Christian Street Hawker

While riding the Downtown B train with a friend after class, I looked towards the closing doors with disdain after a new passenger entered. We rode for a couple seconds and as the train left the station, I realized that I had chosen the wrong subway car.  A subway preacher had entered the train and I was beginning to partake in the well practiced New York ritual of completely tuning out another person who is attempting to engage in a conversation. I was without my headphones so I couldn’t turn up the volume to drown out the noise. Instead both my friend and I had to make the awkward decision of carrying on our conversation or patiently waiting for the message of our damnation to end. (downcast eyes as the preacher enters)

There was nothing unique about this preacher. I had sat through many others. But this time I was forced to actively listen. Having attended a Catholic school, the message too was nothing new: I had the hope of being saved. I had the opportunity at everlasting life; I simply had to reach out and take it. He even had a catchy song. Forced to listen to the testimony, I looked more carefully at the people upon whose deaf ears this message was falling. This preacher was treated the same way I had seen people treat someone begging for money. He may have even been given a little less sympathy. But in this case, he wasn’t asking for anything at all. He was offering something. In fact, he’s offering what he believes to be the most important thing he can. Nevertheless if you had gauged the situation based solely on the reactions of the passengers, you would have thought he was asking for spare change.

This attitude toward the preacher made me wonder what was going through the passengers’ heads. More importantly it made me wonder what was going through mine. Maybe people understood fully that he was offering something. But just like a street hawker he was assumed to be ‘selling’ something. In a city built on business, it seems like everyone is suspicious of something being free. In fact even in the rhetoric he employed, “saving” from sins and forgiving “debts,” one could smell the intermixing with consumerism. His song seemed like a catchy advertisement. This scene felt a little dystopian. Even spiritual salvation had become commodified. To the passengers on the New York subway, even ideas are now viewed as being “sold” to them. And we have become experts at tuning out when we feel we are being sold something.

This begs the question of where American Christianity stands when people feel they are being sold a bad deal. Can it be viewed as a deal? Is there a price to pay for believing? What does the preacher have to gain? These questions were left unanswered as people popped in their earphones to silence another advertisement. The preacher was clearly playing the game of the modern consumer. He caught these riders  in the middle of the quotidian, just like a commercial. He proclaimed the payoffs they could receive by converting. But the passengers were clearly not affected.  Christianity may not be suited to play this game. It may have to change tact to avoid being lumped in with the noise we are accustomed to tuning out. We arrived at the next stop waiting for the preacher to change cars as he slowly became one with the advertisements for mattresses above his head.