The Jesus Bully

The Dixie Classic Fair brings the most interesting combination of smells together among some of the most interesting people you may ever see. Deep Fried Krispy Kreme Doughnut Hamburgers, live animals, including their shit, and puddles of vomit circled around roller coasters and tilt-a-whirl rides bake in the early October sun while you attempt to push through masses of boon dock NASCAR enthusiast, inner city gangs, church youth groups, grandmothers competing in quilting competitions, and middle school students free from their parents with pockets full of ride tickets and dinner money sure to be spent on cotton candy and funnel cakes.

The sun was barely warming the air before the fall breeze blew the heat away. I was the third wheel on my best friends second date with Kate Cavenaugh. Kate was one of the pretty girls in our grade. She had long red hair and would be elected Homecoming Queen our senior year. The school we went to was small, so social hierarchy was everything.  Andrew, my best friend, thought himself lucky to be out with her. Andrew had stepped into popularity because he was on the baseball team, and I came with him because we were best friends. I was cool, but not very athletic. I didn’t start swimming until freshman year and compared to the friends I hung out with I was fat.

We walked in between funnel cake stands and through chicken coops to meet up with all of Kate’s friends. In eighth grade being seen at the fair without your parents was a big deal. We were supposed to be meeting two girls on Kate’s cheerleading team beside a roller coaster called The Firebolt. People with tattoos and piercings were in abundance. It was as if Wal-Mart had herded all of their customers into a field and set up rides, food stands, and petting zoos. If we had chosen to go on the first night it was open being at the fair wouldn’t have been so bad, but the fair had been open for seven days before we went and the vomit, deep frying oil, and animal shit had built up. On our way to meet Kate’s friends we passed a clown in a dunking booth yelling insults at passersby’s.

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 Everyone hears about bullies these days, teens committing suicide because they were called ugly, fat, or stupid repeatedly. At the university level we are not immune to bullies, in fact no matter how old we are there will always be bullies around us. UNC Wilmington specifically writes in their Academic Catalogue an Unlawful Harassment, Discrimination, and Retaliation clause to prevent such bullying.

From the Catalogue: “UNC Wilmington affirms that students and employees are entitled to an educational and employment environment free from unlawful harassment or discrimination based on that individual‘s race, sex (such as gender, marital status, and pregnancy), age, color…”

It was March 26^th 2012, more than five years after going to the fair as a third wheel with Andrew and Kate. I was sitting in the outdoor amphitheater at my University letting the searing sun slowly burn me as I sat and scribbled notes. Brother Ross, a self-proclaimed open-air preacher, was preaching to the angry mass of my peers who were shouting insults and cries of frustration. Many students were seated in the outdoor auditorium but some were riding bikes through or just walking to class. There was no one type of student listening to Ross. I noticed fairly equal amounts of men and women. There were African American students listening, friends I recognized from Greek life, professors, faculty, and staff of the university all crowded around to hear this man. “Brother Ross” is the fire and brimstone preacher who has no philosophical, religious, or even public speaking credentials of any kind. He travels to college campuses around the state publically accusing students as they walk by of being homosexuals, whores, and prostitutes, even “Masturbating Perverts” which he called UNC Wilmington freshman Austin Robertshaw.

With large anti-homosexual and anti-pornography buttons pinned to his suspenders, I approached not Brother Ross but the plain looking woman behind him in the floor length gray wool skirt and long sleeve white blouse buttoned tightly at the neck. I kept thinking about the dunking booth clown I encountered in eighth grade, and it seemed that the woman in front of me had married one of these clowns. The uncomfortably hot looking woman was Ross Jackson’s wife whom I was most interested in interviewing. When I asked Mrs. Jackson for an interview she told me I had to ask her husband.

“Anything you have to ask my wife I can say for her.” Mr. Jackson told me when I asked permission to interview his wife. The blatant sexism he showed toward his wife was shocking. I could not remember a time when I had seen a husband show such dehumanizing chauvinism with his wife merely five feet away.

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“Hey porky, you couldn’t find a little girl to tow you around the fair?” Was he talking to me? The cartoonish dressed clown pointed at me after I turned to look at him and said, “Yeah you, sausage link, where’s your girlfriend?” I can’t remember if it was the surprise of being called a sausage link or the fact that an adult was calling me out in public for not having a girlfriend, but I froze and was completely lost.

“Ryan, why are you stopping? Do you want to try and dunk him,” Kate said. Part of me wanted to throw a ball, but a much larger part of me knew I would only embarrass myself further if I paid money to throw a baseball at the target and most likely miss. Andrew took out five dollars and walked up to the counter.

“I’ll have three,” He said. Now I wasn’t totally un-athletic but when football season came around I always auditioned for the fall play, and in the spring I would run track but usually finish second to last. It was one of the rare moments Andrew stood up for me while we were friends. He didn’t say anything to me about it, but we had been best friends and neighbors since we were born. I thought our friendship was more of an obligation, but when he pulled out five dollars to defend me against the dunking booth Clown I thought maybe, just maybe we weren’t just friends because we lived across the street.

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On UNCW campus, Austin Robertshaw, a nondenominational Young Life leader and member at Port City Church, sat down with me after listening to Brother Ross. Robertshaw said Ross was “Preaching as if there’s no Jesus and that we aren’t forgiven by his grace alone.” The bulk of my conversation with Austin consisted of how Brother Ross treated his wife and women in general. Robertshaw also brought up an interesting point about female equality. “God made Eve from Adam’s rib, not his head or his foot because she is not above or below him. She is his equal,” Austin told me. He was referring to Genesis 2: 19-23.

So I sat a while longer in the hot sun and interjected my questions with the shrinking crowd of students who had stayed after Mr. Jackson had finished his sermon. After rejecting any question I had pertaining to his personal life, or life when he’s not preaching, I decided to simply ask him if he thought everything the students said to him was condescending?

“Some people ask good questions, but my job isn’t to listen. My job is to tell you people what you’re doing wrong,” Brother Ross answered. Many people decided that the sermon was all an act, and Ross Jackson was simply a spectacle that stirred up talk about Christianity in hopes some people would become interested and begin to come to the Christian faith. I wondered, if this is true, if Ross Jackson calls students these terrible names because like the Circus Clown wants your money, he wants you to read your bible, maybe he isn’t really a bad guy but just someone trying to use a unorthodox way to convert people to Christianity.

Ross Jackson’s message comes across as confusing or hypocritical at many points in his speech. At one point he says, “Christians can’t go worship with sinners.” In Mark chapter two Jesus spends most of his time with sinners. In the Bible, which Brother Ross bases all of what he says on, Jesus makes it a point to sit down with many sinners and talk with them, even to pray for them.

Hearing Ross Jackson call students whores and sluts as he pointed at them and threw his bible on the ground was heartbreaking to many in the crowd. The policewoman on duty making sure Mr. Jackson stayed within the legal limitations of his public speaking said, “I can’t do anything unless he threatens someone, I hope he does do that.” But is condemning strangers to eternity in hell not a threat enough?

Many students left the sermon thinking Brother Ross may have had a hidden agenda for coming to our campus. Could the point of Ross’ spectacle be simply to get people thinking about religion? There is definitely more discussion about Christianity after Brother Ross comes to campus. What led me to believe his zealousness is genuine are his followers. Ross Jackson, like most bullies, has a posse of similarly minded individuals. This posse, made up of his wife, two men, and another wife, follow Jackson around and believe his interpretation of the Bible. While these four individuals did not speak or preach to the extent Mr. Jackson did, they backed him up when he came under attack. The younger white male who held the sign listing the many different types of people going to hell was the most outspoken of his “followers.”   

It seems Ross Jackson’s public condemning of the UNCW student body is, in fact, a spectacle only to the students. People come to see the crazy Christian man call a sorority girl he’s never met a lesbian or a whore. It’s very obvious Ross Jackson acted against the Unlawful Harassment, Discrimination, and Retaliation section of the Academic Catalogue. By condemning students to hell as they walked to and from class, and insulting female students to the point of tears on our own campus, there is no excuse for the University to continue to let this bully preach on our campus. There is no actual substance to Brother Ross’ sermon, he simply draws a crowd because like the clown in a county fair dunking booth, he is a bully and people are fascinated with bullies.

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I was walking away from the amphitheatre shaking my head in amazement thinking about those baseballs Andrew picked up in my defense. He threw each of those baseballs as hard as he could at the little red and white target. When all three had missed he turned around, red in the face from exertion and from embarrassment and walked back to where Kate and I had been watching. I didn’t say anything to him about it, and he didn’t say anything to me. We walked away from the dunking booth, Kate tugging Andrew behind her and I trudging beside him turning left and right to avoid the huddled mass of people listening to a man in a clown suit publicly address their most personal insecurities.  It hadn’t really mattered if Andrew had dunked the clown or not, people would still huddle around the booth. Offending people is often the most effective way to get them to listen to you.