Brother Jed

Brother Jed left Columbia for Indiana in 2013. His family was documented for a pilot TV series while preaching in Indiana.

Smock's character was the basis of the 2012 short, Battle of the Sects, in which an extreme evangelical preacher visits a university only to be run out by the campus Christians.

Smock formed Campus Ministry USA, a para-church organization, in 1984. In 2004, the group moved its operations from Newark, Ohio to Columbia, Missouri, where he often preached at the University of Missouri on Speakers Circle.

Brother Jed's self-described lifestyle of "drunkenness, dissipation, and debauchery" began while he was a freshman in high school. Older friends exposed him to alcohol, which became a regular part of his life. Smock began attending Indiana State University in 1960, studying social studies and English. By his second year, he had established himself as the heaviest drinker in the fraternity. Smock states in his autobiography that, despite his lifestyle, he graduated near the top of his class.

George Edward "Jed" Smock, Jr. (January 4, 1943 – June 6, 2022), better known as Brother Jed, was an American evangelist whose open-air preaching ministry was concentrated on college campuses. He preached at major universities in all 50 US states and other countries. As an itinerant preacher, he usually spent only a few days on each campus, visiting the northern campuses in the fall and spring and the southern campuses in the winter. In 2004, he relocated to Columbia, Missouri, where he often preached at the University of Missouri and other colleges throughout the Midwest. In the summer of 2013, he relocated his ministry and residence to his hometown of Terre Haute, Indiana.