At n+1, Kiera Feldman reports on the Jews for Jesus “Summer Witnessing Campaign” in New York City:
After training was complete, the Jews for Jesus materialized around town for the month of July—their activity brief yet fervent—like cicadas during mating season. Some Jews for Jesus came from nearby Brooklyn, while others journeyed from as far as Los Angeles, Russia, and Israel. From dawn till dusk, about thirty campaigners stationed themselves at street corners and subway stairwells, proffering tracts, rapid-fire, like Chinese menus. “Who do you think Jesus is?” they asked passers-by. They distributed 400,000 tracts, helping thirty-six people become born again into new lives. The Brooklyn Bridge on a Friday night, Bryant Park at lunch hour—three-dozen New Yorkers found Jesus during the Summer Witnessing Campaign.
By political standards, of course, this would be a failure. If Jesus were running for public office, he’d do much better to hire a team of former Obama staffers to run proper get-out-the-vote, homing in on the “undecideds” and launching targeted canvassing. But Jews for Jesus were only superficially interested in converts; theirs was an internally directed performance of faith among believers. As a rite of passage, the Summer Witnessing Campaign served to bind a people together, initiating the young. In this way, a fundamentalist subculture reproduces itself.
Continue reading at n+1.