectomies in Children Spike 389% From 2016 to 2019. Protestia’s post was an excerpt of a Faithwire post with the same title. The goal of both articles was to enflame the anti-transgender hysteria presently burning through the Evangelical community.

Is the latest wave of the sexual revolution really targeting children? Protestia decided to excerpt the Faithwire article before giving its readers the context necessary to properly understand their inflammatory headline:

In 2016, roughly 100 children went under the knife for the procedures. Just a handful of years later, in 2019, that number soared to 489 — a 389% increase.

The findings were based on statistics gathered by the Nationwide Ambulatory Surgery Sample, which found 1,130 chest reconstruction surgeries were performed on children from 2016 to 2019. More than 98% of those procedures were masculinizing, meaning they were performed on females who had their breasts removed. Only 1.4% were feminizing mammaplasties, augmenting but not removing breast tissue.

Of the children who underwent these “gender-affirming” surgeries, nearly 20% were also placed on hormone therapy, presumably to address their gender dysphoric diagnoses.

….

As for the new research, the data shows the patients who underwent double mastectomies ranged in age from 12 to 17 years old. While the majority were 17, roughly 5.5% were reportedly under 14.

For context, the researchers estimated there are currently around 300,000 adolescents in the U.S. between the ages of 13 and 17 who identify as transgender.

Context is everything, right? Is the statistical increase significant? Sure. But the statistics in the aforementioned article tell us that few “children” are getting gender-affirming surgery; and that of the “children” who do, the majority of them are seventeen.

The only way to understand the Protestia and Faithwire articles is through the lens of their hatred and hostility towards LGBTQ people in general, and transgender people in particular. Certainly, there is debate to be had on gender-affirming surgery, and a host of other sex/gender issues, but that’s not the goal of the “fine” Christians at Protestia and Faithwire. Their goal is to provide a daily diet of red meat culture war issues; posts that reaffirm their hatred of the “world.”

Please read Cutting through the Lies and Misinterpretations about the Updated Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People by Dr. AJ Eckert and Dr. Quinnehtukqut McLamore on the Science-Based Medicine website for accurate information on gender-affirming surgery.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Connect with me on social media:

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: “Sissy” Men Can’t Go to Heaven

jd hall

Christian men, you know how you have a natural disdain for limp-wristed, soft-handed dandies with their coiffed hair, penny-loafers, and man-purses? Guess what? It’s not a natural disdain; it’s a supernatural disdain.

The reason why you have an instinctual contempt for men who double-up on fashion accessories and get manicures is that the Holy Spirit has led you to hate sin. You’re not a bigot when you despise effeminate men, you’re a Spirit-filled Christian. Don’t let namby-pambies tell you that you’re being a fundamentalist; you’re just reaching into your inner discernment and hating the things God hates. It makes you like Jesus, and it pleases God to hate sin.

Almost universally, the females of any and every culture spend a far greater amount of time in their personal beauty regiment than men. Women, because men are more visually impressed, naturally spend more time on their wardrobe, hair, and external beauty. When men do these things, it is right to presume they also are trying to impress men.

In other words, when a man aspires to dress for fashion, he’s acting gay (whether he is or not). The Bible calls it being effeminate, and God hates it. That’s right, God hates even acting gay. And regardless of how many times vapidly ignorant Christians argue that God doesn’t care how you dress, they have to overlook a hundred-plus places in the Bible where God gives explicit instructions on how to dress (including prohibitions about gender-bending in places like Deuteronomy 22:5) to do so.

Men, by God’s design, should be practical in their dress, not stylish. Manliness should be displayed in the outward appearance of men in the same way that femininity should be displayed in the outward appearance of women. While this doesn’t imply one thing or another about things like dresses or slacks, it does forbid men putting off a feminine vibe or women putting off a masculine one.

But most of all, I am sick and tired of being treated like my detestation of skinny jeans or stylish man-scarves is some kind of tawdry bigotry. It’s not; it’s godliness. God hates that garbage, too. In fact, if some men don’t man up a bit and stop prancing around like daisies, it bodes poorly for where they’ll spend eternity.

….

In some cases, godly men might need to help an effeminate new convert who’s been sissified from a soft-existence in 21st Century cosmopolitan culture learn how to unbend their wrists or how to replace their slippers with a good pair of boots. But that’s hard to do when – increasingly – evangelical leaders are taking their style advice from GQ to fit in with the cool kids who are, by and large, androgynous morphodites.

— Jordan “JD” Hall, pastor of Fellowship Baptist Church, Sidney, Montana, publisher of Pulpit & Pen, Effeminate Men Can’t Go to Heaven, July 17, 2020

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Praise Jesus for Forced Conversions and Genocide

Christopher Columbus
Cartoon by Sergio Hernandez

Indigenous people should, as every year, be thanking God for colonization on Columbus Day. The Great Commission as promised by Jesus – to spread his name and message throughout the world – has largely been the byproduct of the expansion of Christian empires through colonization. And through colonization, disadvantaged parts of the world have thrived by the influence of God-fearing nations.

….

Native peoples around the world are far better off, more happy, more healthy, and more at peace than they ever would have been before, if it were not for colonization of the New World and the expanse of Christendom throughout the world. Although Columbus himself was a Romanist and not a real believer in Jesus, his voyage across the Atlantic brought the competition of religion between Romanists and Protestants, and set-off the race to Christianize the savage in the New World.

— Pulpit & Pen, Thank God for Colonization on this Columbus Day, October 13, 2019

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: There are No Atheists

there is no such thing as an atheist

Atheists claim that they don’t believe in God. But God, according to the Bible, doesn’t believe in atheists.

….

The Bible teaches that there are no atheists; there are only people who suppress the truth about God in their unrighteousness. Romans 1 teaches that people know intuitively and from creation that there is a Creator, but they choose to pretend as though they don’t believe.

….

Of course, [Brad] Pitt is just affirming the Bible. Atheism is an act. Deep down, there are no atheists. There are only spiritualists and supernaturalists who reject truth as a means to place themselves as Lord and Savior of their own life.

At least Pitt was honest…atheism is for actors, both amateur and professional. Every person knows intuitively that supernaturality exists.

— Pulpit & Pen, In GQ Interview, Brad Pitt Admits Atheism Is Just an Act, Doesn’t Really Exist, September 17, 2019

Is Rachel Evans in Hell? Pulpit & Pen and The Transformed Wife Say YES!

rachel evans

Recently, Christian author and conference speaker Rachel Evans suddenly died at the age of 37. The Religion News Service reported:

Rachel Held Evans, a popular progressive Christian writer and speaker, died Saturday morning (May 4) at age 37 after a brief illness.

Evans had been in a medically induced coma for several weeks and never returned to an alert state.

Writer and collaborator Sarah Bessey tweeted that Evans was surrounded by close friends and family at the end, and the Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber shared that friends were at Evans’ bedside Friday night, offering “our touch and tears and song. I anointed her with oil.”

Her husband, Dan Evans, informed followers and supporters of his wife’s death on her website.

“This entire experience is surreal. I keep hoping it’s a nightmare from which I’ll awake. I feel like I’m telling someone else’s story,” he wrote in an update on Evans’ blog.

“I cannot express how much the support means to me and our kids. To everyone who has prayed, called, texted, driven, flown, given of themselves physically and financially to help ease this burden: Thank you. We are privileged. Rachel’s presence in this world was a gift to us all and her work will long survive her.”

On April 14, Evans, who was particularly gifted at using social media to connect with her readers, tweeted that she had been admitted to the hospital with a “flu + UTI combo and a severe allergic reaction” to antibiotics, asking for prayer and — with the characteristic humor she often used to defuse difficult conversations — lamenting she would miss “Game of Thrones.”

Later, in an update on her website, Dan Evans said that she began having “unexpected symptoms” while receiving treatment for an infection and that doctors found her brain was experiencing constant seizures. Doctors had placed her in a medically induced coma while working to determine the cause and treatment, he said.

Evans is best known for her popular blog and best-selling books, including New York Times best-seller “A Year of Biblical Womanhood,” ”Searching for Sunday” and, most recently, “Inspired.” She also served on President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

In her books and blog posts, she wrote openly about her faith journey, which led her from Bryan College — a conservative evangelical school known for promoting belief in a literal, six-day creation — to the mainline Episcopal Church. Along the way, she chronicled her faith, doubt, honest questions and evolving beliefs with a sense of humor.

That didn’t come without controversy, including pushback from more conservative Christians over “A Year of Biblical Womanhood,” which celebrated an egalitarian view of women’s roles in both marriage and the church.

But in her writing she rarely lapsed into us-versus-them arguments, instead presenting a vision of the church as a place with room for everyone.

“This is what God’s kingdom is like: a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, because they said yes,” she wrote in “Searching for Sunday.”

“And there’s always room for more.”

Evans, a one-time Evangelical, was loved and hated by Evangelicals. Several self-righteous Christians took took to their blogs and social media to let it be known that Evans is now in Hell.

First up, are the miscreants at Pulpit & Pen. Greg Smith writes:

Rachel Held Evans was on the wrong side of every controversial issue and point of doctrine plaguing the western church today. With full knowledge she loudly and publicly chronicled her departure from anything that could be considered the historical Christian faith. No need to establish and or document that here and now. It is beyond dispute for anyone with a modicum of commitment to the biblical gospel.

In that light, how do we respond when a person like this passes into eternity, by all biblically reasonable accounts, apart from the saving blood and knowledge of the true and holy only begotten Son of the living God?

We should certainly not shrink from the realities that such a situation confronts us with. Only God Himself can pass final judgement on a human soul, however He has given us His word whereby we are to declare His revealed mind on all things, including the standards by which yes, we ARE to judge the state of others when it is this clear according to the evidence their life has shown us.

If we do not warn that the denial of the saving truth as it in Christ Jesus IS eternal death, then we are presuming ourselves to be wiser and holier than God who commands exactly that. The blood of those who hear us would then be on our hands as the Lord proclaimed through the prophet Ezekiel.

With that in mind, we also should never rejoice or sneer at the loss of another, no matter who or what they are. To do so is to demonstrate a profound lack of the knowledge of our own sin and the grace and power of God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit required to save us from it.

It is in the spirit of both of these biblical principles that Pulpit and Pen expresses it’s [sic] sorrow and regret at the passing of Rachel Held Evans. Both for the loss of her soul and for the unbiblical and further soul damning treatment that her already tragic death will inevitably give occasion to

….

Jordan Hall, pastor of Fellowship Baptist Church in Sidney, Montana and a writer for Pulpit & Pen, stated he believed Jesus would have likely said the same thing as his Bible buddy Smith:

jordan hall comment rachel evans

Church Watch Central quoted Jordan Hall as saying:

As in her life, Rachel Held Evans was surrounded by heretics and applauded by apostates at her death. She was ‘anointed’ with oil in the hours before her passing by the self-professed “profane bulldyke” and mannish, self-graffitied, vulgar blasphemer, Nadia Bolz-Weber, who better personifies the Grim Reaper than perhaps anyone in a clerical collar. It’s hard to believe that anyone ushered into the world to come by Bolz-Weber would be ushered into the right world.

Perhaps her own tweet conveys this point the best [Evans’ tweet about God not being a dude.]

Evans knows that God is male now. She also knows so much more. The God she expected to see is not the God she now knows.

Evans, who has used her life’s energy to attack the authority and inerrancy of the Scripture, Biblical gender roles and sexual ethics, and commit all kinds of ontological heresies against God, has been eulogized as though a saint after her death by many who criticized her as an enemy of Biblical Christianity during her lifetime.

For many, theological debate is Kabuki theater, where each side has a role to play and even the audience has a part to act out. There are protagonists and antagonists who spar on stage, but go out afterward to celebrate their dramatic endeavors and the show they’ve put on for the masses. This is all basically a more sophisticated version of the showmanship of professional wrestling.

However, some of us religious types view apostasy as a serious matter. Furthermore, some of us think hell is real. Likewise, we think people actually go there. And, we believe that we know what it takes to avoid that place. Ergo, we take theology, you know…seriously and stuff.

Next up is up Lori Alexander and her cadre of followers at The Transformed Wife. My friend, Suzanne Titkemeyer, posted several Facebook screenshots of comments by Alexander and Co:

lori alexander rachel evans

lori alexander followers rachel evans

Many people were outraged by Alexander’s words and demanded she take down her post. She replied:

lori alexander rachel evans

And finally, here’s what Emily Thomes, a former homosexual-turned-Evangelical, had to say:

emily thomes rachel evans

Hateful words from Greg Smith, Jordan Hall, Emily Thomes, and Lori Alexander. However, readers need to understand that their linguistic bile reflects a viewpoint held by millions of American Evangelicals. Evans was viewed by many Evangelicals as a heretic. They despised the larger-than-life presence Evans had among Evangelicals. Her untimely death is viewed by them as God settling the score with one of America’s beloved heretics. That Lutheran pastor  Nadia Bolz-Weber was by Evans’ bedside when she died only confirms their belief that God rained judgment down upon her head. Bolz-Weber’s theology and sexual ethic has been a frequent target of Evangelical writers. That Weber was with Evans at the time of her death only reinforces for them how far she had fallen from grace.

There was a time in my life when I would have agreed with Greg Smith, Jordan Hall, and Lori Alexander about Evans’ unexpected death. I would have viewed her demise as God silencing a heretic. I have long “prayed” that I live to be eighty lest my Evangelical critics turn my death into a sure sign that God has judged me and thrown my ass into Hell. The fact that countless former Evangelicals critique Evangelical doctrine and practices with no recrimination by God should be a sign to zealots that God ain’t paying attention.

Personally, I hope Pulpit & Pen,The Transformed Wife and others of their ilk continue to preach their hatred for people such as Rachel Evans. Their words go far beyond their blogs and social media, leading those with doubts about Evangelical Christianity to conclude that they no longer want to be part of a religion that promotes judgmentalism, bigotry, and hate. Keep preaching the word!

About Bruce Gerencser

Bruce Gerencser, 62, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 41 years. He and his wife have six grown children and twelve grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist. For more information about Bruce, please read the About page.

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

Donations are always appreciated. Donations on a monthly basis can be made through Patreon. One-time donations can be made through PayPal.

Christians Says the Darnedest Things: Democrats Hate God

ten commandments

While their animosity [Democrats] toward God is easily demonstrable (who doesn’t know that Democrats typically hate Him?), it’s the Democratic Party’s platform contrast with the Second Table that might need closer inspection.

Consider the 6th Commandment: “You shall not murder. (Exodus 20:13)This seems simple enough, yes? The Hebrew word is רָצַח (ratsach) and means, “the unjust taking of innocent human life.”

And yet, the Democratic Party platform promotes . . .  Abortion on demand, murdering babies for the sake of convenience.

Consider the Seventh Commandment: “You shall not commit adultery (Exodus 20:14)

Jesus interpreted this command for us in the Sermon on the Mount, in which he equated any kind of sexual impurity as a Seventh Commandment violation (Matthew 5:28). Any of the Bible’s lists of sexual sins – including the desire itself, acted upon or not – fit under the condemnation of the Seventh Commandment.

And yet, the Democratic Party promotes: The special protected status and special rights (including marriage) for homosexuals and others with perverse sexual desires.

….

Consider the 9th Commandment: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor (Exodus 20:16)
We are not supposed to lie. A “lie” is something that is demonstrably untrue. God is truth. To not speak truth is to misrepresent God as his image-bearers.

The Democratic Party platform promotes: Reinforcement of the idea that it’s possible to transition gender, and that a man can be a woman, and a woman can be man.

….

After comparing the Democratic platform to the Second Table of God’s Law it becomes apparent that it’s not so much a platform as just a list of things that God hates.

While the Democratic Party may try to convince the public that they are the compassionate party of love and kindness, in reality it’s God’s Second Table of law that tells us how to love our neighbor. And if that’s the case, the Democratic Party breaks each and every command that teaches us how to love our neighbor.

Being a Republican does not make you a Christian, but being a Democrat probably means you aren’t.

— Unnamed Author, Pulpit & Pen, Love Thy Neighbor: How the Democratic Party Platform Breaks God’s Laws, March 22, 2019

Southern Baptist Seth Dunn Says Female Pastors Are Just as Bad as Sex Offender Pastors

seth dunn

Seth Dunn is a Fundamentalist Southern Baptist [Dunn has since written me and said he is not a Southern Baptist] who believes it is his duty to right all theological wrongs. Dunn, a professor at Tennessee Temple University, [Dunn has since written me and said he is not a professor at TTU; that the school went out of business a few years ago] is one of the hands-on proctologists at the Pulpit & Pen website.

Daily, the fine men at Pulpit & Pen rage against the machine — the “machine” being non-Fundamentalist, non-Calvinistic Christianity. Recently, Dunn took to Twitter to express his outrage over churches who hire female pastors. Thinking he was being clever, Dunn tweeted:

seth dunn tweet

Dunn astoundingly believes that there is no difference theologically or morally between churches hiring female pastors and churches hiring sex offenders — rapists, perverts, sexual abusers, child molesters, and every other crime that might land you on the sex offenders list. Dunn rightly caught a lot of shit over his dumbassery, but he was not moved one whit from his viewpoint. He tweeted::

seth dunn tweet 2

You see, all that Dunn cares about is loving what God loves and hating what God hates, or at least his interpretation of what the Bible says God loves and hates. In other words, Dunn hates most of the human race; which makes sense since Dunn is a card-carrying member of Club Calvin — an exclusive club made up special people chosen by God to be saved. I don’t know Dunn, but even in my Fundamentalist days I would have said, Dude, you are an idiot!

About Bruce Gerencser

Bruce Gerencser, 61, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 40 years. He and his wife have six grown children and twelve grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist. For more information about Bruce, please read the About page.

Bruce is a local photography business owner, operating Defiance County Photo out of his home. If you live in Northwest Ohio and would like to hire Bruce, please email him.

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

Donations are always appreciated. Donations on a monthly basis can be made through Patreon. One-time donations can be made through PayPal.

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Watching “Sin” on the TV by Jeff Maples

tv-is-evil

The biblical principle is simple. If it’s sinful to perform and produce, it’s sinful to watch. But the American church is so morally degenerate that she will not accept this. I understand that this is a very unpopular position to take. Some of the greatest Christian minds will disagree with me on this. Why? Because, for some reason, we have conditioned ourselves to accept “artistic” representations of sin as acceptable. “A swear word here or there won’t cause me to stumble.” But that’s just the thing, you’ve already stumbled. Immersing yourself into something sinful is sinful.

It does us no good to turn from our sin if we have no desire to completely separate from sin. How can we say that we’ve repented–that we hate sin–if we still desire to watch it? Will God allow this kind of entertainment in Heaven? Have the desires of your heart really changed if you’re a believer? If not, perhaps you should seriously examine yourself. Living out your depravity through television shows, movies, and entertainment is no different than living it out in real life. It merely assuages your conscience, leading you to believe that you don’t desire to sin, while the truth is, you very well may still be a twisted, barbaric fornicating pornographer and blasphemer at heart.

What a tool Satan has in leading the world away from God.

— Jeff Maples, Pulpit & Pen, How Entertainment Has the Church in Bondage to Sin, November 28, 2016

Bruce Gerencser