Fundamentalist “BattleCry” Brings Its Message of Hate & Intolerance to San Francisco

Local TV Coverage of the BattleCry Rally and Counter-Protest:

KRON TV: http://www.kron.com/Global/category.asp?C=84890&nav=menu130_2

KCBS TV: http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_069200559.html

KTVU TV: http://www.ktvu.com/video/11216731/index.html & http://www.ktvu.com/news/11216001/detail.html

Report from a World Can’t Wait organizer on BattleCry’s appearance in San Francisco 3/9/07:

When BattleCry came to town
last spring, the counter-presence mobilized by World Can’t Wait and other
progressive groups made a lot of news, and media-driven controversy.  BattleCry comes to San Francisco on a very ugly mission.  SF is known to be one of the most socially
tolerant, politically liberal cities in the world – and BattleCry is no
innocent teenage prayer group.  Its
founder Ron Luce runs with the most powerful and highly connected Christian
fascists from Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell to Chuck Colson.  On the surface BattleCry sports a glitzy
façade – rock concerts, ebullient teens saved from drugs and depression by
religious conversion.  But what BattleCry
actually helps spread across today’s political landscape is a most narrow and
hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism. 
Their stadium shows and literature promote bigotry and violence against
gay people, patriarchy, and an aggressive support of war and blind obedience to
authority.

Statement from Sunsara Taylor of the World Can’t Wait — Drive Out the Bush Regime, read at the 3/9/07 Counter-Protest Against BattleCry’s March on the San Francisco Capital Steps to Protest Gay Marriage. BattleCry is not a harmless movement.  Having been inside their stadiums, I can attest to the fact that despite their public face of concern about violence and overabundance of sex in the media, the gathering of tens of thousands of youth in this two-day stadium “rock concert” is part of building a Christian army to wage war on the secular and non-Christian world. Through language laced with militarism and violence, BattleCry sets as its mission the enforcement of a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism throughout the country and the world.  Rooted in a literalist interpretation of the Bible, its program is fiercely anti-woman, anti-gay, pro-war, and pro-obedience.  And it is marching in lock-step with — and has connections to — the highest political offices in the land.  BattleCry’s leader, Ron Luce, was appointed by Bush to serve on the White House Advisory Commission on Drug-Free Communities and Bush himself has sent letters of support to BattleCry gatherings. Those leading the BattleCry movement — partners like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Chuck Colson, and others — are among the most powerful and highly connected Christian fascists in the land.  Their repressive, intolerant and absolutist interpretation of the Bible does not represent the views of most Christians, nor certainly the majority of people in this country or the world. While the U.S. pursues an illegal and murderous war in Iraq that has claimed an estimated 650,000 lives, and as Bush now makes threats and preparations for war against Iran, BattleCry has brought armed Navy SEALs on stages in their uniform to recruit youth into “God’s Army.”  In what can only be viewed as a massive rationalization of the war crimes and torture being conducted by U.S. forces in Iraq, BattleCry has equated the Iraqi people with ancient Babylonians and upheld uncritically the judicial codes of the Old Testament in dealing with the Babylonians — which includes pillage, rape, and burning people in the name of god. While the scourge of the AIDS ravages whole peoples — leaving villages throughout parts of Africa reduced to a few wandering orphans — the youth at BattleCry events are taught that the cruel notion that AIDS is a punishment for sex outside of “biblical marriage.”  At a time when bigotry and the stripping of the rights of gays is rising and women’s right to abortion and even birth control are under extreme fire, BattleCry’s insistence on “biblical marriage” casts judgment and the implied violence of the Old Testament towards gay people and upholds the vicious patriarchy of women submitting to husbands as to the lord found in Ephesians 5:22.  Further, it is simply a dishonest and selective “literal” reading of the Bible that ignores completely the many marriages upheld in the Bible of men who took more than one wife, like King Solomon who had 700 wives and 300 concubines. At a time when science is suppressed and censored by the government, when critical thought on the campuses is under attack, and when the fact of evolution is assailed throughout the public school system and more broadly, BattleCry teach mindless and mind numbing obedience to a literal reading of the bible, including its creation story, even in the face of mountains of facts.  Rone Luce leads youth in prayer to pledge obedience to his authority even when it doesn’t make sense, “I will keep my eyes on the battle, submitting to Your code even when I don’t understand.” In their insistence that the youth of today are living through profound changes in the world and that how they respond to these challenges will likely shape the lives of millions in this country and around the world for generations to come, BattleCry is correct.  But in how they are training an army of young people to think and act couldn’t be more dangerously wrong. The patriarchy, ignorance, and vicious American chauvinism they preach offers an ominous glimpse of what the future will be if people of conscience — those who oppose torture, unjust wars, enforced motherhood, anti-gay bigotry, and the suppression of science — do not act decisively. Young people today — along with all others concerned with the fate of the world — have a tremendous responsibility to recognize, repudiate, and reverse the dangerous course the Bush regime and of its foot-soldiers in movements like BattleCry.  Our mission must be to stop the war in Iraq, prevent a war against Iran, halt the growing theocracy and drive the Bush regime out of office! This is the only way to live a truly moral life in a time of unjust wars, legalized torture, and a rising theocracy.  Through doing so, we must be guided by and give greater and greater expression to a far higher morality: A morality that fosters relations of mutual respect and equality between men and women.  A morality that respects the love and partnerships that are shared between people of the same sex. A morality that cherishes the lives of people who are born in Iraq or other places around the world as much as our own. A morality determined to end the epidemics of disease, poverty, and injustice rather than viewing them as acts of God’s will. A morality that values honesty and the unfettered search for, and promotion of, the truth — about evolution, about how condoms save lives, about the fact that abortion is not murder, about how women are not incubators, about the fact that there were no WMD’s in Iraq, about how torture is NEVER acceptable, about how the world really works in its many complexities and ongoing mysteries — even when it challenges conventional wisdom and especially when it challenges illegitimate authority and deeply unjust aims. Ignoring the huge shifts, the rapid and radical transformations to this country and its relationship to the world being ushered in by the Bush administration — and ignoring the role that movements like BattleCry aim to play in this unfolding — will be unforgiven by future generations. Rising up to stop all this, including all the ruffling of feathers, all the protest, all the truth-telling and righteous political upheaval that will take, is something that — if we give them the chance — future generations will tells stories and write songs about.  Lets give them that chance. Thank you for being here today.  Join the World Can’t Wait movement to Drive Out the Bush Regime.  Get a copy of our Call, read it, add your name to it, and take it out to others. No Theocracy!  No Unjust Wars!  The World Can’t Wait!  Drive Out the Bush Regime!!

Last week BattleCry brought
back its two-day rock concert show, once again advertising that they would pack
over 20,000 teens (bussed in from all over the western states) into San Francisco’s baseball
stadium.  And again this year, World
Can’t Wait, Bay Area Coalition on Reproductive Rights (BACORR), and Not In Our
Name (Bay Area) jointly called for a press conference and a counter-rally to
stand up against BattleCry’s hateful and dangerous agenda.

BattleCry again launched its
revival with a press stunt on the steps of SF’s City Hall (chosen last year
because same sex marriages had been performed there, so their prayers could
“heal” this “sin.”).  And so a few hours
before their arrival, we held a full press conference.  An impressive and diverse array of voices
from the Bay Area community was heard. 
As the cameras rolled and the speakers came to the podium, people lined
the steps holding up ten huge posters displaying WCW’s Fact Sheet [insert
link]. 

Emceed by World Can’t Wait,
and led off by World Can’t Wait young activist Giovanni Jackson reading Sunsara
Taylor’s statement, the press conference presented strong support messages from
SF Mayor Gavin Newsom and Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin.  Another message came from Supervisor Tom
Ammiano who had us read out the Supervisors” 2006 City Resolution Condemning
BattleCry (emphasizing that “This resolution still stands!”)

All the speakers represented
powerfully:

Pat Gray, a retired SF
teacher and past member of the Executive Board of the San Francisco teachers” union

Larry Brinkin, Senior
Manager at the Human Rights Commission of the City and County of San Francisco
 

Howard Wallace, the Vice
President of the San Francisco Labor Council, AFL-CIO (representing 100,000
members)

Two Sisters of Perpetual
Indulgence

Ean, a young Christian
member of WCW

Jean Davis – Bay Area
Coalition on Rreproductive Rights

Rev. Max Lynn from St. John’s Presbyterian
(Berkeley)

Dr. Marlene Winell, a
psychologist with a Berkeley
private practice specializing in treatment of psychological damage from
fundamentalist religious indoctrination

Don Havis and Mark Thomas,
American Atheists (SF and National)

Chuck Cannon, a member of
the Freedom From Religion Foundation whose case challenging Bush’s faith based
initiatives is now before the US Supreme Court

George Johnson from Veterans
for Peace, Chapter 69 and chaplain of the Bob Basker American Legion Post
315. 

The press conference ended
with a biting performance of “God Squad,” an original song skewering the
hypocrisy of the Christian Right by activist singer-songwriter Jesse Dyen.

As our press conference ended
and BattleCry busses began delivering about 500 teens to the steps, the giant
Facts About BattleCry signs were held up, and a huge green banner was unfurled
stretching down the steet: “YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving each day closer to a
theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will
rule.”  A 14-foot-tall prison cell
with a BattleCry-style sign labeling it “Ron Luce’s Future” began rolling
slowly back and forth with a prisoner in an orange jumpsuit peering out from
its bars, holding a sign: “I’m Gay – I got 25 years.”  The cell was hauled by bobble-head masked
figures of Bush, Robertson, and Falwell. 

We know that the BattleCry
youth have no idea what they”re actually being manipulated by.  So as the busses unloaded, and the BattleCry
chaperones passed out the medieval red banners and signs and herded them into
order awaiting the arrival of Ron Luce, young people from World Can’t Wait took
turns on the bullhorn.  They called
across the police lines, reaching out to the BattleCry teens, challenging them
with the truth: Do you really want to live in a future where a woman who has an
abortion is a criminal?  Where gay people
are criminals?  Do you believe your
leaders when they tell you George Bush was chosen to be president by God?  Do you know that Ron Luce supports an
illegitimate war that has already killed 665,000 innocent civilians?

When Ron Luce himself took
the steps, the scene did get a lot noisier, on both sides.  Luce is a charlatan.  His slick media rap is that he’s high on
Christian love, helping kids escape the horrors of the immoral world that trap
them in despair: drugs, suicide, alcoholism, depression.  (Luce also tucks into this package other evils
such as homosexuality, secular music, and critical thinking.)  He wraps this message around a core political
mission.  BattleCry is training young
people to think and act in service of a 
very right-wing package of ignorance, self-satisified bigotry, and
American chauvinism (a most deadly brew, as history has shown before).  And so, during his demagogic showman’s sermon,
protestors chanted directly at him: “A narrow and hateful brand of Christian
fundamentalism!” and : “650,000 dead! 
What About the War?”  This last
chant especially had a powerful, visible effect on many of the BattleCry youth
– how many of them may have relatives in the military already?  How many of them have conflicted feelings
about the war, no matter what their pastors tell them about God being on the
side of the U.S.?

We have more to report –
from on-the-ground conversations we had with these youth, and from seeing what
went on in that stadium all Friday night and the following day. 

And there was a whole battle
in itself that has been going on in the mass media coverage.  The major news outlets have bent over
backwards to ignore and cover-up the real story at the heart of the BattleCry
visit.  To see their reports, this is
just more born-again evangelism, just a little blip in the diverse world of
religious freedom and “tolerance” for all even if BattleCry may be a little
nutty or even anti-homosexuality (one reporter had the gall to excuse that as
“not the same as being anti-gay people”). 
The SF Chronicle has run three articles already and the worst fault it
can find with Luce is that he rails against commercialism but BattleCry hoodies
cost $40.  TV stories fix their cameras
on outré costumes (the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a flamboyant satirical
performance art group, delivered a heart-rending report on a teenage suicide
victim of Christian fundamentalism).  Yet
the cameras ignore the presence of courageous civic leaders and clergy.  So it’s been a real fight to try to get the
substance of our message out, and as of the Sunday morning local talk shows, it
seems that fight is continuing”. But we”ll have to post more about that
later”..

 

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Below is the call to opposed BattleCry from the San Francisco chapter of World Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime: 

If allow BattleCry’s message
of violence and bigotry to broadcast un-protested from the heart of San Francisco – what are
we saying to justice-loving people everywhere or to the victims of intolerance?

“When Fascism comes to America it will
be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross”

– Sinclair Lewis

THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT IS PREACHING
AN ANTI-CHOICE ANTI-GAY RADICAL   CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISM ON THE STEPS OF SF’s
CITY HALL & IN SF’s BALLPARK. “BattleCry for a Generation” is back to hold
a 2nd annual mega-revival rally at ATT/SBC Park March 9 through March 10 –
kicking off with a City Hall protest.

Join the World Can’t Wait –
Drive Out The Bush Regime!, Bay Area Coalition for Reproductive Rights (BACORR),
Not In Our Name (Bay Area) and other progressive organizations to show the
world that BattleCry’s intolerance is resisted in San Francisco. Everyone is welcome
– of all creeds, faiths, and communities – who wants to stand up and say;

“Religion is one thing, but
Theocracy is another the Christian Right is Wrong!”

Friday, March 9,

San
Francisco City Hall on the steps facing Civic Center
Plaza

12:00 – 2:00 PM Permitted
protest, rally and press conference

3:00 – 5:00 PM
Counter-protest: We Will Not Tolerate Intolerance!

BattleCry is no innocent
teenage prayer group. BattleCry’s extreme politics are violent and reactionary.
BattleCry founder and frontman Ron Luce works directly with Pat Robertson (who blamed
911 on feminists, homosexuals, pagans, abortionists, etc.), Franklin Graham,
and Jerry Falwell. The Texas-based BattleCry is a multi-million dollar
operation that preaches unthinking obedience to government and calls for this
country to be run as a theocracy. That American theocracy would be governed by
a literalist interpretation of the Christian Bible replacing the secular rule
of law in every sphere of life. And Luce promotes the vision that a
fundamentalist Christian America should rule the world. 

Why it’s wrong to not
denounce BattleCry: If we in the Bay Area don’t confront the Christian Right
with energetic protest allowing BattleCry’s message of violence and bigotry to
broadcast unprotested from the heart of San Francisco – what are we saying to
justice-loving people in Alabama, Idaho, Texas or to the victims of intolerance
past, present and future anywhere else in the country or the world?

That which you will not
resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn – or be forced – to accept… Acting
in this way, we join with and give support and heart to people all over the globe
who so urgently  need and want this
regime to be stopped.

-from “The Call” to Drive
Out The Bush Regime

The BattleCry information Kit:

• Fact Sheet

• Press Release

• Flyer

• City of San Francisco Resolution against BattleCry

For more information or to
request press interviews with event spokespeople, call the World Can’t Wait
(415) 864-5153 or email: sf@worldcantwait.org