San Francisco Protests Christian Youth Rally

If this article from the San Francisco Chronicle doesn't underscore the wild-spread fear and minunderstanding about what it means to be an evangelical or a Christian, then I don't know what does.

This past weekend at SBC Park up in San Francisco, about 25,000 Christian teenagers gathered for the Acquire the Fire conference. This year, theme was "Battle Cry" which seemed a bit too militaristic for my taste, but the message was that teenagers are under assault from a culture that cares nothing about God and which will destroy their lives if they follow it, which is certainly true.

Ron Luce, the founder of ATF, and other speakers lead a teen rally encouraged young people to find Bible-based solutions for the spread of sexually transmitted disease, teen pregnancy, drug abuse and suicide. My church sent a couple dozen kids, and our youth pastor and some adult leaders. I wasn't in attendance, so I don't know really anything about it.

But what's been most suprising to me is the response from the city of San Francisco. Not only were there protests, but the city of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors passed a resolution condemning the "act of provocation" by what it termed an "anti-gay," "anti-choice" organization that aimed to "negatively influence the politics of America's most tolerant and progressive city."

The article says:

That's bad news to Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, who told counterprotesters at City Hall on Friday that while such fundamentalists may be small in number, "they're loud, they're obnoxious, they're disgusting, and they should get out of San Francisco."

Get out of San Francisco? The last time I heard that type of rhetoric, I was in college and the KKK was going to stage a rally on DePauw's campus. Is this what people in the Bay Area think about followers of Christ? The article described an even more depressing scene.

Separated by barricades and six feet of neutral sidewalk in front of City Hall, the two sides traded amplified calls to arms Friday. On one side of the barricade was girl carrying a sign that said, "Instead of porn, show us Godly relationships." On the other, a woman held one that said, "I moved here to get away from people like you."

I moved here to get away from people like you? Wow.

I was proud of how some of the people there handled the acerbic protestors.

Christian Gallion, a 15-year-old in town with his Assembly of God youth group from Humboldt County, shrugged off being called "fascists" by counterdemonstrators. "It doesn't bother me," Gallion said. "It's a beautiful city, and we don't have anything against the protesters."

His youth pastor had no interest in engaging in political debates. "I'm not here to hate anybody," Scott Thompson said. "This isn't about Bush or gays or anything other than being here to worship together."

That's a good response. I just hope enough people heard it. It's easy in situations like this one to get awfully defensive and shoot back. But in doing so, you just magnify the stereotypes.

It deeply saddens me that Christianity is so misunderstood and so little dialogue is going on between people that this kind of thing happens. I don't know if the church needs to do a better job explaining what it's about, or if other folks need to do a better job listening, but this can't continue.

* thanks to Jonathan Ziman for calling the article to my attention