Precipice

The New Evangelical Youth Movement Fusing Nihilism, Rap, Hip-Hop, and Fundamentalism – Swallowing a Generation Whole


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 “There is a new movement afoot in this country. It’s a counterculture fusion of politics and pop, and it’s taking over a high school near you. Like the waves that came before it, it’s got passion, music, and antiauthority, posturing, but more than anything else, this one has God.” –flyleaf of Lauren Sandler, Righteous: Dispatches form the evangelical Youth Movement. New York: Viking, Penguin Group, 2006.

 

“They’re engaging their peers with startling success, fusing pop culture, politics, and religion as they preach from the pulpit of the skate park, bar, and rock concert…rap preachers…are merging hip hop’s love of money with old-fashioned Bible-beating fundamentalism…dressed up in punk-rock garb.”  Flyleaf of Righteous.

 

10,000 Teens Rocking Out

 

Here is the picture of one of their Acquire the Fire revival gatherings at a stadium: “Ten thousand teens rocking out to a catchy power pop, their hands raised to the doomed roof, their eyes closed, their faces ebullient. The band was, indeed, loud, and the lights were impressive…The lyrics on the giant prompters framing the stage proclaimed what they were there for: the magnificent, unifying, unconditional love of Jesus Christ.” –Righteous, 2.

 

New Cavalry: Millions of Teens Attend Acquire the Fire Revivals

Millions of teens have gone to these Acquire the Fire revivals. The author describes it as “our new Christian cavalry,” (Righteous, 4), “terrifying and alluring as anything Orwell predicted.” (p. 5). There are freshly shaved Mohawks and three-piece suits in this subculture, and tattoos, “it exists in opposition to all culture and history that excludes Evangelicalism.” (p. 6).

 

Believe that When Jesus Comes Back He Will Be Fronting a Hard-core Band

“These new disciples have ripped down their parents’ white steeples and torn apart the lumber to build a half pipe. Christian youth is deinstitutionalizing the American church for the first time in about four hundred years…the difference between them and the unsaved is invisible…In rural Illinois, a guy in a T-shirt with BODY PIERCING SAVED MY LIFE on the front and an image of the stigmata on the back told me [Sandler] that he had no doubt that Jesus would come back fronting a hard-core band. In Denver, a crowd of skate punks disagreed-the Lord was surely returning with a skateboard in hand. In Seattle, a father-to-be in his early twenties grinned as he described the Christian world his child would be born into. “It’s gotten to the point that when I see someone covered in great tattoos, I assume they’re Christian,’ he told me…

“Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the Lord.” Leviticus 19:28.    

“The Evangelical culture is in place, and its expanding every day to swallow a generation whole.” (p. 7) It is “a population that wants liberation from liberation.” (8).

 

A Significant Precipice

“It seems to me [Sandler] that growth of the Disciple Generation, a movement of staggering demographic diversity united by an intensely shared faith, suggests we’ve arrived at a significant precipice. We are poised before the next Great Awakening in American history. And considering the nation’s metastasizing-intellectualism, the crumbing wall between church and state, and the relative absence of community and meaning in the secular world, I’ve got news for you: this awakening ain’t so great.” (11).

 

The abyss beyond the precipice is syncretistic religion, the principle of fusing popular Baal culture with religion.

 

Millions of Adherents Fuse Hip-Hop and Tattoos With Fundamentalism

A new movement is being born with millions of adherents. “New myths are born, and codes of behavior and values are set….To hit critical mass, it takes a youth movement.” (11,12).

 

This movement is using the “grass roots modus operandi of the 1960’s, “fusing Hip-Hop from the gangs of New York and Kingston, Jamaica, conservative politics, fundamentalist religion, tattoos, and skate boards. This movement is one with the president and views the military as its mission tool.  Dreadlocks ally with buzz cuts. Some of the borderline fascists, all of them are revolutionaries.

 

The Jesuit Left of the Sixties Created a “Blueprint for the Right”

It appears that they are the youth movement of the theocons and neocons, a youth movement of political evangelicalism. The Left of the Sixties created “a blueprint for the right.”  (14). “Tattoos have replaced love beads, skater-punk and hip-hop have replaced folk and psychedelic rock, and the down-and-dirty politics of the far right have replaced the visionary idealism of the New Left. But the infrastructure of the New Great Awakening is a model that’s pure sixties, organizing and inspiring through youth culture, active and intense community groups, and the melding of music and meaning, pop and politics.” (15).

 

Following the Model of Germany

This is happening exactly on the model of what happened in Germany. In the 1920s the Weimar Republic was extreme far Left. Immorality and Left wing culture dominated Berlin. Things were done in Berlin that surpassed Paris. The meaningless nihilism of the culture spawned a great yearning to belong. Then came the Wandervoegel, the German Hippie Movement of 1928, where Bohemian German youth wandered throughout Germany, reading Nietzsche beside the camp fires at night in the forest. Later, in the 1930s, the youth of the Wandervoegel joined the extreme right Frei Corps, and everything swung to the Far Right, with fascist, Nazi Hitler Youth replacing the Wandervoegel. Now nihilistic Germany had what it craved-belonging to something big. Nazism, with a Fuhrer, a leader with a strong will, a great vision, which offered the security of belonging.

 

Meaningless of Nihilism Leads Directly to Fascism

The same tinderbox has been created in America now in the Twenty-first century. A culture of nihilism, with its meaningless, alienation, and disconnectedness, leads directly to fascist movements. It did in the 1930s it is now.

 

Only a deep experience of actual communion with Christ in living union by faith provides the space the soul needs to press back the demonic influence of our culture, and provide the soul with nourishment, strength, power, and freedom under the kingship of Christ.

 

“At Acquire the Fire events preppie kids lay hands on pierced Goths and vise versa-literally by the tens of thousands. Unlike any other Youth movement in history, at least that I can think of, the Disciple Generation integrates kids across well-defined cultural boundaries in a single unifying bond, a dominant ideology without a dominant aesthetic.” (Sandler, 15). 

 

This Christian Army Aims to Destroy Everything That It Is Not

 

 “This Christian army…aims to destroy everything that it is not. Maintain no illusion: they are wide-awake. They are ready.” (16). It is a new Crusade. They have the Life Transforming Experience Weekends, where they fast and pray silently for two or three days. They have “Emotionally Stretching Opportunities pf a Lifetime, when they undergo army-style physical training. These ESOLs, as they are known, include Persecution Training courses in which interns are allowed little sleep or food, and run drills like crawling through sandy trenches and watery pits behind a team leader bearing a huge cross-literally-while facilitators representing the secular sphere verbally abuse them and try to shake their faith in God.” 

 

White House Support

 

Luce, who heads Acquire the Fire, is “filling stadiums where the Detroit Lions and Washington Redskins have a hard time selling out seats…Luce’s Branch Davidian-style training camp and creepy militant motivational tactics may sound like the work of an extremist and marginalized holy roller, but in fact, his supporters include George W. Bush, who in 2003 appointed him as a White House advisor.

 

Christian Woodstock

 

On a stretch of farmland in Illinois, Cornerstone, the annual Christian rock festival draws 50,000. The band sets up at the Rock for life tent. Dread locked and pierced young women set out the buffet. The tents stretch for miles, with grubby vans housing tens of thousands of people who camp for five days of peace, love, music, and right-wing organizing. Deafening bands like the Blood of the Martyrs, and the enormously popular Haste the Day weave their music with antiabortion declarations. (23). It is the Christian Woodstock. Now there are dozens of them. Here at Cornerstone there are over a dozen massive tents that will see over 400 bands. Sandler describes how she sought some quiet in her car as The Passion of the Christ plays deafeningly after midnight. Earplugs do not help. Thousands of sweaty torsos bearing tattoos of Jesus troop by at 3 am to their tents. Rock for Life joined up with ‘the Virginia offices of the American Life League, a Catholic organization.” – Righteous 26.

 

False Christs

 

False Christs-rock concert Christa. Nihilistic Christs, rapper Christs, skateboard Christs, tattoo Christs, taking over a generation, all fused with militant Evangelicalism, and it appears that its wake may well be spilling over into the Structure. All preparing the world for Satan’s appearance as Christ in the last great delusion.

 

 

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