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Despite Opposition, Christian Teens Meet in San Francisco 3/30/2006 Protesters and Board of Supervisors condemn Teen Mania event.
Despite protesters, more than 25,000 Christian teenagers took a stand for their generation at Teen Mania’s Battle Cry event on March 24-25 at San Francisco’s AT&T Park. The youth gathered for a two-day event to worship and come together against the lies of popular culture.
Teenagers gathered at a rally at City Hall before the event to read the Teenage Bill of Rights. The document contains statements such as, “We will live with honor, always striving to do the right thing, even when it is unpopular,” and “We will be honest and truthful in matters large and small, regardless of the consequences.”
Hundreds of teenagers stood silently in agreement during the reading. Their actions sharply contrasted to those of protesters who had gathered nearby. They yelled hateful statements and called the event a “fascist pep rally.” Some held signs that read, “I moved here to get away from people like you,” and “Hitler started with youth rallies.”
“They had a totally wrong idea of why we were there and what Christians stand for,” said 18-year-old Amanda Hughey from Orange County, California, to Concerned Women for America. “They came with preconceived mindsets and didn’t want to hear what we had to say.”
Earlier in the week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution condemning the event as an “act of provocation” by a group they stated is “anti-gay and anti-choice” whose goal was to “negatively influence the politics of America’s most tolerant and progressive city.” (Emphasis added.)
America’s “most tolerant” city’s response to this conference reveals a lot about what they consider tolerance. They opposed an event that seeks to educate teenagers about the state of their generation on issues including drinking, drug use, teen sex, pornography, abortion, cutting, suicide and violence.
“The same San Francisco city officials who banned the Boy Scouts from public schools have outdone themselves with this latest demonstration of their ‘tolerance’ and love of ‘diversity,’” said Robert Knight, Director of Concerned Women for America’s Culture & Family Institute. “They basically branded thousands of fresh-faced Christian kids as a threat to civilization. Keep in mind these officials smile proudly upon ‘gay pride’ parades featuring nudity, crude sex acts and men dressed as nuns. They also support an annual street fair dedicated to sadistic sex, including blood-letting. But these Christian kids are supposed to be the real threat. How sad for the people of San Francisco.”
The San Francisco Battle Cry event is the first of three intended to sound the alarm on the current pop culture that feeds teenagers images of sex and violence. The other two events will take place in Detroit April 7 to 8 and Philadelphia May 13 to 14.
The conferences are a part of the national Battle Cry Campaign, which calls people, young and old, to come together and fight for this generation of youth. Ron Luce, founder of Teen Mania Ministries, has a passion for youth to reach their full potential by living according to the guidelines that God has set in place.
“This is more than a spiritual war,” Luce said. “It’s a culture war,” according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle. The article continues, “Military metaphors abound in Luce's descriptions of the struggle. He tells young people of how ‘an enemy has launched a brutal attack on them.’ At a pre-Battle Cry rally Friday afternoon on the steps of City Hall, Luce told his mostly teenage audience that ‘terrorists of a different kind -- advertisers -- were targeting them and that they were caught in the middle of the battle.’”
According to BattleCry.com, “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 Web sites, most while doing homework.”
Luce’s recently published book Battle Cry for a Generation lays out a plan to reverse the current youth culture trends. The goal: to take back a generation destroyed by a culture that trades innocence for profit.
The San Francisco event, and those coming up in Detroit and Philadelphia, are made possible by hundreds of young adults who take a year to be a part of Teen Mania’s internship program, The Honor Academy. These teens, most of whom were touched by Luce’s ministry, pray and sacrifice their time and energy behind the scenes to call youth pastors and set up logistics to make the events a reality.
Not only are Mr. Luce and other well-known Christian leaders working to win the “culture war,” the youth of America are rising up to reach their own generation.
To join the Battle Cry Coalition in the fight to reach a hurting generation, click here.
Beth Andersen is an intern with CWA's Ronald Reagan Memorial Internship Program. She is a student at the University of Texas, Tyler.
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Concerned Women for America 1015 Fifteenth St. N.W., Suite 1100 Washington, D.C. 20005 Phone: (202) 488-7000 Fax: (202) 488-0806 |
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