Newsgroups: alt.brother-jed



Hi there fans of Bro Jed:

  Since the net is really dead... here is a tid-bit that I picked up some
time ago from this very net...   I thought it well written and informative
enough that it might help others understand the M.O. behind Bro Jed.

  I don't know if the author of the following (Dave Gross) is still on the 
net or not.  The e-mail address may not work.  (Fair warning)

		John in das Fort

PS.   Terry, thanks for the pointer to Dr Scott..... I see this character every
once in a while while scanning the sky.... never stopped long enough to really
get into it.

----------------------8<--------------------------------------
/ alt.brother-jed 
/ dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Dave Gross) / 10:57 pm  Feb  5, 1991 /


The Brother Jed Phenomenon
--------------------------

      As much as I like my sex, drugs, and rock `n' roll (or, perhaps,
fornication, intoxication, and devil music), I must say I learned a
lot from the recent preaching by Brothers Jed and Bob in the
Cal Poly University Union.
      Brother Jed Smock, if you haven't heard, is a hellfire-and-damnation
style preacher who goes from one college campus to another telling
stories of his transformation from hippy to god-fearing christian, and
his wife's from disco-queen to properly submissive wife.
      Punctuating his speeches with uncompromising condemnation of
fornicators, masturbators, sodomites (by which he means homosexuals),
whores and whoremongers (by which he means non-virgins), and a whole
host of other categories that are guaranteed to cover the entire student
body wherever he and his troupe land, he draws crowds that few other
speakers can match.
      His religious agenda, being mostly predictible conservative
christianity in the mold of Jimmy Swaggart with a healthy dose of
the old female-sexuality-as-the-downfall-of-man bit and no tolerance
at all for namby-pamby "God is Love" preachers, is hardly the point.
      He has become an American legend.  A worldwide computer network
monitors his progress.  He has spawned a flock of fans who, in comparison
to the fanatical followers of the Grateful Dead, call themselves 
"Jed-Heads."
      I was alerted that he was in California by a Paul Revere-style friend
of mine from U.C. Santa Barbara who heard him speak there and then called
me to prepare me for his inevitable arrival at Cal Poly.  I got to campus
early and was able to hear most of his speaking.
      What could be more entertaining, I thought, than to listen to a
grown man put forth the sort of bizarre syllogism offered by Brother Bob,
one of Jed's companions on the circuit (here, I paraphrase):

	"I must come out of the closet and admit that I am a
	 hoe-moe-sex-u-al.  I was talking to Brother Jed the
	 other day, and he pointed out to me that masturbation
	 is just like having SEX with YOURSELF!  Since I am
	 the same sex as myself, and I have, in the past, done
	 such things.  I must be a hoe-moe-sex-u-al."

      It may not make any sense, but it got our attention, sure enough.
      After Brother Jed had completed his famous "Parable of the Five
Dormies," he turned to me out of all the people in the crowd and
handed me the copy of "Who Will Rise Up?" that he was reading from.
      I took the book, expressed sincere gratitude, and wondered why
he picked me out of the crowd to bestow this gift upon.  Maybe it was
the way I shouted "For Nigh Cay Shun!"  Maybe it was the feigned
sincerity with which I asked how I might overcome my lustful feelings. 
Maybe he knew I wanted to read that book and see for myself what drove
this man to preach the way he does.  Maybe it was dumb luck.
      I quickly discovered from reading his book that Brother Jed is
no fool.  When he's preaching he may come across as a sex-obsessed
neanderthal, but his writing is clear, deliberate, and obviously the
product of an above-average intelligence.
      Is he a looney?  Well, okay, so maybe he is.  And maybe I
shouldn't be taking him so seriously.  But there is undeniably a
method to his madness.
      When he attacks everything students hold dear (and number one on
that list is his favorite target, fornication), it is not just an
explanation of the tenets of his faith, it is a deliberate attempt to
anger and upset the crowd.
      This is especially clear when there are times when he _could_
easily be diplomatic, and he deliberately turns a phrase that many
find offensive.  Most often baited in this regard are feminists, who
find many of their worst accusations about men being advocated, nay
trumpeted, by Jed in their own exaggerated language.
      "Women need to be put in their place!"  He says.  "They should
be baby machines."  Where did he find that phrase?  Not in any
Christian manual, but in a list of phrases guaranteed to anger women.
      And nobody can argue that it doesn't work.  The crowds he
gathers are as angry, rude, and ill-behaved as any mob that ever
villified any prophet.  And so later in his speech, when he talks
about how today's students are obnoxious and rude and have no
morals...  well, you can't really argue.

      Admittedly, my ministry brings out the worst in people.  But
      some, at the end of the day, will return to the privacy of
      their rooms and reflect on their behavior with shame.  For the
      first time they will see themselves for what they actually are
      -- decadent, depraved and degenerate.

      And several times in his book he reflects on the fact that the
same students who accuse him of intolerance are the ones who try to
shout him down, and the ones who have several times in the last several
years beat him and called the police to have him hauled away.
      And he's been doing this for years.  He knows just what to
expect from his crowd.  Every clever comment anyone in the
audience makes is one he has heard dozens of times before.  You can't
impress him with clever comebacks; and you certainly can't out-bible
him.
      When he uses hellfire and brimstone phrases, it is no nervous
tic of his that he exaggerates them and accompanies them with bizarre hand
gestures.  It is a deliberate attempt to bait his audience into
mimicking him -- and it almost never fails.

      Unusual voice techniques and elaborate gestures are especially
      helpful.  For example, throughout the afternoon I will often
      refer to the eternal home of sinners:

      "The everlasting LAKE OF FI-RRRRRE!"

      After several FI-RRRRES, the whole crowd is chanting along. 
      It's reported that within a few days of preaching, the students
      are shouting "You'll burn forever in the LAKE OF FI-RRRRRRE,"
      down their dorm halls.  They consider it a big joke but as they
      mimic me the fact of this terrible torment is being impressed
      on their minds."

      It's a little disheartening to realize that all the time I was
in the crowd yelling out clever phrases and screaming about "PRO MISK
YOU US WIMMEN!" that Brother Jed was playing me and the crowd with me
like a harp.

      Brother Jed's strange monologues gave me plenty of opportunity
to feel superior.  But in fact, every clever come-back, every satirical
comment, every biblical objection that the crowd voiced that day was
expected, prepared for, and indeed summoned forth intentionally by
Brother Jed's antics.

      Students of group-behavior would be well-advised to study the
mobs that gather whenever Brother Jed speaks.  And Jed's book, "Who
Will Rise Up?" is more than just a work of biography and theology:  It
ought to be a required text in any course on crowd control, sociology,
and mob behavior.

-- 
************************ dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU ***************************
 "When one person was killed, the word spread that Palestinians are terrorists.
 It might be his wife who pushed him overboard to get his insurance."
     -- PLO official Farouk Kadoumi on the death of an Achille Lauro passenger.
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