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The Wall Street Journal
Friday, October 23, 1998
From Gangs to God
By Andrew P. Thomas
View attachment 160
On Oct. 5, Michael Carneal of Paducah, Ky., pleaded guilty but mentally ill to three counts of murder for opening fire last December on schoolmates taking part in a prayer service. His was one of several such atrocities that jolted the country during the past academic year, prompting Americans to wonder why so many kids are taking aim at their fellow students. One person who came to Paducah a few weeks ago to minister to Carneal's schoolmates believes he has the answer:
The Rev. Nicky Cruz, formerly a notorious gang leader in Brooklyn, is an evangelist-and the nation's most accomplished minister to the gangsters of the inner city. Since converting to Christianity in 1958, Mr. Cruz has remained largely unknown outside evangelical circles. Today, as inner-city pathologies seep into the suburbs and heartland, his message is gaining a broader following.
Mr. Cruz's life story is his most powerful sermon. He was born in Puerto Rico in 1939 to parents who were known among the villagers as witches. One day, when he was eight years old, his mother told several other mediums that he was "Satan's child." In a trance, she screamed at the boy, "Leave me, devil!"
Emotionally, little Nicky did just that, henceforth hating his parents and everyone else. Bloodthirsty and amoral, Nicky was sent to live with his brother in New York at age 15. He drifted into gangs almost immediately. He took up with the Mau Maus, at that time one of New York's toughest gangs, and quickly became its president. In his 1968 autobiography, "Run, Baby, Run," Mr. Cruz recalls that he was "an animal without conscience, morals, reason, or any sense of right and wrong."
Mr. Cruz finally repudiated his violent lifestyle after meeting David Wilkerson, a preacher from rural Pennsylvania who had come to New York to minister. Mr. Wilkerson's exhortations of love and forgiveness touched the lonely young man to the point that, at a neighborhood revival meeting, he found himself crying for the first time since being cast out by his mother.
Like Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul, Nicky Cruz (who was ordained as a minister in 1962) pursued his new faith with zeal. And like Paul, Mr. Cruz focused his efforts on society's outcasts, in his case the dangerous young men of the inner city. In his itinerant ministry, based in Colorado Springs, Mr. Cruz relies on a tried-and-true American tradition, the revival meeting, which features impassioned preaching and public professions of faith. Mr. Cruz travels from city to city like something of a social pest-control service, exterminating the sin and misery bred by broken families and leaving behind neighborhoods full of restored souls.
Mr. Cruz's strength lies in his ability to speak to gangsters as one of their own, in terms they can understand. Though his name is often associated with the Teen Challenge substance-abuse program, his greatest legacy is the thousands of inner-city toughs and other lost youths whom he has drawn into Christendom and honorable living. In 1993, his latest revival campaign, T.R.U.C.E. (To Reach Urban Children Everywhere), netted 3,500 converts in San Antonio alone. His revival meeting in the Bronx last year drew what one NYPD officer called "the biggest crowd for any event in the Bronx, except for a Yankees game, that I have ever seen."
Instead of spinning sociological or economic theories about juvenile crime, Nicky Cruz reduces it to its simplest source: loneliness. By their misconduct, he says, the kids are "demonstrating to society that they're drowning, they're suffering. They want to get out but they're hooked to the wrong things." Where others see ferocious young predators, Mr. Cruz sees himself.
What today's young gangsters despise, he believes, are the excuses for their misconduct peddled by therapists and criminologists. "The kids in gangs respect tough love, " he says. "They don't respect weak love."
The also need parents. Indeed, a review of the recent school shootings reveals a striking pattern of divorced parents and broken homes in the perpetrators' backgrounds. "My family was my gang," Mr. Cruz remembers. He echoes the belief voiced by other street ministers that today's troubled youths need a surrogate family to replace the one that failed them.
In his nearly four decades of preaching to an estimated 34 million people, Nicky Cruz has arguably done more than anyone else to provide this spiritual support. Policy makers searching for answers to one of our most pressing and frightening social trends could do worse than to listen to this Billy Graham of the streets
Friday, October 23, 1998
From Gangs to God
By Andrew P. Thomas
View attachment 160
On Oct. 5, Michael Carneal of Paducah, Ky., pleaded guilty but mentally ill to three counts of murder for opening fire last December on schoolmates taking part in a prayer service. His was one of several such atrocities that jolted the country during the past academic year, prompting Americans to wonder why so many kids are taking aim at their fellow students. One person who came to Paducah a few weeks ago to minister to Carneal's schoolmates believes he has the answer:
The Rev. Nicky Cruz, formerly a notorious gang leader in Brooklyn, is an evangelist-and the nation's most accomplished minister to the gangsters of the inner city. Since converting to Christianity in 1958, Mr. Cruz has remained largely unknown outside evangelical circles. Today, as inner-city pathologies seep into the suburbs and heartland, his message is gaining a broader following.
Mr. Cruz's life story is his most powerful sermon. He was born in Puerto Rico in 1939 to parents who were known among the villagers as witches. One day, when he was eight years old, his mother told several other mediums that he was "Satan's child." In a trance, she screamed at the boy, "Leave me, devil!"
Emotionally, little Nicky did just that, henceforth hating his parents and everyone else. Bloodthirsty and amoral, Nicky was sent to live with his brother in New York at age 15. He drifted into gangs almost immediately. He took up with the Mau Maus, at that time one of New York's toughest gangs, and quickly became its president. In his 1968 autobiography, "Run, Baby, Run," Mr. Cruz recalls that he was "an animal without conscience, morals, reason, or any sense of right and wrong."
Mr. Cruz finally repudiated his violent lifestyle after meeting David Wilkerson, a preacher from rural Pennsylvania who had come to New York to minister. Mr. Wilkerson's exhortations of love and forgiveness touched the lonely young man to the point that, at a neighborhood revival meeting, he found himself crying for the first time since being cast out by his mother.
Like Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul, Nicky Cruz (who was ordained as a minister in 1962) pursued his new faith with zeal. And like Paul, Mr. Cruz focused his efforts on society's outcasts, in his case the dangerous young men of the inner city. In his itinerant ministry, based in Colorado Springs, Mr. Cruz relies on a tried-and-true American tradition, the revival meeting, which features impassioned preaching and public professions of faith. Mr. Cruz travels from city to city like something of a social pest-control service, exterminating the sin and misery bred by broken families and leaving behind neighborhoods full of restored souls.
Mr. Cruz's strength lies in his ability to speak to gangsters as one of their own, in terms they can understand. Though his name is often associated with the Teen Challenge substance-abuse program, his greatest legacy is the thousands of inner-city toughs and other lost youths whom he has drawn into Christendom and honorable living. In 1993, his latest revival campaign, T.R.U.C.E. (To Reach Urban Children Everywhere), netted 3,500 converts in San Antonio alone. His revival meeting in the Bronx last year drew what one NYPD officer called "the biggest crowd for any event in the Bronx, except for a Yankees game, that I have ever seen."
Instead of spinning sociological or economic theories about juvenile crime, Nicky Cruz reduces it to its simplest source: loneliness. By their misconduct, he says, the kids are "demonstrating to society that they're drowning, they're suffering. They want to get out but they're hooked to the wrong things." Where others see ferocious young predators, Mr. Cruz sees himself.
What today's young gangsters despise, he believes, are the excuses for their misconduct peddled by therapists and criminologists. "The kids in gangs respect tough love, " he says. "They don't respect weak love."
The also need parents. Indeed, a review of the recent school shootings reveals a striking pattern of divorced parents and broken homes in the perpetrators' backgrounds. "My family was my gang," Mr. Cruz remembers. He echoes the belief voiced by other street ministers that today's troubled youths need a surrogate family to replace the one that failed them.
In his nearly four decades of preaching to an estimated 34 million people, Nicky Cruz has arguably done more than anyone else to provide this spiritual support. Policy makers searching for answers to one of our most pressing and frightening social trends could do worse than to listen to this Billy Graham of the streets
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