On Monday night, March 27, on national TV (Fox’s ‘O’Reilly
Factor’), World Can’t Wait (worldcantwait.org) advisory board member Sunsara
Taylor debated Ron Luce, the middle-aged head of “Battle Cry,” a
Christian fundamentalist group (battlecry.com). [click here to watch the segment]
The backdrop: In SF
this past weekend 25,000 youth gathered for a Christian revival meeting called
by Battle Cry to “show America in a very visible way that there are young people that love
God and want to build the future of our country on biblical values.” World Can’t Wait(Drive Out the Bush Regime
called a counter-rally to Battle Cry’s gathering at SF City Hall steps on
Friday. They were joined by other groups as well as the SF Board of Supervisors,
who had just passed a resolution condemning the Battle Cry rally that reads in
part: ‘It is 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.’
Interestingly,
when World Can’t Wait activists went into the Battle Cry crowd, they found that while a solid core of
them were fanatics who declare gay marriage to be ‘a sign of the End Times,’
many others were confused and as they began debating us the older organizers
literally told them to close their eyes and not look at our literature, but
just pray. Knots of debate formed up around World Can’t Wait organizers.
It turned out that many Battle Cry youth were actually against the war, didn’t
like Bush – and some were at least willing to debate abortion, gay marriage,
birth control, abstinence.
It is a sign of how late the hour is in
the US that tens of
thousands of youth can be brought into stadiums drawn by this extreme rightwing
people-crushing program. But even here the situation is more fluid than one
might imagine. World Can’t Wait is
committed to peeling away as many of these youth as possible, based
simply on the truth of what we are saying.
Sunsara: “We agree there is a moral crisis
in this country, but ‘Battle Cry’ has it all wrong. There is torture
being carried out right now by our government, unjust war in Iraq based on lies.
Women are being stripped of our rights to abortion and birth control.
Bigotry against gays is being whipped up. Thousands of young people in
this country are realizing that the only moral way to live right now is to
stand with those determined to drive out the Bush regime. âBattle Cry’ say the
youth are being preyed on and manipulated– but there is no one more guilty of
that than the president of this country and his administration who sent
thousands of young people to kill and die in an unjust war based on lies.”
Battle Cry’s Ron Luce
equivocated in a smarmy manner throughout the debate on O’Reilly, but there
should be no mistake these people are for instituting theocracy. From Battle
Cry’s website (until it was oddly removed the day of the O’Reilly broadcast):
‘There are young people that love god and want to build a future of our country
on biblical values. We want the world to know this is the purpose of our
gathering.’
From the World Can’t Wait(Drive Out the Bush Regime Call:
‘Your government is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and
hateful brand of Christian
fundamentalism will rule) That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop,
you will learn ( or be forced ( to accept.’
There
is something historic happening here in the showdown between this
rapidly-growing army of youth being trained by extreme rightwing political
operatives in thought-free obedience to a literal reading of the bible and the young people who are
stepping up to consciously oppose the Bush-led remaking of America in a fascist direction.
World Can’t Wait plans to show up at
the Battle Cry revivals in Detroit, April 7-8 and in Philadelphia May 12-13.