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In the Oct. 19 edition of The Maine Campus, I discussed the freedom that should be afforded to groups who would like to spread their views on campus. Perhaps the most notable pursuer of that freedom at the University of Maine was Matt Bourgault of Consuming Fire Campus Ministries. In October 2001, Bourgault confronted UMaine students on their many moral shortcomings that he said helped lead to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
Bourgault requested a telephone interview and was a polite interviewee. I didn’t expect that from someone who shouts at students for a living. He quotes Bible verses from memory with incredible knowledge of the citations. He is obsessed with scripture. He lives his life by it and demands that others do too.
His sermons are all over YouTube. He has been ridiculed in college newspapers and online forums. One group on Facebook is sarcastically titled “Disciples of Brother Matt,” the name he insists he be called. His radical beliefs are the butt of many jokes.
According to Bourgault, he has preached in approximately 40 states and at 100 college and university campuses, which he sees as hotbeds of ungodliness. He said the perpetrator of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, Seung-Hui Cho, was a victim of the world view of humanism.
“They robbed him of his faith and then Virginia Tech wants to say ‘no, no, no, we’re not responsible.’ Well, they are. Vicariously, they are,” he said. “When you promote things on a university that are contrary to the word of God … you’re going to breed a bunch of perverts.”
We were talking about condoms when he made one of his more outlandish statements, saying condoms are “bringing more problems than [they are] solving. Condoms are not safe. They don’t protect you in every case. An example of that is the AIDS virus. It is known that the AIDS virus is 10 times smaller than the pores in a condom.”
Condoms don’t eliminate any risk, but they do cut many risks drastically. According to a 2000 report by the National Institute of Health, condoms can reduce the transmission of HIV by 80 percent.
He has little regard for feminism, believing the Bible describes a “very clear pecking order” of the sexes. “We would totally disagree with Obama’s agenda of telling the housewives to go back to work,” he said.
But he insists that he isn’t a chauvinist, saying, “I’ve been married 20 years. We have seven children. I don’t think I hate women.” He went on to say that he and his wife raised their 19-year-old daughter to be “very, very chaste. She’s a very good girl. We trained her up to be this way.”
He weighed in on Maine’s new same-sex marriage law, which will go up for popular vote Tuesday. He lamented Maine’s passage of the law, saying it was “a sign of the times” and “an abomination of God.”
Bourgault’s beliefs disgust me. They are outdated and don’t work in a changing society. So why did I hang up the phone respecting him?
There is something strangely quixotic about the man. He struggles against the status quo for a change he sees necessary for our salvation. Tomatoes fly at his signs. Students scream at him and sometimes try to push him around. But he buttons up his white shirt, dons his signature red tie, grabs his signs and his dog-eared Bible and puts it all on the line. He’s got guts. He knows that he is right, even when we all think he isn’t. This is admirable.
We all want a pulpit for our opinions. Bourgault creates his own among a hostile crowd, and for that, if nothing else, he deserves some respect.
“I’m committed. And by the grace of God, I’ll continue to preach,” he declared.
Well, Brother Matt, I hope you do.
Bangor Daily News