Campus Crusade for Christ is No More…

Being a Brit, I’ve never encountered the CCC (we have Christian Union groups over here) but that new name just makes me think about Mötley Crüe.

They brought Phillip Johnson to my university to give his “Darwin on Trial”(?) spiel. I pissed him off by asking a couple good questions. One of the members was in my biology program but left it because it was “so ingrained in evolution with no other opinions”. Good riddance.

As if changing the name of the group will really bring people to sign up….smh

that’s their new logo?  
we have a copyright issue here, methinks.
http://1x.com/

We had a pretty sizable CCC group, although their presence was always overshadowed by the local and traveling street preachers who like to show up and screech at people. However, a couple of girls came up to me in the student union and asked me to participate in a “class experiment” where they showed me pictures and asked what they made me think of…except they forgot that on the back of each little picture card, it had CCC information all over it. I wasn’t surprised that they were using underhanded tactics to get people to give them fifteen minutes of their lives, but the whole experience was irritating. 

aha — thanks. i never considered the difference.
yes, they are overly similar, aren’t they..

 So out of a pool of 1,600 potential names, they decided to go with the one that retains part of the word that was causing their problem in the first place, and discards the bits that weren’t causing a problem?

I roomed with a CCCer for about six months my sophomore year.  Only real takeaway was that he bitched at me for having vodka in the room (he was 21, and couldn’t get in trouble for it, still complained) and that he was disappointed I didn’t want to go protest The DaVinci Code with him.

I’m sorry to kind of spam your comment threads with something that’s somewhat not relevant to the actual topic, but I am greatly concerned with how Patheos is treating you.

(I put more details on the thread about the timestamp problem, because it was at least a LITTLE closer to the idea of problems in your new web location.)

I can’t figure out how to navigate to your blog while on the front page.  The portals are all assumed to be religious, and four different kinds of Christian are considered to be deserving of being split up and elevated to an equal position with all of, say, the Muslim faith, while ANY nonbelieving/skeptic/et c portal doesn’t exist AT ALL.

I really hope you’re working as we speak to fix this, and I’m surprised you did the switch before they made this more acceptable– given how a few months ago you posted your frustration with AMAZON for removing the “atheism” category for book searches.

And that wasn’t even your new web home!

I’m surprised by how much news / twitter, etc attention this is all getting.  The group must be massive!

When I was in College, CCC tried to change their name to “Christian Impact” a few times. They kept changing it back and forth. Back then, there weren’t many outspoken atheists and I was pretty outspoken. I used to go to their meetings a lot (I was invited). The leader of their local group even told members that God really really wanted to convert me and told challenged them to be the one to do it. So I started to get multiple Christians coming to my dorm room every day.

At one point CCC did a program called, “Do You Agree With Tom: How I Got Over Alcoholism.” Some of my friends in the Philosophy Club urged me to do a counter program called, “Do You Agree With Staks: How I Got Over God.” It was fun.  Interestingly enough Tom came to my program and we are still friends today.

ISSA (My campus secular group) did a couple of blood drives with Cru this last academic year. At one of them, one of their guys stated that he was “dealing with some homosexual urges”. It was such a frustrating experience to see his supposed friends encouraging him to subvert who he really was in the name of their moral structure.

Wow!  Just LOOK at those colors.  They’ve abandoned that fifties era title and jumped head-first into the nineteen-sixties!  Far out, man.

There is evidence to back up what they believe:  http://atheistlegitimacy.blogspot.com/

Hopes raised, then dashed.

They’re not supposed to use subversive tatics to get you to take the questionnaire. They’re actually told not to. I apologize on behalf of them. Reading through the comments it makes me sad that you all took each individual’s actions so negatively. I don’t know the students with whom you encountered, but let me say that Cru’s thought process is this: if we believe that eternal punishment (or ED ;-)) is a real thing then it is not loving of us to keep quiet about it. We use the picture thing, called Soularium and other methods to begin conversations because we know spiritual topics can be very awkward. Cru is all about presenting the Gospel and allowing you to make your own decision. I apologize if members of Cru (which shouldn’t taint the whole organizaton) shoved it down your throat.

Well, literally everyone I’ve spoken to who has encountered CCC has said they tried to push things down their throats. I know that’s anecdotal, but CCC are not subtle.

For me, this is old news. My cousin’s been involved with “Cru” at Purdue University. It’s very glamorous – they go on big mission trips around the world and attend big, flashy conferences.

http://vimeo.com/10514571 <—- like that one.

Stuff Christian Culture Likes describes these tactics as "doing stuff and avoiding relationship", and I think Cru is the epitome of this statement. I've never seen Cru host a project that helps individual communities or solves an immediate problem. Pray about it! Hold your hands in the air! Build each other up! Go to the altar call! Raise money for trips! Buy the t-shirt!

While not expressly atheist, a feminist organization I participated in hosted a showing of the Vagina Monologues and raised THOUSANDS of dollars for the local YWCA (they always depended on the performance to help continue programs like donating diapers, formula, etc. to low-income women/mothers). But we got picketed for being "godless". WTF.

Which org did the greater good? I wonder…

Simple rebranding.
Corporations do this when their actions have irredeemably damaged their reputations, but it would be far too troublesome to change their tactics, so they simply change the name, hoping that people will be far too stupid to notice the wet paint.

That’s the way many Christians approach the Bible, so it’s really a logical slam-dunk. 🙂

 They don’t get it. It’s not the word “Crusade” that makes non-Christians stay away from them. It’s the convert-at-all-costs mentality members exhibit. It’s the Science-is-the-enemy way of thinking. It’s the inability to think beyond the Bible. It’s the way they seem to alienate so many people on their own campus, including other Christians.

The crusade word really is relevant. When I was an undergrad I was very involved in an interfaith Jewish/Muslim organization, and the use of the word “Crusdade” by some Christian groups made us feel very uncomfortable. (Note that at my university the CCC chapter used a different name generally that didn’t have the word “crusade” in it.) 

I understand at some level their fear about eternal damnation. If I thought that people would suffer for eternity if I didn’t convince them, I’d try very hard to convince them. In that regard, a lot of evangelicals are in some sense more compassion than their deity. Their deity is willing to torture people for eternity, they are not.

That said, being at a major, well-respected university and dealing with people who think that evolution is a satanic lie is scary as all heck. Not even thinking that evolution is wrong, but that it was really constructed by the Devil. At least most of them are far as I could tell seemed to think that scientists had come up with evolution to destroy Christianity. (This is in contrast to some charedi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews who actively claim that dinosaurs are an outright hoax to undermine “Torah Judaism”. One won’t encounter those sorts generally as college students.) But seriously, dealing with such people on campus, and then what they wanted to go into… almost all of them wanted to go into politics and other fields where they could make as large of an impact as possible. Scary.  

And then you had the Christian athletes organization, which seemed to do an amazingly good job making non-Christian athletes or even non-evangelical Protestants really uncomfortable.  

Aggressive proselytizing can never be a good thing. If your message is so great, people will come to you anyways. You don’t need to push them.

And don’t get me started on your twisted, sick conception of “love”. Urk

It baffles me why they chose to shorten “crusade” instead of “Christ”.  I guess we know what is more important to them.  The crusade.  Quietly praying in closets by themselves be damned.  

As a college student with a lot of friends in Cru, I have to say a couple things. 

1) The name change is totally unsurprising. CCC has been calling itself Cru for a while, among members, on signs, etc. Might as well make it official to avoid the obvious connotations with the word “crusade”. 

2) My friends in Cru have NEVER made any attempt to convert me. At all. They know full well that I am an atheist, as we have had many long talks on the subject, but apart from simply expressing their opinions they have made no effort to proselytize to me. All of them have been sincere and respectful while trying to understand my point of view, as I try to understand theirs. I’ve had similarly good experiences with people from Navigators as well (another Christian group on campus), and I count many of them among my dearest friends. Even though I have a few problems with the way Cru/Navs is run (mostly the gender separation stuff) and have a sincere passion for science and rational thinking, I would truly be a fool to write these people off for the organization they choose to worship through. 

3) The most proselytizing I’ve ever heard of from CCC was when they hand out flyers for their meetings with coupons on them. And anything they do is probably better than the street preachers.

As if a name change means anything if they still hold the same anti-gay & anti-women stances for example.
If they had it their way, women would be stoned to death for adultery.
Oh wait only Muslims do that surely?

Me too! And I doubt glam-rock is what they were going for.

In my first few days of moving off to college I was having a sort of rough adjustment period, living away from friends and family for the first time.  At that point I was basically an apatheist; I went to church one time just because I had made some friends there at a mission trip a few years earlier but I didn’t receive the warm welcome I was expecting.  

My mother was friends with the local CCC guy and convinced me to meet him for lunch.  He ended up being the perfect caricature of a try-hard “hip” youth pastor, with that meticulously groomed goatee and edgy (in someone else’s mind) t-shirt.  I told him when we met that I didn’t intend to go to his organization’s meetings, that I was only eating with him because he knew  my mom and she had encouraged me to meet him.  As soon as we sat down he started proselytizing in a pretty pushy way as I continuously told him to cut it out and just have a meal with a human being.  The whole experience left a pretty bad taste in my mouth with regards to campus religious orgs so I guess I can thank that guy for helping me not waste my time with any more of them.

2 Live Cru, anyone?

Actually, when I left for college in 2005 it was already called CRU at the state college I attended. As in, that’s how it advertised, that’s what everyone called it, both those in the organization and those outside it. I know because I was part of it for the first several years of college, before I turned my brain on and started questioning things…which led me here. And yes, it’s every bit as crazy as everyone says it is.

That’s what I noticed too. It makes the ‘crusade’ part come to mind all the more quickly. Oh, well. I’m all for truth in advertising.

My one run-in with the group came while I was still a Christian.  Walking through the student union, some guy waived a Snickers bar at me and challenged, “I’ll give you a candy bar if you’ll tell me why you don’t believe in Jesus.”  When I replied, “But, I do.”  He smiled and said something like, “Praise God, I’m glad to hear that.  Have a great day.”  But all I could think was, “Listen, buddy, about that candy bar…”

We had those too; they were the football team’s members of the FCA.

My fondest CCC memory comes from my freshman year of college.  Two guys came up, asked my major, and then asked if I realized that Jesus Christ was the greatest Chemist of all time (Obviously off a script, as I was an English major) because he managed to live inside us.

I pointed out that tapeworms can also live inside us and left smiling and they fumbled for something to say.

17 years later, I still chuckle over their expressions as they tried to come up with a response to that.

What good things does it stand for?

My most memorable run-in with CCC was my junior year, while I was a member of a different campus Christian group (I’ve since fully recovered).  CCC held a camp featuring some celebrity preacher.  I’ve never since felt so much like I was staring into the eyes of a true madman, every time he spoke.  He would go on passionately,  like verging on violence passion (I expected him to just start tearing his hair out) about how your heart was pure, unadulterated evil.  When someone dared ask where he had attended seminary he went berserk- “I have a degree… FROM GOD UNIVERSITY!!!” No kidding, actual words. 

All the CCC people thought he was just terrific. 

The “hip” kids on my campus already call CCC “Cru”, which led to me thinking my friend Daniel was on the rowing team for the first four months of our acquaintance.
I prefer to call CCC “Joyus Jihad for Jesus”.

I think he’s pretty terrific too! But then I’m amused by crazy people.

Here in Canada, we’ve had it switched to Campus for Christ for quite some time now. There’s a solution for ya – drop the part of the name that’s *causing* the problem.

Strangely enough, there is a freshmen undergrad in my chemistry research lab. Considering her age, I hope it’s just a remnant from Mom and Dad that will ware off soon.

No it doesn’t. It stands for brainwashing people into their Jesus cult. That is not a good thing at all. If you were all about the “good things” there would be no need to mention Jesus at all.

They don’t get it. It’s not the word “Crusade” that makes non-Christians stay away from them.

I certainly think the name is part of it.  I’ve talked to CCC members who themselves felt uncomfortable with the name.

Chri babies?

One word: “Stryper”

I was invited to and attended a Navigators meeting when I was in college in the early 90s. It was all guys, and I asked them if women were allowed. I was told yes, but that few ever came.

Soon after I visited the local Campus Crusade meeting and observed that it was mostly women.

I have no idea whether this was typical of either organization or just the way it happened locally.

I mentioned jokingly to a member of Cru: “You and the Navigators should get together.” She replied that there was a saying about that: “Navigators are never-daters, but when they do they date Crusaders.”

Sorry, that’s my only story of an encounter with Cru.

Cru-sade’s membership is so large because it’s always being inflated by incoming Christian high schoolers who are told by Mommy and Daddy that they had better enlist. Even though I was still a Christian at the time, I was highly resistant…

Funnily enough, my (private) high school mascot was the Crusaders. Nothing to exemplify the love of Christ like deliberately associating yourself with brutal violence which helped set up the horrible interfaith situation we have today.

I consider this a good sign, though: not even they can be as overt as they used to be without getting the “dude, not cool” stare. Even their new logo is not incredibly crucifixy. 

Huh?  They don’t like the word crusade anymore, so they completely removed the words campus (which describes the location of the groups) and Christ (which describes the affiliation of the group) and left only the word they no longer like; they just cut it in half.

They could have gone with something like Campus Christian Fellowship, which leaves the two important descriptive words alone and adds a word that means camaraderie and friendship, but instead they took the word Christ out of it and left only the first half of the “bad” word.  (I thought these people hated removing names for their gods from anything and everything with their gods’ names on it!)

I’ll never understand these people.

I know when I was in college, groups from many different campuses went to New Orleans to help clean up after Katrina (embarrassingly I was in it at the time).  Their group was much larger than any of the other college groups.  However, the overwhelming majority of their mission trips and “projects” are all about proselytizing (which is why the next year I went on a secular Alternative Spring Break Project, since even in my Christian days I preferred helping people to proselytizing).  So they’ve done some charity work, but even that was in the hopes of being able to “share Jesus’ love”, and overall they’ve probably done far more harm than good in the world.

Maybe the Muslims on campus could start a group called “Ji”, short for Jihad?

Anyway,
I was actually in “crusade” as we called it for a while.  I was indoctrinated as a child and thus pressured to join by my mom who got her coworker’s daughter who was a couple years older and in it to connect me.  At the time I was somewhat shy and a “goody-two-shoes” so it seemed like the best way to make friends.  Of course most of the friendships ended up being pretty shallow, based only on mutual love of Jesus.  We were occasionally pressured to go door to door proselytizing, which made me severely uncomfortable, but mostly I just went to the meetings and bible studies once a week each.

I then went through a period of severe depression and came out the other side a bit skeptical (it helped that I was a biology and anthropology double major, learning evolution and comparative culture) and not long after, the day they announced that their “MC” for the next semester’s meetings was going to be a kid that I had been on a four week study abroad program with, who had been nothing but disrespectful to the professors who put the program together and the professors they brought in to teach us, I decided to never go back.

Well, she was wrong. Gravity is certainly not absolute. It’s not even uniform on the Earth’s surface. Unless she means that it’s deterministic. Science fail

Ah, Cru. The bane of my and my college GSA’s existence. I’ve never personally had a run-in with them (save my dorm neighbor being an avid member, but she only invited me along once), but our GSA had an issue with club flyers being torn down, so when we posted more, we covered them in boxing tape. And when we had our office-warming meeting with pie, a bunch of their homophobic members dined-and-ditched. Good times.

Amanda, I think you should dig a little deeper for the facts. Cru mission trips and staff go all over the world to help all kinds of people..Katrina disaster relief, Tsunami relief, earthquate relief, inner-city work (back-to-school items for kids in poverty, toiletry/food drives for homeless), numerous orphanages over seas, they partnered with a Gay/Lesbian group for AIDs awareness and prevention…the list goes on. Check out Global Aid Network (GAIN) and Here’s Life Inner City. These are both Crusade ministries that contradict your accusations. Please, oh please stop the ignorance.

 What is the Gospel, then?

Usually it’s the cookies that lure them to our side.

My freshman year of college I filled out a survey that Cru (the local chapter was already referring to themselves by that name)  members were handing out in exchange for pizza coupons.  The questions were mostly innocuous, until the end where it asked what your relationship with Christ was and if you wanted a visit from Cru representatives.  I answered the questions, didn’t mark the box asking for a visit, and was on my way.  Imagine my surprise when a few days later two Cru missionaries walk into my dorm with my survey in hand.  My roomie and I gave them the cold shoulder, thinking they would get the hint and leave.  Sadly I wasn’t even the focus of their efforts.  One of them found out that my poor roomie was Catholic and spent half an hour trying to persuade him to convert.  Because apparently in this missionary’s mind, being Catholic is worse than being agnostic.  Go figure.

I think CCC is trying to blame the “word” for its negative connotations, rather than the connotations themselves.
They obviously don’t want to stop Crusading, hence retention of “Cru.” What they still don’t want to acknowledge is the crusading aspect of their entire culture.

Organizations like that like to keep a strict line between their “audience” and their business associates. They know that crusading against someone can result in hostile confrontations, and those can make everyday business like renting cars more difficult. Amateurs will make make that mistake.

Don’t shit where you eat.

no — i had just happened to bookmark it yesterday because they’re holding a photo contest that i’m thinking of entering, and i saw hemant’s post today.

You know, what bothers me about that story is that when I was in college, 35-ish years ago, everyone, even the Christers, would have been fine with it.

Now, a generation and a half later, we have college kids who think and behave like red state retirees and who seem to be incapable of getting the bleeding point.

I don’t know if people are getting stupider, or if stupid people are just getting more power.

Gah. That made me snort. “evolution and no other opinions?” Uh, science isn’t about opinions. “This math department is about correct addition and no other opinions.” Go over to the art department or English department. There’s nothing wrong with opinions except when they’re used where they have no place, i.e. science!

And all in the name of spreading religious dogma and disinformation.

cipher, 

I don’t think that’s accurate. First, if they really didn’t care they presumably wouldn’t spend so much time trying to save us. Moreover, if one has doubt about that sincerity look at the reactions that sincere evangelicals have sometimes about friends and family that aren’t save. Some of them will even cry over it.

I don’t think the argument about rebelling against the dictator is valid because they believe that God is omnipotent. 

I’ll admit that I clicked through the videos until I got to the “I accepted Jesus” link.  Hilarious

Immediately I begin to wonder what percentage of that time was spent proselytizing and handing out Bibles to people in need of actual help.

I guess I’m lucky. I went to a tiny Catholic college, and I’m pretty positive we didn’t have an evangelical student organization. I met a grand total of two evangelicals during my four years there. We did have something called Campus Ministry, but I didn’t know anyone involved in it. I assume the group was Catholic, but I have no real idea of what they did. The only thing I noticed was that they would put up flyers offering “spiritual retreats” every so often. Thankfully, no proselytizing.

I was a member of both my GSA and (occasionally) Cru during my second-to-last year in college. I had plenty of people try to convince me that I needed to give up the spirit of homosexuality. Guess they forgot what the ‘S’ part stood for…

A few months ago, I was approached by two fellow students in my school’s student center.  They were from Campus Crusade for Christ and they were doing something called the Quest Survey, which they said is intended to find out if there are people interested in knowing about God or Christianity.  They were pretty nice.  First, they asked questions about what I believed about God, the afterlife, etc.  (There’s a pdf file online of what the survey paper looked like:  http://quest.campuscrusadeforchrist.com/pdfs/quest1.pdf)  One of the questions was about how interested you are to know about God (on a scale of 1 to 10).  I said 10, because (as I explained) although I don’t believe in God, if he does exist, then I would want to know about him.  So, because of that, they read me a booklet about Christianity.  (There’s a pdf file online of that as well: http://www.campuscrusade.com/downloads/would.pdf)  We only got to page 9, because I had to go to class.

I though it was awkward that they just read directly, word-for-word, from the booklet, but that may have just been because I had told them that my class was starting soon, so maybe they were trying to go quickly.  Of course, I disagreed with several things in the booklet, but my main complaint was that, on page 9, there’s a part where it describes two kinds of lives:  one with Christ at the center of your life, and one with “self” at the center of your life.  The booklet asks you which of these two kinds of lives best describes your life and which life you would like to have.  I thought that this makes it seem like the only two options are (1) believing in Christianity or (2) being selfish, only caring about yourself, etc., so I answered that I don’t think either one describes my life, because there are others options than these two.

I agree with you that a name change isn’t really going to make people change their opinion about the actions, beliefs, etc. of the organization.  It might make people have less of an instant negative reaction when hearing the name of the organization for the first time, but then ultimately, they have to base their opinion of the organization on their actual actions.

Alice, were you able to get a hold of our forming group at UCF? I’m from the OrlandoCoR and the Fox story a few months back.
Search “Project SMART” on Facebook. 🙂

What is a dcru?

😉

I’m not entirely sure whether I’ve actually encountered a representative for the CCC personally, but in High School there was a group that seems to follow the ideas of CCC fairly well. 

The first time I interacted with someone from the High School club was when one of the representatives was invited into a history class I was in to give a talk that resembled Ani Sharmin’s encounter (the guy seemed to be reading off of a script, and despite not actually saying that Christianity was the only alternative to the sadonist-selfish-evil atheist, he made it clear that he saw Christianity as the best path). It was always odd that what essentially amounted to a motivational speaker came in to talk to a History class, but I guess since the teacher was one of the adult supporters of the club, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out why it happened.

Then in my junior year my father died, and while sitting along one day at lunch (that part is not unusual for me) one of the kids who was a member of the organization (it was usually fairly easy to tell when a student was a member, because they had taken to wearing the club shirts quite regularly) came by. While he seemed nice, it did seem like he was only interested in conversion, and when the topic of my father’s recent death came up he was instantly talking about how wonderful his church is, and how I should come that Sunday. 

Let me let you in on one more little secret.

Many of us were raised Christian.  Then we saw the hypocrisy, the taking advantage of vulnerability, etc… up close and personal.  We read the bible for ourselves.

Then we applied some rationality, critical thinking, and ethics, and became atheists.

That’s why instead of sending food, water, and shelter to Haiti in their time of need, groups like yours send them boxes of solar powered bibles.

I’ve researched your charities.  Many of them, before they will give any aid, require conversion.  You don’t pray for people.  You prey for people.

You had the benefit of the doubt.  You lost it.

Googling the Gospel doesn’t show individual knowledge of what it is nor does it mean you’ll actually get the Gospel, but something that is called a gospel.

 That’s your opinion. You can’t speak to the motives of an organization of which you are not a part. And your assertion below is also false, too. The campus ministry was the first, founded by Bill Bright, but several of the other ministries have their separate leadership, mission statements, and goals.

This will be my last post. ‘Twas nice conversing with you all.

What percentage would tickle your fancy, Mike? If you’re really curious. Go on a trip with them and find out. I really think this blog can do better than make false accusations and hurl insults. Really.

“Cru” makes me think of “cruel”.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I’ve been struggling for years to find a proof that Jesus is a tapeworm!  And you had it all along?  I am grateful.

When I was in college the Campus Crusade for Christ invited creationist moron grandpa Duane Gish to babble  about how the Earth is 5,000 years old.  I’d never seen the campus community so united in calling him out and ridiculing him.  Apparently even the students who invited him regretted doing so once they saw his talk.  Warms my heart to think on it.

Hey, nice logo!

Umm…

Uh-oh!

How come they didn’t see that one? 😛

I sort of feel like I need to give a shout out to the University of Alabama at Birmingham Cru here, because we do debates with them all the time, because the guy who runs it is awesome, because I’ve been invited to the front of the room to speak about the possibility of there not being a historical Jesus when it was just me and one other atheist in a room of 70 Christians and everyone was fabulous to me. (It was a debate followup for a debate I debated at.)
I don’t have warm feelings for some of the Cru national administration, but no hard feelings at all toward Cru on campus. I agree with the people up there that Cru is not subtle, but then I’m not so subtle myself.

 As an ex-employee let me explain: Christ lives in those who serve Him………therefore it is our duty to ‘help people’. This is how we are ‘for Christ’. By doing  unto those in need we are actually doing those things to and for Christ.

Plenty of people die for what they believe.  That doesn’t mean that what they believe is true.  Unless you are suggesting that the martyrdom of the Islamic terrorists who blew up the World Trade Center makes Islam true? or the self immolation of Hindu extremists makes hinduism true?

Like how Blackwater changed their name to Xe Services LLC?

Forgive us if we choose this venue to air our frustrations and grievances with religion and Christianity; many of the readers of the this site have had bad experiences, ranging from irritating to dehumanizing, with religion and Christianity.

I’ll consent that sometimes I visit here to let off some steam, and while I can’t speak for everyone, I do think that happens a decent amount.

I want to make a short point, too, that another commenter has stated: if what Cru, and Christianity at large, is selling is actual truth, there wouldn’t be as great a need for the intense proselytization (via annoying and impersonal methods) that this org feels is necessary (read all of the comments about people being stopped in between classes and then read aloud to, word for word, from a pamphlet). If something is absolutely, proveably true, people will hear about it and come to it!

I, for one, would love to see Cru follow this biblical teaching instead:

“By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” Matthew 13:35 (KJV)

Want to show that you are a Christian? Love your fellow man. Help with service projects at every possible opportunity. Assist other orgs that may have conflicting viewpoints. Maybe then people will be interested in what you’re selling.

“And, you know, it’s the fact that there’s no evidence to back up what they believe.”  Really? Do you even know the difference between ‘evidence’ & ‘proof’?  Although there is no ‘proof’ for the Christian faith, their IS plenty of ‘evidence.’  I suppose you have ‘proof’ that the universe created itself out of nothing, ‘proof’ that ‘multiverses’ exist, & other non-evidential claims, like macroevolution, are ‘PROVEN.’  Take off your atheist blinders, & actually take the time to look into the EVIDENCE that the Christian faith is actually based on.

i agree on the tone of ‘crusade’ however, Lord Willing, the group is for spreading The WORD, The Salvation, The Truth Of GOD, and may we not condemn such but embrace it, Lord Willing they not be wrongfully condemning of others or misanthropic or misogynistic, but be careful to study The WORD, with belief and witness, and pray, yourselves.  Eternity is a long time, seek first The Kingdom of GOD (jn.3,mt.5, etc.) praise God

choose God n choose life, *all y’all* The Bible is for *all y’all* Lord Willin’ are His Creation, capable to be His children, n Lord Forgive be i wrong or offbase PLGB

choose God n choose life y’all, don’t condemn those trying to share His Way Truth And Life, actually concerned for folks’ souls, and actions, etc., though sexual orientation doesn’t guarantee action, God Willing.

God Is Life, pro-life, before and after birth, are important folks, an embryo is a new life, a blastocyst, a fetus, all of it, eventually he or she, etc. praise GOD!

i can’t vouch for everything cru hands out, but please *keep* and *read* The Scripture stuff!! don’t be quick to dismiss Salvation, and God, Eternity is a long time

Lord Forgive be i wrong or offbase, prayers for y’all n cru n God Himself, PLGB

some pro-God n life resources for y’all to share PLGB

http://www.usccb.org/nab (The Good Word, Catholic version i guess for y’all, All Begins W God), could also do http://www.Bible.cc/ or http://www.Biblegateway.com/, etc. if you prefer

http://www.40daysforlife.com/ (multidenominational Christian prayer vigil movement outside clinics 2x a year, likely info for Christian/pro-life pregnancy centers, ultrasounds, etc. available through their resources)

http://www.rachelsvineyard.org/ (post abortive (Lord Have Mercy) recovery, education, and repentance Lord Willin’ if need be)

http://www.justthefacts.org/ (‘life begins at conception’ and other ‘developmental factoids’ of human children after such)

http://www.180movie.com/ (controversialesque ~33min ‘documentary’ about folks ‘turning around’ to be pro-life, see the need for Christ, etc….though some of the ‘angst’ in that one over hitler, etc., even him i likely mayn’t judge, PLGB)

http://www.ababysbreath.com/ (assistance for mothers in ‘crisis pregnancy’ situations)

nLord Forgive Lord Willin’ be i wrong or offbase PLGB praise God Amen

Kenny,

I appreciate your apology. But you don’t owe one on behalf of others in your organization. I’ll pick this bone: sincere belief does not excuse an action that others find obnoxious. Bear in mind that there are many of us who have witnessed, maybe lived through, the harm caused by threats of hellfire and find the idea cruel. We mock it because it needs to be brought down to size, a fabrication intended to get people to fall in line. Sincere belief can be hauled out to justify bilking the faithful out of paychecks, denying children vaccinations or blood transfusions, flying planes into skyscrapers, picketing soldiers funerals with God Hates Fags signs, pretending to really be conducting a questionnaire, wearing funny underwear, you name it.