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Brother Jed’s Fire & Brimstone
Came across a really interesting article about an old-school fire & brimstone preacher who practices something called “confrontational evangelism” on college campuses across the US. He’s so well-known (though I never heard of him before this) that he supposedly has fans called “Jed-Heads” who travel around to all his “shows.”
Check out this article on Sniggle.net for more about Bro. Jed, along with some links for further exploration. The most interesting part of the whole thing is that Jed’s style is inflammatory on purpose. People who get riled up by his approach tend to not realize that they are being lead very intentionally down the primrose path. Dave Gross, the author of this article, reflects on Jed’s tactics as revealed (in italics below) by a copy of his autobiographical book “Who Will Rise Up?” (available online).
When he attacks everything students hold dear (and number one on that list is his favorite target, fornication), it is not just an explanation of the tenets of his faith, it is a deliberate attempt to anger and upset the crowd.
This is especially clear when there are times when he could easily be diplomatic, and yet he deliberately turns a phrase that many find offensive. Most often baited in this regard are feminists, who find many of their worst accusations about men being advocated, nay trumpeted, by Jed in their own exaggerated language.
“Women need to be put in their place!” He says. “They should be baby machines.” Where did he find that phrase? Not in any christian book, but instead in the caricatures of American religion written by its most offended and horrified critics — and he has adopted that caricature for his own!
And nobody can argue that it doesn’t work. The crowds he gathers are as angry, rude, and ill-behaved as any mob that ever villified any prophet. And so later in his speech, when he talks about how today’s students are obnoxious and rude and have no morals… well, you can’t really argue.
Admittedly, my ministry brings out the worst in people. But some, at the end of the day, will return to the privacy of their rooms and reflect on their behavior with shame. For the first time they will see themselves for what they actually are — decadent, depraved and degenerate.
Several times in his book he reflects on the fact that the same students who accuse him of intolerance are the ones who try to shout him down, and the ones who have several times in the last several years beat him and called the police to have him hauled away.
And he’s been doing this for years. He knows just what to expect from his crowd. Every clever comment anyone in the audience makes is one he has heard dozens of times before. You can’t impress him with clever comebacks; and you certainly can’t out-bible him.
When he uses hellfire and brimstone phrases, it is no nervous tic of his that he exaggerates them and accompanies them with bizarre hand gestures. It is a deliberate attempt to bait his audience into mimicking him — and it almost never fails.
Unusual voice techniques and elaborate gestures are especially helpful. For example, throughout the afternoon I will often refer to the eternal home of sinners:
“The everlasting LAKE OF FI-RRRRRE!”
“After several FI-RRRRES, the whole crowd is chanting along. It’s reported that within a few days of preaching, the students are shouting “You’ll burn forever in the LAKE OF FI-RRRRRRE,” down their dorm halls. They consider it a big joke but as they mimic me the fact of this terrible torment is being impressed on their minds.”
It’s a little disheartening to realize that all the time I was in the crowd yelling out clever phrases and screaming about “PRO MISK YOU US WIMMEN!” that as noisy as we were in the crowd, and as independent-minded as we wanted to sound, we were just the orchestra and Brother Jed was the conductor.
All in all it sounds very clever to me. (See Brother Jed’s website for more) It seems like this kind of realization ought to be a wake-up call for people who get riled up by Christian Fundamentalism. It’s entirely possible that these people thrive on you being riled up and attacking them.
Just think of how much more you know about the Bible and the “true” message of Christ after having been forced to listen to or argue with somebody who thinks like this. How much more do you know about Christianity in general than you ever thought you would, simply because you’ve been intentionally orchestrated into a position of reaction? If their goal is to spread the truth of Christianity, in a sense they are doing a damned good job of doing so among those people who are (or at least fancy themselves) their toughest critics.
Especially since many of us have so frequently resorted to arguments accusing them of not being “Christian enough.” I mean, before you know it, we’ll all be going to church and kissing the Pope’s ring just so we can all prove how we’re better Christians! Fucking ingenious!
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December 13th, 2005 at 7:01 am
Of course they do. It reassures them that they’re right.
December 13th, 2005 at 10:29 am
This sounds like Bill O’Reilly.
December 13th, 2005 at 10:39 am
Brother Jed rules! He used to come to m’eye college campus every year. He’d definitely rile people up, get them all emotional (a good way to put people in an altered state of consciousness and make them suggestible) and combative. He had to stay on the sidewalk so as not to be officially on school property since it was a private school. He’s a great performance artist, even if he doesn’t gno it. He does the same kind of shit with his Christian evangelicalism that Andy Kauffman used to do with his “I’m from Hollywood” and wrestling women shtick. Those who become über angry to the point of spitting on him, screaming at him or hitting him (which has happened), end up confirming lots of the stuff he’s saying about them, despite themselves. A lonely and impressionable college kid looking on at the circus is then more easily primed for a (short-lived) conversion. If you gno what he’s doing and why/how it works, you can just sit back and enjoy the theater of it. (I’d used to go talk to him when he was taking a break and letting one of his sidekicks keep up the emotion baiting and he’d be very soft-spoken and reasonable, insofar as his fundamentalism allowed it. So that was one clue to kmee…) Seeing him in and out of action and then reading posts from some Jedheads back in college, along with some books on altered states, made for one of those pivotal “Ah-ha!” moments in m’eye life.
Eye still have some sound collages eye made in college using some of the more hilariously ridiculous things he said on campus. One example: equating anal sex with someone’s friend sticking a slice of pizza up their nostril. Followed by a “Wrong hole, friend!” It’s just ridiculous! If you don’t approach it with a sense of the absurd, you’re apt to fall into pretty predictable emotional responses and end up lost in the circus.
December 13th, 2005 at 12:45 pm
This brings back memories. I remember a warm sunny day on the U of Minnesota campus standing with a group of atheists (the militant kind that have weekly meetings. It’s a total substitute for church), watching Brother Jed. I had a go at him, but he was not interested in reasoned discourse. It’s performance art. He must thrive on the adrenaline of it, as does his audience. Having a religious argument in front of a crowd does give one quite a rush.
I met a very cute atheist boy that day.
December 13th, 2005 at 12:52 pm
I totally rememeber this dude - he used to come to my college all the time too. I still have an autographed copy of his tell-all biography at my mom’s house somewhere, i’ll post scans of teh funny parts if i find it next time i go home.
December 15th, 2005 at 4:47 pm
“It�s entirely possible that these people thrive on you being riled up and attacking them.”
“Of course they do. It reassures them that they’re right.”
It also gives ‘em a sense of persecution, something that’s hard to get when you’re one of the biggest religions in the world. They really miss the good old ’secret Christian’ days. Or, as a fortune cookie would put it: everybody wants to be Rebel Alliance, no one wants to be Empire.
And everyone loves a good show. I remember someone like this coming out to UGA, and asking the crowd “Do you know how to stop the sin of masturbation?”
As one, we yell “Get LAID!”
Couldn’t have scripted it better.
December 15th, 2005 at 4:54 pm
I dunno, though, Tim, about the efficiency of this as some wacky viral marketing scheme. I feel like these guys just make non-Christians more likely to view Christians as ignorant, backwards, hypocritical sacks of tripe. Reinforcing stereotypes with regard to Christians, and further laying down the association between ‘anger’ and ‘Christianity.’ Thusly continuing to divide us up into our little boxes, walling our hearts off from one another. Which is not good.
Not to say it isn’t amusing. It is, if you have the right eyes and ears for it - if you keep the smoke and mirrors firmly in conscious view. And it is good to know that he isn’t just saying the shit he says because he genuinely beliefs it.
May 6th, 2006 at 2:08 pm
[…] Much like other conservative Christian firebrands though, apparently he intentionally is trying to piss people off: That brutal honesty, that aggressively confrontational style, is deliberate. “One of the most important things I can do is agitate people to the point where they start to investigate,” he says. “Otherwise, they’re indifferent.” […]