Teen Maniacs? Or Teen Victims?
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)
New York, NY – February 8, 2008. “Battle Cry For Our Generation” is a campaign of a Texas based parachurch organization known as Teen Mania Ministries, headed by founder Ron Luce. Backers include Pat Robertson and other prominent leaders of the Christian Right, many of whom subscribe to “dominionist” (theocratic) beliefs. The core precept of dominionists is that Christians must engage in political action to replace secular law with biblical law. In practice this would mean an extreme authoritarian state. {1} Battle Cry activists are working towards this goal and they brought their message to New York’s Times Square on Friday, February 9. They were met by counter-demonstrators from the World Can’t Wait, the Harlem Revolution Club and Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS).
Times Square’s “Military Island” Recruiting Center
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)
The Times Square action was not the first Teen Mania event to inspire controversy or counter-demonstrations. Battle Cry staged a protest on the steps of San Francisco’s City Hall in March 2006 because the steps were “the very city hall steps where several months ago ‘gay marriages’ were celebrated.” {2} According to the San Francisco Chronicle’s Joe Garifoli the March 2006 protest earned Teen Mania an official city condemnation. Garifoli reports that local protesters characterized the event as a “fascist mega-pep rally”. {3}
View Photos/Videos From The Teen Mania Event In Times Square…
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In May of 2006, Battle Cry held a rally in Philadelphia’s Wachovia Stadium which opened with a letter from President George Bush being read to the crowd by a young adherent. Following a reading of the letter, a minister led the 17,000 youths in attendance to pray to god, “Thank you for giving us George Bush.” {4}
Teen Mania Erupts – On Cue
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)
Teen Mania’s “Battle Cry” campaign is designed to recruit young “warriors for god” and is apparently being assisted in this effort by some members of the U.S. military. In the rally in Philly, Navy Seals, brandishing automatic weapons, participated in the event. {5} In New York City, Teen Mania organizers were allowed to use “Military Island” (the recruiting center) in Times Square for their Battle Cry rally. In fact, the recruiting center remained open during the event perhaps in hopes that some members of the audience would be raptured out of the throng and into the Army. A number of youth in the rally were issued colorful signs with a variety of approved messages and some clutched small boxes containing “Battle Cry” dog tags. For those true believers unable to make the New York rally the Battle Cry website has an online store offering olive drab beanies, camouflage covered “Rise Up” manuals offering “basic training for warriors” and a “Follower Of Christ” patch – with an Army star in the center.
Teen Mania in its rally mode is aptly named – it is Beatlemania for Christian fanatics. It is complete with young people screaming in a frenzied manner, which, albeit affected, is definitely loud enough to drown out any dissident voices. Organizers of the New York City rally crammed a number of well scrubbed, energetic youth into protest pens in Times Square’s Military Island. As media walked by the teens erupted in full Beatlemaniac mode. Meanwhile, across Broadway a group of atheists held a counter-demonstration. In sharp contrast to the glitzy, noisy graphics of the Teen warriors, the atheists had a simple, subdued presentation of their message: a block long white placard which stated in large black letters: ‘Away With All Gods’.
Away With All Gods – Atheist Counter-Demonstrators
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)
Protester Will Reese explained why he was involved in the counter demonstration: “The Harlem Revolution Club came to Time Square to oppose what Battle Cry and black minister TD Jakes are doing. Battle Cry is building a youth component to a fascistic Christian fundamentalist movement that’s out to establish a theocracy. And, Jakes’ appearance at the event is about trying to draw Black and Latino youth into this thing. People need to know this. At the same time, the people who catch the most hell from this system need to stop believing in shit that doesn’t exist, and God does not exist, and be a part of making a revolution and changing the world. Oppressed people who can not or will not confront reality as it actually is – are condemned to staying oppressed. That’s what is being fought out in this Battle Cry event. And that’s why we were there.”
Carl Dix Gave An Eloquent Soapbox Speech Against Theocracy
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)
“There are very foul and reactionary things that these folks want to bring forward…they want to impose as the law of the land. They are promising that they are going to bring a big time Black preacher, T.D. Jakes, to town to speak to this crowd. What they’re trying to do is to rope some Black people into this and we gotta look at that: what they’re doing is they’re trying to use religion, on the one hand, to bring forward fascist stormtroopers while at the same time they’re trying to chain down the oppressed…” – Carl Dix, protester
The rally and counter-demonstration produced no arrests and no incidents but there were some heated exchanges. Part of the Battle Cry war on popular culture, termed a ‘blitzkrieg’ by Ron Luce, {6} is directed against ‘virtue terrorism’ and ‘sexualized popular culture’ which includes an effort to ‘recreate’ New York and other cities – in a biblical image. This desire to tell New Yorkers what to believe and how to behave did not go over well with the counter-demonstraters and it prompted one protester to yell: “Get out of New York City!” {7} The Re-Creationism of Luce and Teen Mania appears multi-faceted: Teen Mania, a derivation of Beatlemania – or perhaps its synthesis with the Nuremburg style mass rally; the stated goal of re-creating metropolitan centers of tolerance and diversity as biblical theocracies, and; the appropriation or cooptation of revolutionary symbols – a tactic that worked very well for National Socialists (Nazis) in Germany’s Weimar Republic.
“The Heartbeat of BattleCry: To see an entire generation of 33 million teenagers being discipled by the local church into life-long followers of Christ.” – battlecry.com
Cooptation Of Revolutionary Symbols: Battle Cry’s Red Flag
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)
The conscious cooptation of revolutionary symbols, an approach pioneered by Germany’s National Socialist Party (Nazis) in the 1930s, is evident in the majority of Teen Mania literature and merchandise: “I will not stay silent” t-shirts are sold online – the phrase “We Will Not Be Silent” was a slogan of the White Rose – a student group executed for leafleting against Hitler. The red flag, usually associated with Communist organizations, is everywhere: on t-shirts, banners, posters and books. For $30 you can get the “Revolution YM” book (YM = “Youth Ministry”) at the Battle Cry online store. This volume, complete with an abstract red banner on the cover, appears to be a self conscious appropriation of the name and symbolism of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM), the SDS faction that became Weatherman – a grouping known for its revolutionary militancy. All of the slick packaging and appropriation of symbols known to resonate with youth is calculated for maximum impact by the architects of a cynical marketing strategy that seeks to wrap some old, largely discredited ideas, in acceptable, glitzy, “modern” garb. This begs the question: are the youth recruited in this manner the personification of Teen Mania? Or are they Teen Victims?
In “The Battle Cry of G.I. Jesus”, Debra Schaffer Hubert notes that: “With the packaging of Christianity into the Pop youth culture of feel good rock concerts, they are selling redemption, during and after life, to the impressionable, sexually developing and questioning, fearful youth of our times. This coalition of emotionally crippled Christians creates ‘Teen Mania’ to redirect the natural sexual development of the youth to a militaristic style movement.” {8}
True Believers And Heretics – Exchanging Views
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)
The atheist protesters in Times Square were able to engage with the Christians when several of the Teen Maniac faithful crossed the street to speak with their opposite numbers. Exchanges were sometimes sharp but most were almost colleagial – it was not uncommon to see protesters from both camps hunched over a bible, citing passages to make their case. Many of the teens appeared genuinely surprised to find that the non-believers did not have horns and indeed had some interesting observations to offer. Atheist protesters were also occasionally surprised.
Todd Eaton, a counter-demonstrator at the Teen Mania event, told NLN that:
“I was expecting the usual formulaic Christian hate-wrapped-in-compassionspeak from some ‘saved’ zombie for hire. What I was not prepared for was what Battle Cry actually sent over to talk to the atheists’ counter-demonstration. A doey-eyed nineteen year old former drug user…who asked with painful and disarming sincerity, ‘Excuse me, sir? What’s a fascist?’”
NLN intern Nathaniel Good contributed to this article.
NOTES
{1} The most prominent formulation of “Dominion Theology” is Christian Reconstructionism. Christian Reconstructionists use the word dominionism to refer to their belief that civil government should be controlled by Christians alone. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominionism
{2} “Battle Cry For Theocracy”, Sunsara Taylor (CounterPunch)
http://www.counterpunch.org/taylor05112006.html
{3} “Christian youth rally in S.F.”, San Francisco Chronicle, March 25, 2006
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/25/BATTLE.TMP
{4} Fear and Loathing at Philadelphia’s BattleCry, Sunsara Taylor, TruthDig
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060513_battlecry_philadelphia/
{5} ibid.
{6} ibid. (The use of the term ‘blitzkrieg’ by Ron Luce, as reported by Sunsara Taylor in TruthDig, produced a minor controversy. Apologists for Battle Cry stated that even Wikipedia notes that the term is often used in non-military contexts. Nonetheless, it was coined by the Nazis and is associated with their brand of warfare. Further, use of militaristic symbolism and rhetoric abounds in Battle Cry. The term Battle Cry itself is an interesting choice as the white supremacist metal band of the same name predates the Teen Mania campaign. Did Luce know this when he chose the name?)
{7} For more on the Recreate ’08 campaign see www.recreate08.com
{8} The Battle Cry of G.I. Jesus, Debra Schaffer Hubert (CounterPunch)
http://www.counterpunch.org/hubert05152006.html
