A contingent from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence stood on City Hall's Polk Street steps at noon on Friday...
...along with a half-dozen leftist groups such as World Can't Wait.
They were protesting a Texas "youth ministry" called Teen Mania, which was holding an event called "BattleCry" in San Francisco at the Giants baseball stadium on Saturday, and at a pray-in directly in front of San Francisco's City Hall on Friday afternoon.
The only problem was that the Christians were late, and there was nobody to protest against at noon, except for one lone gentleman telling everyone that there was going to be an earthquake soon in San Francisco and that we were all going to hell.
This must have been disappointing for all the local television stations who had sent out photographers looking for a wild confrontation.
At some point between two and three in the afternoon, the Christian teens finally arrived with their signage...
...and their T-shirts, whose backsides read: "WARNING! This teen is branded by God. This teen will be seen changing this generation, preaching the Word of God, laying hands on the sick, walking by faith, lying in purity, standing for the truth, and demonstrating the unconditional love of Jesus Christ."
There were also large red flags that looked like refugees from a roadshow production of "Les Miz"...
...along with signage spelling out the mathematics of marriage.
The Battlecry website is amazingly sophisticated, with blogs and video of Friday's City Hall "action" already posted. (Click here to get there and check it out.)
In fact, the entire operation struck me as bizarrely slick, with a lot of money involved to get these Young Christian Warriors pumped up.
At one point, a large group formed a huge circle in Civic Center Plaza holding hands...
...and I found myself in the middle, half expecting dodgeballs to be flung.
Thankfully, there were still a few Sisters around to offer salvation.
4 comments:
ahaah, michael, we forgive them!!!!
did u get me message the other day?
Thanks for the explanation -- I walked past both sides on Friday and wasn't sure quite what was going on. Ironically I was coming from volunteer work at Project Open Hand, and if those teens were really following Jesus they would have been up there with me helping to feed the sick and hungry. . . .
"lying in purity"?
Like saying something untrue after taking a bath?
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Dear anonymous: "lying in purity" threw me for a loop, too.
Dear pjwv: Ron Luce, the organizer of "Teen Mania," was on one of Dubya's "War on Drugs" commissions, and he strikes me as about as far away from "feeding the sick and hungry" as you can get while still using Jesus' name. I wouldn't blame the kids, though, as they literally don't know any better.
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