‘Radical’ preachers call for repentance
Joshua Borchert, a self-proclaimed “gangbanger for Jesus,” hurled insults, quoted the Bible and spit on a freshman Monday in the Free Speech Zone.
Known as Brother Josh by The Campus Ministry USA, a non-denominational group that preaches at pride parades, high schools, bars, holiness churches and the Chicago SlutWalk, Borchert was on campus to “inspire (students) to repent” and promote the group’s online reality show.
His approach to preaching is inspired by John the Baptist, he said.
“(His) ministry was so radical it only lasted six months,” Borchert said. “He (stood) for removal of all sin. That’s kind of what we are.”
While the group’s methods are radical in today’s society, it’s not radical based on Christianity of the Bible, Borchert said.
“Paul spoke in public,” he said. “Jesus spoke in public. The disciples spoke in public. John the Baptist spoke in public.”
Borchert said the group was started to have intellectual discussions about God because college is a place of learning.
“In their college years, (students) are thinking more about life, the meaning of life, the purpose,” he said. “So we’re here just to give them our opinion, our view, and hopefully they’ll want to pick up the Bible, read the Bible and find out for themselves.”
Colin Dixon, a junior psychology major, attends Bible studies on campus.
“I think (Borchert) is wrong,” he said.
Dixon said the preacher doesn’t show the true love of Jesus.
“He’s a false prophet,” he said. “He’s just telling everybody they’re wrong and they’re going to hell for things they can be forgiven for.”
Freshman engineering major Sergio Stroud said the crowd, which ebbed and flowed around 100 students at a given time, reacted they way people should have–angrily.
“He’s pissing everybody off,” he said. “Calling girls ‘hoes’ and ‘sluts’ is not right and judging people calling them ‘Muslim’ is not right as well.”
Stroud originally said no when asked if he wanted to file a police report with the on-scene sheriff after Borchert spit on his shoe.
He changed his mind shortly after and told the sheriff he’d be back after class to file one.
Between Bible verse quotes, Borchert singled out women in the crowd that weren’t “dressed like virgins,” spoke extensively on “the sins of being inside the womb of a black person” and took a “hymen count.”
Borchert’s preaching resulted in insults, tears, cursing and screaming from students.
It also inspired student-led discussion circles of Christians apologizing for the preacher and explaining, “we’re not all like that.”
“When Paul spoke in Athens, it says many mocked, a few listened, a few reasoned,” Borchert said. “So we’re here for the few listening and the few that are reasoning.”
Jed Smock, a member of United Methodist Church, established the group’s confrontational tactics when he started The Campus Ministry USA 43 years ago.
A former “whore-mongering frat boy that got down and dirty with sorority girls,” he graduated from Indiana University, where he majored in social studies and minored in English, before becoming a professor at the University of Wisconsin LaCrosse from 1969 to 1970.
The group’s central message for college students is to repent and believe, Borchert said.
“It’s the same as the Bible,” he said. “Repent, stop your sinning and obey God.”
Unlike past years, where the preachers’ visits were a week long, Monday was their only stop to campus this year.
They left campus an hour early and said they’d be back in spring.
According to the group’s website, they were scheduled to be in Florida from Nov. 30 to Dec. 9.
