There’s a brouhaha on Bruin Walk. A loquacious loggerjam
of a knock-down drag-out. A heavyweight title fight on the
sidewalk, with punches being hurled from the tongues of man and
child alike. A man shouts, “Whore!” A girl yells back,
“Idiot!” A young child screams, “Repent,
sinner!” And I have a front-row seat. I just wish I had some
popcorn.
The scene is like something out of WWE “Raw.” The
preacher is trying to beat down a tag-team of incredulous college
students not with a folding chair, but with zingers such as
“The Bible says if you don’t cover your head,
you’re a whore, so repent, you (horribly unprintable
word)!” They come after him in waves, with an impromptu ring
of dozens of the bemused and horrified on their way to and from
class formed around the combatants. Offended students yell
questions and insults at him one after another, and he deflects
them with the statement that everyone in the crowd is probably
going to go home and masturbate. A derisive cheer springs up from
the unruly masses. I think to myself, “Maybe there will be a
riot.” Would I be able to defend myself from the melee using
only a heavy course reader? My heart races. You can’t buy
this kind of entertainment.
Chances are, you have encountered the preacher at one point or
another since you’ve been at UCLA. He’s been at his
post near Kerckhoff Hall at least twice in the past couple weeks,
and he has been on campus on and off for at least as long as any of
us have been students. Chances are, you wish he would go away, or
get in some sort of trouble for his verbal abuse. Maybe he’s
called you a whore or a masturbator (if so, then cheer). Perhaps
you’ve even stepped to the front of the line of protesting
students, armed with a gospel verse and a trick question,
attempting to take the man down in a blaze of glory. Things got so
heated between some offended bystanders and the preacher last
Thursday that the police had to intervene. If you are one of those
people, my question to you is this: Why let this man get your
britches in a bunch?
You can say what you want about the preacher’s views. You
can say what you want about the way he treats people. You can even
say what you want about his parenting style ““ letting his
young son run around, ducking between college students who tower
over him and yelling at groups of them that sinners go to the lake
of fire. But to say such things to the preacher himself, as many
students decide to do, is entirely counterproductive. What exactly
do you hope to gain from stepping into the ring? Do you think that
you can shame him into going away? He is more likely to spend the
Sabbath at a West Hollywood bathhouse.
The fact is, the preacher can say what he wants. He’s even
allowed to say what he wants in the middle of UCLA’s busiest
thoroughfare ““ otherwise he’d surely have been forcibly
removed by now. And, as disgusting as it may seem, he’s
allowed to call you a (remember that word I wasn’t allowed to
print earlier?) in the same way that I would be if I drunkenly
encountered you at a party on Gayley. And here’s what makes
things even worse: By yelling back at him, you’re doing
exactly what he wants. As a (much quieter and more reasonable)
friend of his was telling a (much smaller) group of interested
students on Thursday, the preacher is shrewder than many students
give him credit for. His intention is to get exactly the reaction
that he’s getting, because in getting 100 students to yell at
him, he’s getting 100 students plus anyone else who walks by
to ““ guess what ““ think about Jesus.
And you may think that’s the stupidest thing you’ve
ever heard. You may think he’s doing more harm than good by
getting people so angry. You may think he’s a contemptible
bigot who is hurting his own cause by making already-jaded college
students laugh at him and his ideas. If you think many of these
things, then I agree with you.
But if you go one step farther and jump into the pulsing mob,
trying to use a verbal Vader bomb or a logical leg-drop to
piledrive the Padre, then don’t mind me if I sit over here
under a tree chuckling at the both of you until the start of my
next class. Pass the popcorn.
To discuss street-preaching, wrestling, or words such as
“furniture,” e-mail Atherton at
datherton@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.