Character in the pulpit

Former pastor Bruce Gerencser reprises today a familiar subject hereabouts: Biblical inerrancy.

Many Evangelical pastors know the Bible is not inerrant. Privately, they will bitch and complain about Bible thumpers such as Ken Ham, David Barton, Jerry Falwell, Jr, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, James Robison, Jim Bakker, and Bob Gray Sr. They wish these men would shut the darn, freaking, heck up. However, when these very same swearing preachers enter their pulpits on Sunday, they sing a different tune, leading congregants to believe that the translations they hold in their hands are the inspired, inerrant, infallible Words of God. These liars for Jesus know that telling people that the Bible contains errors, mistakes, and contradictions would lead to conflict, unrest, membership loss, reduced offerings, and perhaps even unemployment.

I live just a few miles from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and operated a used bookstore directly across the street from the seminary for a couple of years; I got to know a lot of seminarians.

Some seminarians, I am convinced, are so dumb that they actually do believe the Bible is inerrant — but many, probably a majority, are not that stupid. What they are is … trapped. The Southern Baptists encourage young marriage and swift procreation. By the time an eager-beaver young seminarian puts together all the disparate strands of subject matter that comprise his education, and figures-out what a cynical scam evangelical Christianity really is … there are mouths to feed and the wife — herself raised to be preacher’s helpmeet — has no intention of staying in married student housing long enough for him to change fields and study something actually useful.

So he spends the rest of his life standing in a pulpit telling lies and battling depression and being ridiculed by people like me. Ultimately, the issue is character, and evangelical Christianity conspires against character.

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