This itinerant preacher and his sign were obstructing my path on Monday before noon. I had better places to be and he didn't. I never caught his name and I didn't hear his story, but this isn't his story - it's mine.
This is my photo story and what I saw on the corner of Liacouras Walk and Berks Mall.
He wasn't working alone - this woman was helping him, handing out leaflets. Besides eternal damnation, the leaflet touched upon the power struggle between men and women and concluded that women should be subservient.
Naturally, a man with a huge sign yelling at students on Liacouras Walk would draw hecklers.
This student got particularly irate. "The Bible has unicorns in it," he said. "Are you really telling us to believe everything in it?" The student was unable to offer the precise verse with unicorns, nor did he elaborate further.
"If someone knew about 9/11 beforehand," the preacher said, "wouldn't it be their duty to tell people to save lives? I know you're going to hell and I'm trying to save your life."
"How do you know?" asked the student.
"He told me," the preacher replied, pointing to Jesus in the sky.
"When?" the student asked. "Did he come down to tell you in person, or did he tell you in a dream?"
Other students began yelling logical fallacies, but I don't know what they hoping to accomplish. The atmosphere grew increasingly tense.
Suddenly, this student stepped in and started reading out the entire St. Crispen's Day Speech from Shakespeare's Henry V.
"It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive."
Within about twenty minutes, things had gotten so out of hand that the police had to step in. They politely asked the preacher and his female assistant to leave, and they politely agreed.
"And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."
... or listened to that itinerant preacher on Liacouras Walk one Monday, at noon.
No comments:
Post a Comment