A shrill, megaphone-enhanced voice urged, or rather, demanded that college students must reject hedonism and be holier, gathering a crowd that grew larger and louder.
At the epicenter of these whispers, snickers and erupting in laughter was Sister Cindy, brandishing a sign that read “Hell is hot, don’t be a T.H.O.T.” A petite woman in her sixties, her croaking voice and violent fist-shaking commanded attention.
Instead of quoting bible verses or doing any preaching at all, Cindy Smock railed in an obscene manner against debauched college shenanigans.
Her shock-jocking, gross-out sermons often include language and anecdotes that most would never imagine coming from a preacher.
Her first brush with viral fame came from her 2014 sermon “Sin is like a Chocolate Covered Bloody Tampon,” which included an arts-and-crafts project, including real tampons that she brought around to college campuses.
Consequently, she became known as the Tampon Lady.
She divulges vivid, debaucherous imagery of the behind-the-scenes doings of college students, as well as testimonials from herself and other born-again Christians. Or as she refers to her followers, Ho no mos.
Her preachings border on performance art. She even inspired a parody song.
Her unabashed posturing is undeniably vulgar and abject, especially for a church setting, making for an unexpected levity. It’s as if the awkward giggles in health class when the birds-and-the-bees talk is given were multiplied by a factor of a thousand.
Quite possibly our generation’s only real televangelist, Cindy is a beacon of showmanship if nothing else.
In our attention economy, must even the holiest among us debase themselves? Is the message lost when delivered among all of this raunchiness?
She’s emblematic of a problem we’ve been facing for quite some time now. Our simultaneous obsession with irony and gratuity now bleeds into spaces it really shouldn’t.
University of Minnesota first-year student Jack Klein said other people in Cindy’s attendance treated her appearance as more of a sideshow than anything else.
“They were all kind of, like, making fun of her, kind of to her face, pretending like they weren’t, I don’t want to say virtue signaling, but everyone’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m a whore,’ ‘Yeah, I smoke weed,’ etc.,” Klein said. “So I really don’t think it resonated with college folks.”
Is Cindy subversive or a sellout? Is all press really good press?
University first-year student Amber Schlappi said she observed a certain star power in Cindy.
“She’s definitely more unique in her craft,” Schlappi said. “There was something about her, like the way she spoke, the way she drew in attention from the crowd, that seemed different from any other preacher on campus.”
Having gained her most recent and most well-known wave of fame from TikTok, Cindy has been at this for years now.
Most people, if they know her at all, know her from one of her various catch-phrases, which have coined all sorts of reactionary content. She’s an ironic figure, propped up for her theatricality.
She has a particular affinity for the word “ho,” the likes of which she differentiates to varying levels of affection. She advises us to stay away from and be wary of becoming vampire hos. She instead encourages students to turn to religion and become ho-no-mos.
Her roots lie in abjection. She seems to have originally positioned herself as a bogeyman-esque figure in this way. She started preaching on campuses nationwide alongside her late husband, Brother Jed.
She’s been on an endless campus tour since, but her methods have become more tactical. If nothing else, she has a handle on pop culture.
Her lingo is surprisingly up-to-date. She doesn’t pull punches or shy away from who she’s talking to, or about. She also wants everyone to know premarital sex is not only wrong, but shameful and, most importantly, gross.
On Sept. 2, she handed out flyers for an event she was holding in Dinkytown that evening, which she encouraged all virgins in the crowd to attend. On a whim, I decided to see what was up.
While this sermon still contained allusions to her past ways of “hoing,” it was far more intimate. It wasn’t entirely serious, but it lacked the incendiary tone that I had associated with her.
Her signature levity was still present, albeit differently packaged. It wasn’t put on, but emanated through the room as she spoke.
She told the story of how she began preaching. She detailed how her late husband inspired the start of her over forty-year preaching career and how she felt particularly drawn to young people because of how misunderstood she believes they are.
I knew then and there that whether she was in on the joke or not was irrelevant.
She’s had to adapt a near half-decade of preaching to a completely different world. She’s continuing the legacy, yes, but is the meaning lost?
That’s up to us to decide. However, I don’t find it particularly hopeful that even our search for a higher power must be coated in irony.
She may be practicing what she’s preaching, but she isn’t really providing anything content-wise that couldn’t be found in a “Call Her Daddy” episode.
Is it that we’re defined as a generation by our lowest common denominator, or is it something much darker?
I can confidently say I came away from her sermon no more pious, but far more motivated to spread the gospel of sincerity.