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The Water Cooler Title: Rand Paul's College Group Mocked Christians Rand Paul's Kentucky Senate campaign drew a round of startled media attention this summer, after GQ reported that he'd played hair-raising pranks as an undergraduate at Baylor University in the early 1980s. Issues of the newsletter published by Paul's secret society, the NoZe Brotherhood, during his time at Baylor reveal a more specific political problem for the Kentucky Republican: The group's work often had a specifically anti-Christian tone, as it made fun of the Baptist college's faith-based orientation. Paul, the son of Texas Rep. Ron Paul, beat back charges in the Republican primary that his libertarian views put him outside the GOP mainstream. A practicing Christian, he has backed away from some of his father's more radical views on cutting government programs and withdrawing the American military from conflicts abroad. But Paul's Democratic rival, Jack Conway, has sought repeatedly to cast Paul as out of sync with "Kentucky values," and the NoZe newsletter may provide more fodder. The NoZe Brotherhood, as the group was called, was formally banned by Baylor two years before Paul arrived on the grounds of "sacrilege," the university president said at the time. "They had 'made fun of not only the Baptist religion, but Christianity and Christ,' " President Herbert Reynolds told the student newspaper, The Lariat. The group hardly denied the charge. One "brother" told a reporter from the Lariat during Paul's sophomore year that the group was raising awareness of an abundance of both "hot air" and "dangerous and even toxic levels of Christian atmosphere on campus." A fellow NoZe brother, William John Green, said he couldn't recall whether Paul made specific contributions to the group's newsletter, The Rope — which he called a "collective effort." But he said Paul would have been involved in its production and familiar with its stance toward religion, including "a strong subversive anti-Christian strain." "Randy smoked pot, he made fun of Baptists, none of us ever heard him pontificating about religion," said Green. "Fundamentalists didn't join our group." Paul's spokesman, Jesse Benton, responded to the report by assailing Paul's Democratic foe. "So now the Democrats are shopping stories about 30-year-old college articles that aren't even attributed to Rand? They must see how badly Jack Conway's liberal agenda of Obamacare, Government bailouts and tax hikes are playing in Kentucky and are getting truly desperate." The newsletters were retrieved from the Baylor University Library by Democrats opposing Paul. In response to the initial GQ report, he dismissed "National Enquirer-type stories about [Paul's] teenage years," while Paul denied the most extreme interpretation: That he'd "kidnapped" a fellow classmate, attempted to make her smoke marijuana, and then forced her to "worship" a god called the "Aqua Buddha." The undisclosed fellow student also later told a reporter that she'd gone along with the prank. The NoZe Brotherhood was founded in 1926, according to an account in Baylor's magazine, a social club for smart, irreverent young men at the Baptist school whose irreverence may naturally have targeted the religious university authorities. As for the newsletter, "In the 1970s, its format and content changed, carrying more topical and controversial, stories," according to another Baylor Magazine account, to which a university spokeswoman referred POLITICO. That official history avoids detailing the group's irreligious tendencies, but they were front and center in Paul's time, and the newsletters offer the context for the strange, high-profile campaign flap. At a Christian school, the group focused explicitly and repeatedly on religious targets; the Aqua Buddha was just one jab in that direction. One typical article, headed "Fishy Bibles," revealed that one Clement Updike, 83, of Victor, Calif., was in fact that author of the bible. "I wrote the thing as a lark," Updike says. "I had just read Faulkner's "Intruder in the Dust" where I found the moniker Joe Christmas. I liked the name,but I'm no plagiarist. So, I took part of it and added the name of a friend, Mr. Jesus Gonzales ... For years I ignored the argument between evolution and creationism until I realized this creationism stuff was from my book." "I guess it's time I cleared this up. I don't know what all the fuss is about; I mean I'm no Tolkien," the scribe concludes. The group made particular targets of the conservative religious leaders of the era. One NoZe article titled "Rapture!!! Still Here?", reported that Jerry Falwell, Anita Bryant and other leaders had missed out on salvation. One parody was titled: "I was a teenage savior." "My new father is so stupid, he doesn't have the foggiest idea that Mom's been seeing the Holy Spirit behind his back," the authors wrote. By 1983, Paul was being featured, a giant false nose on his face, on the cover of "The Rope." He left Baylor the next year for medical school, though he didn't graduate. "I don't remember him participating much in writing," Green said. "It's too bad. He was funny enough."
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