Albion

That's pretty sad really. Is college life really just drinkers and drugtakers or fundamentalist Christians? Not much of a choice. It's also a bit worrying that they latch onto lonely students - that sounds like the way cults operate. How easy is it for people to leave this group?

Kassiana

No one else here has ever been a member of CCC, hm? Well, I have.

For what it's worth, the ones at my college, anyhow, never preached anti-Catholicism. The "worst" thing I ever heard any CCCer say when I was one about Catholics was, "Well, the Truth is IN their church...but it's a lot harder to find there." (Yeah, kinda condescending and arrogant, I know, but better than some fundy "they're all the anti-Christ and going to hell" types.)

They follow standard evangelical/fundy Christian beliefs. Their main "distinguishing" characteristic from other groups with the same theological basis (InterVarsity, The Navigators) was that they pushed evangelism. A lot. Very hard. When we had "staff" - adult leaders - on campus (all staff, BTW, have to beg for money from their friends and from fellow Christians in order to survive...it's called "raising support." Cute, eh?), a lot of people from our college were considering going on staff with CCC. Curiously enough, during the year we ran it without staff, the interest in being on staff dropped exponentially...though I don't think the staff consciously were pushing it.

Don't think, by the way, that the members all necessarily agree even on issues where they seem pretty monolithic from the outside. My roommates one year and I were all CCCers, and they told me one night they thought abortion in the cases of rape and incest was a good thing to have available.

He may well get bored with it. I did by the end, because I felt they never advanced beyond "baby" theology.

Any more specific questions you have on this one?

I ate Pascal's Wafer

LMAO!! If I were a Muslim I just might start such a group!

-Nick

Megusic

My school has a chapter of the CCC called Student Impact (but they go by CRU, I have no idea why). Even my Christian friends call them a cult. Now of course this is going to be different at all universities, but this is has been my experience:

Here, I have found them to be a very sneaky group. My freshman year of college, for about a month there were these neon green signs all over campus (small school, about 9,000 undergrad). All that the signs said were "I AGREE WITH JUSTIN" Then all of a sudden some of the signs had, at the bottom a date and time, and a room number at our Student Center. Some students started to wear the bright green pins and tshirts proclaiming "I AGREE WITH JUSTIN". If you asked them what it meant, all they would tell you was that you would have to go to this thing to find out. This of course sparked many peoples interest. I personally was against going, I thought it was all a little too sneaky for my taste, but quite a few of my friends went. Most came back scared. The whole thing was this Justin guy telling his story about how he became a true lover of JC and whatnot, then the CRU/CCC members started signing and doing what my friends could only describe as chanting. Very few ppl were impressed.

OTH, most of the ppl I know who are members are very nice and normal. One of my friends who is a member used to be really annoying w/ trying to get me to check out one of the meetings and checkign it out, but when i decided and told him I was an atheist, he didn't mind a bit and let it go, however a few of his friends didn't quite feel the same. One girl I know won't talk to me or another guy I know b/c we don't follow the teachigns of JC. I have seen a couple of acquaintances personalities change quite drastically since entering the group.

One of the groups, either CRU/CCC or InterVarsity here, held a big anti-abortion demonstration in front of our student center, which is next to a day care playground. Here, they yelled, chanted, and waved signs. Fine. They also tried to grab ppl walking by and force them to look at pictures of aborted fetus's (fetus'? feti?) and yell in their faces. Not fine.

Some ppl join mainly for social purposes, but some seem to get way too serious, and I hope you can help your bro to stay on the former side of that line. Have you talked to him about what his group does, the friends he has made, how involved he is??

daria

We had them at my school... I never attended a meeting, but a friend did once. She said they were pretty much only interested in themselves and didn't make her feel extremely welcome. It was a small school, so most people pretty much knew how you felt about religion (or thought they did) and my friend who went never showed any signs of being a Christian before she went to the meeting. I suppose they knew they didn't have much of a chance with her, though it wasn't like she was going to cause trouble. *shrug* I wish I had known where I stood about religion when I was still in school; I would have gone more out of my way to mess with those CCCers than just wearing my "You aren't saved" button on my bookbag.

Boro Nut

Sorry wrong post - I thought you were looking for info on the Camp US Crusade For Christ, of which I am an active member, but only because I have no social life.

Boro Nut

I also founded Camper's Crusade for Christ myself, if you're interested.

AbbyNormal

I have heard of the "I AGREE WITH <insert name here>" campaigns before. Strange.
We don't talk much about CCC as that inevitably leads to discussions on religon, which inevitably leads to an argument...I think we have agreed to disagree. For now anyway. I do know that he's very involved with their activities and has made many close friends. He attends the retreats, spent spring break in Panama Beach handing out leaflets, and a summer in NY working with the homeless. But, to his credit, he has a good head on his shoulders. He's done a lot of research on various religons and philosophies, so he hasn't jumped into this blindly.
I truly think much of it will fade after college. He needs a support network and he's made many close friends, so I wouldn't want to take that away from him. And if they got too "cultish" on him, he would have no problem telling them where exactly they could stick their bibles (he's done it before to another group!).

At any rate, thanks for the info from everyone. It's very appreciated.

Regards,
AbbyNormal