Battle Cry Campaign: Difference between revisions

For other uses of Battle Cry, see Battle Cry (disambiguation).

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Battle Cry logo

The Battle Cry Campaign is an organizing initiative of a parachurch organization known as Teen Mania Ministries. This initiative, started in 2005 and headed by Teen Mania founder Ron Luce, has an evangelical Christian orientation; it primarily seeks to influence American and Canadian social and political culture. Major backers include prominent evangelical leaders Joyce Meyer, Jerry Falwell, Chuck Colson, Pat Robertson, and Jack Hayford.

On August 24 2007, during secret filming by a CNN film crew as part of the three-part documentary God's Warriors, founder Ron Luce admitted that he was in fact an atheist, and that the Battle Cry Campaign was “a great way to make a whole heap of money out of the dumb and ignorant masses”.

Purpose and goals

The basic purpose of the Battle Cry Campaign, as described in its promotional materials and events, is to ensure that Christianity survives in America by redefining society:

• "Christianity in America won't survive another decade... unless we do something now."

• "Our nation is at a crossroads. The path America is currently headed towards is a devestating [sic] future where Christianity may not survive."

• "You are invited... to join in an effort to redirect the way America is headed.

The urgency of this "Wake Up Call" is based on the assertion that current trends among teenagers will result in an inevitable decline in the number of "Bible-based believers:"

• "The evidence shows that if current evangelism trends prevail, only 4 percent of them will stand firm for Jesus by the time they become the decision makers of our nation."

The fundamental goal of the campaign is the recruitment of 100,000 churches to implement a multifaceted campaign to promote youth commitment and involvement in church programs.

• "The goal is 100,000 churches fully engaged in reaching this generation by doubling and discipling their youth group each year for the next 5 years."

Other notable aspects of the Battle Cry Campaign involve other church and political leaders as "BattleCry Partners," the 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."

Major tenets

The Battle Cry Campaign maintains that "for the first time ever," "sexualized culture," "point and click pornography," and young people being "saturated with media influence" spell doom for Christianity in America. It also has cited gay marriage and other "culture war" issues as matters of current and future concern:

• "Our current society with 35% baby boomers as bible-based believers: increasingly perverted TV, film, music and video games, proliferation of Internet pornography, rise of activist government officials promoting gay marriage, attempts to remove the Ten Commandments from public buildings and attempts to remove God from the Pledge of Allegiance."
• "What does a nation with 4% evangelical Christians look like? Netherlands legalized euthanasia, Nudity in newspapers in England, Scotland's consenting age is 14 years old, Pastor arrested for preaching biblical perspective on homosexuality."

The campaign focuses on corporations and media outlets for targeting young people with advertising and programming depicting content often labeled objectionable by evangelical leaders:

• "A stealthy enemy has infiltrated our country and is preying upon the hearts and minds of 33 million American teens. Corporations, media conglomerates and purveyors of popular culture have spent billions to seduce and enslave our youth."
• "This generation views 16 to 17 hours of television each week and sees on average 14,000 sexual scenes and references each year. That's more than 38 references every day."
• "This generation spends three hours a day online and is the first to grow up with point-and-click pornography. Almost 90 percent of teens have viewed pornography online at one of the 300,000 adult websites, most while doing homework."
• "More than 25 percent of teen-targeted radio segments contain sexual content; 42 percent of the top selling CDs contain sexual content"

Other encouraged tenets include submission to certain kinds of authority:

• "We will respect the authorities placed in our lives, even though some may not live as honorably as they should."
• "We refuse to be led by those who are morally bankrupt."

Extending from Biblical analogies and characters used as role models [1] [2] [3] [4], the campaign uses 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 has 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." 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."

Programs, activities and methods

"Battle Cry" participants on the steps of San Francisco City Hall, March 24, 2006.

File:Optruth flyer back.jpg

Flyer announcing "Operation Truth" at the California State Capitol, August 6, 2006.

• Mass events in stadiums and arenas. "Battle Cry" stadium event locations in 2006 included San Francisco at AT&T Park, Detroit at Ford Field, and Philadelphia at Wachovia Spectrum arena. In 2007, the "Battle Cry" event returned to San Francisco in March, and to Detroit in April. A third event, originally scheduled for the M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, was held at the Nissan Pavilion in Bristow, Virginia in May 2007. Smaller arena-sized "Acquire the Fire" events are scheduled for 33 cities during the 2006-07 season.
• Pre-event rallies at places symbolic of governmental power. These smaller rallies in 2006, each with a few hundred participants, included San Francisco City Hall, Detroit City Hall, and Independence Visitor Center, in the area of historic sites associated with the American Revolution in Philadelphia.

• Battle Cry Leadership Summits. Advertised as the "Wake Up Call," these meetings, featuring Ron Luce and a guest speaker, were scheduled for 44 cities in the United States and Canada through the fall of 2006. Scheduled guest speakers in that tour included Blaine Bartel (15 cities), Ted Haggard (10 cities), Tommy Barnett (7 cities), Jack Hayford, Jerry Falwell and Wellington Boone. Materials distributed at these meetings presented the Battle Cry Campaign plan, recruited churches and individuals to the campaign, and promoted other Teen Mania Ministries programs.

• Lobbying and gatherings intended to influence legislation. The initial legislative strategy of the Battle Cry Campaign is "to inform lawmakers of the plight of this generation and lobby them to pass legislation that protects our teens from the dangers they face while online and from advertising and other electronic media."
  • "Operation Truth," a rally co-sponsored by Battle Cry and the Christian Action Alliance, was announced for August 6, 2006, at the California State Capitol. One of the announced objectives of this event was "to publicly let legislators know that Christians will not stand idly by while being bombarded with legislation that attacks the core values of believers." Examples of the legislation that motivated the organizers to protest, according to the flyer announcing the rally, included Senate Bill 1437 and Assembly Bill 606 of the 2005-2006 legislative session. These bills were intended to prohibit discrimination in California public schools on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation, and to prohibit school activities and instructional content that reflects adversely on persons on the basis of their sexual orientation. Joel Johnson, a frequent co-host of Teen Mania's "Acquire the Fire" arena events, had been announced as an "Operation Truth" speaker.

• Coalition activities. Teen Mania Ministries, initiator of the campaign, participates in a number of coalitions or networks, both formal and informal.
  • Battle Cry Coalition. Teen Mania's own coalition includes prominent Christian Right leaders Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Chuck Colson, and Joyce Meyer, and other personalities such as Jack Hayford, Kay Arthur, Jack Graham, Greg Laurie, Josh McDowell, Tommy Barnett, Bob Reccord, Kirk Franklin and John Maxwell. Coalition members participate in Teen Mania's events and programs and also assist in promotion of the Battle Cry Campaign.
  • The Arlington Group. Teen Mania is a member of the Arlington Group, a coalition which unites the leaders of almost all of the most prominent Christian Right organizations in the United States. Arlington Group members have prominently appeared in Battle Cry materials and events, including Battle Cry Coalition members Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and (former member) Ted Haggard. Group member Keith Butler delivered the opening invocation at the Battle Cry stadium event in Detroit on April 8, 2006. One of the first "Battle Cry Leadership Summits" was held at the church headed by Arlington Group member Harry Jackson in November, 2005. Ron Luce has spoken before at least two political conferences organized by Arlington Group members in 2006: Vision America's "War on Christians" conference, and Family Research Council Action's "Values Voters Summit".
  • National Network of Youth Ministries. Teen Mania is a member of the Cooperating Ministries of the National Network of Youth Ministries. Other prominent members of this network include Assemblies of God, Campus Crusade for Christ, Church of the Nazarene, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Focus on the Family, The Salvation Army, Young Life and Youth With A Mission.
  • GOD TV. Teen Mania's television program, "atf.tv," and exclusive live broadcasts of Acquire the Fire events are featured on GOD TV, an international Christian television broadcaster. This channel is available in the United States on the DirecTV satellite system. The U.S. version of this channel features a number of personalities and programs connected with the Apostolic-Prophetic Movement of Christianity, including Rick Joyner, Cindy Jacobs, Mike Bickle, Rodney Howard-Browne, Steve Hill, Francis Frangipane, Patricia King, and the "Elijah List" program hosted by Steve Shultz.
  • Other supporters. In presentations of the Campaign to churches and ministry groups, a number of additional individuals and organizations have been named as supporters, including: Senator Sam Brownback, Senator Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity, Benny Hinn, Gary Bauer, Hank Hanegraaff, Dennis Rainey, American Family Association, Trinity Broadcasting Network, Family Research Council and the Traditional Values Coalition.
• Battle Cry 33 Affiliated Partner Churches. As of December 2006, 1077 churches and ministries were listed on the battlecry.com website as partner churches of the Battle Cry Campaign. "33" refers to 33 million American teens.
• Promotion of other Teen Mania Ministries programs:
  • Global Expeditions mission trips, which have taken more than 50,000 young people on short term mission trips since 1987.
  • The Honor Academy, a character and leadership development internship program run at Teen Mania Ministries' headquarters in Garden Valley Texas.
  • Extreme Camps summer camps, which feature bands, sports, well-known speakers, adventure courses and paintball.
  • Center For Creative Media Production school ran by TeenMania that offers three courses; Production, Acting, and Production Management.
• Marketing program. Battle Cry is marketed as a brand by Tocquigny, an advertising and marketing agency in Austin, Texas. "Tocquigny will help the organization re-launch its Battle Cry™ brand with the goal of spreading its message to 31 million teens across America."
• "Christian alternative to Myspace", battlecry.com ("Let MySpace be His space")

Controversy and criticism

The "4 percent panic attack"

Some critics maintain that the statistics used by Teen Mania to support its cause are suspect and exaggerated. Rick Lawrence, who for the past 18 years has 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.

Lawrence goes 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." Lawrence takes 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.

Christian Smith, a professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame and a specialist in the study of American evangelicals, says he is skeptical of the "4 percent" statistic and that that figure was inconsistent with research he had conducted and reviewed.

San Francisco demonstrations and city resolution

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).

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. 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.

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." Teen Mania later prominently quoted Leno as part of a postcard sent to San Francisco churches to promote the 2007 Battle Cry stadium event.

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."

This resolution was then cited by various commentators, including Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly and the city's leading newspaper, 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.

They were also criticized for their noise level last year so they were not allowed to turn on their sound systems until 10AM on Saturday, but overcame it by tuning to KFAX AM 1100 to listen to their worship and sing out loud. [5]

Other criticism

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.

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.

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.

External links

• Battle Cry web site
• Teen Mania Ministries corporate website
• Teen Mania Canada
• Acquire the Evidence - Website "responding to Teen Mania's 'BattleCry' Campaign"
• San Francisco sound controversy from 'BattleCry' site
• San Francisco Entertainment Commission discussion of 'BattleCry' sound issue
• Rolling Stone : Teenage Holy War