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October 02, 2007
Silencing Brother Jim?
I know I should be terribly offended by the potential free speech principles in this case, but I've met Brother Jim.
Brother Jim will not have his day in court. The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear the case of the evangelical preacher, James G. Gilles, who calls himself Brother Jim and whose speech Vincennes University restricted to a small part of its campus in 2002.Since Brother Jim was still allowed to speak, and in a prominent location, his free speech rights don't seem to have been violated.Officials at Vincennes, a public institution in Indiana, had found the preacher on the campus and told him he needed to file paperwork to engage in “solicitation” there. The permit the university granted limited Mr. Gilles to a walkway in front of the student union. He sued in 2004 and lost. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed the lower court’s ruling that the university could legally limit Mr. Gilles’s speech to a certain location.
Plus, the guy is a real piece of work - he's offensive, insulting and frankly, not a particularly good evangelist for the message of grace that is the gospel.
When I was a student in college, Brother Jim visited my campus. He had an interesting theological perspective - he preached that he was perfect and completely free from sin. Since I was young and foolish at the time, I decided to challenge his claim. I asked him how he could justify that position, given that Romans 3:23 says "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
His response was to ask me whether I engaged in fornication or masturbation. So we're not exactly dealing with Billy Graham-level evangelism here.
I think the Supreme Court made the right call on this one. Brother Jim was allowed to spread his version of the gospel on that campus, with his only "restrictions" being where he could speak. Since that "restriction" didn't constitute a form of prior restraint or censorship, his free speech rights were not violated.
Posted by slublog at October 2, 2007 10:47 PM
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Comments
I witnessed the Brother Jim show on campus as well when we went there.
The guy is crazy...
Posted by: Steven at October 4, 2007 04:20 PM