It's been a summer of brimstone and religious bile in Knoxville's nightlife district
by Joe Tarr
Gleaming in a crisp white shirt and tie, Howie Johnson stands on the corner of Jackson and Central avenues surrounded by drunks. It is after 10 p.m. on a Friday night, and Johnson is telling them they're all going to hell, but he is not. Because he's been "saved," Johnson says he's heaven bound, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
"So you don't have to live a good life?" one woman asks him.
"Nope. I don't try to live a good life," says Johnson, who holds a large banner picturing Christ dying on the cross.
"You mean you could murder someone and still go to heaven?" she asks, incredulously.
"Yep, I could," responds Johnson, who comes nearly every weekend from Wartburg to spread messages like these. "I'm not saying I'm a good guy. I'm an awful guy and I deserve to go to hell."
Catty-corner across the intersection, Erin Byers and her friends are blessing folks and trying to get them to join their mock cult—the Church of the Giant Golden Microphone (otherwise known as the Sunsphere). A replica of Knoxville's landmark made of a wire tomato cage and a Styrofoam globe painted gold stands on the sidewalk next to her, and she "blesses" people by painting one of their fingernails with sparkling gold polish.
Meanwhile, Chris Long is pacing the sidewalks preparing to make a somewhat ambiguous statement about Christianity. Before the night is out, Long will wrap himself in a white toga, carry a wooden cross around the Old City, after which some friends dressed as Romans will handcuff him to it and a dominatrix will whip him across the face and chest with leather straps—all to the sound of Nine Inch Nails.
The cops seem a little nervous, trying their best to keep crowds moving and conflicts minimal, without violating anyone's First Amendment right.
Just another Friday night in the Old City, when religion, drinking and emotional theological arguments mix freely. These spectacles began about a year ago, when Johnson, John Vespie and others from the Lighthouse Baptist Church in Wartburg started showing up on the corner here every weekend—telling just about everyone that they're on the way to hell.
Depending on your perspective, the spectacle is either a very entertaining, sad, or obnoxious display of free speech.
The Characters
Howie Johnson
A Bible pounding fundamentalist Christian from the small town of Wartburg, Johnson got "saved" about five years ago. He is tall and burly. He says he makes $500 a day. He cited his salary to a man one evening to prove that his God was good to him. "How good is your God to you?" he asked the man.
There are many others from the Lighthouse Baptist Church who preach at this intersection, but Johnson may be the most regular and zealous of the bunch.
He often uses analogies to try to win people over. To convince someone that there is a God, he asks one man: "You believe you got a brain? You ever seen it?" At other times, Johnson screams at people. Asked why he's so angry, he says "I'm angry at the devil."
"The reason we're down here is to preach this Bible," he says. He says he doesn't mind people arguing with him. "I love 'em. I'm thankful for them. The more they come, the better I like it."
"There ain't nothing like being a Christian," he adds. "You can quote me on that."
Erin Byers
A high school student, Byers got the idea about a year ago to form the Church of the Giant Golden Microphone. It was an L. Ron Hubbard-style experiment to see how many people she could get to join. The Church of the Golden Microphone's beliefs are somewhat vague, but the church's website (http://home.earthlink.net/~erinthered/sphere/) states, "We will not stop until there are statuettes in every home...We will not stop until we outnumber the Southern Baptists!"
Byers and her friends saw the preaching in the Old City as a way to spread their own gospel. They dress in gold glittery capes and wave a cardboard wand shaped as a Sunsphere (which may also be used as a flyswatter, they say). When Johnson suddenly breaks into song, the Sunsphere cultists dance around him like munchkins from the Wizard of Oz. Only taller.
"I tried to bless him, but he wouldn't let me," Byers says of Johnson. "Then he told me I was going to hell."
The cult raises a disturbing question: If the Sunsphere is a divine object or being, what does that make the Public Building Authority workers whose offices are inside it?
Chris Long
Long is one of Johnson's more habitual adversaries. He owns a clothing and fetish shop located on Jackson Avenue, and he's well versed in the Bible. One night, he preached from the Knoxville phone book. Long says he keeps confronting Johnson because the preacher has singled him out for his looks and dress.
"If I don't [confront him], he'll come to me," Long says. "He started slandering the store, slandering me. He loves to make an example of me. He keeps preaching condemnation, but never the love of Christ. Christ's crucifixion wasn't about judging people, it was about love."
Asked if he's a Christian, he says: "I can't answer that. Let's just say if Christ was alive today, I would follow him...But Christ wouldn't stand shouting on a street corner like this. He'd sit and talk."
Kenny Woodhull
Owner of New City Café, Woodhull would love people to talk about Jesus in his coffeeshop. The New City Café, near where Johnson does much of his preaching, doesn't sell alcohol or tobacco and hosts Christian artists on its stage. Still, the shop has managed to earn the wrath of Johnson and his friends. They've told Woodhull he's going to hell and his patrons have been called harlots. Attempts by New City customers and workers to talk about religion and God with the Wartburg preachers have been rebuffed.
"It's very hostile, it's very angry, and it's very unfortunate it's being done in the name of God," Woodhull says. "There's no interest in open, honest dialogue...If you express any interest to talk, get ready for a screaming match."
Woodhull says he wants his coffeeshop to be a place where people can ask questions. He tells artists they can't swear or preach, preferring they teach through parable or example. Do people in the Old City need to get saved to avoid hell?
"We were saved, we are saved, we will be saved," Woodhull responds. "Saved is just one image from the Bible. It's a good image. But there are a number of images in the Bible that talk about what it means to be connected to God. Some Christians latch onto one image or another."
Renee Sanabria
A Farragut high school student and amateur filmmaker, Sanabria is making a documentary about this scene called The Final Word. The film is due out this fall, possibly in September, and will be shown in the Old City. Three weeks ago, Sanabria bounced from corner to corner, trying to capture as much as she could on her digital camera.
"I'm trying to make it as neutral as possible," Sanabria says of her film. "I want to show how crazy people can get in a town like Knoxville that's very conservative."
But analyzing the preachers is hard to resist. "I think they're trying to get a message across but are confused about what that message is. I think they're angry at themselves for things they did in the past and now they've gone to the other extreme," she says.
Sandy Clelland
Owner of the clothing store Kaleidoscope, Clelland just wants the preachers to go away. She says she believes in free speech and isn't against preaching, but the people from Wartburg are too hostile. "They've said their mission is to shut every business down in the Old City...I just want this mayhem to stop," says Clelland. "I don't think you should be able to get in people's faces and call them names."
It keeps getting worse, she says. A week ago, a white supremacist group showed up to push their message.
Knoxville Police Department
Officers have made their presence felt, parking one or two cars at Jackson and Central. Patrolmen wander up and down the street, breaking up crowds when the sidewalks become impassable, and making sure no one gets too loud.
"Our concern is you've got one group with views they're very emotional about, and another group with opposite views they're very emotional about," says Sgt. Carl McCarter. "Once you get to that point, violence would be the next step."
The KPD's chaplain has come down on a number of weekends to try to make the atmosphere less confrontational. The chaplain suggests they concentrate on the love in Christ's message, not the condemnation.
Some are skeptical that the police would be so accommodating if the rabble-rousers weren't pushing a conservative Christian message. "If I was down here doing an environmental protest, the cops would be here telling me to move along," says Aubrey Baldwin, as she sits with a friend on the patio of the Old City Grill.
Sundry drunks, infidels, believers, inquisitors, intellects, heretics, blasphemers, lost souls, Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Buddhists and other agitators
If Howie Johnson and his friends are looking for fights, they've come to the right place. Their approach has led to countless confrontations and arguments, comical and malicious.
A softspoken goateed Catholic man who confronted Johnson seemed to get under his skin. The Catholic (who did not want to give his name) has confronted Johnson before.
Johnson attacks the pope, calls him the devil and asks why the Catholic Church's head rides around in a bullet-proof truck if he's right with God. "The pope's a dope/There's no hope in the pope," he sings, as beads of sweat drip down his face. He says Catholics worship Mary. When the Catholic tries to speak, Johnson refuses to listen, screaming into his face, "You're a liar!"
"He's the most evil person out here," Johnson tells a reporter.
"Hey little boy, go away," he tells the Catholic, then appeals to the police. "Help me officer, he needs to get out of my face."
A patrolman strolls by, but just smiles, shakes his head. "I can't say nothing. He's doing what you're doing," the policeman says.
Not An Ending
There's a meanness in the air tonight. Clelland struts past Johnson, and soon everyone seems to be screaming at each other. A short distance away, Woodhull stands in front of the New City Café, watching in disappointment. "It's a circus. And not even a good circus," he says.
Clelland says Johnson called her a harlot, and she tells the police she wants to press charges.
More shouting. Johnson's fellow church member, the mild—relatively speaking—John Vespie, seems to have vanished. Johnson jumps from corner to corner, increasingly riled. His banner falls off. A man who says he's Jewish tries to reason with the preacher as he helps roll up the banner. But before he can finish, a couple interrupts to argue with Johnson.
Then Long comes along and kicks Johnson's banner pole over. Long tells the police he wants Johnson to get out from his store, and then Long and his friends follow Johnson down Central, challenging him. The crowd stops in front of Old City Java to debate some more.
Johnson finds a couple sympathetic to him. They say Jesus is God. "But if you talk to him long enough, he'll tell you you're going to hell," one man tells the couple. A busker yells that Johnson is taking food from his children's mouths—this is how he makes money. "Well, find a new job," the preacher shouts back.
The police escort Johnson away. They put him in the paddy wagon for Clelland's charges. The crowd cheers.
Vespie talks to the police about why they've arrested his friend. He admits Johnson was a bit overzealous.
"Well, maybe this is just what Brother Howie needs to calm him down a little," Vespie tells the police.
"Is he like this with his wife?" one officer good-naturedly asks.
"Oh, Brother Howie's got a wonderful wife. Sometimes she comes down here with us."
And coming down here is something they will keep doing, Vespie says.
August 10, 2000 * Vol. 10, No. 32
© 2000 Metro Pulse
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