Heart of Bible Belt : Columbia: Street Show of All Faiths

There were souls to be saved on the sweltering sidewalks of this Southern city Friday, of that sad fact of the human condition there was little debate. Everything else was up for grabs.

Throughout the day, on virtually every street corner where the Pope and his entourage were to pass in procession, Bible students, street preachers, an occasional Roman Catholic and clergy of various cloths could be found in contentious coexistence, fervently attempting to proselytize one another and anyone else they could find, be it police officer, shopkeeper or papal souvenir vendor.

The Bible students, young men who uniformly wore short-sleeved white shirts, ties and expressions that seemed at once surly and serene, passed out sheaves of what they called their “literature,” mostly strident tracts that warned Catholics that the Pope was a false leader.

Catholics Outnumbered

The street preachers thundered about the Apocalypse and the anti-Christ and the sign 666. And the Catholics, greatly outnumbered, kept their peace and waited for the Pope to arrive, hopeful that he would work his magic on the doubters.

As for the non-Catholic clergy, they were caught somewhere in the middle. Most had been drawn here by a multireligious meeting on ecumenicalism, the concept that Christians of all denominations share essential religious beliefs. This was to be the Pope’s theme here, and it also was what most riled the Baptist preachers and other fundamentalists who took their homilies and tracts into the streets.

“You are a damner!” a Lutheran minister from Seattle raged at a Bible student from Greenville, S.C., late in the morning. “How does it feel to be a damner, damner?”

The Bible student had confronted the Lutheran as he left a downtown hotel. The young man gave the minister a pamphlet that indicted Catholics for following the Pope and anyone else who would ally themselves with the Roman church.

The minister, Jack Hustad, had traveled here with a colleague who was to meet with the Pope and leaders of other religions at the University of South Carolina, and he took offense at the suggestion that he was destined for the dark below.

“That’s great,” he said. “I walk out of my hotel and find out from this guy that I’m going to be condemned to hell.”

For a moment, the young man, 26-year-old Dave Rader, was taken aback by Hustad’s counterattack and only after the minister was out of earshot did his retort come: “What would Martin Luther say to a Lutheran pastor welcoming the Pope?”

Doubt Dispelled

It was into this roiling environment that Pope John Paul II ventured on the second day of his second trip to the United States. He came to the heart of the Southern Bible Belt at great risk of embarrassment, and if there were any doubt, it was dispelled by mid-morning.

This was not to be a setting for the traveling pontiff’s finest triumph. The streets, where crowds of hundreds of thousands had been anticipated, were all but empty, with only the Bible students and police showing any strength in numbers.

On the front page of the state’s newspapers, pictures of the Pope in Miami competed with one of Baptist preacher Jerry Falwell zipping down a slide at the PTL amusement park, 90 miles north of here.

Between Old and New

Columbia, population 98,000, is a city caught somewhere between the Old South and the New South. Shiny new skyscrapers form an impressive skyline, and tall cranes looming over downtown indicate more are on the way.

Columbia had promoted its bid for a papal visit by stressing that it was playing host this year to a wide assortment of religious leaders. The program’s title, “Columbia Ecumenical Year--A Southern City Becomes a World Religious Center,” says it all in terms of civic ambition.

At the same time, though, it has a rich, Southern history. Gen. William T. Sherman burned it with a vengeance at the close of the Civil War, punishing Columbia for being a Confederate hotbed. Churches were burned too but not all of them.

The First Baptist Church, the site of the first secession convention, was spared when another church was mistaken for it. Also surviving was the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. Knowing that Sherman was a Catholic, someone erected signs misidentifying the church as Roman Catholic, and the Union general ordered it saved.

Man From Thunderbolt

Parked next to that very cathedral Friday was Rollin Emmett. Emmett is from Thunderbolt, Ga., but he could well hail from the imagination of Flannery O’Connor.

He had driven up in a battered black pickup because his 32-foot-long bus with the mural of Jesus on the side did not have proper insurance. He was at work on one more placard to place on the truck, which was all but obscured by hand-printed signs.

All of the signs contained biblical passages that Emmett believes challenge the authority of the Pope. A large, white cross was mounted on the truck’s grill, which was badly crumpled.

“How do you spell ‘mortal?’ ” he asked a reporter. The placard was to say, ‘I Protest This Mortal Man Being Hailed as the Holy Father,” and he was working fast.

Getting Hard Looks

Security agents were directing hard looks at this man in the ill-fitting white overalls with the name “Jesus” embroidered on the back, aged black shoes and no socks. They already had searched his truck.

He wanted to mount this last placard behind the cross and then go drive the Pope’s short parade route for as long as he could. It was now shortly before noon, and the papal parade was five hours away.

As it turned out, Emmett could be seen trolling the street almost until the parade began, at which point he stuck a placard on a bicycle and resumed his work. That’s how empty the streets were.

There were plenty of theories about why the turnout was so small. The procession route was lined with spectators only one deep when the Pope finally rolled by, heading to St. Peter’s Church. The Pope, on his arrival, appeared surprised as he surveyed the nearly empty streets.

Officials Blamed

There were those who blamed public officials who had projected all forms of chaos during the visit. Some reasoned that all the Catholics already were down the street at the university stadium, waiting for an evening prayer service. That Catholics make up only 2% of this community certainly came into play.

The crowd, which could not have numbered more than a few thousand, was subdued, and it gave the pontiff only polite applause. Many of the spectators expressed some civic shame at the paltry turnout, and vendors who had paid $310 for licenses were awash in unbought soft drinks and were furious. The loudest chant to be heard as the motorcade rolled by was “Down with the Pope.”

It was difficult to find a Catholic along Assembly Street, the main thoroughfare for the parade. One who stood out was George Yourishin, 61, who carried a sign proclaiming: “Wow. What a Pope!” He said he had engaged the sidewalk preachers “in several discussions--but so far no fistfights.”

When asked what it was like to be a Catholic in this town, Yourishin replied: “It’s lonely.” Then he hastily added that he was here on vacation--from Maryland.