Posted on April 16, 2007
One must feel at least a little sorry for Campus Crusade for Christ. The organization has taken quite a pummeling in the last few weeks, both in the press and in the court of public opinion.
Crusade’s crime? The organization initiated a massive campaign involving newspapers, fliers on the Commons and the ubiquitous T-shirts to promote the now-notorious beerisproof.org Web site. Call it a sin of advertisement.
Clearly Crusade touched a nerve with the “Beer is Proof” campaign, though the criticism leveled at it thus far has been terribly off base. After a cursory skim of the site (and casual conversation indicates that a cursory skim is pretty much the extent of our exposure), it is highly unlikely that the viewer will be any different from the experience, save for a lingering sadness at the waste of a non-profit domain name and some poor fool’s hopelessly average Web design skills.
For all the melodramatic outrage, the “Beer is Proof” campaign is a weak, pathetic attempt at Christian outreach. Absent of a clear definition of “happiness,” the site comes off as a thinly masked prosperity gospel endorsed by Anheuser-Busch; to continue the God-and-alcohol idea, beerisproof.org amounts to nothing more than a theological Solo cup of Natty Light.
Unless we all take regular umbrage at well-intended mediocrity — and based upon our continual tolerance of the SGA, we clearly don’t — our zealous response may be slightly overblown, tantamount to taking outrageous offense at a carton of lukewarm store-brand vanilla ice cream.
Yet offended we are. The indictment of Crusade has varied, but laughably amounts to an affront to religious tolerance and an attempt at religious coercion.
It is a bit of a role reversal that an attempt to initiate a religious discussion qualifies as a violation of religious freedom; the idea that Campus Crusade for Christ might actually talk about Christ should not offend anyone who doesn’t want his or her “freedom of religion” in constitutional quote marks.
As for coercion, I would hope that JMU students, as the educated future leaders of the free world, would be a little more discerning. Anyone who believes the spiritual tic-tac that is beerisproof.org — likely viewed in the safety of one’s own home on one’s own computer at one’s own free will in one’s own time — amounts to religious intimidation should be required to reregister for GCOM, that they might learn the operative definition of “persuasion.” If we were half as outraged at religious coercion in Darfur, manifested not in Web page but in genocide, hope might not seem so absurd.
Thus the dramatic outrage on our campus toward Crusade has nothing to do with the “Beer is Proof” ad campaign. Rather, our outpouring of offense stems not from issues of faith or freedom but from pride.
Amidst the well-documented apathy that holds our student body in a tight grip of lethargy (how many recent SGA elections were uncontested?), members of Crusade have broken free; they bought ads in The Breeze, donned T-shirts and stood out on the commons in a somewhat misguided attempt to initiate a conversation with each of us, not because they get a free toaster for each visit to the Web site, but because they found the message important enough for us to hear. In their Christian faith, Crusade members have found something bigger than themselves to give a damn about; the rest of us have grilled cheese Thursdays and reruns of “Scrubs.”
Crusade, like every organization on campus, has its problems. It is racially homogenous, though that may be more indicative of the campus than the club. It is disappointingly biased toward freshmen at the expense of upperclassmen; as one former staff intern once said, seniors are expected to “feed themselves.”
Its members are pathetically inclined to hole themselves away inside the “CRU clique,” living in the same houses, eating at the same table in D-hall and generally avoiding contamination from the outside world.
Yet none of that prompted the condemnation of Crusade; Crusade was condemned because it actually did something beyond a weekly meeting, something in the interest of others rather than itself. I may have gotten it wrong earlier; perhaps Crusade members are the ones who should be feeling sorry for us.
Brian Goodman is a senior communications major.
