Teenage Mutant Jesus Freaks
July 06, 2008
You'll forgive my wording if it feels awkward, as I'm not all of that familiar with christian jargon. Greg Stier is an evangelist with a passion for witnessing to teens. Greg began by founding a humble in-home church, from which his ambitions changed and grew into something different, and much, much bigger. His organization now operates on an annual budget of around $5 million. Among other endeavors, he hosts huge conferences called Dare 2 Share, in which he urges and inspires kids to turn their friends to god. The consequence of failure is eternal fire for your buddies. Apparently, during these conferences, he requires his audience to phone a close, heathen, friend, and talk to them about god then and there. 350,000 kids have attended these conferences, of their own will, which is a lot, if you ask me.
Now to be fair, I'm basing my entire opinion on a Westword article and the bit of research it inspired, but there are some aspects of this that scare me a bit. Greg and his fellows appear to be for real, in that this is not a ploy for money or power. That's all well and good.They use some language, and spout some ideas, that turn me off - in a big way. Greg thinks that youth ministers need to talk to kids about their beliefs while they are still young. He thinks its better for them to start thinking about it young, and in church, then later in a philosophy class. He says that kids are more open to new ideas, and that they are more revolutionary. He says if Jesus were in high school today, he would be hanging out with the kids that get bullied and pushed down, because people that are in pain are generally more open to the idea of there being something beyond this. Have I mentioned that this is the social caste he gets the best response from? His rallies are littered with the goths, the punks, the weirdos. So far, not too bad, I guess.
His organization writes and performs plays for their massive audiences. One of these plays depicts a not to distant future, (5 years), in which muslim extremists have taken to blowing up churches and murdering christians by the thousands on American soil. In this same play the US government establishes an agency to facilitate talks between religious leaders, called the National Interfaith Administration. Anyone practicing religion outside of the NIA is persecuted, up to being tried, and executed, as a traitor. Small pocks of resisting christians form a resistance, called The Elect that assassinates key muslim officials, among other day to day christian stuff. In the play, some kids of varying faiths get thrown into the midst of this dramatic backdrop, and dashing heroic and godly things happen. Kids, apparently, eat this stuff up. Great.
Lauren Sandler, author of Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement, researches the Disciple Generation, which is what she calls these types of evangelical movements. She describes them as "...political, emotional, deeply anti-intellectual, and alarmingly successful...". Great, again. Ideas based in a morass of feeling, faith, and fear intrigue and disgust me. It's crazy to watch these things explode and assimilate people. I can't help but think that had these kids bitten a black & white makeup speckled red neck rapper hook rather than a if your friends burn in hell it's your fault but Jesus loves you hook, they could have just ended up down with the clown.
Tags for this piece: opinion article politics religion