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May 12, 2006
Should We Fear the Teen Mania Battle Cry?
Sunsara Taylor is calling attention to a growing movement within fundamentalist Christianity that is sounding pretty frightening, taking the "Onward Christian Soldiers" theme to new heights with the new "Battle Cry" effort by Ron Luce.
My first inclination is to believe that it is paranoid to worry about violence growing out of this movement. I grew up with Christian battle talk, and it was always about battling evil in your own heart, battling for people's minds and hearts, etc. And if you go to the Teen Mania website, you find pretty innocuous material there (I even joined so I could look at members only sections). The worst thing I could find was advice to teachers on how to get Christian books into their school libraries.
But here's what gives me pause: kids all across the social spectrum are different now than they were when I was a kid 30-40 years ago. More of them seem more willing to engage in violence. It seems obvious to me that this trend would also touch the Christian community, as every other trend appears to do. Add to that the horrors of anti-abortion killers and Timothy McVeigh and I can see where there is room to be nervous. While I believe most of the youth involved in this movement likely see war as a metaphor (though Taylor does not believe it is a metaphor), I fear others will, like Muslim extremists, take it literally. Hence, I think we should look at some of what Taylor is calling to our attention.
Ron Luce, Battle Cry's leader and Teen Mania president and founder, makes clear this is not mere metaphor: "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."
Taylor lays out a comparison between Battle Cry's Honor Academy and Islamic fundamentalists that is sobering. She also reveals the group's links to the Bush Administration, which is even more sobering.
What most of these figures have in common is their insistence that the Bible be read literally and obeyed as the inerrant word of God. And, as Ron Luce leads youth to pray, "I will keep my eyes on the battle, submitting to Your code even when I don't understand. . . . outside my comfort zone in the battle zone," it would be foolish to expect that there is any part of the Bible's literal horrors this movement would be unwilling to enforce.
I think it is this call to blind obedience, disregarding one's own inner voices, that most chills me. This December, 2002 review by a fundamentalist Christian of a televised discussion on Christianity is a very good example of the sort of brainwashed thinking that will result if these kids are not taught to think for themselves:
There is absolutely no compromise, no middle ground, no reaching across the aisle ... This battle, which began in heaven in Satan's rebellion, has now moved to the earth and is dividing the hearts of men. It has no ethnic, geographic, or socio-economic boundaries. It is a battle over life and death!…This battle … is not a battle that any of us on earth started, but it is one that requires each of us to choose whose side we will be on. ... Christianity versus the world and all of its false religions.
… One cannot peacefully coexist with Adolf Hitler - it is either you or him. The seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman cannot peacefully coexist together. … Jesus is right and the whole world is wrong! …Satan is a liar and a murderer. He is leading the whole world astray. He must be dealt with by forceful men of God.
I understand the concern over such rhetoric, but I also think it is a mistake to get ourselves worked up just yet. Yes, there are many, many verses in the in Old Testament in which, at God's direction, holy men took forceful action against those who worshipped other gods (see below), but the fundamentalists I know still view this as a spiritual war, not a physical war. What remains to be seen is whether their leaders succeed in sufficiently changing the tone so that young people believe God is calling on them to cleanse the earth of the ungodly as they believe he did in Old Testament times:
Of King David: "And he brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under the axes of iron, and made them pass through the brickkiln: and thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon." (II Samuel 12:31)"If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers… thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die…" (Deuteronomy 13: 6-10)
"Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." (I Samuel 15:2-3)
"Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree: And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place." (Deuteronomy 12:2-3)
"The righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance. He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked." (Psalms 58:10)
Posted by Becky at May 12, 2006 02:12 PM
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