UF Campus Preacher Joey Johnsen

I've written a few times about Joey Johnsen, as he just keeps popping up in UF campus news. Joey was at the Wharton Business school at UPenn, and should've graduated in '05. I'm pretty sure he said he did finish, but I'm not positive [*Update: this article says yes, he did graduate*].

I mean, the guy looks harmless, even nice. How could he stir up so much anger?

At any rate, today (11/15) he was the lambasted (again) in the editorial cartoon for his preaching antics, as well as two letters to the editor: Sermons don't spread Christian message by Paul Moore, and UF preacher harasses captive audience by Fei Long. Paul had written in a letter published last Wednesday (11/8) on the same topic: Preacher needlessly attacks Krishnas.

Basically, Joey goes out and stands beside the Hare Krishna lunch table in a public square and preaches very loudly. The Krishnas have a huge line every day, and people are forced to stand for at least 5-10 mins in one place, so he's quite the opportunistic parasite. This has caused a bit of a recent ruckus with his mentions in the Alligator op-eds.

My recent interactions with him included private correspondences and a column I sent in to the Alligator. As I said in my post about our correspondence, Joey is not new at campus evangelism. He did a lot of it while he was at UPenn as an undergrad, in their business program. He was involved in CCC (at least, their Fall retreats) and started a campus ministry called "Frontline" in which people would go, unsolicited and unwanted (in most cases), to dorm rooms to "witness" to others (my facts from article "On the Battlefield for Our Lord: Joe Johnsen Serves in Frontline", May 10, 2004).

I wonder how the Christians would feel if I went to some place where they were peacefully going about their business and loudly read relevant portions of Friedrich Nietzsche and Freud, calling believers in God "sickly" (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) and telling them religion is a psychosocial delusion (Freud). I'm sure they wouldn't be happy about it. But, tu quoque -- two wrongs don't make a right, I certainly don't have the same motive as Joey does -- hellfire, and I'm above that sort of nonsense.
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