There is an article in the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine about BattleCry, a youth crusade that whips kids up into a frenzy and gets them to commit to rejecting anything that the organizer, Ron Luce, doesn't consider Christian. This includes their non-Christian friends. According to the article Luce tells the kids, "The devil hates us and we gotta be ready to fight and not be these passive little lukewarm, namby-pamby, kum-ba-yah, thumb-sucking babies that call themselves Christians. Jesus? He got mad!" You can read more here. Or you can read the whole article in the latest issue on stands until the 19th. You can read a really good analysis of this movement and why it isn't what Jesus would do at Internet Monk here.
By the way, they sang Kum ba yah at my beloved grandfather's funeral. He spent ten years in the mission field teaching young people. He spent the rest of his life committed to caring for the vulnerable. It was this grandpa who first taught me the grace of forgiveness when I was four years old. I had been playing in the basement and my family were terrified that I had wandered off. Since my grandparents lived on a winding road with poor visibility, a block from the ocean, they had reason to be terrified. As I stood in the midst of some very angry adults it was my grandpa who pulled me up onto his lap and held me.
What kind of face do we want young people to associate with the Gospel?
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