"Jesus freaks" spread the word at music festival

By Claudia Parsons

MOUNT UNION, Penn (Reuters) - Dozens of young people at Creation, a Christian music festival in Pennsylvania, wore green T-shirts with the slogan "Young Single Available."

They weren't looking for a date. They were proclaiming their willingness to spend a year as a missionary in Asia.

Many of the 70,000 people at the Creation Festival at the end of June were not shy about advertising their beliefs on their clothing or, in some cases, their skin.

They wore T-shirts with slogans like "Total Jesus freak," "Poop on Satan" (over a picture of a toilet) and "Caution: Unsocialized home schooler."

Several merchandizing tents did a thriving business in everything from a diet book based on the Bible to prints by artist Stephen Sawyer, who paints Jesus as a bronzed, muscular hunk with flowing hair resembling the model Fabio.

One in four Americans count themselves as evangelical Protestants, a growing movement with serious clout in a country where religion and politics often mix.

Abortion was a common theme. Among the options: "Help cure abortion," "Love lets live," "Abortion: America's hidden holocaust" and a baby suit proclaiming "Former Embryo."

Appropriately for a festival named Creation, another recurring theme was Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which most evangelicals dismiss as contrary to the Bible's teaching that God created the world and everything in it.