Ex-Hippies Stage Court Room Pray-In!
Miami Herald, Florida
April 16, 1969, North America
FORT LAUDERDALE—They called themselves former pot-heads, speed freaks and hate mongers…
They called themselves Christian revolutionaries for Jesus, and held hands and prayed…
The corridors of Municipal Court looked like a scene from a Fellini art film Tuesday as 12 young disciples of a religious cult called Teens for Christ massed in support of four of the brethren who’d been arrested for picketing for Jesus.
AS THEY waited for their spot on the docket, they talked of conversion and Christ, cradled well-marked Bibles in their arms and addressed everyone with “God bless you” and “praise the Lord.”
They’d been caryin such messages as: “Jesus is Risen, He’s Alive, Halleluja.” and “God said great confusion would come…Turn to Jesus. Put prayer, Bible and God back in schools.”
THEY CHOSE to march on the sidewalk before the police station, they said, because another of their group, Bill Garrison, had been arrested for “reading the Bible to a girl on the beach.” The charge, interfering with a police officer, will be debated at Garrison’s trial later.
The Christian revolutionaries with their sandals, boots, jeans, long hair and Bibles, “witness” to their salvation every week in the park, they said.
Tuesday they witnessed for each other.
They stood in the corridor and joined hands with their gratis, bearded Jewish attorney, Louis Beller, from Miami Beach. They prayed individual prayers individually as pr9olice and attorneys walked by with quiet stress.
THEN, in unison, the Lord’s Prayer, led by 21-year-old Bob McDonald, who’s been arrested elsewhere twice for preaching and who thinks preaching to the jail inmates is one of his greatest experiences.
In the courtroom, policemen with obvious disdain for the defendants’ mode of dress testified to the traffic snarl created by the marchers … admitted they “couldn’t remember” if anybody had ever asked the kids to cease and desist before the arrests, and asked what remarks the marchers made to them said:
The defense summed: “The police are the ones who should be arrested and charged with disorderly conduct because the accused were just parading up and down until the police came to make the arrests, then the traffic jam formed and the photographers came—not before.”
And Judge Arnold Grevior found the defendants guilty, but withheld adjudication so they’d have no record.
The Bible-quoting young people are mostly transplants from Northern cities with stories similar to one told by Russell:
“I was so much of a hate freak, you wouldn’t have believed it. I tried every drug and abused every drug I tried. In 1964 I was in jail for five months.
“One day we were all turned on, and in walked Arnie. He just sat down and started reading out of the Bible.” Said Ken. “Within three days about half of us had converted.”