Breeze Perspectives: Bourgault could ‘be the change’

While preacher’s speech may arouse anger among JMU, we might be able to learn some lessons from him

By Peter Weems, contributing writer
Posted on October 29, 2007

Perhaps we should set aside our outrage for a moment and try to see what we can learn from Matt Bourgault, the preacher from Consuming Fire Campus Ministry. Bourgault and his family travel the country preaching their message at college campuses. According to Bourgault’s Web site, they have spread their word in forty states and four foreign countries. Bourgault claims that in 1999 he was called by God to be an open-air evangelical.

Last Tuesday afternoon I listened to Bougault speak for about an hour and a half. I found what he had to say to be quite ridiculous. His message was at times downright ignorant and hateful. But I do not think that our lesson to be learned comes from the content of his speech. Rather, we should consider the form of his actions.

Bourgault is actively spreading his message. He is out on college campuses trying to remedy the problems that he sees in the world. He has gone on the offensive to right what he sees as wrong. Can we say the same about ourselves?

We are a campus full of alleged liberals, progressives, free-thinkers and activists. I use the word “alleged” because it is hard to discern in what way these people’s actions reflect their descriptions. This is my fourth year at JMU and I have yet to see any major effort on the part of students to bring about any tangible or ideological change. Rather, we seem to spend most of our time self-congratulating.

Our efforts are either incredibly passive, in the way of wearing T-shirts, selling bracelets and handing out flyers. Or our efforts are merely reflective of whatever grievance is in vogue that particular month, like campaigns to save Darfur, free Myanmar, stop genital mutilation and so on. In the case of the former, this means that we go on the offensive from the comfort of our own campus. In the case of the latter, this means that we ignore the deeper problems of which these grievances might be symptomatic.

Bourgault is living a nomadic lifestyle and taking his message wherever it needs to be taken. Further, he is inciting people, and he is being controversial.

This is precisely the opposite of liberal methodology. There is nothing controversial about liberalism. There are no new messages, no new lessons, nothing we haven’t seen or heard a million times before. It is all very comforting and self-affirming.

Perhaps of greater importance is the type of problem Bourgault is attacking. He has identified all of the symptoms of what he thinks is society’s sickness, pointing out the faults of liars, sodomites and potty-mouths. But, he is going further—he is going after the sickness itself.

We as students do not do this. We do not take our insights and outrage further. We merely point out individual problems and try to fix them. None of us are trying to cure society itself.

Saving Darfur will not save the world. Instead, perhaps we should think about it the other way around—it is only because the world in general needs help that specific issues and problems arise.

So, what is to be learned here? Perhaps we should look at our T-shirts and take that message further. Perhaps we should take that message seriously. Instead of telling others to “be the change,” we should realize that Bourgault already is the change.

Peter Weems is a senior philosophy major.