“Controversial” is putting it mildly. Aaron Keck referred to the death of “the famously infamous Pit Preacher.” This morning’s news brought me back to the spring of 2002 when I was visiting my younger brother at UNC. We strolled through a gorgeous spring afternoon when suddenly I saw a red-faced man shouting something about hell to a half-dozen underclassmen. “Don’t pay him any attention,” my brother advised. “That will only make it worse.”
The Pit Preacher thrived on confrontation. According to the Daily Tar Heel, he believed that angering people was the “most effective method of preaching.” As a pastor, I couldn’t disagree more. As a Christian, I disagree with his positions on everything.
But I read his obituary. His name was Gary Eugene Birdsong. Despite the abundance of pictures online depicting the Pit Preacher’s screams, growls, exhortations, and finger-pointing, this obituary is the only one I could find showing him smiling. Gary Birdsong grins under an old cap, looking almost childlike.
My intention is not to excuse hate speech in any form. In no way do I condone his views, despite his legal right to express them. For all his warnings about the sins of others, the Pit Preacher was guilty of this part of the Bible: “The tongue … is a restless evil, full of deadly poison” (James 3:8).
And there was a man named Gary Birdsong, who, like all of us, was once a child, and for all his famous infamy, he was capable of smiling in a lighthearted way that calls to mind his surname. And this is another beautiful day in Chapel Hill, so as I listen through my open window to the birds—finches, I believe, punctuated by a proud cardinal—I rededicate myself to singing words that might join with others in a chorus of peace against the cacophony of hate.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of the book with Wipf and Stock Publishers titled This Is the Day: A Year of Observing Unofficial Holidays about Ampersands, Bobbleheads, Buttons, Cousins, Hairball Awareness, Humbugs, Serendipity, Star Wars, Teenagers, Tenderness, Walking to School, Yo-Yos, and More. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where he is a student of joy.
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