Simply being a jerk is not enough to boot someone from the public square. When I lived in the city, there were street corner evangelists but there were also crazy people who stood yelling incomprehensible gibberish at invisible beings. Among any number of other public performances. I’m sure people complained but I don’t think there was any grounds to remove them. At least not in that town (1980’s San Francisco).
I could sanction putting an axe through his PA system, at least.
I draw a line when someone starts screaming at me on how to live my life or condemns me to their version of hell for not believing in their imaginary divine pooh-bah.
Stranger
If they are in the form of “The Church at Planned Parenthood”, my opinion is that is a group of gigantic assholes. They can fuck right off! They’ve been harassing folks around here and were recently fined for their jackassery.
It’s free speech. Reasonable limits on volume apply.
Last summer, I had a nice exchange of compliments with a street-corner Jesus-shouter when I told him it was a myth. Left me feeling good. My view, it’s performative religiosity, and has bupkis to do with attracting new adherents to their church; what they’re actually looking for is confrontation. Had I been more mature, I would have just ignored the loon, but I couldn’t resist talking a little smack.
This fellow has a much better strategy: drown the asshole out with bagpipes:
A subtle approach is better. Reminds me of a time many years ago when some friends and I ran a PA hire company in London. We were doing a job at a festival which ran later and later and later… the final band would not finish playing even though everyone had left and it was clearly time to pack up and go home.
A quiet sortie backstage with a pair of wirecutters taken to the speaker cable of the lead guitarist’s amplifier solved the problem…
I had a very smart schizoaffective uncle who often said things that sounded like theoretical physics and I have no idea how much of it was accurate vs the rambling of a madman.
It’s not necessarily the street preaching. It’s the insanely loud PA system. I was glad to see the police drive up in the vid with the bagpipe player.
From the comments:
“when you said “most Scottish way” I thought you meant half naked with a shield and a six foot longsword”
Of course, you still need the pipes for the trifecta.
In Portland we value our bagpipe players…especially if they are riding unicycles.
Unicycling Darth Vader upgrades to Flaming Bagpipes - Keep Portland Weird - The Unipiper Official (youtube.com)
I wonder if you’re poisoning the well a little bit by leading with examples like these, of “preachers” who are confrontational and condemning, the most famous example of which are the infamous Westboro Baptist Church of Fred Phelps. I think most people, Christian and non-, have a pretty negative view of them.
I haven’t personally encountered much, if any, public evangelism of the sort the OP talks about. I suspect that most of it is counterproductive, just annoying people and, if anything, turning off anyone who isn’t already a convert.
I do have very vague memories of seeing Cliffe Knechtle engaging with students on the University of Illinois campus, and I think his approach might be an example of a more appropriate and effective style of public evangelism, to the extent that there is one.
I don’t know how often it happens but it’s well known that Christians will go to a diner/restaurant, make a obvious show of praying before the meal and leaving what appears to be a folded 20/50/100 dollar bill for a tip only for it to be a religious tract proclaiming the Glory of God and exhorting the recipient to join The Church Of The Self-Righteous Asshole.
Having very recent memories of watching Cliffe Knechtle engaging in debate I think his approach might be an example everything not to do.
Though I will give him points for clearly stating that the Old Testament is not reliable history . . . and take them away for continuing to use it as the basis of his theology.
uh, not in the amount of time I was willing to listen to this.
similar. Here i did jump to the end, but couldn’t make out what the woman said to him.
based on the other two, I didn’t click on this one.
Seriously, if you want me to see something brief, post it. If you want me to see something brief embedded in a REALLY LONG, BORING video, post which minutes of the video are worth listening to. Please.
I’ve seen the Black Israelites set up on the sidewalk in downtown Seattle near Westlake once or twice. They’re usually reading from the Old Testament through a bullhorn, though once when I was passing them they called me out and called me disgraceful for wearing a t-shirt that read “I shaved my balls for THIS?”, because I guess shaving offends their sensibilities. I’d tell them what I think of them, but I don’t think they’d care.
I hated getting those “tips” back in my waitressing days, >30 years ago. It’s exactly the way NOT to endear someone to their message.
That Cliffe guy has a program that airs a couple times a week on our local public access channel. It’s not very interesting MHO.
My feelings when I hear a street preacher blathering on and on?
Basically, shut the fuck up, you clueless tool. But, if someone came by and forced the moron to stop ranting, then I would be on the nutty preacher dude’s side for having the right to rant BS in public all he wants.
The right of a person to speak freely about anything at all trumps my right to not be annoyed by nutty goofballs. Every time.
I have a very militant atheist friend. (I am moderately militant, though I suppose that is my opinion and may be inaccurate)
I used to travel by train to work. At the end station there was a preacher who sung gospel really badly and very loudly and interspersed his songs with prayer and exhotations.
I got into the habit of sending my friend short videos of the preacher.
Eventually the preacher asked me to send him the videos.
It’s a totally different mindset. I was doing it for cynical reasons to annoy my friend; the preacher thought I was a fan.
Overdub with line readings from The Satanic Bible and send with a comment, “Everything sounds so much clearer in Dolby!”
Stranger
Ultimately most of these folks are not actually proselytizing. What they are doing is protesting. This goes double for the folks who stake out an abortion clinic, a synagogue, etc.
They have persuaded themselves that their god will reward them for making these ineffectual protestations. To the degree they have any rational motivation at all, they aren’t looking to convert anyone; they’re looking to curry favor with their god.
Laughably juvenile or laughably crazy are the only reactions I can have to a mind this fouled up. But the evidence shows us there are lots of them. And for every noisy proselytizer, there are hundreds of generally like-minded people nodding approvingly from the sidelines with varying vigor.
Unrelated to the above …
Please stop using that word. Especially when speaking about freedom, rights, and the responsibilities attached to defending those rights.