Students, non-students, Christians and non-Christians all had an impromptu gathering at the Humanities Amphitheatre on Wednesday afternoon in what amounted to several theological arguments.
Two street preachers attracted a crowd of roughly 150 to the amphitheatre in a discourse which lasted from the late morning into the late afternoon, as of press time.
Tracy Bays wore a suit with a pin that said “porn” with an X over it. An associate carried a large, yellow sign, sending out a warning about judgment to “God haters, fornicators, thieves, liars, drunks, mockers, adulterers, (and) sodomites.”
Bays, who identified himself as a “Bible-believing, Bible-obeying Christian,” said the verse Mark 16:15 was the reason he was outside that day.
“Mark 16:15 says go out to all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature,” Bays said.
He said he encouraged students to “surrender” and stop sinning, as he said he has.
“Any true Christian is a saint,” Bays said. “A saint means holy one of God. Holy means set apart from sin. So if you’re set apart from sin and you’re a holy one of God and you’re a saint, that means you have stopped sinning. I would say, unless you do stop sinning, you’re not really a Christian.”
He said he didn’t understand why some students took exception to him saying he has stopped sinning.
“Me saying that I stopped sinning is no big deal,” Bays said. “Any real Christian has stopped sinning.”
But students did take exception. Monica Provence, freshman in graphic design, was among them.
“He was just talking about how he doesn’t sin anymore,” Provence said. “That’s a blatant lie. So it’s contradicting a statement in general. And he’s talking about needing grace. I think he needs to look up the word ‘grace’ in the dictionary for a minute. Absorb that, and decide whether he actually needs grace or whether he actually is perfect.”
She said Bays is making Christians look “horrible” with his street preaching, and she was out there with her friends to persuade him to stop.
“Obviously we’ve had street preachers, and they’re not causing as big of a ruckus as this guy because this guy is blatantly lying, and he doesn’t seem to get that,” Provence said. “And we’re all trying to say, ‘Hey, dude, don’t be preaching if it’s not true.’”
Billy Crawford, sophomore in history, also took up the cause of free speech against what the preachers were saying.
“I’m not with him (Bays),” Crawford said. “I’m telling everybody that Jesus loves sinners because that’s all I know.”
Crawford, who held a sign saying, “Ask me about Jesus,” disagreed with what Bays said about conversing with non-believers.
“He said he’s not a sinner, which is not true,” Crawford said. “He said that he will not invite sinners to his church, and you shouldn’t associate with them. But Jesus Christ himself ate with sinners and invited them to church. He came to heal the sick. ... I believe that we need to present the gospel with love and not with condemnation.”
Crawford said he also would not have street preached the way Bays does.
“I think God can work through any presentation of the gospel, but I think this (asking Crawford about Jesus) is a way that people may respond to a little better in a campus situation,” Crawford said.
Bays said street preaching was justified because Jesus was a street preacher.
“He (Jesus) preached on the mountainside,” Bays said. “He preached in the streets. He preached out in the open. He preached where the people were. He didn’t say, ‘Build me a building and tell his disciplines, go out and bring people to me. Jesus didn’t do that. Jesus went out to the people, where the people were. That’s what we’re doing.”
Other students raised signs that ran contradictory to what the preacher was saying. Made out of cardboard and written in spray paint, signs like “I love scotch,” “Get laid” and “God loves fags” were raised by students around Bays, who moved from place to place when he said the crowd “got too close.”
Dustin Moore, freshman in music education, held a sign that said “sinner” in all capital letters with an arrow pointing toward Bays.
Moore, who had been at the amphitheatre for at least three hours, said he disagreed with the preachers’ presentations.
“I think they’re just going about it wrong,” Moore said. “It’s one thing to preach the word of God and state their beliefs and what they believe, but it is wrong, morally, to come out here and call us names and judge us and tell us what we are, whether we believe it or not. Because who can say that any religion is wrong? There’s no real basis of proof on any of it.”
Bays said he came to the amphitheatre to simply preach the Bible’s message.
“(I came to) give glory to God, preach the truth of the Bible, preach the gospel, exhort people to stop sinning and trust in the Lord,” he said.
As to how the situation became so large with so many people, Crawford blamed the heat.
“Well it was a nice day already, and there were people here before the preacher showed up, which had a lot to do with it I think,” Crawford said. “And then things escalated. ... You get a bunch of people around in hot weather, and things are always going to escalate.”