By Jordan Carroll
Preaching to Brother Jim
Recently, a man calling himself “Brother Jim” came to campus to speak. He set himself up in the center of the Humanities Quad and proceeded to talk about subjects that interested him–namely homosexuality, “rock ‘n’ roll,” and eternal torture. I think, at some point, he might have mentioned love or something like that, but for the most part he just yelled “queers!” or “lesbos!” or “whores!” at passersby. At one point, it is rumored, Jesus showed up, but Brother Jim apparently ignored Him.
It is little wonder why Brother Jim and other fundamentalists use scare tactics and insults to convince people to believe. Brother Jim and his ilk exist as reactionaries to other lifestyles and beliefs. Without the sinners to condemn, Brother Jim would have little or nothing to say. Rather than positively assert a way of making the world a better place or even a way to become closer to God, reactionaries simply roar about what they are not.
Why do they spend so much time nay saying? They wish to feel eternally besieged. Without a sense of urgency, victimization, exclusive initiation, and necessary solidarity, their churches would probably crumble. These traits force them to concentrate more and more on their religious fervency rather than “backslide” or “become lukewarm.” They provide much-needed energy for fanatics in a culture that considers them irrelevant. Only by attacking our culture and our modern times can they interact with it, otherwise they are left to twiddle about with their pre-scientific and pre-enlightenment notions.
One would think that for all their obsession, they’d know their subject. Brother Jim was, quite simply, outdated. He dramatized his conversion at a Van Halen concert! At one point, he even did a spastic air guitar impression and I was sure he was going to yell “Wyld Stallyns rule!” any minute. It only shows how out of touch he is with what he hates. They’re so divorced from our lives, yet they want us to listen to them and believe them. Even when an evangelist does make an attempt to connect to the audience, it usually fails. They either tell us how much of a fuck-up they once were or they prove how little they know about us.
It doesn’t seem like they care about their audience at all. The evangelists seem to want to charge forward, shouting “Deus Vult,” into the crowds of unbelievers. When we do agree with them, we become just another scalp and another conversion story to be compiled in a pamphlet. The reason the fundamentalists and the crowd have become so alienated goes back to the fundamentalist’s paranoid fantasy of a world against them. When the entire planet is divided, in their minds, into believer and unbeliever, the unbeliever becomes increasingly “other.” Even innocent things associated with those outside their sect become tainted in their minds and, thus, they drift further and further away from those they preach to.
There is no proper way to deal with the street preachers. Our friendliness is taken as satanic seduction and our hostility is thoroughly enjoyed. They want us to throw leaves at them or slap their faces so that their worldview can be confirmed. Their actions provoke attack, then, once they are attacked, they blame a great satanic world and further entrench themselves in their pews. We would probably do best to ignore them. Their specific belief system is only a few hundred years old, really, and is held by a relatively small portion of the population. It will pass. In many ways, Protestant Fundamentalism is in trouble, but it won’t be killed by aggression but through general apathy
