The Battle Cry Campaign was an organizing initiative [1] of a now-defunct Christian parachurch organization known as Teen Mania Ministries. This initiative, started in 2005 and headed by Teen Mania founder Ron Luce, had an evangelical Christian orientation; it primarily sought to influence American and Canadian social and political culture. Major backers included prominent evangelical leaders Joyce Meyer, Chuck Colson, Pat Robertson, Josh McDowell, and Jack Hayford.
The basic purpose of the Battle Cry Campaign, as described in its promotional materials and events, was to ensure that Christianity survived in America by redefining society: [2]
The urgency of this "Wake Up Call" was based on the assertion that then-current trends among teenagers would result in an inevitable decline in the number of "Bible-based believers:"
The fundamental goal of the campaign was the recruitment of 100,000 churches to implement a multifaceted campaign to promote youth commitment and involvement in church programs.
Other notable aspects of the Battle Cry Campaign involved other church and political leaders as "BattleCry Partners," the then-existing arena events and other programs offered by Teen Mania Ministries, the battlecry.com website, and a "legislative strategy engaging lawmakers to protect our teens." [8]
The Battle Cry Campaign maintained that "for the first time ever," "sexualized culture," "point and click pornography," and young people being "saturated with media influence" spelled doom for Christianity in America. [5] It also cited gay marriage and other "culture war" issues as matters of current and future concern:
The campaign focused on corporations and media outlets for targeting young people with advertising and programming depicting content often labeled objectionable by evangelical leaders:
When interviewed at a Battle Cry event in 2007, Ron Luce condemned "purveyors of popular culture" as "the enemy," who according to Luce are "terrorists, virtue terrorists, that are destroying our kids... they're raping virgin teenage America on the sidewalk, and everybody's walking by and acting like everything's OK. And it's just not OK." [13] Battle Cry materials contain charges that a "sexualized culture" is the product of "media people" who are the "virtue terrorists" responsible for sexual content, naming examples such as "MTV, VH1, Desperate Housewives , and movies like Broken Back Mountain [ sic ]." [14]
Other encouraged tenets included submission to certain kinds of authority:
Extending from Biblical analogies and characters used as role models, the campaign used narratives, metaphor and scripted staged presentations including images of weapons, pervasive use of a red pennant, and terms from a war lexicon such as God's Army, enemy and battle. It used current and former members of the U.S. armed forces prominently in the Battle Cry stadium events, encouraging young people to become "the warriors in this battle." [17] In "Battle Cry for a Generation," a book released at the start of the campaign, Ron Luce wrote, "This is war. And Jesus invites us to get into the action, telling us that the violent — the 'forceful' ones — will lay hold of the kingdom." [18] At a Cleveland Acquire the Fire event, he said, "The devil hates us, and we gotta be ready to fight and not be these passive little lukewarm, namby-pamby, kum-ba-yah, thumb-sucking babies that call themselves Christians. Jesus? He got mad! ... I want an attacking church!" [19]
Biblical passages reflecting this militarism that were often referenced in Battle Cry and Acquire the Fire events and promotional gatherings during the first year of the campaign included the following:
Some critics maintained that the statistics used by Teen Mania to support its cause were suspect and exaggerated. Rick Lawrence, who for the previous 18 years had edited Group Magazine, a publication for youth pastors, coined the label "4 percent panic attack" as the title of an editorial in his magazine in which he outright calls this statistic a "lie:"
This masquerading stat/lie goes something like this: "The percentage of young people who are Bible-believing Christians is steadily decreasing, and right now has dropped to a rock-bottom 4 percent." The 4 Percent Warning has entered unopposed into the church's vocabulary of accepted fact. But every time I hear it I cringe because it's so ridiculously over the top. [50]
Lawrence went on to point out that the "4 percent" statistic originated in a 2003 report by Christian statistician George Barna, which is based on a very narrow definition of what defines an "evangelical" or "Bible-believing Christian." A Barna press release issued in December 2003 announced a study that "showed only 4% of adults have a biblical worldview as the basis of their decision-making." [51] Lawrence took issue with Barna's attempt to measure the number of teens who apply "biblical principles" to "every decision" they make:
I teach an adult Sunday school class, and my guess is that half of the people in my class are still struggling to understand the Bible well enough to apply its wisdom to "every decision" they make. The point is that some of these "Bible-believing" standards are ridiculous when you consider how they're applied to kids. [50]
Christian Smith, a professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame and a specialist in the study of American evangelicals, said he was skeptical of the "4 percent" statistic and that that figure was inconsistent with research he had conducted and reviewed. [31]
Two weeks before the first Battle Cry stadium event in San Francisco, Teen Mania announced a pre-event rally to be held on the steps of City Hall on March 24, 2006. In the cover letter, signed by Ron Luce and sent to registered participants in the stadium event, the significance of City Hall as the location where gay marriages had been held two years before was explicitly pointed out:
Please prayerfully consider coming early and gathering for this pre-event Battlecry Rally at San Francisco’s City Hall and have your teens participate as we pray for the northwest region, our nation, and this generation (These are the very city hall steps where several months ago gay marriages were celebrated for the entire world to see). [52]
City Hall is significant to many San Francisco residents for a different reason: it was where the city's first openly gay supervisor, Harvey Milk, and Mayor George Moscone, were assassinated in 1978. [53] Ron Luce has said that, at the time of the rally, he was unaware of the historic and social relevance of the City Hall site. [54]
Local activists organized a counter-demonstration of about 50 people to greet the Battle Cry participants. State Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, addressed the counter-demonstrators, saying that while such "fundamentalists" may be small in number, "they're loud, they're obnoxious, they're disgusting, and they should get out of San Francisco." [55] Teen Mania later prominently quoted Leno as part of a postcard sent to San Francisco churches to promote the 2007 Battle Cry stadium event. [56]
Earlier that week, the city's Board of Supervisors had passed a resolution "condemning upcoming rally to be held by anti-abortion groups in front of City Hall." The resolution called the rally an "act of provocation when a right-wing Christian fundamentalist group brings their anti-gay and anti-choice agenda of intolerance to the steps of San Francisco's City Hall" and that the presence of Battle Cry participants at City Hall "should be taken by no one as an official or semi-official sanctioning of their rally nor of their message by the elected officials of San Francisco." [57]
This resolution was then cited by various commentators, including Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly [58] and the city's leading newspaper, [59] as evidence that the city itself was being intolerant of Christians or was attempting to silence the Battle Cry participants. Elizabeth Creely, a San Francisco activist with the Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights, explained the purpose of the resolution this way:
...no one in city government made any attempt to silence anyone. The resolution was simply the progressive community's proverbial two cents thrown into a debate Battle Cry started when the group assembled on City Hall's steps. [60]
Noise complaints from nearby residents received by the city due to the early Saturday morning start time became an issue during the preparations for the return of the Battle Cry event to AT&T Park in March 2007. [61] According to the minutes of the city Entertainment Commission hearing regarding Teen Mania's application for a required loudspeaker permit, the director of event production for AT&T Park had advised Teen Mania in advance that noise had been an issue and "advised them to start any musical component after 10:00 A.M. due to complaints last year." [62] The Commission approved the permit with the stipulation that amplified music not be used before 10:00 A.M. on Saturday. In a notice sent to Battle Cry participants, Teen Mania described this action as a "last minute noise ordinance" imposed by the city's Board of Supervisors, and while the notice began by saying "we want to respect and honor our lawmakers" it offered a sample letter to be sent to the Board that included the following:
The spiteful action of the Board [of Supervisors] is in reality a subtle jab at one of the core values of our nation... the action of the Board will be remembered as an ineffective act of intimidation one step removed from prohibiting our Constitutional right to free speech. [63]
The event began Saturday morning as originally scheduled, without amplified music, through the use of radios throughout the crowd tuned to a broadcast of the event on a local Christian radio station. [61]
The Hamilton, Ontario "Acquire the Fire" event in October 2006 prompted some commentary on Teen Mania's methods and message in the region's media. Toronto Star writer Jen Gerson began her account of the event this way:
They enter oblivious, hands outstretched, fat cheeks and watery eyes staring skyward to the Lord.
They are to leave warriors. Convinced by arguments crafted from statistics and fear, these children of God are told they are to be the salvation of a generation in decline, one beset by the perils of pop culture, advertising and corporate greed.
They absorb those lessons, squealing in delight whenever a speaker mentions the righteousness of Jesus.
Then they head to McDonald's. [64]
In an interview with a CBC Television reporter, Bob Shantz, former University of Toronto chaplain, commented on the militarism inherent in Teen Mania's programs:
To feed them military language makes it into a campaign, makes life into an aggressive campaign where evil must be overcome by good... I don't think there's enough trust placed in teenagers to be discerning and let them find their own authority without having an authority thrust upon them. [65]
In an interview with Bob Garfield on On the Media, Jeff Sharlet described a Battle Cry commercial in which replicated teens march off to war:
It is – and I use this word very advisedly – it is the aesthetic of fascism. Ron Luce isn't a fascist, but it is the aesthetic of fascism. And one of the strange things about Ron Luce is it's also the aesthetic of Stalinism, that these red flags that they wave - and you're not a member of this movement – you're a trench mate. It is designed to draw very stark lines and to dehumanize those who are on the other side. [66]
Mark Cox, a pastor at Bethel Christian Church in the Mission District of San Francisco, told a San Francisco Chronicle reporter that he attended one "Acquire the Fire" event and would never return, commenting:
BattleCry has a lot of hype with not much substance to it... It [the Acquire the Fire event] left a bad taste in my mouth. My main concern is the effect it has on teenagers. They mistake adrenaline for the Holy Spirit... They're looking for an emotional high rather than a faith that will endure through hard times, not just on the mountaintop. [67]
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