Remembering Holy Hubert: Raucous street evangelist roiled Berkeley campus

1
2062

By Mark Ellis —

(Facebook)

As a student at UC Berkeley in the early 1970s, I vividly remember a bold street evangelist known as Holy Hubert who preached a fiery message of repentance near the entrance to campus.

As a forerunner of the Jesus Movement beginning in the mid-1960s, Hubert T. “Holy Hubert” Lindsey, dared to confront the spiritual void of a generation that had been urged to tune-in, turn-on, and drop out.

With huge freckles dappling his perspiring forehead and a raspy shouted gospel message, he turned heads and invited vitriol. Frankly, as a student not following Jesus, I had a strange fascination with the man’s courage in the face of opposition, but I kept a wary distance.

An ordained Southern Baptist minister, Hubert preached about sin, repentance, revival—and the sufficiency of Christ’s grace—in a climate dominated by anti-war chants, campus protests, and cultural upheaval. As he hollered scripture through a bullhorn, he became a notable presence in the place where the Free Speech Movement was born.

(Facebook)

Born in Nelson, Georgia, May 21, 1914, he never fit the mold of a shy farm boy. Even from a young age, he spoke with a conviction that made heads turn. Converted in a local revival meeting a few days before Christmas when he was 15, he sensed God’s call to preach—even if that meant standing barefoot on the sidewalk.

By the mid‑1960s, Hubert was drawn to Berkeley, the epicenter of societal change and student activism. “There’s a deep hunger here,” he often said. “But they’re eating the wrong bread.” Armed with scripture and a small portable amplifier, he set up shop at Sproul Plaza, near the entrance to the school.

He was met with scorn, jeers, and even physical violence. In 1965, he was reportedly struck unconscious, suffering temporary blindness from repeated blows. Yet, within hours, he was back on his feet—the bullhorn in hand, scripture on his tongue.

The Apostle Paul faced similar opposition and treatment:

But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead. But when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city, and on the next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe. (Acts 14:19–20)

“They can bruise the body,” he told a local reporter after the incident, “but the soul is under the shepherd’s care.” His wounds—both physical and spiritual—helped establish his reputation as a man unwilling to back down.

(Facebook)

Some historians credit Hubert as a precursor of the Jesus Movement, which swept through California and other parts of the world in the late 1960s and ‘70s.

One witness recalled years later: “Hubert yelled like fire—but he shook me awake. He made me start asking the big questions.” Wherever debates raged on war or free speech, Lindsey countered with questions of repentance and resurrection, citing Christ—for him, the only real solution to man’s deepest needs.

Some might describe his confrontational approach as unorthodox, but he was no more truculent than John the Baptist. He carried a battered Bible in one hand, a microphone in the other, and a folder of gospel tracts in his coat pocket. He’d rouse crowds with lines like:

“If Berkeley won’t heal the nation, the cross will!”

When students cried “Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! That war in Vietnam has got to go!” Hubert thundered back: “Yes, the war must end—but unless you find peace with God, you will go!”

His signature line was “Bless your dirty heart,” a phrase which he used as the title of a 1973 autobiography. He claimed to have converted thousands of Berkeley students to Christianity by the mid 1970s.

In a 1972 letter home, he wrote:

“I stand in a hurricane of philosophies—at every turn they’re yelling ‘peace, love, revolt.’ But the quiet voice that changes hearts comes from above, not around. If I’m the only one speaking Truth—Lord, let it come through this cracked voice.”

His rose above the political ferment of the day, looking for deeper change—soul change. “Hubert’s faith and politics were largely traditional,” according to Tom Dalzell. “He railed against homosexuality and was particularly scornful of Cesar Chavez and the grape strike in Delano. Although he opposed the war in Vietnam, Lindsey (Hubert) did not support demonstrations against the war, but instead urged individual spiritual revolutions.”

In 1977 Hubert told the press that he was on the death list of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), the kidnappers of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst. I was a freshman at Berkeley when she was kidnapped, and the far left in the Bay Area was probably one of the few places in the country where the SLA had popular support.

Students remember outbursts of anger by Hubert, but also moments of tenderness: “He’d drop to his knees, tears in his eyes, begging people to turn,” said one respondent in a later oral history.

Some Berkeley students viewed him as a nuisance, others as a rough-edged Pied Piper. For every person who viewed him as a pest, perhaps a few had their hearts softened by the Word and the Spirit. He dodged disciplinary notices (the university wouldn’t ban him outright) and weathered inquiries from the police. But in interviews he remained unfailingly pointed and winsome: “I’m not here to argue,” he’d say, “I’m here to love.”

His unshakable certainty in the gospel stood in stark contrast to the era’s new morality, which amounted to a deconstruction of the timeless truths of Scripture. Lost in moral relativity, sadly, many Berkeley students and their professors never found the Truth.

Off campus, Hubert lived simply—bunking in a shared ministry house, subsisting on donations, and visiting a local church in El Cerrito. Church leaders described him as “gruff voiced yet tenderhearted.” He avoided the limelight, deriding media spectacles: “What I do is kill the messenger, but the Message still lives.”

By the early 1980s, the campus counterculture receded, and protest movements waned. Hubert stepped back. Archival photos show him well into his 50s, preaching without fanfare to smaller audiences. In the mid‑1990s, he retired as a street evangelist, returning to his roots in the Midwest.

Hubert passed into the arms of his Savior March 30, 2003 (aged 88) in North Carolina.

He fought the good fight, he finished the race, he kept the faith. (2 Timothy 4:7)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 COMMENT

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here