IN HARRIET Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a character returns from church saying that the reverend preached “a splendid sermon ... It was just such a sermon as you ought to hear. It expressed all my views exactly.” Such a statement might, in a lively intellectual community, appear excessively, even laughably vapid. In some ways, however, it reflects the viewpoint of many students at the University, expressed through actions directed at those who hold viewpoints different than their own. This has again been pointed out to me over the last two weeks, as the University community has played host to Brother Micah, a traveling evangelist who has spent time speaking to passing students from the grass in the Amphitheater. Brother Micah, controversial oratory aside, provides students a chance to respond to greater theological and intellectual challenges, a chance students often miss by failing to respond at a level beyond surface derision.
Brother Micah preaches from a very conservative Christian perspective, often in very damning language, about what he feels are the excesses and primary sins of the student body. While Brother Micah’s abrasive phrasing and extremely pointed and critical words cause an almost instinctive desire to repudiate what he has to say, this does not mean that his presence provides no benefit to the University community.
Brother Micah gives the University community a colorful but healthy dose of an alternative take on college life. This is a uniquely valuable but often ignored service. It is remarkably easy to coast through the University at an intellectual level without ever really having one’s values challenged. Brother Micah brings a direct assault on the secular values of the student body of the University — not publicly endorsed valuessuch as those expressed in the lofty ideals of student self-governance and the Jefferson quotations liberally sprinkled around Grounds. Rather, he attacks at an uncomfortably basic level the values that we see expressed by students every day in their lives, the values frequently made obvious by their actions.
In this way, he provides an unorthodox forum for intellectual exchange. He holds up a mirror that shows students an alternative perspective on their activities, from drinking to sex to social values. From his perspective, students live in a culture immersed nearly irredeemably in sin. Whether or not students exist in a climate more conducive or accepting of immoral behavior, Brother Micah allows us to examine our culture from the perspective of an outsider, and by calling our attention to things we tend to gloss over. By doing this, he opens up a fresh conduit for self-examination. Sometimes it takes a shock, or a dissenting voice, to change an incorrect opinion.
It is difficult to perceive Brother Micah as a legitimate source of intellectual or moral fodder, given his propensity for inflammatory language. But the fault for the fractious intellectual climate of the Amphitheater debates does not lie solely with Brother Micah. In responding to him, many (though not all) students have treated him with the same disrespect they implicitly accuse him of showing them. They also demonstrate the paucity of their arguments. Mockery fits in where the lack of desire or ability to engage intellectually fails, or where a base desire for attention overrides the respect one ought to feel for the individual holding the opposite viewpoint. This behavior has not been limited to Brother Micah. This University sees its fair share of traveling preachers and public displays of Christianity, and all too often they meet the same response: utter disrespect. For example, last year a group that spent time reading the words of the Gospel aloud — not condemnatory words, but the words of Jesus — frequently acquired an accompaniment of mockers reading names out of the telephone book.
This demonstrates the same closed-mindedness students accuse Brother Micah of exhibiting. One must ask why they choose to do so and fail to see the hypocrisy in it. Brother Micah may be a rough instrument, but he is a useful one if only for the purpose of bringing up an unpopular idea. No matter why he and those of his ilk meet such derision, the student body would do well to bear in mind the arrogance demonstrated by immediately disregarding the worldview of another, and ought to see this as an opportunity to engage and refine their own intellectual and moral outlooks.
Robby Colby’s column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at r.colby@cavalierdaily.com.
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