Before Paul Frazier started attending the University, he went to high school in Beaverton. When he was a senior, his school screened “The Laramie Project,” a film about the aftermath of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard’s 1998 murder.
But before Frazier’s school had the screening, it had visitors: Fred Phelps and other members of Westboro Baptist Church, who journeyed to Oregon from Kansas to wave signs reading things like “Matt Shepard rots in Hell” and “God Hates Fags.”
“It was sickening,” Frazier said. “They had four-year-olds holding up signs that said, ‘God Hates You.’”
Frazier is a member of Campus Crusade for Christ, a non-denominational University group. Through Wednesday, CCC is sponsoring “Are you sick of religion?” an event focused on the discrepancy between Christ and Christianity.
“As Christians in the West, sometimes we get it wrong,” said CCC staff member Travis Garrison. “Sometimes we think it’s more about being right than loving people. In doing so, sometimes we may end up hurting people.
“As Christians, where do we draw the line between loving people and bashing people?”
Wearing hot pink T-shirts, CCC members have been stationed just outside the EMU Amphitheater since Monday with a Masonite board decorated with index cards. Any passerby is encouraged to write down dislikes about religion and add it to the board.
University junior Chris Hatefi wrote one that said, “There is a loving God but mankind complicates things, especially by doing ridiculous things in His name.”
Hatefi used the post-9/11 bombing of mosques as an example.
“Any religion has extremists,” he said. “It makes religion look bad, it makes God look bad. All He has for us is a simple set of morals and beliefs.”
Other examples of cards people wrote include: “I am sick of Christians being more concerned with rules than with loving people,” and “Religion is dangerous and highly volatile, but only when you add man.”
Next to the board was a reverse confession booth.
“Rather than them confessing to us, we’ll take the opportunity to confess things people have done in the name of God that have hurt people,” Garrison said. “At the very least, we want to show a little humility.”
The finale of the three-day event is a free pre-screening of “Lord, Save Us From Your Followers,” followed by a Q & A with director Dan Merchant.
A mix of expert and man-on-the-street interviews, Merchant talked to a wide variety of people in exploring why religion is so divisive.
“The documentary highlights the ongoing cultural divide that has been caused by sometimes well-meaning Christians, and in an effort to be right, we have been judgmental, hypocritical and just plain mean,” Garrison wrote in an e-mail. “For my part in that, I want to say I’m sorry.”
CCC staff member Justin Devine said the diversity of Merchant’s interview subjects, which runs the gamut from Minnesota Democrat Al Franken to televangelist Pat Robertson, is what makes the documentary so good.
“It’s too engaging a movie for people not to have an opinion on it, whether (they are) Christian or not,” Devine said.
He said that while many people associate Christianity with “fanaticism rooted in hate,” CCC’s event is about reaching out to the University community.
“We are a Christian group on campus, and we want to engage people on the topic of Jesus because we know we haven’t always done a good job conveying His message,” he said.
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