How to Make the Most of a Campus Preacher February 22, 2010

How to Make the Most of a Campus Preacher

By Guest Contributor
February 22, 2010

Brother Jed & Sister Cindy are notorious campus preachers and they were at the University of Arizona last week.

Reader Benjamin tells me it was a great recruiting tool for their Secular Student Alliance affiliate group:

They’ve probably brought more new people to our campus group in 4 days than all the other events we’ve participated in over the last 5 months.

And they’ve made the most of the experience.

They also created a little game that’s fun for everyone to play when anyone is preaching at you:

Take that printout to church with you next time you have to go.

Benjamin adds: “I even got Sis Cindy and two of her daughters to play.”

That’s %&$#ing awesome.

This week, the preaching duo will be going to ASU in Tempe. Here’s hoping the atheists are ready for them.

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  • TychaBrahe

    Are they still around? They would come to USC in the mid-1980’s.

  • An

    I used to sit and listen to Brother Jed when in between classes. Entertainment purposes only! I think prostitute (every time an attractive girl walks by) and masturbation would do very well on this B-I-N-G-O card.

  • medussa

    My then roommate and I were students at Berkeley in the 80’s and were the scourge of the campus preachers. We both have fond memories of tag teaming them from the audience, alternately shocking them with vulgarity and stumping them with reason.
    And yes, they did more for my powers of argument and reason, and critical thinking than most of my classes did.
    They do serve a valuable function. Just not the one they think.

  • Regarding the Brother Jed Bingo, I see “squirt” and “Chevrolet”.

    Where in Brother Jed’s bible, does Jesus refer to changing your oil regularly?

  • What, no space for evolution references? (Unless “Dirty Animals” counts). And what’s Brother Jed got against Chevrolet?

  • Claudia

    @MiddleMan, took the words right out of my keyboard. Squirt? They seem pretty obsessed with sex, could it be some obscure sexual practice they secretly crave? Or maybe they’re just calling them kids, though I personally favor the first option.

    Chevrolet though I’ve got nothin. God Hates GM?

  • At Oklahoma State, we have good ole Preacher Bob. He was great for a laugh while I went to school there and is apparently still good for a laugh. I found a youtube video of him:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLBAReyjGJo

  • antonio

    Hey hey.. just throwing this out there – I’m the president of the club featured in this article! Woohoo!

    Anyway, Chevrolet is on there because Jed often recounts a story in which he loses his virginity in a Chevy.

  • colin

    I love it, this takes me back! These two used to come to the University of Tennessee when I was there, 98-02. I had no idea other people would recognize them. You’ll be glad to know that even in TN, no one took them seriously.

  • Wendy

    F***ING. WIN!!!!!!!!

  • This reminds me of the Phelps clan coming to Ball State while I was still in college. Local secular groups quietly applied for demonstration permits from the university and organized a peaceful counter protest with banners reading “No Hate in Our State” and stood chanting just loud enough to cover the Phelps family’s ranting.

    Oh, and they also helpfully pointed out to campus police that the Westboro Church didn’t have a permit to demonstrate on university property, leading to campus police escorting them off campus property almost as soon as it started.

    Lawyered.

  • «bønez_brigade»

    Thanks Hemant! We had a blast with him. That’s just one of about 12 different cards we used, and there were still 50-60 new words we discovered whilst listening to them during the week. One of his daughters won a few times.

    He uses Chevrolet when discussing what he and Margaret(?) did in the back of his father’s 1954 Chevrolet Bell Aire (as crowd chants along) whilst Jed & said college girl would intentionally miss the drive-in picture shows — b/c they had their own show going on in the back seat! Sister Cindy yelled over to us a few times to “put that on your bingo card”, but I was usually already putting pen to paper.

    Feel free to continue the game at other universities; we’re certainly not the first to do it. I can supply a vast word list. The students love it!

    ————

    @Medussa,
    I concur. The crowd shows up for the comedy show, not the salvation message.

  • Hugh

    I used to teach at the U of A and I remember running the gauntlet of screechers for Jeezus on the mall.

  • muggle

    LOL! Great move.

    You’d think Jesus would clue them in but maybe Satan’s leading them astray.

  • duhsciple

    Re: “Brother Jed Bingo”

    The name of this blog is “friendly atheist”. I see the “atheist” part of the bingo card, but where is the “friendly” part?

  • Rick

    Duhsciple, the friendly part is that rather than heckle Brother Jed we were able to have fun and games with him while still promoting our skeptics club. God this man was a blessing. While he often says things that are just strait from his own head, the best stuff is when he simply quotes from the Bible, which, despite all of the new atheist books out there is still the best case for secularism avalibe. We made sure to publicly thank him afterward (quite sinisterly I might add) for all the help he does for our cause.

  • duhsciple

    So Brother Jed had fun with y’all, and he was a blessing to you? You were able to enjoy each other despite your contrasting perspectives? He quoted Deuteronomy 23:1 and made you laugh, not to mention wince?

    If you were friendly with each other, then cooooool! Sounds great! Are atheist and believers allowed to say “Amen”?

  • I’m so jealous, we don’t have any lunatic “confrontational” preachers like this in England.

  • Jim G

    At Western Kentucky University about 12 years ago, Brother Jed or one of his pack made the mistake of yelling that the girlfriend of a football player was a prostitute. Result: broken collarbone.

  • Chas

    I used to see them in the early 1980’s too at the University of Minnesota, I think that was back before they got married and they were traveling with an older guy “Brother Max”. Max would tell a story about how his wife kept telling him to get a job, but he left to preach the gospel, so people would periodically yell out “Get a job Max” at opportune moments.

    I remember Jed’s rant against oral sex was to compare it to “would you eat a pizza with your nose?” I also seem to remember Jed having a story of “seeing the light” while as a hippie/druggie traveling in Morocco(?) and seeing someone guy dragging a huge cross down the beach?

  • littlejohn

    This idiot claims “masturbation today, homosexuality tomorrow.” Why aren’t we all gay? Really, really gay.

  • I’m so jealous, we don’t have any lunatic “confrontational” preachers like this in England.

    That is becaue all the lunatic “confrontational” preachers have left England (long ago) and settled in America… Would you like some back?

  • @hoverfrog:
    you wrote, “I’m so jealous, we don’t have any lunatic “confrontational” preachers like this in England”

    Not even in Hyde Park?

  • Angie

    Wow, religious nutjobs are the same the world over. The fundamentalist protesters who harass LGBT events and women’s health clinics in my neck of the woods have a similar fixation on sex. I suspect that repression and projection are the culprits.

  • I loved it when Brother Jed came to campus. I always took it upon myself to be incredibly nice. It helped whenever he’d start attacking atheists.

    “But Brother Jed! I’m an atheist – do I act like that?”

    “Well… No.”

    Of course, he insisted that I was simply denying being a Christian (for whatever reason).

    Apparently atheists can’t be nice.

  • Colin

    Woohoo! You mentioned ASU! I wonder if this is the same guy who used to preach that breast cancer was caused by women exposing their breasts during Spring Break.

  • Steve

    That doofus and his wife came to Ohio State one time when I attended there back in the late 80s. Cindy got on some rant about girls “eating semen.” Someone in the crowd shouted “Maybe it’s their only chance to get a hot meal!” We all laughed so hard and Cindy actually shut up from the embarrassment!

  • fritzy

    As far as the Chevy thing goes, I feel obligated to say something that no one else bothered saying: “EWWWWW!”

    I’ve noticed these campus preachers do appear more obsessed with sex than any of my over-sexed frat brothers in college.

    These folks must take some kind of classes informing them what to say, because they all seem to say the exact same thing. When I was in college, the guy on our campus reasoned that ANY woman in college was a prostitute, ’cause Jesus doesn’t want no learnin’ amoungst the women folk.

    My personal favorite experience with one of these preachers was when one of the local street musicians started singing “Cum ba ya” with some slightly altered lyrics: “Ouch it hurts my lord, you came in my eye.”

  • «bønez_brigade»

    @duhsciple,
    You should check out Bro Jed’s journal and read what he said about us and the bingo game. It was mostly positive:
    http://brojed.org/journals/Gays%20Atheists%20and%20Clerics.pdf

    BTW, thanks for noting Deut. 23:1. Bro Jed repeatedly quoted the contradictory verse about plucking out yer eye (Matt 18:9 &&/|| Mark 9:47), and I was thinking about the aforementioned pentateuchal one but couldn’t remember the damn chapter:verse for it.

    [oh, and “rAmen” is certainly ok]

    ————

    BTW, Bro Jed gave the Skeptics Club a signed copy of his book ‘Who Will Rise Up?’, and he even stopped his ranting for a bit for a little ceremony to present it to us. And, as Rick already mentioned, we stopped him for a bit on the last day to thank them for bringing so much interest to our group. I hope ASU also has a successful week with them.

  • Sue

    @Godless Monster: I’ve seen a few in Speakers’ Corner, but they weren’t nearly as entertaining as the former Scientologist with the inflatable alien. Most lunatic preachers over here seem to have given up shouting in favour of handing out leaflets.

  • Ubi Dubium

    Wait, this is the “Pizza in your nose guy?” I remember him at William and Mary in the early 80’s!

    I remember a wonderful exchange between him and a crowd of students. He was ranting that everything had its proper place. After all, “you wouldn’t put pizza in your nose, would you? No you put it in your mouth! Likewise, you should not put sexual organs in your mouth – right?”

    And the crowd merrily shouted back, “No, you put them in your nose!”

    Made my day.

  • Ron in Houston

    Damn, I remember Sister Cindy from Univ of Houston in probably 1979 or 1980. She certainly is annoyingly persistent.

  • Andy

    This truly is the best way to talk with Jed, people who argue with him (Mostly liberal Christians, but also Atheists) really don’t get anywhere.

  • Ed-words

    Andy, what is a liberal Christian?

    Don’t they tell their kids they

    were born with original sin on their soul

    and need J.C. to save them from eternal

    damnation?

    That’s liberal? Ugh!

  • Beth B.

    We used to get these groups at least once a year when I was at the University of South Carolina. My senior year one group parked themselves on campus for an entire week during Carolina Pride Week, and then held a ragtag protest outside Pride. Bad strategy: by the end of the week we’d reached god-bot saturation and were no longer interested. No one even bothered to make out with their same-sex partner in front of the preachers after the first few days!

  • Sweet! Brother Jed used to occasionally appear on the Georgia Tech campus when I was there in the late 80s. Of course, given the male-to-female ratio on campus, his rantings about premarital sex mostly fell on deaf ears 🙂

  • alex

    Hey, I’m all for ridicule when it’s appropriate (and I think it is in this case), but the misogynistic Bible quote in the first photo is still misogynistic, no matter how you put it. It’s still vile, even if used against an annoying prick of a preacher who happens to be female. I wish anti-religious people wouldn’t stoop to the level of their opponents, but I guess it’s just me.

  • Polly

    alex,

    Does it help to see it as pointing out the Biblical cherry-picking of the believer in question?

  • Ron in Houston

    Yeah for Hemant –

    This post is #3 on Diggs list of top posts in the last 24 hours

    2002 Diggs so far

  • @ASU RIGHT NOW

  • Peter

    wow! I didn’t know they were still around! Again, UofA, mid 80’s:

    “You’re all WHORES and WHORE-MONGERS!”

    always seemed to bring the largest affirmative response from the crowd.

  • alex

    @Polly:

    Well, yes and no. I do understand what you and the person carrying the sign are saying. I realize that it points out the bitter irony of an oppressed person essentially defending the system that oppresses them, but… it still rubs me the wrong way. I guess, that’s the feminist in me speaking, or something 🙂

  • Ashlie

    they are seriously the absolute WRONG people to be preaching the gospel. i sat and listened to them talk and I don’t even go to the U of A but it was such BS that it made want to scream. they consistently judged people which Matthew 7:1-2 it says “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” but they were preaching the wrong thing and COMPLETELY misinterpreting it making people not want to hear it.

  • Perkins

    They go to California and Arizona too? They are always making the rounds in Missouri! I went to Missouri State (used to be Southwest Missouri State), and they were there at least every couple of months.

    My favorite Bro Jed/Sister Cindi/Sister Pat speeches are 1: His Michael Jackson speech and 2: Where they explain why homosexuality doesn’t work by using the ends of extension cords (the male/female parts of the cords equals male/female anatomy fitting together).

  • Heidi

    I went to a religious college so we didn’t get itinerant preachers. Now I see what we were missing. Too funny!!

  • Linden

    Jed sounds like he’s mellowed a little since he and Max Lynch preached at the U of A when I was there ’80-ish. But, it looks like I missed out on a lot, i.e. gay sex, oral sex, aural sex (I assume this is why the Georgia Tech guys were deaf – just kiddin’), nasal sex, ’nuff said…