Jesus Loves the Little Fascist Zombies.

I recently saw what I expect is a pretty old clip - a couple years anyway, though I don't really have any idea as to when it would have first been aired. It was from a series of stories CNN did called "God's Warriors," looking at different aspects of modern expressions of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.

This particular segment was following the events surrounding something called BattleCry. Here's a little exerpt from the main page of BattleCry's website:

In America today, we have the largest number of teens since the baby boomer generation. These teens hold the future in their hands. BattleCry is here to answer why and how to reclaim our youth for Christ. At this very moment, an entire generation of young people is at risk. Giant corporations, media conglomerates, and other purveyors of popular culture have leveraged every dollar they can spare, as well as every waking hour, into claiming the souls of today's youth. BattleCry is answering the call.

There are a lot of things about stuff I'll reference in this post that are troubling to me. One of them is the second-to-last sentence in that snippet. Giant corporations, media conglomerates, and purveyors of popular culture (three super general, mean-nothing phrases that only ever are used to describe something that's about to be demonized) aren't advertising with billboards and magazine ads and television commercials and product placement to get your children hooked on products and to fuel consumerism for financial gain. They are, apparently, making an effort to harvest their souls, to capture the very essence of their beings.

If you drive into the city, to one of the very tall buildings, and you travel up the elevator to the highest floors where the most important business is being conducted by the people with the most power - there, in those very rooms, there are the people in charge. They're wearing suits with pocket squares that cost more than my college tuition, they're smoking cigars and drinking cognac - and they're all talking about how they can get more little kiddie souls to feed on. They hunger for them, as you or I do for common vittles. The only problem is, once you've had little kiddie souls, it's hard to go back to casual restaurants or to eat last night's leftovers. Unless it's leftover little kiddie souls - those are almost better reheated on the second day, like your mother's lasagna.

What better way to provoke the overprotective suburban Christian mother than to convince her that the man or woman in charge of the company that's making little Eric's blue jeans is really out to eat his soul?

Anyway, here's the video. I'm not sure where it'll pop up, because I don't know anything about embedding videos in my blog. Let's talk about the video.




The video follows a guy named Ron Luce around during one of these BattleCry events, which is being held in San Francisco. The students, who have received considerable emotionally-charged ramping up from leaders, are demonstrating in the streets of what is widely referred to as one of the most liberal cities in the United States, largely because of its close association with homosexuality.

This sounds like one of the more productive things one could do with a few hundred teens, right? Get 'em all hopped-up on Jesus, convinced that they have to be a cultural force by being loud and confrontational, and then turn 'em loose to go combat homosexuality when they view it as a behavior and homosexuals mostly believe it to be directly linked to their identity. This brings us to another reality that troubles me: out of all of the many, many people it takes to organize something like this, there weren't a big enough number of level-headed people there to say "good God, what good do you think this will accomplish?" to stop it (or at least to talk about a better way to move forward).

Not far into the video clip, you'll hear a man with a megaphone yelling out: "BattleCry is a tool to turn the kids into little fascist zombies." No, you silly man; read their website. BattleCry is combatting the soul-eating practices of corporate big-wigs. Duh.

Another thing that troubles me about this video is that the guy in charge of the thing doesn't expect or understand this great ugly shouting match he's instigated. The reporter notes that Luce "professes not to understand the anger" directed at him and his demonstrators. He was "shocked...with the amount of anger and hostility from the protestors."

Are you kidding me? How can a person choose these methods and be honestly surprised at these results? Take a bunch of teenagers and rile them up about sexual purity and morality and then make a public demonstration in San Francisco - how do you think that's going to be received? You think nobody's going to feel like it's hateful or gay-bashing? This is the guy who's the public face of the whole operation. He's got his teen followers chanting in the streets: "We won't be silent! Our voices will be heard!" and honestly expects a softer reception? As a person who is often put in charge of many teenagers, this is awfully unsettling to me.

But the thing that's most troubling? It's not that the public accepts these things as hateful, gay-bashing, fascist zombie-making teeny parties. It's not that the guy who runs the thing seems to be about as brainwashed (or out-of-touch, I guess) as his critics think he's trying to make the teens. It's not that there's a big ugly scene and everyone's screaming at one another thinking they're more and more right while others are more and more wrong and that the divide between people who think differently gets wider and wider and wider and wider.

It's a single sentence, beginning at the 1:27 mark:

This is the intersection of faith and the secular world.

We're screwed. If these things, these events - if the screaming and hating and not listening and being shocked that others think differently and just getting more and more riled up about what we think without listening to anybody - if this is the intersection of faith and the secular world, we're screwed.

But if it's just people connecting with people, in conversation and in action, in living and working together and learning from one another? If that's the intersection of faith and the secular world, then there is hope. If it's something we do together and not against one another, then there is hope.

I don't know exactly what it looks like in all situations, but I know that being open and honest with those around me is a start. If we can have honest conversations about what is most important to us and learn from one another as a starting point, I can deal with that.