If you walk to class along Greene Street most mornings, you cannot fail to notice the people preaching on the street or handing out religious materials. You also cannot fail to notice that they are ignored by the vast majority of students passing by. Despite being a practicing Christian, I admit that I have, for the most part, paid them little attention myself, either because I am legitimately trying to get somewhere quickly or because I am somewhat embarrassed by the heavy-handed methods often employed by those of my faith in such preaching.
That I, who hold common beliefs with many of these preachers, would have an ambivalent impression of them made me wonder how effective they could be in reaching areligious people or members of another faith. I had the idea of trying to figure out empirically by surveying other students at random. On Jan. 14, I conducted a survey for approximately one hour on Greene Street, asking my subjects three questions:
1. Have you ever stopped to listen to a street preacher?
2. Would you listen to a friend tell about his/her faith?
3. Do street preachers give you a positive, neutral or negative impression about their faith?
By the end of the hour, 73 students had completed my survey out of the many hundreds who passed. I was beginning to feel a little like a street preacher myself, trying with little success to solicit the time and attention of uninterested strangers.
The results showed that a majority, 65.8 percent, of students had never stopped to listen to a street preacher, while 34.3 percent of the students had stopped to listen at least once in their lives. Admittedly, the fact that, to be represented in the survey, students had to be willing to respond to a stranger’s petition probably did skew the results of this question upward. However, 94.5 percent of respondents, a vast majority, said that they would listen to a friend tell them about his or her faith. Only 5.5 percent of respondents said they would not listen if a friend tried to tell them about his or her faith. While the percentage of respondents who were given a generally positive impression of street preachers’ religion was a low 8.2 percent, the final question received a more nuanced response than I was expecting, with nearly as many respondents claiming a neutral or undecided impression, 45.2 percent, as did a negative one, 46.6 percent. Many students told me a variation of, “It depends on how it’s done,” and, “I have seen it done well.”
After hearing from USC students, I interviewed two street preachers and got their side of the story. First I talked to Rich Suplita, who grew up Christian, then became an atheist, but returned to the faith five years ago. He attends a reformed church in Athens, Georgia, but ministers here with a local partner, Rob McAlister. Suplita says he preaches publicly for two reasons: scriptural precedent and to counterbalance cheap grace, or the idea that you can become a Christian without repenting of your sins.
He told me his goals are “to speak to both God's love and His justice and how they both come together at the cross” and “to do what [he] can to make Jesus the talk of the campus.”
Then I spoke with David Hallmen, a zealous evangelist from a “heathen” background who calls himself a “Hebrew, which means to cross over, to follow your spiritual Father/Mother who is Yahweh.” Hallmen argues that since “the attributes of a man and a woman come from him,” we can’t assign an exclusively masculine personality to God. He preaches from the Christian Bible, with an emphasis on its Hebraic origins and his message is that “we are all born from the flesh but we must be born from the Spirit, who is from above."
Hallmen lives in Florida, but includes USC in his rounds to the campuses of the University of Florida, Florida State and the University of Central Florida. While in the Columbia area, he attends a messianic church, Gates to Zion. He has been preaching for 30 years, and when asked the reason he replied, "If there was a disease and I had the cure, what kind of man would I be if I kept it to myself? What does love do? It gives, not takes.” He quoted Acts 20:35: “It is more blessed to give than to receive." Hallmen exhorts college students to ask of ourselves: “Are you becoming the type of person he (God) wants to live with forever?"
The data I compiled indicates, as I suspected it would, that those who feel led to share their faith would have a much more receptive audience in their friend group than in the public at large. However, the sizable number of those who were neutral or undecided (I’m going to make an educated guess that people who felt positively about street preaching are most likely of a similar religious persuasion and thus not the intended objects of this kind of preaching) indicates that there are still some students at USC who make a distinction between "good" and "bad" street preaching and could be persuaded to listen to the former.
While street preachers are often stereotyped as being harsh and judgment-obsessed, my conversations with Messrs. Suplita and Hallmen showed that not all fit that mold. The two I talked with were polite, knowledgeable and very convinced of the truth and necessity of their message. No one could accuse either of the two men of being insincere or not wishing the best for their listeners. These men view themselves as part of God’s work to bring unbelievers to a saving faith in him and are willing to go to great lengths to further that end. Even though most students ignore street preachers, the men I talked to and others like them continue to diligently sow their seeds of faith, hoping that some fall on fertile ground.