Duffey Strode

Ryan Duffey Strode (born May 25, 1977) is an American former street preacher who, as a 10-year-old child, became the subject of nationwide controversy in the 1980s for his idiosyncratic style of preaching. Strode's sermons were characterized by bellowing rote-learned excerpts from the Bible, in particular those pertaining to Hell and sin.

Life Duffey Strode was raised by David and Robin Strode in the mountains of North Carolina with his younger sister, Pepper, and brother, Matthew. David Strode had been arrested several times for his own street preaching; he and Robin were homophobic and anti-Catholic in their beliefs. The children's idiosyncratic style of preaching consisted of shouting biblical passages concerning Christian views of Hell and sin at their classmates. Strode's parents agreed to keep their children away from the school and educate the three themselves. He began dating Kim Ellington, a girl who attended New Manna Baptist Church, the Marion, North Carolina, megachurch that had previously thrown the Strode family out. He left home in June 1997 to live with a punk rocker friend and the Strode family would not speak to him for 10 months. In November 1997, Duffey and Ellington, then aged 20 and 19 years, respectively, were married at the Marion Community Center, where the Strode family had once faced hundreds of angry townspeople at a filming of The Sally Jessy Raphael Show. David, Robin, Pepper, and Matthew Strode did not attend the wedding.