Annoyed with all the religious nuts on campus

[O Latin]

So, like pretty much every university campus, I imagine, we occasionally get religious nuts on my campus. Usually they're the type who just stand in the quad and shout about how we all need to find Jesus. I don't actually mind them all that much and actually find them rather amusing. But this semester the religious nuttery seems to have been kicked up a notch. We have a new Jesus Guy who has not one, but two giant neon signs. He stands around and shouts, but he has a buddy passing out tracts to students (I don't know what they say because I have so far managed to avoid said buddy). Then this morning the campus was invaded by the guys who pass out tiny Bibles. They always show up around this time of year, but I swear there was one stationed every fifty feet across the whole campus. Even the people who took one had to fend off the next four they encountered.

Now, to be fair, I generally despise anyone who tries to shove useless paper into my hand as I'm walking to class, whether it's religious info or a summer work flyer or whatever, but there have been so many religious nuts around lately that I'm starting to get especially annoyed with them and I figured the lovely people of FJ would understand my annoyance.

[Bella99]

What is it about a bunch of college students that brings out the crazies? My favorite was tiny bible guy trying to give me one during finals telling me it was "test insurance". I told him God had told me to study ahead of time. I also enjoyed the ones trying to delay me on my way to a party go soulwinning in the dorms - hopefully security has improved since then.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

The large state university I work at gets the Bible-dispensing guys too - old guys, in suit jackets, handing out New Testaments, all on one day. It's one guy (sometimes they work in pairs though) every 50 feet or so, yep. Particularly they make sure to have at least one guy standing at every entrance to the main quadrangle, the front doors of major buildings, etc.

Often they will cluelessly stand in the dedicated bike paths, mistaking the paths for sidewalks. I've come close to hitting them before.

[keen23]

Walk by with your hands in your pockets, don't make eye contact, and if they try to talk to you "Ich spreche kein Englisch" (I don't speak English in German- but really, any foreign language works).

Conversely, ask them to show you their permit for distributing items on campus. If they don't have one, pull out your phone, take a picture of them, get their name and report them to the campus police for harassment. If they have a permit, talk to the person that issued the permit and report them for harassment and anything else you can thing of.

[xReems]

My college campus usually has those crazy nut jobs who put up those billboards of aborted fetuses and preaches about that on the Campus Green (our "quad") once in a while. I've learned to ignore them but it is entertaining to hear them preach stupid shit.

[emmiedahl]

The JW's had an ongoing table in the student union of my former college. I never understood how they managed to get approval for that. They were very unfriendly (scowling, no eye contact, etc) and I never saw anyone approach the table.

Right now my apartment building is the subject of several bus ministries. So every church in the county has been coming door-to-door, ignoring the signs posted at every entrance regarding solicitors. Since I do most of my classwork from home, I guess that qualifies as campus crazies :)

The other day, I opened the door to find a skinny, scroungy meth-browed guy. He was from a local church and asked if anyone has ever told me about Jesus. Um, this is the United States, it is fair to assume that someone has.

[ADoyle90815]

Once at my university, the student run newspaper decided to have a little fun with those crazies, as they have a satire page. They even got a couple of theater majors who were men to make out in front of them, and took pictures of the person's reaction. The next week, the satire page did a full thing on that nut saying that he realized he was gay when he saw that "couple." Those nuts made themselves a target by coming on campus that particular afternoon as they were amusing more than annoying as they didn't try to pass out tracts or little Bibles to everyone. Now, there were those types who did try to hand out those little Bibles, but our campus police took reports of harassment seriously enough to kick them off when they showed up.

The other group that occasionally showed up was the Mormon missionaries sponsored by the LDSSA, but they didn't try to hand out things to people, and if you didn't make eye contact with them, they left you alone.

[jockosmom]

The little Bible guys are the Gideons. My dad used to be a Gideon. They're also the group that puts Bibles in hotels and motels.

[Rosa]

We ended up with so many of those damn Gideon Bibles we ended up using them for craft projects.

For the homophobic ranters, there's always the classic kiss-in response.

And they don't need a permit, if they're on public property. Just like every political & other group on campus.

Though I wish they'd stick with free food like the Hare Krishnas & CCC.

[emmiedahl]

True fact: when I was in high school, we hoarded Gideon Bible because the pages are AWESOME for rolling joints. Plus, the parents never saw them as paraphernalia.

[GeoBQn]

Keen23, that might not work at a state school, which is considered public grounds for free speech as long as they don't physically impede people from going to class. Here's all the nut jobs from my various universities.

Undergrad:

-When I was moving into the dorms my freshman year, a very helpful young man in a shirt with the school's colors helped me and my dad move my luggage up to my room. I didn't realize until the end that the shirt he was wearing said "Campus Crusade For Christ." The next year, my university banned all outside groups from assisting students with luggage on move-in days.

-Campus Crusade for Christ had a public event in my floor lounge about "being the total woman." I went intending to get into a debate with them, but silly me! There was no opportunity for discussion, just a young woman talking about how she used to be a goth until she found Jesus. When she lead everyone in a prayer, I prayed, "Hashem, you know I am only here for the free smoothies." Campus Crusade was always having events where they would advertise with great posters, only noting who was sponsoring the event on the very bottom in the smallest font possible.

-A WBC type group protested on campus every Thursday, railing against gays and other Hell-bound types. It drew a crowd of counter-protests for a while, but then everybody ignored them. Once, I asked one of them if he kept kosher, as long as he was following other Leviticus laws.

-A group protested downtown with pictures of bloody fetuses, including a truck with a large picture that drove around town some days.

-There would occasionally be Gideons passing out Bibles at EVERY bus stop, and a pair of Mormon missionaries sitting on a bench with a poster that said "Ask the Mormon Missionaries."

Grad School:

-Guy with a neon sign reading the Bible out loud.

-A group from the Catholic center parading around the first day of the Farmers Market with a giant poster of Jesus.

-A choir of Amish-dressing folk at the Farmers Market, with small children holding up signs saying things like "Jesus is judging you." We used to call them the "Damnation Choir."

-Guy at the Farmers Market with a display about how evolution is a lie. There was a group of guys who used to debate with him every week, to the point where they would write down things he said so they could research during the week.

-Guy at the Farmers Market passing out Chick tracts. When a group of college boys walked by and ignored him, the guy threw a tract and hit one of the boys in the shoulder.

-A Catholic group with a makeshift confessional, inviting people to confess their sins. I happened to see this as I was walking home from services on Yom Kippur, so I had the urge to go up to them and say, "No thanks, I'm good for the next year."

-Two college kids on the main shopping street holding up a sign that said "Jesus loves you!"

-I directed a play for a Jewish arts organization on campus that got funding from the university. A Catholic organization that was denied funding complained, saying that the university was giving to money to organizations that other students "wouldn't agree with," citing the Jewish arts organization and an environmental group. The reason the Catholic group was denied funding was because their main goal was to proselytize, while the Jewish group got funding because we weren't proselytizing and it was open to students of all religions (out of the entire cast and grew of my play, the only Jews were me and the lead actress.) Still, the University completely revised their approval system, and as a result the Jewish arts group got no funding the next year and it dissolved.

[marmalade]

The little Bible guys are the Gideons. My dad used to be a Gideon. They're also the group that puts Bibles in hotels and motels.

Yup. My dad was a Gideon as well, but they never hit the big colleges in the area (including our alma mater, UC Berkeley). To my horror, as I was taking a few classes a few years ago at a community college to transfer into Berkeley so I could finish my degree, I discovered he was handing out bibles at my campus on Wednesdays. Thankfully, I didn't have classes on that campus on Wednesdays or I would have been absolutely mortified. It was bad enough just hearing about it.

Thankfully, most of the other big colleges in the immediate area are Catholic, which is why they resorted to the community colleges. While the student body at Berkeley is actually far more conservative than its reputation (strong engineering and econ departments will skew any campus far right), I don't think the Gideons would fare well; students are just too harried, although the common word you see along the area where students "table" for clubs, frats, etc. is "fellowship."

(edited because the syntax in the original post was SODRT-worthy)

[CanticleoftheTurning]

So, like pretty much every university campus, I imagine, we occasionally get religious nuts on my campus. Usually they're the type who just stand in the quad and shout about how we all need to find Jesus. I don't actually mind them all that much and actually find them rather amusing. But this semester the religious nuttery seems to have been kicked up a notch. We have a new Jesus Guy who has not one, but two giant neon signs. He stands around and shouts, but he has a buddy passing out tracts to students (I don't know what they say because I have so far managed to avoid said buddy). Then this morning the campus was invaded by the guys who pass out tiny Bibles. They always show up around this time of year, but I swear there was one stationed every fifty feet across the whole campus. Even the people who took one had to fend off the next four they encountered.

Now, to be fair, I generally despise anyone who tries to shove useless paper into my hand as I'm walking to class, whether it's religious info or a summer work flyer or whatever, but there have been so many religious nuts around lately that I'm starting to get especially annoyed with them and I figured the lovely people of FJ would understand my annoyance.

Totally. We had them all the time in the plaza at my university. Nutters who said gay sex is sin, unmarried sex is sin, we're all going to hell, and so on. We even had a group on campus that totally staged a fake debate. They invited a preacher to campus, and they all made a wide circle around him as he preached, some people hollered out fake questions, and when he said something that was supposed to be profound, some applauded. Everyone could totally spot the plants. That pissed me off to no end, especially all the anti-Catholic rhetoric and handing out of Chick Tracts.

And I dislike those old men who hand out these mini Bibles. Come to think of it, this is the time of year for them to do that again. Glad I'm not back on campus.

I used to sign to them, 'cause I know sign language. I'd say something totally nonsensical in ASL, and they'd look at me in shock not knowing what to say or do. That way I didn't actually have to speak with them.

[Bella99]

I have an Anatomy exam next week. Suddenly I'm wishing the Gideon bible really was test insurance, but methinks its time to study.

[Boogalou]

Wow. We have very few religious crazies on my Canadian university. The most you will get is the odd Mormon on a Saturday afternoon. There are also a lot of religious student groups but none of them are out to convert anyone.

[alphaeta08]

My favorite was the guy who came and yelled at us about various sins, usually once per semester. I would be disturbed if anyone took him seriously, but it was fun interacting with him. You have to wonder if those people really believe they're getting through to anyone, and if so, how they get through life without being committed to some institution.

[keen23]

Free speech laws would allow them to be there, and allow the signs and whatnot, but once they touch you or physically intimidate you into taking something from them, they cross the line to harassment.

[lilwriter85]

The Gideons who came to my college campus were polite for the most part. They didn't pester people into accepting the tiny bibles. There were some religious nuts that hung out around different areas of the campus here and there. Pro-life groups showed up on the Roe vs. Wade anniversary to hand out pamphlets in very forceful ways. They would get pissed if students rushed by them and I was one of them. I was in a hurry to get to class and the guy who tried to hand me out the pamphlet said to me, "You should care about legalized murder". I ignored him and walked to class. One of the local meagchurches sent members to hand out "premartial sex is evil" tracts out for an entire week. On the last two days they were shouting matches with the church members and students.

There was a husband and wife nut team that targeted the performing arts and music buildings regularly . My cousin who attended the same college took a hip hop dance class one semester and at the end of the semester, her class had a planned smart mob in which the students in the classes recruited 1 or 2 friends to join the class in having a smart mob dance in one of the courtyards which was filmed for college promotional videos. My cousin recruited me to join. It was an all day event. The students and their friends went in and learned the dance. During the practice, the couple was outside the performing arts building saying how dancing, hip hop and rape were evil. My cousin and her classmates told me that this couple had been hanging near their dance classes all semester long. Luckily there left before we went out and did the smart mob.

[dawbs]

The little Bible guys are the Gideons. My dad used to be a Gideon. They're also the group that puts Bibles in hotels and motels.

My dad quit the Gideons when he was asked to use his position as a (public school) teacher to proselytize to students....and he was given grief for saying 'no'. :!:

(the reading materials in hotel rooms don't bother me--people can decline to read it and it is nice when one is very very bored. And you can even use it for drinking games. :whistle: )

[Austin]

We almost always stay at Marriott hotels and resorts and some of those have the Book of Mormon.

[Kitty]

Campus Crusade for Christ and a college group called Overflow run around at my uni. Of course CCC changed its name to "Cru", which confuses the hell out of everyone thinking it's "Crew," as in the rowing team. They totally did it on purpose. And yes, they advertise these big events with pretty impressive posters and flyers, often either not even saying they're the ones hosting the event, or putting it in very small letters. There are other ways Cru advertises- those of you who frequent the Friendly Atheist's blog would know that my uni does chalk ads on the sidewalks. Holy shit, Cru's tend to be EVERYWHERE and rather large- nowhere near as ubiquitous and large as the Overflow ads, but pretty fucking big. Every year this one preacher comes to our 60% female campus to preach that women should not be in college but barefoot and pregnant as soon as possible. And there was that one douchebag last week who defaced one of the Secular Student Alliance's chalk ads. Asshole.

Otherwise, there's not a lot of religious craziness here.

[dawbs]

We almost always stay at Marriott hotels and resorts and some of those have the Book of Mormon.

When I stayed at the House of Blues hotel, there was a sheet in the nightstand that said they don't allow books to be left in the room but they had *insert list of about 20 various religious books* at the front desk--just call and they'd bring it up.

I was impressed :clap:

[hoipolloi]

My brother had an awesome story from his time at UW Madison years ago.

An itinerant "Christian" preacher showed up on campus & parked his rear in the mall in front of the library for the several days or so of his "visit." About Day 2 or 3 into the preacher's harangues, some students hooked up an excellent sound system, recruited a friend with a wonderfully deep bass-baritone voice, and had him read the following over the speaker system:

"John, this is God. Please stop bothering the students NOW - you're making them late for class. No one, including Me, is interested in what you have to say so please stop it. Thank you."

[mirele]

When I was at the University of Texas at Austin in the early '80s, we had Brother Jed Smock and his wife Sister Cindy (Lasseter) Smock. (The first time I saw them, she wasn't married to him.) They were great performers, but as far as converting people, not so much. Jed was notorious in the mid-80s for writing a book supporting the apartheid regime in South Africa. (Yeah, that went over real well on campuses where divestiture was a hot issue, as you might have suspected.) Jed's still doing his thing, even at age 68 (Cindy's about 15 years younger), hitting all the college campuses in a circuit. I follow him on Facebook.

[doggie]

the sad part is most of these flakes really don't do anything but make themselves feel good. why is it you need guilt and fear to get people to believe?