NEWS FEATURE: Christians Cruise the Road Less Traveled on Two Wheels

c. 2005 Religion News Service CHINO, Calif. _ Alex Saldate looks upset. As he walks over to his friends’ table, he says, “Any of you want to buy a bike?” He says his wife thinks he spends too much time on his motorcycle. “I’m giving it up,” he says. “But I’m not giving up Jesus!” […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

CHINO, Calif. _ Alex Saldate looks upset. As he walks over to his friends’ table, he says, “Any of you want to buy a bike?”

He says his wife thinks he spends too much time on his motorcycle.


“I’m giving it up,” he says. “But I’m not giving up Jesus!”

Saldate and seven other bikers are members of Bikers for Christ, a Christian motorcycle group that meets every Saturday morning at a Starbucks, filling the mall’s parking lot with shiny, loud bikes.

This is Bikers for Christ’s Ontario-Chino Valley chapter, one of 15 chapters in California. They have chapters in 40 states, as well as Afghanistan, Canada, Japan, the Netherlands and South Africa. The group was founded by Pastor Fred Zariczny of Marysville, Calif., 1990, and new chapters spring up each year.

Christian biker groups are a growing phenomenon in the United States. The largest such group, Christian Motorcycle Association, has more than 800 chapters. The association started in the mid-’70s, as did Christ’s Motorcycle Club of Los Angeles. Most such groups have grown through Web sites, e-mail newsletters and word of mouth at church services.

The eight members of the Ontario chapter of Bikers for Christ regularly attend the Saturday coffee and fellowship meetings. A ninth rider, Bob Belanger, comes to the fellowships and goes on rides but hasn’t formally joined, a process referred to in biker-speak as having “patched up.”

The idea of a motorcycle missionary may seem strange to outsiders, but nothing could be more natural to the members, who say motorcycles are a lifestyle choice that needn’t conflict with being Christian. Motorcycles must, however, remain subservient to one’s relationship with Christ.

“It gets in your blood, and it’s actually part of your life,” member Mike Brown says, referring to motorcycles. “I try to keep Jesus at the center of my life and incorporate everything that I do into him.”

Indeed, such groups have turned the biker paradigm on its head. They avoid the use of drugs and alcohol, something that clashes with the traditional view of outlaw bikers such as the Hell’s Angels, Satan’s Slaves and Mongols _ who are thought, at least in their early years, to have encouraged such behavior.

They dress the same as outlaw bikers, wearing bandannas, leather jackets, chaps and black sunglasses. But the skulls and pistols of the outlaw biker uniform are supplemented and sometimes replaced by crosses and slogans like “Hard Core Jesus Freak” and “Full Throttle for Jesus.”


Unlike the outlaw groups’ outfits, Bikers for Christ uniforms are less a means to scare people than to evangelize through curiosity.

“I was at a gas station last week,” says Brown, 49, who’s been riding with the group for two years, “and this guy was looking me over. He read my patches and asked me, `Are you a Christian?’ `Well, yes I am.”’

“We’re missionaries on motorcycles,” he says.

Bikers for Christ was founded as a Christian outreach group with the mandate “to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.”

But it tends to lead by example. Brown says he will hand out copies of the New Testament at stoplights from his bike, but the advice is almost always solicited.

Member Nelson Padilla says a lot of people ask him for advice because they know he’s a Christian, but he tends to have a live-and-let-live attitude toward non-Christians. If they have questions he’ll answer them, but he won’t offer unsolicited advice.

He has a gay colleague who asked him about his beliefs. Padilla recounts telling the man, “If you lived with a woman out of wedlock, I’d see it the same way. I think you’re a pretty cool dude, but sin is sin.”


The members take rides to Hell’s Kitchen, a famous Hell’s Angels hangout, to meet other bikers. One reason is to check out other people’s bikes, but the evangelical mission is always a part of it. The Hell’s Kitchen visits are another way to keep up their “rescue shop,” members say.

On the main points of Christian motorcycling _ evangelizing on the back of a bike, incorporating Jesus in all aspects of one’s life _ Bikers for Christ differs very little from other Christian biker groups.

There are, however, a few fundamental differences between the groups.

While each member has different reasons for joining BFC, they all seem to say that it was the group’s egalitarian nature that attracted them. Some biker groups won’t let bikers “patch up” unless they ride a Harley-Davidson.

Padilla estimated that 80 percent of his organization’s members ride Harleys, but the Ontario-Chino Valley chapter is more eclectic. Padilla and Saldate ride Harleys but Todd Sanders, Brown and Belanger ride Hondas. Javier Acosta and Rick Zolozabal ride Yamahas, Ron Helder rides an Indian Chief and Dan Ash rides an Independence Freedom.

The egalitarianism extends to the group’s leadership structure. Part of its mission, according to its Web site, is to eschew “lofty titles like president and treasurer.” The only title in each chapter is “elder” _ a person largely in charge of administrative duties such as applications, finances and spreading the word about upcoming rides. Padilla is the elder for the Ontario chapter.

The group’s national headquarters _ the “mother chapter” _ is in Oceanside, Calif., and it deals with the same administrative matters. Group founder Zariczny is the national and international elder and a member of the Oceanside Chapter.


Two weeks after he was about to sell his bike, Saldate is back. He still has his motorcycle. He, Padilla and Brown talk about a ride they’d taken into Los Angeles _ to see Billy Graham at the Rose Bowl.

KRE/PH END WELLNER

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