Posted on April 12, 2007
Last week I noticed that all over campus and in The Breeze there were quite a few ads promoting a Web site called Beerisproof.org. I didn’t really think anything of it until someone told me what the site was actually promoting. Campus Crusade for Christ is using the quote attributed to Ben Franklin (“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy”) to promote its religious agenda. I could hardly believe it!
CRU is using this quote to catch people’s interest, to “tell” them about its organization and ultimately try and persuade people into joining. I put the word tell in quotations, because it’s really just a thinly veiled conversion attempt; CRU is exploiting an alcoholic beverage in order to try and get students to partake in its organization and its faith. Perhaps talking about alcohol in reference to religion allows people to think drinking and making bad choices is excusable in God’s eyes. I thought religious groups were strongly opposed to drinking due to the “un-Christian” actions associated with drunkenness.
I, along with a considerable amount of others, don’t like having an opinion shoved down my throat. We came to college to learn to make our own decisions and have the freedom to be who we want to be. If I feel like not bothering with church or having a strong faith, then that is what I’m going to do. I know that members of Campus Crusade for Christ and Intervarsity are not bad people; in fact, many members are my friends. However, I think the way CRU uses sneaky tactics to snag people into being evangelized is wrong. People will only be willing to join if they feel it in their hearts.
By the way, Ben Franklin wasn’t a Christian. He a Deist, defined as a “believer in the existence of a supreme being, specifically of a creator who does not intervene in the universe.” The term is chiefly used for the intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that accepted the existence of a creator on the basis of reason but rejected belief in a supernatural deity who interacts with humankind. Sorry, CRU, but good ol’ Benny really isn’t the best person to use to represent your Christian campaign, considering he actually renounced truly Christian beliefs.
After taking a thorough look at Beerisproof.org, I am still no closer to understanding what alcohol has to do with Jesus and religion. I just wish that those of us who aren’t of strong or necessarily Christian faith can be left alone and not have offers to be evangelized thrown in our faces. As impossible as it may seem, not all of us here at JMU are white, upper-middle-class, Christian females. There is such a thing as a difference of opinion, so if you are such a good, CRU-attending person, respect that fact.
Casey Shaw is a freshman SMAD and communications major.
