GUEST COLUMNIST: The lure of gospel on the Green

All sinners will burn in Hell. They will swim for ever in molten lava, fiery brimstone and sulfurous gases. Who counts as a sinner? Who can expect this fate of eternal damnation? According to the self-proclaimed messenger of God, Brother Steven, who has been attracting huge crowds this month on Locust Walk with his fervent preaching, just about every student in the University qualifies as a sinner. Those engaged in "sinful" behavior include everyone who listens to rock 'n roll music, thinks of their own needs before those of others, smokes, drinks, participates in premarital sex, uses obscenity or wears provocative clothing. Not to mention Chinese students, anyone of the so-called heathen Buddhist or Hindu faiths, gays and lesbians. The list goes on and on. What is particularly fascinating about Brother Steven is not that he holds extreme fundamentalist views, or that he finds it his duty as a messenger of the Lord to espouse his beliefs on a college campus, or even that he's willing to subject himself to the mockery and derision of countless students for hours on end, as passersby swarm around him, drawn by the inherent comedy in his earnest ravings about religion. No, what is intriguing about Brother Steven is the amount and the type of attention he is accruing with his act. At an urban university where homeless people, crime and the occasional disturbed individual are looked upon as sad, but rather commonplace occurrences, Brother Steven has managed to capture the time and attention of busy students. These students are normally too jaded to pay such ranters much mind as they hurry down the walk to their next class. But the lure of Brother Steven proves magnetic and infectious as more and more people join in the chorus of hecklers who goad him on from the sidelines. "Am I a sinner?" one guy asks. "How about Madonna?" quips another." And what about Bill Clinton?" Steven answers that the campus and the nation are filled with "whores and whore mongers," to which the crowd responds with jeers, laughter and cries of "All right!" and "Sounds good to me!" Why have so many students, myself included, with plenty more pressing matters to attend to, dropped their backpacks and black bags by the curb and listened to the preachings of Brother Steven? And they don't just listen and move on. Rather, they often become so absorbed by the spectacle that they have to dash away, sheepishly grinning and shaking their heads, whenb they realize that they're already late for class. His hair is combed and greased back so that not even a rough wind disturbs it. This in itself is somewhat peculiar, but alone probably wouldn't be enough to spark such interest. One advantage of attending a large university such as Penn is the chance to test your own ideals against those of others. We try to find what it is we approve of, what defines our political and social beliefs, our value systems, our morals. Often times, however, we have no way of defining what we do approve of until we see something that we don't approve of first. Brother Steven has this in spades. If there's anything most of us could agree on, it's that we don't like being told what to do or how to run our lives. By trying to tell us just that, good old Steven has tapped into a common college student enjoyment: The love of mouthing off to someone who's trying to give us direction. Furthermore, Brother Steven provides the opportunity for humor, and perhaps most importantly, exhibitionism. It seems to me that he isn't the only one who likes to rant on Locust Walk to get his ideas heard. Lots of us feel the desire to express our views and to have others applaud our wit. Brother Steven provides the perfect excuse with his showing off for us to do the same. And while letting him get what he wants -- namely, our attention, -- can't be ther right thing to do, I have to admit, it's a lot of fun.