Opinion

Sharing Jesus’ Love?

By Haley Hulett, Contributing Writer

My heart sank when I saw the street “preachers” back on Asbury’s campus this week. Their message of spite and hate is familiar to upperclassmen who have been subjected to their accusations and yelling over the years, but for students who are not as familiar with them, they come to Asbury (and other college campuses) for the sole reason of “converting” people to repentance by calling them names and using graphic examples to describe their supposed sins.

[column size=two_third position=first ]Brother Jed, the man in charge of the campus ministry, proclaims on his website, “Confrontational evangelism: Open rebuke is better than secret love-Proverbs 27:5.”

They take this passage to the extreme by calling people names and saying things too inappropriate to print in this venue. In my opinion, they have no resemblance to the Christ that I want to believe is real.

However, their appearance on campus was personal for me. Standing alongside Brother Jed and his followers was the headmaster of my old homeschool group. I attended a Christian homeschool group in high school that he was in charge of, and while I have never personally met Brother Jed, I was subjected to teachings that, while not quite as extreme, resembled his.[/column]

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“Their appearance on campus was personal for me.”

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The homeschool group I went to (I will call it my school) was run by a church that the headmaster was the pastor of. Walking into their before-school summer camp for the first time with a suitcase full of t-shirts and long shorts, my thirteen-year-old self was excited to be a part of a group that was known for their rigorous academics and classical approach to education. The realization that my life would be changed in much more unpalatable ways because of their ideas did not occur to me for several more years.

The promise of strenuous academics was effectively delivered, and as I approached my senior year, I felt very well prepared for college. Throughout my four years at the school, I met new friends and strengthened my bonds with old ones. In those respects, I am glad I had that experience. But there was one aspect of the school that I did not realize would have such an impact on me: their religion.

The fact that I grew up in church, and that my family was deeply religious led me to have no initial apprehensions about the ideals that I was exposed to. However, as the years went on, I suddenly started feeling uneasy about the approach to Christianity they were taking.

Our headmaster enforced the many rules we had, our strict dress code, and our “no dating within the school” policy. An emphasis was placed on sin and rules, while God’s love and compassion were rarely mentioned.

Like most 13 and 14 year olds, I believed what they were saying without question. Of course God hated sin. Of course He wanted us to be holy. Of course we needed to be “set apart” for Him. These views did not seem radical enough for me to be skeptical in the beginning, and there was no outward display of hatred or name calling that I was aware of.

I remember the first time something they said that struck me as theologically wrong. One of my classmate’s fathers (he was also a fellow pastor and personal friend of the headmaster) was speaking during chapel, and I remember enjoying his talk until he said something strange. He began to explain to us that God loved some people more than others, and that the people who were most obedient to Him were His favorites. This, along with a few other minor incidents, was the beginning of my feelings of suspicion about what the school was teaching.

[column size=two_third position=first ]A year or so later, the underlying unease that I had begun to feel came to the surface. As a senior, I was required to take a senior seminar with the headmaster, with the intention of preparing us students for following God with our lives. My chosen career path, acting, was indirectly put under fire in the class because we were told that partaking in art that was not directly glorifying to God was sinful.

While attending senior seminar, I started paying more attention to the other ideas that we were being taught. In chapel, we were repeatedly told that our happiness did not matter at all; all that mattered was our constant and complete obedience to God. We were told that forgetfulness was a sin; in fact, it seemed that almost everything was sinful.

They enforced the idea that women had to take extreme precautions to be modest and not tempt boys with their bodies. At one of our modesty talks at camp, I, terrified of getting in trouble, asked an older female leader if my shorts were too short. She replied that they were, and that she and the headmaster had been talking about them the night before, making me acutely uncomfortable. [/column]

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I remember the first time something they said that struck me as theologically wrong.

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I began to realize how controlling the church was by telling its members what they could and could not wear, watch and do. The headmaster and the elders of the church dictated this, and their need for control bled over into the school.

I wish I had seen this sooner, and had saved myself from years of a joyless high school existence. I realized that throughout all of my years there, through countless hours of listening to their preaching, I rarely felt any closer to God or that He loved me. To my parents’ credit, they were completely unaware of what we were being taught. Once I opened up to them and let them know what was going on within the school, they immediately began to look into it further. I left the school for good with one semester left, and I never regretted it.

I will say that their teachings do not have such a drastic effect on everyone, but I do know many people that have been as negatively affected by them as I have.

It has been years since I have stepped into the tiny church where the school met, but the effects have been long term. I still tense up involuntarily when I hear someone talking about rules or obedience to God. Some parts of Christianity still turn me away. I want to believe that my old headmaster and Brother Jed and his followers have good intentions, and that they truly think what they are teaching is right. However, an extremely misguided view of Christianity combined with a desire and need for control, stemming from a fear of the world and of opposing mindsets, pervades their message. It may not be their mission, but their teaching oppresses, judges and can cause people to live unhappy, unfulfilled lives.

 

(Brother Jed’s website is brojed.org)

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8 Comments

  1. Hi, I am an Asbury alumni I actually went to the same school as Haley and I am now the head of the English department. I was out standing with brother Jed as well. Haley was a wonderful student in my classes and I always looked forward to reading her papers.

    I wish she would have practiced what she preaches in this article and talked these issues through with the people she mentions personally and lovingly in private instead of judging the school, headmaster, and church leadership so harshly in public without qualification.

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    1. If these “preachers” have the right to come and yell at our students and call them cruel names out of ignorance in public, then Haley has every right to respectively talk about her experience with the school in a public manner.

      These people were not loving at all, and Haley has every right to talk about her experience. This testimony could help shed some light on the corruptedness that is truly going on with their style of “evangelizing.”

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  2. It would appear to me that, if she went to the school and experienced the teachings going on there, and also has a mind of her own, then she is perfectly “qualified” to share her opinion on the matter. Especially when, in many Asbury students’ experiences with this group–including my own–they have had a very publically judgemental approach in attacking the character of students on their own campus. If only you practiced what you preached and approached students in a loving way instead of preaching fire and brimstone as they try and get to their English class on time.

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  3. Excellent article, Haley! Thank you for sharing.

    Ben Hughes, I would love to know how that “private conversation” would have gone, considering how condescending you comment is. She’s allowed to share her perspective of her experience and as an Asbury alumna who has seen and heard those sidewalk preachers in the past, I can’t imagine wanting any affiliation with people who claim the name of Christ while spewing such hateful things. So again, Haley, great writing and thank you for sharing.

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  4. In my experience, that style of approach to conflict works more effectively when everyone involved is practicing the Gospel. Not when only one party seems to have a grasp of God’s true love and grace (the foundation of Christianity), and the other uses the Word as a weapon to control people. This type of spiritual abuse occurs in many other places, and had she approached her school leadership as a child, it is extremely unlikely that they would have been able to hear the concern and more likely that they would have discounted it as a “sinful departure from respecting authority”. But there is nowhere in Scripture where God encourages you to be manipulated or made blind to his truth. Indeed, much of his ministry involved calling out the existing church leaders (very publicly) for a failure to comprehend his message, and loving people as they are.

    Kudos to you, Haley, for being brave enough to share your story and bring light to a very unhealthy behavior. Perhaps it will be a wake up call for many who call themselves Christians to examine their belief system and ask God to open their eyes. I’ve yet to see Him deny the request. And, thankfully, there is Grace for all of us sinners, even if our sin is wrongfully interpreting his message, or hurting others even though our intentions are good. His love is our rock, and we can rest secure in his grace.

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  5. I am both an alumna of Asbury University and an adjunct professor at the University. I have heard Brother Jed and Co. preach at Asbury as well as UK, where I am pursuing my graduate studies. I came to this article interested to hear the responsiveness of the students at Asbury to Brother Jed and co. While this style of preaching was something that I was entirely unfamiliar with before seeing Bro Jed at Asbury for the first time as a student and it turned me off in a lot of ways, I found when I sat and listened to what they actually had to say, they were really preachers of holiness. I still don’t agree with all of their tactics. However, as I sat and listened to their message, I was not convinced that these were not men and women who are called of God, come to bring a hard message to a dying land. I would be careful to judge them.

    Instead of finding a response from a student to Bro Jed and company, I found a deeply personal accusation of one of my dear friends, who happens to be the headmaster that is spoken of. This man is painted in this opinion article in an entirely different way than I have ever experienced in my 9 years of knowing him. Rather, this man is a man who is deeply anointed by God and is desperately pursing holiness as well as a way to portray that message (deeply convinced of the same Wesleyan holiness that Asbury was founded upon). As I read this article, I cringed to see a man of God accused in this way.

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  6. I am an Asbury alumna who applauds Haley for having the courage to publically share her experience with others. While Mr. Ben Hughes may feel exposed, I noted that Haley used no identifying proper nouns in her article beyond “Brother Jed” – who very publically showed up on Asbury’s campus. I want to assure Mr. Hughes that the majority of readers will have no clue where this church and high school are, nor even know the name of the headmaster who was at campus protesting Asbury’s students. In fact, Mr. Hughes revealed more to us by naming himself as one of Haley’s teachers than Haley did in her article.

    That said, if this group feels they have the freedom to come to campus and openly rebuke students they do not know, then I do think it fair for a student to write about her experience with members of the group. (And, Mr. Hughes, I personally applaud your teaching – Haley is an excellent writer!)

    To Haley, thank you for adding a personal perspective to this event. Most alumni would prefer to love on you students and protect you from such attacks. In fact, I personally would have loved to have been there the day of the protest to give each student an affirming hug after their encounter with such hate-filled speech. We know you’re not perfect and we know some of you don’t believe yet – but you’re where you should be and we accept you as you are. We will be praying for an abundance of God’s spirit to anoint the entire campus and bring His truth and righteousness and love to every person. We will also pray for these protesters who appear to have chosen to shape their lives after the Pharisees instead of following Jesus’s footsteps.

    Reply

  7. Haley, as you know romans 8 says “therefore there is no condemnation to those who are in christ Jesus.” If a word coming at you strikes condemnation and not conviction, it does not originate from heaven!

    Reply

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The Asbury Collegian is an Asbury University publication. The paper is staffed entirely by Asbury students who seek to write on topics of interest to the University and the surrounding community.