A week and a half ago, Southern Baptist Convention leaders released a list of alleged sex-abuse offenders that had been kept secret. Perhaps it is not fair of me to say that I am not surprised, as I have never had any connection with the SBC. On the other hand, having experienced childhood sexual abuse while serving as an altar boy in the Roman Catholic Church—and hearing whispers about sexual harassment of women and teenaged girls in the Evangelical church of which I was later a part—I don’t think I was being cynical in saying to myself, “Well, what does anybody expect?” upon reading about the SBC report.
Perhaps even less surprising, to me, was the accompanying revelation: victims who alerted church authorities, at whatever level, were advised to “be quiet” or, worse, intimidated into silence. It sounded like an alternate-universe version, if you will, of my own story. Decades passed, and the priest who abused me died, before I spoke or wrote about my experience. For one thing, I had neither the language nor other cultural contexts for telling about what was done to me: there was no open discussion about such matters in the time and place in which I grew up, and priests and other church officials were seen as beyond reproach. In such an environment, even if I knew the names of the parts of my body that priest touched, I could not have told of my ordeal in a way that would have been more credible, in the eyes of my community, than anything that priest—or the priests to whom he reported—could have said. I can’t help but to think that if I could have described what the priest did to me—beyond that “it felt weird”—someone, whether a relative or a father in the church, would have told me to keep my story to myself.
That nobody had to tell me not to tell—at least at that time in my life—is a testament to, not only the esteem in which priests in the church were held in my community, but also the power the Church has wielded. It also says something about how powerless I was. Perhaps the most important lesson I have learned from carrying my sexual abuse, alone—and, years later, seeing children bearing their burdens without a champion or mentor—is that nothing is more damaging than inculcating, or allowing a child to grow up, with a sense that their reality—or, more importantly, what they have to say about it—is not to be trusted or believed.
For that matter, invalidation of the fear, anger or whatever else one might feel about having been violated—which, by definition, is done by someone with more power or, at least, credibility—serves only to further traumatize the victim. That is what SBC officials did when they told people to “be quiet.” That is what my parish, and larger Church officials, could just as well have done after I was abused by a priest.
So, while the abuse I experienced as an altar boy in a Roman Catholic parish in Brooklyn, New York in the 1960s is different from what girls and women in the Southern Baptist Convention endured, we have this much in common: we suffered in silence for too long as a result of churches that were more interested in preserving their “institutional integrity” than in helping those of us who have been victimized. That silence—my “closet,” if you will—hindered my development in so many ways, not the least of which is that I didn’t affirm my identity as a woman until my mid-40s. I can only wish that those whom the SBC told to “keep quiet” didn’t lose as much—time, or anything else—by remaining in a “closet” I know all too well.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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An alternate headline would go something like this: OMG! The Southern Baptist Convention Has a Sex Abuse Problem — Who’d a Thunk It?
The media, much like a hog finding an acorn, breathlessly reports that notable Southern Baptist leaders knew that sexual predators were roaming the halls of SBC churches, colleges, seminaries, and youth camps. The media acts like the recently released Guidepost report on sexual abuse in the SBC (read full report here) is new information; that no one knew the depth of the depravity until the report was released. To that, I say, bullshit. Some of us have been writing about sexual abuse in Evangelicalism, in general, and the SBC and the IFB church movement, in particular, for decades. I know I have. (Please see the Black Collar Crime Series.) Our voices, for the most part, were ignored. I was routinely dismissed because I’m an atheist, a bitter, jaded ex-Evangelical with an ax to grind. Even if such claims are true, and they are not, this question remains: is what I write about sexual abuse, pastors abusing their positions of authority for sexual gain, and sundry other crimes committed by so-call men of God, true?
Countless Evangelicals have self-righteously told me: yes, preachers can and do commit crimes, but they are just a few rotten apples among a bushel of Red Delicious apples. As the latest report reveals, there are a lot more rotten apples in that bushel than Evangelical sects, churches, and colleges would have us believe. We are not talking about a few isolated incidences here. I suspect that there are thousands of preachers, evangelists, missionaries, college professors, deacons, Sunday school teachers, youth directors, bus workers, and church janitors who are sexual predators; men (and a few women) who prey on vulnerable children, teenagers, and adults — most of whom have never been prosecuted for their crimes (though this is changing thanks to the Internet and increasing pressure on law enforcement and prosecutors to aggressively investigate and prosecute preachers and other church leaders). We know that these predators will not stop until they are caught; until they are arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned.
For years, SBC and IFB preachers gleefully pointed out the Catholic church’s sex abuse scandal. “We preach the true gospel and personal holiness, so we don’t have such problems in our churches,” many preachers self-righteously said.
Reeves knows this is a bald-faced lie; a denial of the facts on the ground. As IFB and Southern Baptist preachers are wont to do, all that matters to Reeves is protecting the “good” name of the sect and its churches. That’s why the SBC executive committee, pastors, college presidents, and attorneys covered up sex crimes. All that matters is outward appearance, victims be damned.
Much like a mob family, SBC leaders buried countless sex abuse victims in non-descript, out-of-the-way plots of ground, never to be heard from again. The good news is that a true miracle is taking place. Those buried victims, long thought dead, are very much alive, shouting their stories from rooftops to all who will listen. And they will not be silenced. And as a small, insignificant voice in this battle against predatory preachers, I will continue to leverage this site’s traffic to continue to expose their crimes. As far as the SBC is concerned, several things need to happen
The FBI needs to begin an immediate investigation of the SBC Executive Committee and other denominational leaders. It’s evident that some SBC leaders engaged in organized criminal behavior, and, if warranted, should be prosecuted for their crimes.
The SBC should establish an accessible database of people accused of sex crimes. Not just those who have been prosecuted. Yes, there is a small — a very, very very small — chance someone could be wrongfully accused. That’s unfortunate, but the overwhelming majority of preachers and other church leaders accused of sex crimes are as guilty as Judas Iscariot. Often, guilty preachers escape punishment due to statutory limitations, so a lack of prosecution is not a statement of innocence.
Churches must enact policies that put the safety and welfare of children, teenagers, and church members first. Background checks on an annual basis (state and federal) must be required for a church to remain in the SBC. Churches must use outside investigators to thoroughly investigate new hires. Word of mouth is not good enough. Contacting a pastoral candidate’s previous church is not good enough. I candidated at a number of churches over the years. I still find it astounding what churches DIDN’T ask me. Not one church performed a background check or investigated my past. All that seemed to matter is that I was winsome, an excellent public speaker, and had a wife who could play the piano.
Churches should immediately shutter their youth programs and fire their youth pastors. The sheer number of youth pastors accused of sex crimes is such that the risk far outweighs the benefit. Young youth pastors have raging hormones, yet churches think it is a good idea to put them in ministries that afford them close, intimate interaction with teens and college students who also have raging hormones. What could possibly go wrong? According to the Black Collar Crime Series — a lot.
Accusations of sexual misconduct should be IMMEDIATELY reported to law enforcement. Don’t investigate, call for a church meeting, or interrogate the victim. It is up to law enforcement, not the church, to determine if a crime has been committed. If churches don’t do this, their leaders should be prosecuted for “failing to report.” Start throwing in jail preachers, deacons, and other church leaders for not reporting allegations of sexual abuse, and I suspect they might start taking the matter seriously.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Tom Ascol, a noted Calvinistic pastor, and a candidate running to be president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), thinks abortion is murder and women who have abortions should be prosecuted for homicide. In fact, Ascol thinks anyone and everyone involved in an abortion should be arrested, charged with murder, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Since Ascol is pro-capital punishment, we can safely assume he’s okay with killing women for “killing” their fetuses. Think on that one for a while.
The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States — albeit the sect is in decline, with over half its members AWOL on any given Sunday. At one time, the SBC was pro-choice. Today, thanks to the wholesale takeover of the Convention by Ascol and his fellow Fundamentalists, the sect is wholeheartedly anti-abortion and forced birth.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Before I became a mature ObstacleChick, my mom and I lived with her parents and her maternal grandmother just outside Nashville, Tennessee. My grandparents were active in their local Southern Baptist Church: my grandfather as a deacon on the Buildings and Grounds Committee, and my grandmother who served sometimes in the choir, as a Sunday school teacher, as a Women’s Missionary Union teacher, and on the Pastor Search Committee. We attended church services three times a week (twice on Sunday and again on Wednesday evening). When my grandfather wasn’t working, he was doing something at the church, helping people in the community, or hanging out at the local gas station/convenience store connecting with more people to help in the community.
Grandma was a strict complementarian who ran the household on a hierarchical structure. She considered Grandpa to be the head of household, and thus we were all instructed to obey him. Grandma’s mother was next on the totem pole as we are supposed to “honor our father and mother that our days may be long upon the earth”. My mom and I were somewhere way down the line, and Grandma considered herself to be the obedient servant. Grandpa did not subscribe to the complementarian plan, and he taught me that I should prepare myself to become a financially independent person, but he did not spend a lot of time arguing with Grandma’s sincerely held beliefs unless she tried to ban TV again. That’s when he used his executive privilege to ensure that he could watch his favorite sports teams and WWII-era movies.
Grandma’s sincerely held beliefs were often dictated by the latest culture wars that she heard about on Christian radio. I think she meant to be as obedient to what she thought God wanted from his creatures as she could possibly be, but she had a long laundry list of what was considered appropriate and inappropriate behavior. For example, she would not play any games with a regular deck of cards because she believed that decks of cards were tools of gambling. Grandma would not consume alcohol in any form, and she didn’t even want to patronize a restaurant that served alcohol. She never went to the movies and only watched the news on television. Substitute swear words were omitted from her vocabulary. Christian media were the only media sources that Grandma partook in (except for the evening news).
When I was 15 years old, I had pneumonia and Grandma had tuberculosis. You can imagine the amount of coughing that was happening in our house. Both of us were prescribed cough medicines, but nothing was working well. My grandfather was at his wits’ end, so he went to the store and brought home a bottle of whiskey, some lemons, and honey. He proceeded to make his family’s cough suppressant concoction from these ingredients plus a heavy dose of sugar, and he told Grandma and me that he wanted us to try it because it had worked when his grandmother (who by all accounts had been a skilled healer) gave it to him and his siblings. I thought, cool, I’ll be able to find out what whiskey tastes like. Grandma, however, was incredibly distressed. She was caught between the two sins of consuming alcohol and disobeying her husband. Unable to decide which was the greater sin, she told Grandpa, “I am only taking this because you’re my husband and I am supposed to obey you, but I do not agree with consuming alcohol.” I am pretty sure that was the first night in a while that anyone in our house got a good night of sleep as Grandpa’s home remedy soothed the coughing beasts. I guess after a good night of sleep, Grandpa took pity on Grandma and did not ask her to use his cough concoction again. Of course, I continued to use it despite the fact that whiskey tasted nasty, even with copious amounts of lemon and honey. My mature ObstacleChick version made with Fireball is much tastier and works better (in my opinion) than the over-the-counter cough syrups. I wonder which Jesus would have preferred?
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Millions of Americans attend IFB churches. Add to this number Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) churches who hold similar Fundamentalist theological and social beliefs (please see Are Evangelicals Fundamentalists?), and you end up with a sizeable minority within the broad Evangelical tent. While some IFB apologists trace the movement’s genesis to the Modernist-Fundamentalist battle of the 1920s, most would say that the IFB church movement was birthed out of opposition to liberalism in the Southern Baptist Convention and American Baptist Convention in the 1950s and 1960s. Many of the fathers of the movement were Southern Baptist or American Baptist pastors who pulled their churches out of their respective conventions. I attended numerous Sword of the Lord conferences in the 1970s and 1980s where big-name IFB preachers trumpeted the astronomical numerical growth of their churches while delighting in spouting statistics that showed the SBC was in decline. I heard Jack Hyles, then the pastor of the largest church in the world — First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana — run down the list of the largest churches in America, pointing out how many of them were IFB churches. Hyles, along with countless other IFB preachers of that era, believed that their churches’ growth and the SBC’s decline were sure signs of God’s approval and blessing.
Today, the IFB church movement is in steep numerical decline. Churches that once had thousands of members are now closed or are shells of what they once were. IFB colleges have also seen drops in enrollment due to the fact that the feeders for these institutions — IFB churches — aren’t sending as many students to their schools. The Southern Baptist Convention, on the other hand, has been reclaimed from liberalism, and many of the largest churches in America are affiliated with the Convention. (The SBC is the first denomination that I am aware of that has reversed its course and returned to its Fundamentalist roots. The Convention is now home to a burgeoning Calvinistic movement. Many liberal/progressive SBC churches broke away in 1991 (1,800 churches) and formed the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Liberals who remain will either seek out friendlier associations or be excommunicated.)
For countless Christians, the IFB church movement is all they have ever known. Their entire lives, from baby dedications to graduations from IFB colleges, have been dominated and controlled by Baptist Fundamentalism. In many ways, the IFB church movement is a cult (please see Questions: Bruce, Is the IFB Church Movement a Cult? and One Man’s Christianity is Another Man’s Cult) that shelters families from the evil, Satanic outside world. All that congregants are required to do is believe and obey. Is it any wonder that the hymn Trust and Obey is a popular hymn in many IFB churches? Trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey. For those born and raised in the IFB bubble, all they know is what they have been taught by their parents, pastors, and teachers. Encouraged to make professions of faith at an early age, these cradle Baptists know little about the world outside of the IFB bubble. The bubble protects them from outside, worldly influences and helps to reinforce IFB beliefs and practices. (And when IFB youths run afoul of the strict rules found in IFB churches, they are sometimes sent off to IFB group homes and camps so they can be “rehabilitated.”)
The video below graphically (and beautifully) illustrates how deeply and thoroughly Fundamentalist beliefs dominate the thinking of those raised in Fundamentalist churches. Sung by Champion Baptist College’s (now Champion Christian University) tour group, the song I Have Been Blessed, is a compendium of IFB beliefs. The indoctrinated young adults singing this song really believe what they are singing. Outsiders might label these singers ignorant — and they are — but I choose to be more charitable, knowing that this song is simply a reflection of the tribal religion they have been a part of their entire lives.
I have great sympathy for people who know only what they have been taught in IFB churches and institutions. From the early 1960s to the mid-1990s, I was one such person. My parents were saved at an IFB church in the 1960s, and from that day forward we religiously attended IFB churches. When my parents divorced in the early 1970s, I continued to attend IFB churches. In many ways, these congregations became my family, giving me love and structure. After high school, I attended an IFB college, and from 1979 to 1994 I pastored IFB churches. (One church I co-pastored, Community Baptist Church in Elmendorf, Texas, would not call itself an IFB church due to its Calvinistic beliefs, but its social practices and anti-culture beliefs put it squarely in the IFB camp.) I was, in every way, a true-blue believer, never questioning my beliefs until I was in my late 40s. I know firsthand how IFB indoctrination affects a person intellectually and psychologically.
Not everyone, of course, is born into the IFB church movement. Others become members due to the movement’s aggressive evangelistic efforts and methodology. Particular targets are people who have messy, unhappy lives or have drug/alcohol addictions. Wanting deliverance from their present lives, these people are often quite receptive when they come in contact with IFB preachers and church members who promise them that, if they will believe the IFB gospel, then Jesus will make their lives brand new and deliver them from their chaotic, broken lives. Once saved, these newly minted Christians are encouraged to join the churches that cared enough about them to share the Good News® with them. And many of these people do indeed join IFB churches, but unlike those raised in such churches, these outsiders often have a harder time accepting IFB social strictures. More than a few of them stop attending church or seek out congregations that aren’t as extreme.
And then there are the people who deliberately seek out IFB churches to attend. Drawn to such churches by their need for doctrinal purity, certainty, or a safe haven from the world, they are thrilled to find churches that believe the Bible from cover to cover (even though, as anyone who has studied the IFB church movement knows, IFB preachers and congregants pick and choose beliefs just as non-IFB Christians do). Perfectionists, in particular, find IFB churches quite appealing. If IFB churches and their pastors are anything, they are certain that their beliefs and practices come straight from the mouth of the Christian God (God wrote the Bible, so its words are his). Perfectionists — as I know firsthand — love structure, control, and order.
Perfectionists make the perfect members. They joyously buy into the go-go-go, do-do-do, work-for-the-night-is-coming-when-no-man-can-work, better-to-burn-out-than-rust-out thinking that permeates IFB churches. There’s no time for rest and comfort. The Bible is true, judgment is sure, hell is real, and there are billions of lost souls who need to hear the IFB gospel. How dare anyone who truly loves Jesus live a life of ease while sinners are dying in their sins and going to hell. On and on go the clichés. I suspect that most successful IFB preachers have perfectionist tendencies.
Some IFB church members were once members of Evangelical or mainline churches. Concerns over perceived liberalism drive them to seek out churches that still believe in the Book, the Blood, and the Blessed Hope. Tired of pastors who refuse, they believe, to preach the whole counsel of God or to stand against worldliness, these disaffected Christians often find that IFB churches believe what they believe, so they leave their churches and join with the Baptists.
While I could give other reasons people attend IFB churches, those mentioned above cover the majority of people who attend Independent Fundamentalist Baptist churches.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Ed Litton, pastor of Redemption Church in Saraland, Alabama was recently elected as the next president of the Southern Baptist Convention — the largest Protestant Christian sect in the United States. While Litton is a Fundamentalist, evidently he was not Fundy enough for extremists within the SBC. Outraged over his election, these keepers of Baptist purity scoured the Internet looking for evidence to smear Litton. And sure enough, they found it.
Litton is a serial plagiarizer. Scores of online sermons were found where Litton had ripped off the material of others and presented it as his own. In other words, Litton is a thief. He took that which belonged to someone else, failed to provide proper attribution, and presented it as his own. In any setting, this is wrong. I have had numerous bloggers over the years quote my writing without giving attribution. Some Evangelical bloggers quote my work but refuse to link to this site lest their readers are tempted to read my writing for themselves. You know, I work for Satan and my calling in life is to lead people astray.
As I have followed the Ed Litton saga, I have noticed the outrage among Evangelical preachers over Litton’s thievery. While pointing out how dishonest and unethical it is to not provide proper attribution, some offended preachers believe such behavior is rare. As I shall show, it is not.
I was an Evangelical pastor for twenty-five years. I preached my first sermon at age fifteen, my last at age fifty. All told, I preached 4000+ sermons. While I bought several sermon outline books early in my career, I never used them. Every sermon I preached was my own. I worked hard at crafting sermons that would speak to those who heard me preach. Having OCPD (Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder) drove me to be exacting in my preparation. I was a consummate outliner. Whatever people thought of my preaching, there was no question that my sermons were my own. When I quoted a preacher or an author, I ALWAYS gave proper attribution.
The first church I worked for was a GARBC church in Montpelier, Ohio. While I was there, one of the deacons accused the pastor of stealing material from the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) rag, the Sword of the Lord. This was the first time I saw plagiarism firsthand. The pastor won the battle, and the deacon and his family left the church.
In 1983, I started Somerset Baptist Church in Mt. Perry, Ohio. I pastored this church for eleven years. Before purchasing an abandoned brick Methodist church building, Somerset Baptist used the upstairs of a facility called the Landmark Building. The aforementioned plagiarizing pastor had left Montpelier Baptist by then, so I asked the new pastor to come preach for me. This pastor asked me if I had anything specific he wanted me to preach on? He told me that he had memorized a number of sermons that had been published in the Sword of the Lord, and he could preach several of those if I wanted him to. One such sermon was Greg Dixon’s sermon titled “The Sinking of the Titanic.”
I replied, “why don’t you preach something original?”
In the mid-1980s I managed a Christian bookstore owned by a family that attended Somerset Baptist. Evangelical preachers came to the store to purchase books of sermon outlines. I was surprised by how many preachers wanted these books. While I was happy to sell the books to them, I silently wondered why they weren’t crafting their own sermons. I concluded that these preachers were either poorly trained, lacked the requisite skills necessary to write a sermon, or were just downright lazy. (The ministry is a perfect place for lazy men to hide.)
From 2002-2008, my wife and I, along with our children, visited over 125 churches. Please see But Our Church is DIFFERENT! for a list of the churches we visited. We heard lots of sermons — good and bad. We heard preachers who had no public speaking skills. And I mean none. These men were atrocious speakers who had no business preaching. I was taught in Bible college that whom God calls, he equips. These preachers may have been “called,” but they most certainly were not equipped. My wife’s father graduated from Midwestern Baptist College in 1976. He started an IFB church in Buckeye Lake, Ohio in 1981. I was his assistant for 2 years. Dad was loved by the church, but he couldn’t preach. Dad took speech and homiletic classes in college, but what he was taught didn’t stick. His sermons were often rambling and incoherent. Dad turned chasing rabbit trails into fine art. I tried to help him. I remember sitting down with Dad and showing him how to craft an outline. Sadly, my instruction failed. We heard many Dads over the years; good men who lacked basic public speaking skills.
We also heard a handful of gifted orators, men who knew how to craft sermons. What was surprising was the number of men, regardless of skill level, who “borrowed” the work of others without attribution. I will admit that I was a sermon critic. I could spot theft from a mile away. Let me conclude this post with a story about a new church plant in Bryan, Ohio.
We attended this church for several weeks. After hearing the pastor preach a few times, I came home one Sunday and told Polly that there was something not right about his sermons. His words had a familiar ring to them. After doing a bit of sleuthing, I determined this pastor was using the sermons of Rick Warren word-for-word. He wasn’t even trying to disguise his theft. The tell? He quoted a lot of different Bible translations, a classic Warren trait. Busted!
I am not suggesting that all Evangelical preachers are thieves. However, it is clear to me that plagiarism is far more common than Evangelicals are willing to admit. There’s nothing wrong with quoting the work of others as long as you give proper attribution. Doing so is not hard — “Rick Warren recently said _______.” Easy-peasy.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I love Southern Baptists. They are some of the most compassionate, forgiving, and understanding people on the face of the earth. I love the fact that there are so many that hate injustice. I like others have felt the cruel tentacles of injustice.
….
I believe it is encouraging that an overwhelming number of messengers stood against discrimination and abuse in our convention.
What does that mean going forward?
We need to unite around the fact, that whether we are supporters of Randy Adams, Al Mohler, Ed Litton, or Mike Stone, the overwhelming number of us agree on the major issues expressed by a total disdain for abuse, discrimination, and injustice as the Bible demands.
We also need to realize that we all can bring different significant contributions to this conversation that will help us to develop better solutions.
The overwhelming number of us agreed that we do not want fine, godly, and good people to be divided by godless worldly philosophies that are designed to divide us, but to be united instead around the truth of the inerrancy and sufficiency of the Word of God.
To realize that since the convention overwhelmingly voted for the truth to be discovered concerning the Executive Committee’s actions on abuse, it can logically be concluded that all sides want the truth to be known. Yet knowing that the vote for president was separated by less than 600 votes, there is clearly a difference of opinion about what the truth is. For the sake of unity let us not jump to conclusions and let the process work.
This is a moment when the best that is within can emerge, and we as Christian statesmen can rise above the bickering partisanship, and instead be used of God to heal the wounds and fractures in our convention with kindness, grace, and understanding. God bless us as we experience, by His grace, our finest hour as the people of God known as Southern Baptists.
Speaking of Southern Baptists as a whole, Davidson glowingly and effusively says:
They are some of the most compassionate, forgiving, and understanding people on the face of the earth. I love the fact that there are so many that hate injustice. I like others have felt the cruel tentacles of injustice.
While Davidson may sincerely believe this (I don’t personally know him), to those of us outside of the SBC, Southern Baptists are anything but “compassionate, forgiving, and understanding people [who] hate injustice.” Take the latest national convention, a time when Southern Baptists get together to argue, pass resolutions, and pretend that their denomination is not in numerical and moral free fall. What did we learn from the latest convention?
Southern Baptist love talking about sexual abuse, but don’t plan on doing anything meaningful to put an end to predators roaming the halls, sanctuaries, restrooms, and offices of their churches. Resolutions accomplish nothing. How about a national searchable database of pastors and other church leaders accused/convicted of sex crimes? How about excommunicating churches that hire or continue to employ pastors who have been accused/convicted of sex crimes? How about requiring annual comprehensive background checks on all pastors, church workers, and anyone who will come in contact with children? How about firing the executive board members who have protected criminals and covered up sex crimes? Nope, nope, nope on all of these things, yet we are expected to believe that Southern Baptists are really, really, really serious about sexual abuse THIS time.
Southern Baptists made it clear that they are opposed to teaching critical race theory (CRT). In doing so, it is hard to not conclude that Southern Baptists remain true to their racist roots.
Women will continue to be treated as second-class citizens.
Let me share with Pastor Davidson how Southern Baptists are viewed by outsiders:
Southern Baptists are anti-science
Southern Baptists are anti-abortion
Southern Baptists are anti-LGBTQ, anti-same-sex marriage
Southern Baptists are exclusivists, believing their sect’s doctrinal beliefs are the faith once delivered to the saints
Southern Baptists are culture warriors
Southern Baptists overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump, a godless, immoral man who caused great harm to our country
Southern Baptists hate atheists, humanists, and secularists (and Muslims, Catholics, Buddhists, and LGBTQ people)
Southern Baptists promote social policies that impede progress
Southern Baptists pine for the 1950s, the golden era of American life (gays were closeted, women stayed in the kitchen, and blacks knew their place)
Southern Baptists view their unbelieving neighbors strictly as targets for evangelization
Evangelicalism, of which the Southern Baptist Convention is a part, is the most hated sect in America. I have deliberately painted with a broad brush in this post. I know (so you don’t need to tell me) that what I write above doesn’t apply to all Southern Baptists everywhere. That said, the picture I painted accurately portrays how Outsiders view Southern Baptists (and Baptists in general). If Southern Baptists want to change how outsiders view them, they must change their beliefs and practices — and that ain’t going to happen. Fundamentalists control the denomination. It’s improbable that the Baptist Faith and Message will be revised, nor is there a chance in Heaven that conservatives will willingly relinquish their stranglehold on SBC boards, colleges, and institutions.
Davidson presents himself as a voice of reason, but he gives away his hand when he says:
The overwhelming number of us agreed that we do not want fine, godly, and good people to be divided by godless worldly philosophies that are designed to divide us, but to be united instead around the truth of the inerrancy and sufficiency of the Word of God.
Am I the only one who smells a Fundamentalist? Godless worldly philosophies? United around the truth of the inerrancy of the Bible? Davidson sounds like a Fundamentalist culture warrior. What next? Telling us that the earth is 6,023 years old? Believing that Bible is in any way “inerrant” ( an indefensible, irrational belief) allows Southern Baptists to continue to live in the dark ages. For all I know, Davidson may be a great guy, but his view of the SBC is out of touch with how things really are.
I am sure SBC faithful will view me as an ill-informed atheist. But marginalizing and dismissing people who are critical of the denomination only further serves to hasten their demise. Unless Southern Baptists recognize how out of touch they are with our culture and make the necessary course corrections, numerical and financial decline is sure to continue. While the SBC says it has 14 million members, over half of those card-carrying Southern Baptists are nowhere to be found on Sunday mornings. Baptismals are empty, used to store Christmas decorations. Older members are dying off and younger adults are fleeing in droves. These are facts, and thirty years from now, Fundamentalists will still be passing resolutions at the national convention, wondering what happened to their denomination. It’s too bad I won’t be around to tell Southern Baptists I told you so.
For the record: I attended several Southern Baptist churches as a child. I pastored a Southern Baptist church in Michigan, candidated at several Southern Baptist churches in West Virginia, and visited with my family a goodly number of Southern Baptist churches in Ohio, Michigan, Arizona, and California. Since deconverting in 2008, I have interacted with scores of ex-Southern Baptists (including pastors, evangelists, missionaries, and youth directors).
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Robert Aaron Long, 21, of Woodstock, Georgia, stands accused of a string of Asian massage parlor shootings that left eight people dead. Long, a devout Southern Baptist who frequented massage parlors, felt guilty over his “sin” and decided to atone for his sins by murdering eight people.
Long attended Crabapple First Baptist Church, a Fundamentalist Southern Baptist congregation in Alpharetta, Georgia. The church has made its website and social media accounts private. Last Sunday, First Baptist’s pastor, Jerry Dockery, had this to say in his sermon:
We’ve had, what, 45 presidents in our brief history as a nation? How many other kings around the world? How many other rulers have sat upon thrones, claiming to be in charge? The King is coming again.
When Christ returns, he will wage war against those who have rejected his name.
There is one word devoted to their demise. Swept away! Banished! Judged. They have no power before God. Satan himself is bound and released and then bound again and banished. That great dragon deceiver — just that quickly — God throws him into an eternal torment. And then we read where everyone — everyone that rejects Christ — will join Satan, the Beast and the false prophet in hell.
This sermon has since been deleted. I wonder why?
First Baptist is a member of Founders Ministries — a Calvinistic group dedicated to reclaiming the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) for the glory of John Calvin’s God and five-point Calvinism.
guy who was very active in his Baptist church. He prayed a prayer and was baptised at 8 but later confessed that he had been a false convert, who was now truly regenerate. He was baptised in 2018 and his testimony circulated online.
Most news media sites have focused on the victims’ race, treating these murders as a racially motivated hate crime. Long has already disputed that claim, but that narrative continues to drive discussions about his crimes. I want to posit a different motivation for Long’s murderous rampage: Evangelical teaching on sexuality.
Long frequented massage parlors, I assume even after he really, really, really got saved. Getting re-saved is common in churches with Calvinistic leanings, especially Southern Baptist and Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregations. People who walk the aisle, pray a prayer, and are pronounced born again, often have second born again experiences later in life after hearing the TRUE gospel of sovereign grace. I recently read a book about a Sovereign Grace congregation in Texas (which I pastored for a time in 1994) that detailed some of its members’ conversion stories. Almost to the man (and women), the members testified that they had made false professions of faith, and upon hearing the TRUE gospel, they repented of their sins, and Jesus saved them. This happens so often in Calvinistic churches that I think it is fair for me to conclude that this is the norm.
Despite Long’s latest conversion experience, he still struggled with what new reports are calling “sex addiction.” While I know nothing about Crabapple First Baptist Church and its pastor, I think I can safely assume that Pastor Dockery preached the gospel of sexual purity; that he preached against fornication, adultery, homosexuality, premarital sex, masturbation, and pornography. As many Evangelical teens and men do, Long struggled with staying on the straight and narrow sexually. Instead of being taught to embrace and own his sexuality, Long likely heard guilt- and fear-inducing sermons about how the thrice-holy God viewed sexual “sins.” While I am in no way justifying what Long did, I can envision how overwhelming guilt drove him to massacre those he believed were the locus of his sin problem. Long planned to murder more sex workers, but fortunately, he was stopped before he could. Imagine how great a blood atonement he planned to make to Jesus to expiate his sexual sins.
Evangelical church leaders are falling all over themselves to “explain” Long’s heinous behavior. I wonder if they will take a long, hard look in the mirror and see that their “Biblical” teachings and preaching are the problem? Evangelicals will distance themselves from Long, deconstructing his life, and even saying that he was never a REAL Christian. However, the evidence suggests that Long was a Jesus-loving man who took his faith seriously. A man who attended high school with Long had this to say about him:
He was very innocent seeming and wouldn’t even cuss. He was sorta nerdy and didn’t seem violent from what I remember. He was a hunter and his father was a youth minister or pastor. He was big into religion.
“As many of you may remember, when I was 8 years old I thought I was becoming a Christian, and got baptized during that time. And I remember a lot of the reason for that is a lot of my friends in my Sunday school class were doing that.
And after that time, there wasn’t any fruit from the root that is our salvation.
[Long goes on to say that when he was in seventh grade he attended a youth group and a speaker was discussing the biblical story of the prodigal son.]
“The son goes off and squanders all that he has and lives completely for himself and then, when he finds he’s wanting to eat pig food, he realized there’s something wrong and he goes back to his father and his father runs back to him and embraces him. And by the grace of God I was able to draw the connection there and realize this is a story between what happened with me and God. I ran away living completely for myself, and he still wants me, and so that’s when I was saved.”
There’s little doubt that Long was a born-again Christian, that he truly loved Jesus. There is also little doubt that he had problems with his sexuality, and this led to the deaths of eight innocent people. While race and misogyny played a part, they were secondary to his religious beliefs.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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It seems that some Evangelical sects, pastors, and parachurch leaders are now aware of the fact that Evangelical churches are pastored by and filled with members holding racist, nationalist, white supremacist beliefs. Recent weeks have brought countless articles detailing Evangelicalism’s white supremacist and Christian nationalism problem. Shocker, right? While I appreciate high-profile exposure of these problems, I do chuckle a bit when Evangelical and secular authors alike express outrage over something they have just become aware of, acting like a pig who just found a truffle. They seem clueless of the fact that the alarming problems they see in Evangelicalism are not new, that racism, Christian nationalism, and white supremacist beliefs have been core Evangelical dogma for decades. I saw similar behavior when these same people expressed alarm and outrage over sexual abuse and coverup in Evangelical churches and colleges. I wanted to ask, “where the hell have you been?” This stuff has been going on in Evangelical and Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) churches my entire life. And for new readers who may not know my age, I am sixty-three years old. I have been around Jesus hanging on the cross a time or two.
On the same day I read several news stories about Evangelicals and their affinity for Christian nationalism, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) expelled two congregations for “affirming homosexual behavior” and two other churches for employing convicted sex offenders. Homophobia and pedophiles pastoring SBC churches? Who woulda thunk? The SBC is dying on the vine, a result ot its continued move to the right theologically, politically, and socially. Racism, misogyny, white supremacism, and Christian nationalism are common among Southern Baptists — the largest Evangelical sect in the United States. The same can be said of IFB churches and thousands and thousands of Evangelical congregations.
Long before I left the ministry, I was speaking out about these issues. By 2000, I made it clear to the people I pastored that politics had no place in the church. We were no longer going to be culture war warriors. Instead, we would focus on loving God and loving others, trying to present to the world a Christianity worth having. After I left the ministry in 2005, I continued to focus on the rot within Evangelicalism and continue to do so today.
Well-meaning Evangelicals think that they can “fix” Evangelicalism; if they work to root out bad actors that Jesus will once again bless Evangelical churches, people will get saved, and congregations will start growing again. This, however, is wishful thinking. The problems facing Evangelicalism are systemic. Unless Evangelicals are willing to rewrite the Bible or jettison many of their beliefs, I can’t imagine they will ever return to the glory days of the 1960s-1980s.
Evangelicals are one of the most hated religions in America for good reason. Thanks to the Internet and sites such as this one, Americans now know what goes on behind closed church doors. Evangelical churches and pastors can no longer hide their abhorrent beliefs and practices. The facade has been ripped away, exposing structural racism, misogyny, and homophobia — to name a few. I have published 800+ stories about Evangelical clergy sexual misconduct (and other criminal behavior) in the Black Collar Crime series. Former insiders are now telling their stories, revealing where the proverbial dead bodies are buried. From blogs to podcasts to social media, Evangelicalism is being assaulted on all sides. Their response? Whining, complaining, doubling down, and attacking their critics; anything but making systematic changes to their beliefs and practices.
I get it, Evangelicals believe the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible word of God. They also tend to believe the Bible is a timeless text meant to be read and interpreted literally. To make systemic changes would mean abandoning these beliefs and admitting fallibility. Imagine Evangelicals ever admitting that the Bible is wrong, that its teachings cause psychological and physical harm, that the Bible — a man-made book — is in desperate need of an update. This is not going to happen, of course. Evangelicals, as they like to say, shall not be moved.
As alarmed reporters and Evangelical leaders belatedly see the light, I hope they will take a hard look at core Evangelical beliefs and practices. I hope they will come to see that Evangelicalism is rotting from within and is in the advanced stages of decomposition. I hope they will see that the Christian nationalism they just stumbled upon was there all the time, that the events of January 6, 2021, were just the culmination of beliefs put into place by men such as Jerry Falwell forty years ago. Most of all, I hope they will see that racism and white nationalism have always been part and parcel of Evangelical Christianity. My God, read the history of the Southern Baptist Convention.
As a critic of Evangelicalism, I hope that increased scrutiny and exposure to the light will bring the sect to an ignoble end. Thoughtful, kind, loving Evangelicals will hopefully abandon the sect, taking their money with them. That alone will starve and kill the beast. We shall always have Fundamentalists among us. The best we can hope for is that they will once again be forced to the margins of life, that the power they have over our culture and political life will be broken. By all means, let them rage against sodomites, abortion, and libs from their clapboard church houses. We just won’t care. Until that day comes, we must do everything in our power to marginalize Evangelical beliefs. We must love Evangelicals but hate their beliefs. We are in a no-holds-barred battle for the future of our country. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to fight for a better tomorrow, one where Evangelicalism is little more than a toothless, lazy porch dog — all bark, no bite.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Just when I think I’ve heard it all, a Christian comes up with a new argument to deconstruct, discredit, and minimalize my story. Yesterday, a man who considers himself the smartest man in the room told me that none of the churches I pastored were Evangelical; that, in fact, all of them were cults, and I was a cult leader. How this real man of genius came to this stupid conclusion is beyond me, but I thought I would make an attempt to respond to his baseless assertions.
First, let me list the churches I pastored and their denominational affiliations:
Every one of these churches and sects was Evangelical in doctrine and practice — without exception. No amount of deconstruction or gaslighting will change this fact.
Every church and denomination had an official statement of doctrine. I was required to embrace and preach the doctrines found in these statements. I did so without objection. Why? Because I believed these things, at the time, to be true.
Let me give Pastor Bruce Gerencser a test to determine if he really was a circumcised Evangelical:
Do you believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God? Yes
Do you believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Yes
Do you believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in His personal return in power and glory? Yes
Do you believe that for the salvation of lost and sinful people, regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential? Yes
Do you believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life? Yes
Do you believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost; they that are saved unto the resurrection of life and they that are lost unto the resurrection of damnation? Yes
Do you believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ? Yes
Anyone suggesting that I was never was an Evangelical is an agenda-driven liar out to obfuscate my past.
If this man still doubts my Evangelical creds, I offer him up unassailable proof: I have Jesus & Bruce 4ever tattooed on my back — my Evangelical tramp stamp.
So there . . . 🙂
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
