Carlin Fortkamp and Jim Semisch are on a mission. On a Tuesday morning near the Elliott Avenue near the crosswalk that connects Emeritus Hall and Doyle library, Semich stands on his stool, a Bible in his right hand, and begins to shout at students walking to and from their classes: “See, Jesus Christ came to die for the ungodly! He didn’t come to die for good people! He came to be crucified on the cross for the sins of the world!”

Fortkamp sits near his shouting partner; his own Bible in his hands as he quietly waits for his turn to yell out the gospel.

The preachers are quickly becoming a regular sight at Elliott Avenue, though the two are not exactly a welcome one. They have acquired a controversial reputation through their sermons; they regularly address the students and passers-by as sinners doomed to go to Hell (repentance is a common theme), and they openly condemn homosexuality as an “abomination.”

But to the preachers, what they do is a divine calling.

“We believe in Jesus Christ,” Fortkamp says. “We believe that his word, the Bible, is 100 percent true. We believe that he calls us out to preach the gospel. He doesn’t want people to go to Hell.”

Most students crossing Elliott Avenue ignore the preachers, but for many of them, the loud proselytizing is a source of irritation.

“Sometimes it just annoys me,” Daniel Garber says. He and his friends hang out at the Bertolini Hall patio, only 30 feet from the preachers, and try to carry on despite Semisch’s warnings about eternal damnation. “I don’t really pay too much attention.”

Religious Studies instructor Eric Thompson shares Garber’s annoyance.

“I just talked to a librarian who is telling me that people in the library are complaining a lot because they’re disruptive, loud, obnoxious and they’re yelling at people,” Thompson says. “I find it disturbing to my classes sometimes.”

For some students however, the preachers’ activities on Elliott Avenue bring more than just annoyance, and they took it upon themselves to counter the preachers.

Ron Whitman, angered by the preachers’ statements, decided to give the two a piece of his mind on his way to class: “There is only one law: ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’. Period! All that [sermon] is bullshit!”

Matthew Hatfield is one of the few students who confronts the preaching duo. Like Whitman, he is offended by the statements the two shout, and his initial reaction is to yell back at the preachers. But he decids to instead engage the preachers in conversation, and that doesn’t work well.

“I tried to talk to them reasonably, but they would never talk to me reasonably,” Hatfield says.

Thompson once attempted to communicate with the duo in an effort to “calm them down,” but found them unwilling to cooperate because both men feel that they are being commanded by Jesus and the Bible.

“They are not prepared to engage in a two-way conversation at all,” Thompson says. “That becomes frustrating. I’m kind of done talking to them; there’s no fruit to it.”

Some of the students who attempt to talk to the preachers are concerned Christians. Kenny Bruner thinks the duo’s approach to spreading the gospel is inappropriate, and tried to talk to the two about it.

“I feel like they’re forcing a religion upon people,” Bruner says. “I feel like they’re giving believers a bad stereotype.”

Another student, Michelle Dedora, agrees with Bruner.

“I just think they’re way too extreme into one side,” Dedora says. “I think that standing on a stool and yelling about how we’re all going to Hell and we’ve all sinned against God is not the correct approach.”

Yet for all the controversy their sermons stir, even the people offended by the preachers believe that the two have a right to free speech. However, their regular condemnation of homosexuality may also mean that they practice hate speech.

“I’m a big believer in free speech, and I think that some of the things that they’ve said probably do come very close to being hate speech and I think that that’s something the institution should look at,” Thompson says.

Roxanne Squires, a member of SRJC’s Politics Club, believes that despite the controversial content of the preachers’ sermon, the two have the right to free speech, provided they don’t harm or diminish other people.

“You can have that belief, a lot of people do, but the fact that’s he’s yelling it in there with homosexual people walking by, that can be called a hate crime,” Kelsey Schwartz, another member of the Politics Club, says.

Schwartz and Squires were selling cookies for a Politics Club bake sale, not far from the Elliott Avenue preachers.

“He’s probably offending quite a few people,” Squires says.

As for the preachers, the two are determined to continue doing what they’re doing. From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, both men endure the heat and heckles from cars passing along Elliott Avenue, occasionally switching places with one person yelling the gospel, and the other talking to people passing by.

Preachers Fortkamp and Semisch manage to gain the support of some students. One student named Colin stops and congratulats Semisch for his activities.

“I think that this man has a lot of strength, a lot of courage, and a lot of faith in God to be able to stand up here in front of strangers; people that are going to pass judgment on him. It’s one thing to live a good life and read the Bible, but it’s another thing to be out here in front of people,” Colin says.

“Our desire is to warn people about the wrath of God and to look to Jesus Christ for salvation, just to tell them how they can be saved,” Semisch says. “So that’s what motivates us.”

As for Hatfield, he says that free speech motivates him to counter the preachers.

“Under that same protection, I have the right to go to their faces and call them religious fanatics,” Hatfield says. “That’s what a democracy’s for.”