College is a wonderful place full of interesting and exciting people. Then, you have the people I call Campus Christians, although I suppose Campus Religious People would be more appropriate since not all of them are necessarily Christian.

These people tend to come in two different varieties.

The first type, or “Type A” are the aggressively obnoxious and oftentimes offensive people you see “preaching” around campus. And by “preaching,” I mean yelling about how most of us horrible students are probably going to Hell. I can’t help but think that as long as these preachers aren’t going to be in Hell, spending eternity there doesn’t seem so bad. Some campus preachers are worse than others because while all of them are an obnoxious inconvenience, some spew relatively harmless jargon while others say things so awful it could almost be taken as a physical threat. These campus preachers come in all different shapes and sizes. Some young, some old, and all probably mentally unstable.

The second type of Campus Christian, or “Type B” are the non-aggressive type, yet they are still a nuisance. These people awkwardly stand around campus and wait for innocent students to walk by so they can try to inject their religious venom into the poor student, the ultimate goal being to recruit the student into their club, or to go to their church, or maybe to join their cult, depending on the day. They might preface their attempt with a question such as “Do you have a minute to answer 3 questions?”, before launching into whatever supposed knowledge they have that will change the poor student’s life.

My personal favorite introduction that I have ever seen from one of these Type B groups was on a poster, and instead of saying “Bro, do you even lift?” the poster said “Bro, do you even know about your lord and savior Jesus Christ?” I almost had to stop to listen to what they had to say, but of course I didn’t. I did, however, agree to answer a question from one of these groups once. I even made the grave mistake of giving them my phone number because I thought this would let me leave more quickly. They didn’t stop calling me for a month, even though I never answered. I vowed right then and there, “never again.”

Of course, the question arises as to how to avoid these campus monstrosities. Sure they were sent by the Lord Almighty himself to save the lost souls of us terribly behaved college students, but they are still terribly annoying. At first, I tried praying to God to keep them away from me, but that didn’t seem to work. So, if you see a Type B on the prowl for its next victim, try not to go too near it. If you walk right into its trap, say you have to get to class and keep on walking, without ever stopping. As you walk away, they may say something like “this will only take 30 seconds,” but don’t ever fall for this.

Also, always do your best to avoid eye contact. Similar to other jungle predators, this creature is more likely to attack if you look it straight in the eye, so just keep on walking. Now, on one occasion I was sitting on a bench and studying, when a Type B came up and completely blindsided me, launching right into his religious mumbo jumbo. I had no clear escape route since I was sitting down. I eventually had to say, somewhat forcefully, that I was not interested, at which point the Type B luckily recoiled back into its religious shell and proceeded to slither away from me.

If you see a Type A, try not to encourage it. Many Type A’s mainly want to provoke to attract attention, so the best to thing to do is just ignore. If nobody engages with it, the preacher will eventually get bored and move on. If you don’t give them any attention to feed off of, they will lose interest and find a new place to preach.

Campus Christians; some of the most obnoxious people you will ever meet during your college career. To be clear, I have no problem with religion and religious groups on campus, I just don’t want to have to deal with a Type B trying to recruit me on my way to class, or hear a Type A screaming about eternal damnation when I’m grabbing some dinner. Still, it’s all part of the college experience, so all we can really do is accept that these people are out there, do our best to avoid them, and hope that God forgives us later on.