'Brother Jed' is on a mission
Story and photos by Andy Phipps, posted Sept. 6, 2007
As a steady stream of students walked past Speakers Circle on the second Monday of the semester, a high-pitched, whiny cry cuts through the cool morning air: “I think that some of you didn’t come to college to get a higher education … I think you came here to get high,” said Jessie Morrell.
The demonstration signals an annual spectacle. A camera crew from the Discovery Channel will even stop by to film it for use in a six part miniseries profiling underground cultures that has been several years in the making. The topic of this one, street preachers.
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George E. (Jed) Smock, founder of Columbia based Campus Ministry USA with daughter Martha Smock. |
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| A crowd of students listen to the sermonizing of Jeremy Sonnier. |
By the time the film crew arrives in the afternoon, Speakers Circle will be filled with a lineup of shouting evangelists and people holding signs and giant banners advertising that, “God Hates Sin” or “Jesus Mockers, Homos and Lesbos, Porno Freaks, Drunkards and Muslims,” among others.
At 10:50 on this morning, Morrell, a man not much older than the probable average age of the group that gathers around him is speaking alone. He has a dark goatee and glasses, dressed in black slacks, dark shirt, black suspenders and a black hat shading his dark eyes. He wears a sandwich board that reads, “GOD IS ANGRY WITH THE WICKED EVERY DAY.” In his hand is clutched a small, black covered Bible.
Moments later, he produces a plastic human scull from a blue velvet bag slung around his arm. He thrusts it in the air, crying, “You are all going to die.”
Morrell continues, plastic skull in hand; to ramble on about drugs, pornography, Greek life, homosexuality and the certain death and eternal hellfire that comes to all who engage in any of them. Comments and laughter erupt from the crowd.
“This is better than Hamlet,” remarks freshman Daniel Miller.
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Jessie Morrell preaching, skull and bible in hand, at speakers circle. |
The method of preaching they use is called “confrontational evangelism.” As the day progresses it is preached by a group of men, women and children, watched by a man on the sidelines. His name is George Smock, but he is known as Brother Jed. His Columbia-headquartered Campus Ministry USA is holding a “School of Evangelism” on campus this week, with conferences and debates by night and a message of fire and brimstone by day.
But as fiery as Smock and his message may seem in Speakers Circle, he is much different outside of it. He is a family man with a wife and five daughters who call Columbia home. “We wanted to be in a college town,” Smock said. “We like the size of Columbia as a city and the size of the campus… We didn’t know anybody here, just prayed and sensed God’s guidance to come to Columbia.”
When not busy denouncing fornicators, atheists and sodomites at colleges around the country, George Smock might be found doing chores around the house, or watching baseball. “I like baseball…[I’m a] Chicago White Sox fan, this has been a very disappointing year for the White Sox though,” Smock said.
And as much as he might rail against “rock & roll music” you might find him listening to Johnny Cash or even Bob Dylan. “I was a big Dylan fan in my youth,” Smock said, “somewhat of a prophet in his age… it’s more of folk rock, instead of rock and roll,” he said.
He is also very involved with the education of his children, who he and his wife Cindy home school.
“There’s a home school support group in Columbia,” he said. “Cindy and I are on the board of directors and we also head all of the youth activities.” That involves entertaining students and their families at their home.
“This past year Cindy organized an elegant evening. The home schooler’s answer to the high school prom.” Smock said. “We brought somebody in who taught the students to do dancing like out of ‘Pride and Prejudice.’ I think the students all liked that.”
Despite his family life, Smock is known mostly for his public sermonizing, whose message seems lost to students who hear it. He acknowledges that only a few students that hear his preaching are converted and students who group around the sermonizing often jeer and make crude remarks of their own.
“I grew up in a very rural, very conservative area. It’s not very surprising, it’s just that here I can yell whatever I want,” Miller said.
Another person in the crowd, Carolyn Giroux, a first-year master’s degree student familiar with Brother Jed’s performances saw it differently.
“I actually think it’s good; people are talking a lot about different things and they are challenging their own notions, their own beliefs, the things that they’ve been raised with, and I always think that is a positive force,” Giroux said.
Another freshman, Sam Lewandowski, was upset by their presentation of Christianity.
“These kind of people are giving Christians bad names, as being hateful and being hypocrites, saying we’re supposed to be doing all of these things, condemning people and being rude,” she said.
“I yelled at them earlier, ‘judge not lest ye be judged’, and he just kind of looked at me and then went on.”
Whether or not his brand of evangelism is effective was the topic of a debate Monday night between Smock and Brian Kaylor, a Baptist minister and associate professor of communications, who wrote “For God’s Sake Shut Up,” a book tackling the other side of the issue.
Smock jolted into action reading haltingly from prepared notes, waving his arms and stabbing pointed fingers in the air. “Preaching the word of God, in public places is a biblical mandate,” he said. “We are hostile toward sin. And God is hostile toward sinners.”
Kaylor’s response was opposite in every way. Slowly, clearly and with open gestures he rebutted. “There are different ways of preaching the Gospel, and that’s the critical error [Smock] is making.”
“When we are talking about something as important as spirituality and a relationship with God, it’s not just rhetorical suicide, it’s spiritual suicide if you are driving people away from God,” he said.
He went on to cite the reactions to Smock’s preaching, saying that among his students it had been about 80 percent negative. “I have non-believers who are very put off by Smock’s message, and then Christians who tell me they are very upset because he doesn’t represent them well,” Kaylor said.
In the end , it was certain that Brother Jed and his preaching would not be going away anytime soon. Quoting Proverbs at the debate, Smock said, “Wisdom cries without, she cries her voice in the streets, she cries in the chief place of concourse. What is the chief place of concourse? At the University of Missouri. Speakers Circle, every hour, on the hour.”
