Street preachers obey new laws, present many new voices
SALT LAKE CITY – Last fall, street preachers at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints General Conference were antagonized physically by some conference-goers.
With new regulations put in place for last weekend’s conference – meant to protect both street preachers and conference-goers – things were much more organized.
“Everyone is doing exactly as they are asked to do and things are going really well,” said Salt Lake City police Detective Dwayne Baird. “I think it has to do with the compliance of the street preachers.”
The new regulations set up free speech zones, designed in cooperation with some of the preachers, that allowed individuals to stand to the side of sidewalks. Those who wished to leave the free speech zones were allowed to, as long as they kept moving with the flow of foot traffic.
A scuffle last year occurred between an individual attending conference and a street preacher who was waving LDS temple garments in the air while yelling antagonizing comments. The individual grabbed the garments and engaged in physical altercation with the preacher. The antagonizer was arrested.
This year, street preacher Ruben Israel brought a pair of the sacred garments and had them strung between two signs as he yelled his beliefs toward passersby.
“You’ve denied the blood of Jesus Christ! You’ve denied the Bible!” Israel yelled. “Shame on you! You drank the Kool-Aid here in Salt Lake City!”
Israel said he wasn’t planning on doing anything to get arrested, but said he brought his bail money just in case.
“It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been arrested, and it won’t be my last,” he said.
A group of street preachers is currently embattled in a lawsuit with Salt Lake City over the right to assemble and speak freely on the streets of Salt Lake.
“The lawsuit was not about free speech, it was about the right to assemble and the right to practice our religion,” said Kevin Deegan, director of the New York Street Preachers Fellowship. “They’re trying to frame it as a free speech issue, that’s why we’re not in a free speech zone.”
Deegan said there was a flaw in the city’s map that designated free speech zones. One area between the sidewalk and the street was not designated as a free speech zone or a walking zone. Legally, Deegan said, the street preachers could be there.
Deegan said the hurdles the preachers are having to go through are weird, saying Utah is like another planet and “a very bizarre place.”
“You don’t have any state in this country where a church can buy Main Street, the Catholic church can’t do it,” he said. “No church except the Mormon church in Utah because the city council is Mormon, the mayor is Mormon, the police are Mormon, hey, you can do whatever you want.”
While some street preachers yelled derogatory remarks to conference-goers and others made challenges to LDS missionaries to have a Bible debate, Rod Warner, a preacher from Orange County, Calif. said he was not there to raise trouble.
“We’re just out here to give the word of God,” he said. “We’re not here to fight, scream, yell, cuss, that’s not the word of God.”
Warner said man has gotten off on the wrong track with all of it’s “isms.” Mormonism, Catholicism, Baptism and all other groups that have been started by men have turned people away from the word of God and toward the word of man.
“It’s all in the Bible,” he said. “We don’t need man coming into this world and retranslating.”
Baird said Salt Lake City police increased the number of officers at conference to about 50 officers after the events of last fall. More people requested permits to preach as well.
Other groups of street preachers chose to act as a buffer between the more vocal preachers and conference-goers by singing songs or by holding signs of support for the LDS church. Two brothers who antagonized preachers in the fall by dressing up as gorillas also made an appearance Saturday morning, dressed as clowns.
The loudest voices, however, belonged to preachers like Israel who lasted both days of the conference vocalizing their beliefs.
“The next thing this church is going to do is allow homosexuals to prance on it’s grounds,” he yelled. “I wouldn’t be a Mormon even if you gave me a million bucks.”
-str@cc.usu.edu
Aaron Shafoualoff, a street preacher from Dayton, Ohio, advertises the Web site BiggerGod.com at the LDS General Conference. (Photo by John Zsiray)