There's a special kind of loathing I have for Campus Crusade for Christ (now known as CRU). I went to college at Miami of Ohio, a hotbed of CCC activity. It all started when I was studying on the campus grass and a clean-cut guy approaches me and tells me he's doing a survey as a part of a class project. I was glad to help a fellow student. The first questions were innocuous enough but near the end of the survey, he started asking about my religious beliefs--that raised some YUGE red flags. My suspicions were confirmed when he invited me to a CCC meeting; I declined. CCCers sometimes refer this kind of thing to as "heavenly deception." I call it being a lying tub of shit. What a buzzkill.
I wasn't the only one at Miami U. put off by CCC and their deceptive tactics. During my junior year, someone on campus promoted a film purportedly about death; the promos made it look like it was going to be a serious examination of death and dying. About a week after the screening, I read a letter to the editor of the campus newspaper, The Miami Student, by a student who attended and said that it wasn't a scientific film about death but another of CCC's high-pressure attempts to proselytize.
At about the same time, a plucky group of Miami students created the student group, Students Against Campus Crusade (SACC). It mocked CCC and warned about its deceptive tactics, pushiness, and general lameness. Apparently, they infiltrated the Miami U. chapter of CCC because SACC regularly bought ad space in The Miami Student to denounce CCC's upcoming projects; I loved them.
I learned to hate CCC more when I read John G. Turner's Bill Bright and The Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelism in Postwar America. CCC's founder Bright was an authoritarian reactionary who despised the mission of higher education to create autonomous adults who think for themselves. Bright used vague Bible verses to justify the subjugation of peoples' intellect to CCC's goals. In "Jesus and the Intellectual," Bright writes,
As I said earlier, there is a throne in every life. If you are on that throne — if you are deciding what to do with your life — it is quite likely that you are not a Christian. Christ says, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock (the door of your heart — your will, your intellect, your emotions). If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in” (Revelation 3:20).
The Bible promises that “to all who received him [Jesus] ...he have the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). And “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Commitment to Christ involves the surrender of the intellect, the emotions and the will — the total person.
When I was writing the screenplay for the satirical film Ivy League Exorcist: The Bobby Jindal Story, I discovered that the group of students performing the exorcism enlisted the help of CCC with this questionable task. I am happy that the film could be used to mock CCC.
"Good News" (1970) is one of the anodyne tracts put out by CCC. It's the size of a Chick tract but the inside is in color. This one seems to be aimed at children. Really weak stuff.
Note: Watch the Campus Crusaders fight the devil's spawn in Ivy League Exorcist: The Bobby Jindal Story (the CCC member enters the exorcism at around the 7:00 point).
Here's a review of the film by noted film critic Richard von Busack.
The
Museum of Weird and Demented Religious Tracts is a project of Les
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Contributions of weird tracts to the museum can be made by mail: send your weird tracts to Les Zazous Postmodern Art Gallery 3475 Guernsey Street, Bellaire, Ohio 43906.
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