Worldcantwait.org received the following report on the San Francisco protest against Battlecry, and analysis of this Battlecry’s agenda:
Demonstrators successfully disrupted Battlecry’s plan to stage a big in-your-SF-face press appearance on the steps of City Hall. Luce was forced to speak hidden in a crowd of youth squashed up against the steps and surrounded by chanting and noise from beginning to end, unable to be filmed or recorded for the news due to the bold and loud disruption.
The counter protest, organized in just a few days by World
Can’t Wait, Not In Our Name, Code Pink, and Bay Area Coalition for Our
Reproductive Rights, was a colorful mix of representatives of the gay, lesbian,
bi-sexual and transgender community, progressive religious forces, pro-choice
and anti-war political activists, atheists, revolutionaries, politicians and
others.
San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano said, ‘We have to
take them seriously because if we don’t stand up, if we don’t speak out and if
we are not counted, they could win.’
Earlier in the week the San Francisco Supervisors passed a resolution
condemning the fundamentalist rally for spreading hate of gay people and
others.
Mark Leno, who led the fight in the California legislature for a gay marriage
bill spoke at the rally. Leno said that he was afraid that Battlecry’s religious rhetoric could “under a cloak
of love” feed a “fearful world’s appetite for hate.”
A lead editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle attacked the
demonstration and in particular the politicians like Leno and the Board of
Supervisors who spoke out against Battlecry, accusing them of intolerance.
Responding to the Chronicle, Sunsara Taylor, an advisory
Board member of World Can’t Wait wrote: ‘They are wrong when they suggest that
the mobilization of thousands of youth around blind and religious submission to
very human authorities is harmless. They are wrong when they suggest that the
measure of San Francisco’s
tolerance is whether it will lie down as its values are besieged in the public
square. And they are wrong to suggest that the impact of such a gathering can
be measured in whether there is an immediate ‘discernable shift’ in San Francisco’s
ideological alignment just two days later.
‘For too long too many have taken the approach of the San
Francisco Chronicle: turning the other cheek as our rights are stripped, ceding
the moral high ground to forces who openly uphold the subordination of women
and the condemnation of gays, and allowing those who would fight against these
things to be put on the defensive. And that is exactly how we have gotten into
such a dangerous place.’ [click here for the full text of Sunsara Taylor’s response to
the Chronicle editorial]
Opposing the Battlecry for Christian Fascism
Tens of thousands of youth are being drawn to large
stadium-sized event/concerts organized by a group called Teen Mania, led by Ron
Luce, a 44-year-old, Texas-based evangelist, author, and host of the
“Acquire the Fire TV” cable program, who is also a Bush appointee to
a federal anti-drug-abuse commission.
These shows, going under the name of ‘Battlecry’ were held in San Francisco on March 24-25 (attended by an estimated
20,000) and in Detroit
on April 7-8. A final 2006 even will be
held in Philadelphia
on May 12-13.
At the Battlecry event in San Francisco Christian
inspirational speakers and prayers alternated with Christian rock bands. Members of the Navy Seals spoke of how the
youth today must win their battle against Satan just like America must win its war against Iraq. Military
paraphernalia and rhetoric were everywhere in the arena, complete with a Hummer
on stage, military fatigues and dog tags. Luce spoke to the need to
combat the influences of MTV, video games, and premarital sex on youth saying,
‘An evil enemy has launched a brutal attack.
Millions of souls are at risk.
There is but one hope, and if we fail the youth of our nation could be
lost forever!’
Luce and Battlecry aim to organize youth into an ‘Army of
God’ (this is a term that they use).
They want youth, trained and indoctrinated in a particular brand of
hateful Christianity, based on a literal interpretation of the bible and
‘prepared to defend it against the onslaught of secular thought they encounter
in schools and in popular culture,’ as Charles Colson says in the introduction
to Luce’s book, Battlecry for a New Generation.
Many of the youth who
attend Battlecry events are not aware of the full program that it
represents. Nonetheless, Battlecry
is dangerous and must be opposed because it is part of a large well-organized
and movement in the U.S., backed by many in top levels of government that seeks
to impose fundamentalist Christian morality on U.S. society. This movement is accurately called Christian
fascism.
Protesters in San
Francisco gave a fitting welcome to Battlecry on March
23. As Luce and a few hundred youth
supporters rallied on the steps of City Hall in San Francisco, behind a line of
police and a row of barricades, they were drowned out by protestors chanting,
‘Religion Is One Thing, Theocracy Is Another! The Christian Right Is Wrong!’
and ‘Battlecry Is Based On Lies, Think
For Yourself, Open Your Eyes!’
Theocratic Agenda
Battlecry aims to return America to ‘a nation set aside for
God’s purposes.’ (Battlecry, p. 31) or, in other words, a
theocracy or religious state.
Battlecry made a point of rallying in what they call
‘reverse rebellion’ on the steps of city halls in both San Francisco and
Detroit, making a symbolic statement that they were taking back the cities.
“These are the very city hall steps where several months ago gay marriages
were celebrated for the entire world to see,” the Battlecry organization
said in its press release for the San
Francisco rally.
The Western Regional Representative of Battlecry wrote that youth groups
should bring signs to the rally that say: ‘God in America is what
made us great,’ and, ‘Enough is enough; we will not be ruled by those who
destroy us!’
A few days after the San Francisco
rally, Luce was a featured speaker at a major program for Vision America, a
group headed by Rev. Rick Scarborough, a close associate of former House
Speaker Tom Delay. Scarborough
is the author of a booklet titled “In Defense of Mixing Church and
State.” It argues that the belief that the Constitution provides for
separation of church and state is “a lie introduced by Satan and fostered
by the courts.”
Rev. Jack Hayford was one of the main speakers at both the San Francisco and Detroit
rallies. Hayford, who was chosen by
President Bush to give the benediction at his first inauguration, is an open
exponent of ‘dominion theology’ a religious doctrine that demands the remaking
of society to conform with the laws of the Old Testament of the Bible.
This Christian fascist agenda is backed and pushed by a
significant section of the ruling class in the U.S., which is why it has become such
a big deal in society. While Christian
Fascists are not the only section of the ruling class, they are adamant that
the only way to advance the U.S.’s
agenda internationally and domestically is to recast the social norms that have
characterized U.S.
capitalist society up to this point and to forcibly assert a Christian
theocratic framework. (for more on this see The Coming Civil War and
Repolarization for Revolution in the Present Era by Bob Avakian)
In this light all of Battlecry’s military rhetoric takes on
a more ominous tone. Luce calls MTV and
MySpace ‘the enemy’ and ‘virtue-terrorists’ and compares them to al
Quaeda.
‘This is a war,’ Luce writes. ‘Think about it for a moment. Hold in your mind all that the bible says
about war and battle and being a soldier. Now consider the churches around
you. Do they look like an army or a
social club? There’s quite a
difference.’ (Battlecry, p. 57)
A Hypocritical and Twisted Morality
Luce hooks some people in by talking about what he considers
the problems facing youth. He talks
about sexuality on MTV, he talks about violent video games, he talks about
teens committing suicide, internet pornography, the commercialization of teen
culture. But let’s look at the problems
that teens face that Luce does NOT want to talk about. He does not mention poor and minority youth
growing up in a society that has no place for them except in a prison cell or
fighting in an imperialist war. He does
not mention police brutality. He does
not talk about the moral implications of living in a society that is justifying
torture and waging a global war for empire. He doesn’t talk about how with
global warming and other environmental concern there may not even be much of a
planet left for future generations. He does not talk about youth suffering
because they can’t or don’t want to fit into the rigidly defined sex roles or
hypocrisy of traditional morality.
Luce speaks to a real
breakdown of traditional morality in this country over the past decades. But the solution that he, and others like
him, put forward ( to have a society based on a literal interpretation of the
bible — would be horrific.
The Bible upholds the death penalty for homosexuals
(Leviticus 20:13). It says women be
slaves to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22). It says rebellious youth or those
that talk back to their parents be stoned to death. (Deuteronomy 21:18-21 and Matthew 15:4).
And Battlecry wants people who will accept all this without
question. ‘As enlisted soldiers, we can’t silently vote on which part
of the Bible we feel like living from day to day. As if God’s code (His Word) is up for debate!
) He is looking for the kind of commitment that says, ‘Even if I don’t
understand why You want me to do it I will obey.’ (Battlecry, p.
63).
When Luce attacks MTV and popular music he doesn’t just go
stop at misogynistic artists but includes groups like Green Day and Avril
Lavigne and singles out the Green Day’s anti-Bush anthem, ‘American
Idiot.’ Luce considers this music part
of ‘the enemy’ that people need to make war against.
And when Luce talks about teens and sex he isn’t talking
about having social relations based on mutual respect and love. He wants a return to the hypocritical and
repressive social relations of the 1950s and before, where sex education was
prohibited, where a woman’s place was in the home, where the right to divorce
was restricted, where birth control was unavailable, when young women died in
back alley abortions, when parents on sitcoms slept in separate bedrooms, and
when homosexuals were forced into the closet and physically attacked.
A New Morality, A Real and Unprecedented Revolution
In Preaching from a
Pulpit of Bones, Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party
writes: “From whatever vantage point one looks, it is unmistakable that
there is what could be called `a moral crisis in America.’ There has been, to a
significant degree, âa breakdown of traditional morality.’ But the answer to
this — at least the answer that is in the interests of the majority of people
in the U.S. and the overwhelming majority of humanity — is not a more
aggressive assertion of that `traditional morality’ but winning people to a
radically different morality, in the process of and as a key part of radically
transforming society and the world as a whole. It is not the tightening but the
shattering of tradition’s chains that is called for.”
He goes on to speak of the need to forge a different
morality:
‘What is required, what is urgently needed more than ever,
is not a vision that accepts that, ‘the poor we shall always have with us’ and
then, at most, speaks to compassion and caring for the poor; not one that
decries selfishness, yet rejoices ( or in one way or another acquiesces ( in a
system that pits people against each other in ruthless competition, and then
holds up as paragons those who have been most ‘successful’ in enriching
themselves at the expense of others.
What is needed is a vision that dares to call for ending the division of
society into classes and nations, where a few are rich only because so many are
poor ( a vision that calls for the elevation for human beings as a whole to a
new plane where there is no poverty, and no basis to get rich while keeping
others in poverty, and where instead it is possible for all to work,
cooperatively, to advance their common interests) ‘
‘This is a real, and unprecedented, revolution–as opposed
to the fortifying of tradition’s chains under the threadbare banner of
“revolution”…against liberation! What is called for is nothing less
than advancing humanity to a whole new stage of history, where it will have
left behind the oppressive divisions which for thousands of years have brought
horrendous consequences but which have been unavoidable–until now. And a
crucial part of the battle to break tradition’s chains is to bring forward the
radically new morality that corresponds to this world-historic
transformation–that can expose in its true light “traditional
morality” and at the same time can illuminate the way to a far higher
basis for human relations’