Austin’s Sixth Street got far more crowded far earlier on Friday afternoon, and in the thick of it was a troupe of Christian evangelists carrying a large sign warning against homosexuals, liars, drunks, abortionists and many other types of sinners. What I wasn’t sure of was why they targeted the South By Southwest Conference for this kind of approach. Does our conference contain more homosexuals, drunks and liars than society at large? And I’m not really sure what abortionists have to do with SXSW, since we’re not exactly a medical conference. Fortunately, instead of getting angry, most of the young people on the street seemed amused by the whole thing, many of them stopping to take pictures of the sign with its warning “Hell Awaits You.” The unfortunate thing from my point of view is that many of them will take from that encounter an idea of Christianity as a faith of prohibitions and threats, not a personal relationship with a living Jesus Christ. How much better it would have been if the sign had read “Jesus is the answer for your loneliness, sadness, emptiness, addiction, anger or confusion.”
Related
