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In the Oct. 8 edition of The Maine Campus, Denise Bickford wrote about the pushy, neon sign-waving, radical evangelical group that came to the University of Maine on Oct. 7. Her message was one I can agree with – these people acted ridiculously and didn’t help their cause.
I have heard many stories of harassment by this group and I do not doubt that many happened. The uproar got me thinking. What do religious groups have to do to be allowed on campus?
The answer is nothing – if they stay in the right places. According to Associate Dean of Students Angel Loredo, the mall is the university’s main public space. If somebody wants to show up to preach their gospel, they can. As a state university, our school must serve as a public forum to a certain degree. Infringement upon that would be a violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
Eight years ago, notorious self-proclaimed evangelist and nationwide roving college preacher Matt Bourgault came to UMaine. In an Oct. 11, 2001 opinion piece in The Maine Campus, Amanda Hebert wrote, “He waved his dog-eared copy of the King James Bible for at least four hours, sometimes for crowds of nearly 100 and sometimes to almost no one at all.” He blamed 9/11 on America’s moral shortcomings and called UMaine and college students nationwide a laundry list of names, none of which were pleasant. Here are the highlights, according to Hebert:
“Fornicators. Drunkards. Pot smokers. Masturbators. Adulterers. Liars. Blasphemers. Sinners.”
Bourgault has been much maligned on American campuses. He has been assaulted and charged with battery. He won $500 in damages from Southern Oregon University after they kicked him off of campus for violating the “verbal harassment’ and ‘creating an unreasonable atmosphere’ clauses of SOU’s Open Forum free speech policy,” according to the Mail Tribune, a southern Oregon newspaper. A judge said that the university’s policies were too vague and had violated Bourgault’s constitutional freedoms.
We must realize as freedom-loving people that freedom of speech goes in many directions. Any of us has the equal right to dissent. This dissension can be about anything we want it to be, just so long as we do not incite a deliberate, imminent and likely danger to society. Hate is legal. Persuasion to a likely violent end is not. These religious groups on campus did nothing of that sort.
I have even heard complaints on campus about the Gideons, the organization that handed out green New Testaments on campus on Oct. 14. I had a great interaction with a person near the library that day. He was polite, handed me a testament and commented on my Red Sox sweatshirt. The Gideons have placed more than a billion Bibles in hotel rooms worldwide since 1908.
This makes me wonder if college students as a whole have an increasingly negative opinion of religion – in our case, mainly Christianity. According to a 2008 report by Trinity College, 30 percent of Americans who say they have no religion are between the ages of 18 and 29. The report says the percentage of Americans who have no religion “increased from 8.1 percent of the U.S. adult population in 1990 to 15 percent in 2008.” These numbers greatly exceed the combined total of all non-Christian religious groups in America.
I am not a religious person at all. I would be in that “no religion” group. I just fear that many of our young people are losing respect for religious establishments because of the louder, more radical voices of notable evangelicals. They don’t represent the mainstream Christian — who is much quieter.
If groups of radicals or any group you don’t agree with come to campus in the future, please try to avoid them. If they harass you, contact Public Safety. But please don’t think religious groups should be banned from campus. Even if you don’t agree with everyone you meet, you may find your viewpoints could be strengthened and diversified by healthy conversation.
