BattleCry and Teenage Brainwashing

[Ibby]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...age_holy_war/1

This is how you enlist in the Army of God: First come the fireworks and the prayers, and then 4,000 kids scream, "We won't be silent anymore!" Then the kids drop to their knees, still but for the weeping and regrets of fifteen-year-olds. The lights in the Cleveland arena fade to blue, and a man on the stage whispers to them about sin and love and the Father-God. They rise, heartened; the crowd, en masse, swears off "harlots and adultery"; the twenty-one-year-old MC twitches taut a chain across the ass of her skintight red jeans and summons the followers to show off their best dance moves for God. "Gimme what you got!" she shouts. They dance -- hip-hop, tap, toe and pelvic thrusting. Then they're ready. They're about to accept "the mark of a warrior," explains Ron Luce, commander in chief of BattleCry, the most furious youth crusade since young sinners in the hands of an angry God flogged themselves with shame in eighteenth-century New England. Nearly three centuries later, these 4,000 teens are about to become "branded by God." It's like getting your head shaved when you join the Marines, Luce says, only the kids get to keep their hair. His assistants roll out a cowhide draped over a sawhorse, and Luce presses red-hot iron into the dead flesh, projecting a close-up of sizzling cow skin on giant movie screens above the stage.

"When you enlist in the military, there's a code of honor," Luce preaches, "same as being a follower of Christ." His Christian code requires a "wartime mentality": a "survival orientation" and a readiness to face "real enemies." The queers and communists, feminists and Muslims, to be sure, but also the entire American cultural apparatus of marketing and merchandising, the "techno-terrorists" of mass media, doing to the morality of a generation what Osama bin Laden did to the Twin Towers. "Just as the events of September 11th, 2001, permanently changed our perspective on the world," Luce writes, "so we ought to be awakened to the alarming influence of today's culture terrorists. They are wealthy, they are smart, and they are real."

Luce is forty-five, his brown hair floppy, his lips pouty. On the screens above the stage, his green eyes blink furiously. "The devil hates us," he exhorts, "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!" Luce considers most evangelicals too soft, too ready to pass off as piety their preference for a bland suburban lifestyle. He hates what he sees as the weakness of "accepting" Christ, of "trusting" the Lord. "I want an attacking church!" he shouts, his normally smooth tones raw and desperate and alarming. He isn't just looking for followers -- he wants "stalkers" who'll bring a criminal passion to their pursuit of godliness.

Cue Christian metal on the mammoth screens flanking the stage: "Frontline," a music video produced at Luce's Honor Academy in east Texas for the band Pillar. It opens with a broken guitar magically reassembling itself, a redemptive reversal of four decades of rock & roll nihilism. Then comes the gospel: "Everybody with your fist raised high/Let me hear your battle cry!"

And thats all before the article REALLY gets going.


This is just sick, what this asshole is doing. Sick and downright scary.

[Beestie]

Great. Just great.

I remember my Western Civilization teacher - a very bright Asian - made a point that stuck with me all these years. He made the point that Christianity was able to gain a foothold and spread so fast in the acient world because, in his words, it was a religion of poverty and suffering and therefore appealed to the poor and the suffering.

Now, it would appear, that it has gained a foothold and spreading so fast in the modern world because it is a religion of angst. Think about it. All that teen angst we've been hearing about since the dawn of the 1990s starting with the so-called Gen X has now been given purpose and focus.

Someone has finally come along and figured out how to take all that directionless and, therefore, self-cancelling (up to this point anyway) destructive energy that defies diagnosis and treatment since it has long since become disconnected from its source and give it life, purpose and meaning.

Normally, teen angst just gives way to the demands of living a peer-approved life in a modern world - school, money, sex, cars, work, sex and beer. And sex.

But what was once a self-extinguishing rumbling that would just get crowded out by hedonistic pursuits is now being imbibed with attributes of much deeper concern: self-awareness, purpose, conviction and not just the will to survive but a desire to propogate and extinguish its opposite.

Not good this is.

Really, tho there's nothing to worry about. Yes, its an awful lot of energy but as long as there isn't one person who has enough control over it to decide where or upon what to direct it then its not a concern.

I wonder what the guy meant by "Father-God"? Can't say I've heard that term used before but it does seem vaguely familiar...

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Beestie

I wonder what the guy meant by "Father-God"? Can't say I've heard that term used before but it does seem vaguely familiar...

It seems like there is a growing movement in "Christianity" to distance themselves from the nurturing, feminine side of God, It makes sense that folks raised to submit to authority would seek out authority in a scarey (to them) free society. Biologically we want survival, reproduction, and a general sense of well-being, this nut gives them all of those things.

[Sheldonrs]

Is it just me or does this sound a lot like the recruiting methods of the KKK and the Nazi party?

[Clodfobble]

The problem with harnessing the power of disaffected youths is that in the span of just a few years they will completely change who they are and what they believe, probably more than once, and you'll have to keep infusing fresh, younger angst just to keep things going.

"It's just a phase."

[Beestie]

Originally Posted by Sheldonrs

Is it just me or does this sound a lot like the recruiting methods of the KKK and the Nazi party?

Ding, ding, ding. That is what Iwas alluding to with the "father-God/Fatherland" question.

[Griff]

Hitler did well keeping recruits because the economy tanked. Let's root for full employment.

[cashc]

It seems like there is a growing movement in "Christianity" to distance themselves from the nurturing, feminine side of God

First of all, don't make broad generalizations because of what a few televangelists and fundamentalist Christians are shouting. As a Christian myself I would say this is the FARTHEST thing from the message of Jesus. This is old-testament fire and brimstone bullcrap.

Secondly, it seems strange to me that you refer to God's feminine side. As far as I'm concerned God never spoke of God's gender. Sounds like some Da'Vinci nonsense to me.

This guy is taking advantage of kids and needs to be stopped.

Immediately.

[Griff]

That's why I put Christanity in quotes. It isn't Christian or at least a form I recognize. I'm a Catholic, my God is all encompassing. We were made in his image, all of us male and female alike. I was speaking of attributes, loving creator etc..., of God not actual gender. These guys are focused on the God who drowned Pharoh's charioteers, a defender or destroyer. They ignore the bigger picture. I didn't say the muscular Christ movement was a major part of the faith, but it exists and we ignore this stuff at our own peril.

[BigV]

Having already firmly established my brown nosing sycophantic minion-ocity, I am unafraid to say that Griff is right, *again*. And I am relieved and encouraged to hear discussions about Christian values presented in a moderate voice. I'm not deef, m'kay? I'm not stupid. The shouting and the jumbo-tron, they're distractions. Make your point and let it stand. I'm more interested in the man behind the curtain, than the image on the screen.

[cashc]

I'm just sick of fundamentalists distorting the principles of their respective faiths.

If I seemed combative I'm sorry.

This is perfect... I don't even have to say it.
The mask is off.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I don't find this guy nearly as scary as the fact that he has such a large and willing pool to recruit from. Kids that were raised on video games, the internet and TV as surrogate parents.

I'm not condemning the electronic world but the parents that abdicate the raising of their children to electronic world. I wonder how many parents know, where the kids at this event, are or what's happening there?

Oh, the kids went to some religious thing at the stadium, that should safe enough....bridge!

[tw]

If not complex enough, apparently, an evangelical Christian group is distributing 700,000 DVDs that disparaged Mormons. How can one 'moral' evangelical Christian organization attack another politically active Christian movement?

Replicated again, when a religion goes beyond a relationship between one and one's god, then satanism (in its many forms including religious wars, hate, pedophilia, torture to 'save' another from himself, etc) is possible and justified.

Why does the most religious western nation, with a leader clearly elected by the most religious, now advocate international kidnapping, "Pearl Harboring" of a sovereign nation, outright lying justified by the agenda, suspension of Constitutional rights, perversion of science, imprisonment without judicial review, and torture. This is what happens when religion is anything but a relationship between one and his god. Notice the more secular nations don’t kid off their kids in school – and decide to do nothing. Even torture is now becoming more acceptable – demonstrated by how a TV show called ‘24’ is brainwashing the young. This is what the most extremist religious advocate?

Religious extremists even swore on a bible to tell the truth in a PA Federal Court – and then outrightly lied. Now an evangelical group in NY distributes 700,000 DVDs to promote hate of Mormon? Just another reason why 'good' nations must keep politics and religion separate.

I don’t see religious people up in arms about how corrupt their peers really are. “A man who marries outside his religion inherits the devil for a father-in-law.” I did not see religious people rising up to condemn that religious leader for his statements of hate.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I did not see religious people rising up to condemn that religious leader for his statements of hate.

How would you suggest they do that without becoming what they are condemning?

And if their faith only concerns their God and themselves, why should they bother?