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CNN Presents
Encore Presentation - God's Christian Warriors
Aired December 15, 2007 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The scripture is the blueprint to life and living.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: They are sure of their mission.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our role is to redeem the entire world.
AMANPOUR: And the stakes are high.
(on camera): Do you really wish that you could have been martyred?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, martyrdom was my biggest wish.
AMANPOUR: What they have in common...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: God promised we would return to this land.
AMANPOUR: Jews, Christians and Muslims...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is the ultimate sacrifice, to give your soul as a gift to God the creator and the country.
AMANPOUR: The belief that modern society has lost its way.
RON LUCE: They're raping virgin teenage America on the sidewalk and everyone is walking by and acting like everything is OK.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The problem we have now with the civilizations is we don't offer the men where to go. He doesn't know his place in life.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The people that don't keep the Torah, they don't understand the meaning of being Jews, they're wasting their life.
AMANPOUR: They say God is the answer.
REV. JERRY FALWELL: I would like to see America become the nation under God again.
AMANPOUR: But their battle to save the world has caused anger, division and fear.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I believe that Islam is a real threat.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Something's gone wrong. We have too closely fused politics and our faith.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I fear from those individuals who feel that they will go to heaven by killing. I fear for my life.
AMANPOUR (on camera): Jerusalem -- the ancient city filled with sacred meaning for three great religions -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
I'm Christiane Amanpour.
For the last 30 years, religion has exploded as a powerful political force, with an army of followers who share a deep dissatisfaction with modern secular society and a fierce determination to bring God and religion back to the seat of power.
We call them "God's Warriors".
(voice-over): For eight months, I've traveled the world.
FALWELL: Hello.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Investigating who they are, what they want and why they believe it's a battle they cannot afford to lose.
Now, God's Christian warriors -- the religious right in America. They have transformed the nation's landscape with a mix of faith and politics.
FALWELL: Good Christians ought to make good citizens. Vote in every election. Become a part of every campaign.
AMANPOUR: In the beginning, there was Jerry Falwell...
FALWELL: After 55 years of ministry...
AMANPOUR: ...the Baptist preacher who became the godfather of the Christian right.
FALWELL: Our politicians need to be men and women who take their faith into the halls of Congress, into the voting booth.
AMANPOUR: And from the beginning, there was controversy...
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: Go home! Go home!
AMANPOUR: ...as Falwell thrust religion into politics. His mission was to change America.
FALWELL: Let's see to it that we keep a president and a control in the Senate and the House of men and women who believe in the moral values that this nation was built on.
AMANPOUR: I was the last journalist to interview Falwell in the spring -- a week before his sudden death.
FALWELL: That's the Blue Ridge Mountains out there.
AMANPOUR: He showed me around his Liberty University, which now has 10,000 students on-campus in Lynchburg, Virginia.
(on camera): Are you expanding?
FALWELL: We're growing by about 1,000 students a year.
This is the first dorm we ever built.
AMANPOUR: This one?
FALWELL: Right there. It's got a number one on it. You can't see it now.
AMANPOUR: Yes, I see it.
FALWELL: Can you?
AMANPOUR: Number one female.
(voice-over): Dorms are either male or female. At this Liberty, there is no freedom to go astray.
FALWELL: We have an alcohol-free zone, we have a tobacco-free zone, we have no co-ed dorms. If we catch a boy in a girl's dorm, we think about shooting him. We don't, but we think about it.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Here, faith is at the top of the curriculum. All students must take classes on the Old and New Testaments, and a course comparing science and scripture, evolution and the creation.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I want to be trained for Christ and I want to have strong biblical values.
AMANPOUR: It took Falwell a third of a century to build Liberty University.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is my first semester here at Liberty.
FALWELL: What are you studying?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Business management.
AMANPOUR: To ensure these students carry on his crusade and shape his legacy.
(on camera): You say you're raising a generation of pit bulls to go out and grab the world by the throat.
What is it that you want them to do?
FALWELL: We -- we're trying to raise up a generation of young people who will confront the culture.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: Not the church, not the state!
AMANPOUR (voice-over): A culture he believed has gone seriously awry.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: Marriage is a privilege. (INAUDIBLE).
FALWELL: We're trying to force God out of -- and we have pretty well done it -- the public square, the public schools, our public lives.
AMANPOUR: When Falwell became a minister half a century ago, America was very different. School days began with prayer and the right to abortion was not the law of the land.
Then came the social revolution of the 1960s and American lifestyles changed.
BRUCE LAWRENCE, DUKE UNIVERSITY: America in the '60s, it had a revolution of excess, where you had Elvis and you had drugs and you had sex at the same time you had a very punishing foreign war -- the Vietnam War.
AMANPOUR: Religious historian Bruce Lawrence.
LAWRENCE: You saw all these other elements, both international and national, that seemed to portend a very dangerous and uncertain future push people to look for other answers.
UNIDENTIFIED WORSHIPERS (SINGING): Onward Christian soldiers...
AMANPOUR: In 1973, the Supreme Court decision "Roe v. Wade" allowed the right to abortion and touched off a Christian counterrevolution.
FALWELL: And out of that Moral Majority was born.
AMANPOUR: It would mean a sea change in American politics and in the courts.
FALWELL: When we started Moral Majority, we were novices. You could have gotten most of our preachers who were interested in public policy in a phone booth at the time.
AMANPOUR: His movement transcended denominations.
UNIDENTIFIED WORSHIPERS (SINGING): God bless America...
AMANPOUR: Falwell joined ranks with Catholics, Mormons and social conservatives.
By the 1980 presidential election, the Moral Majority mobilized millions of voters. And while Ronald Reagan needed almost no help in his landslide victory over Jimmy Carter, with Falwell in the ring, 12 Democratic senators did lose their seats over issues like abortion. FALWELL: We just got everybody registered. We got them to the polls. And they pulled an R and went on down with Rs and 12 went liberal senators went out of business.
AMANPOUR: Suddenly, conservative Christians had become a political force...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our Father...
AMANPOUR: ...portraying themselves then and now as an endangered species whose values were under attack. Issues would be cast in moral terms. Faith and politics would become inseparable.
FALWELL: The press found us the next day. We were not on the radar. They named us the religion right, intending to be pejorative, but I sort of liked that.
AMANPOUR: At commencement now, Republican stars and presidential hopefuls make the required pilgrimage to Falwell's school.
In 2006, John McCain delivered the commencement address.
In 2007, it was Newt Gingrich.
NEWT GINGRICH: We must recognize that we are a nation founded and sustained by our Creator.
AMANPOUR: But did Gingrich set the right example for students of the Moral Majority, given his public admission of an adulterous affair?
(on camera): How do you resolve what looks sort of hypocritical?
FALWELL: We're not trying to elect a pastor or a Sunday school teacher, not a pastor-in-chief. We're looking for a commander-in- chief.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Welcome to Iowa.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you. Great to be here.
Happy fourth of July to you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You, too.
AMANPOUR: In other words, all sorts of compromise is possible in a presidential season when none among the current field of Republican candidates has excited the conservative Christian base of the party. Falwell even told me the 2008 Republican presidential nominee could meet quite a different standard than usual.
(on camera): You basically said that for you, in this next election, correct me if I'm wrong...
FALWELL: It's security.
AMANPOUR: It's security...
FALWELL: Oh, yes.
AMANPOUR: ...rather than the social issues that you care so deeply about.
FALWELL: Well, certainly, we'd love to get, in one package, a man, a woman, who is strong on security and right on the social issues. We've got to find the person closest to where we are.
SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: I believe those prayers. Keep them coming.
AMANPOUR: He dismissed Democrats like Senators Clinton and Obama.
FALWELL: That's like the story, Chelsea Clinton interviewing some Marines returning from Iraq.
And she asked one of them the question -- what do you fear most?
And he, after a thought, said, "Osama, Obama and your mama."
Well, I'm not saying that really happened, but that's how I feel.
AMANPOUR (on camera): That's how you feel?
FALWELL: That's right.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): And Falwell continued to connect liberal beliefs to Islamic terrorism, such as blaming the attacks of September 11th on the prevalence of abortion in America.
(on camera): You know, you caused a huge amount of controversy after 9/11 when you basically said that the Lord was removing his protection from America.
FALWELL: I still believe that. I believe that a country that is...
AMANPOUR: And that America probably deserved it.
FALWELL: Here's what I said, what -- no. I said that the people we have no are responsible must take the blame for it.
AMANPOUR: You did...
FALWELL: We were killing (INAUDIBLE)...
AMANPOUR: ...but you went on to say what I've just said.
FALWELL: We're killing a million babies a year in this country by abortion. But I was saying then and I'm saying now, that if we, in fact, change all the rules on which this Judeo-Christian nation was built, we cannot expect the Lord to put his shield of protection around us as he has in the past.
AMANPOUR: So you still stand by that?
FALWELL: I stand right by that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Back up. Clear out. Back up.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Radical opponents had long waged their holy war against abortion clinics.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What the hell was that?
AMANPOUR: Bombings, arson, assassinations that terrified many women.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We do have one confirmed fatality.
AMANPOUR: This bombing at a Birmingham clinic killed a police guard. In the mid '90s, from Boston to Florida, angry zealots murdered seven people -- three of them doctors. The violence not only frightened a number of abortion clinics into closing, it also caused a public backlash.
FALWELL: It can't be the yelling and the screaming and the bombing of abortion clinics and the marching outside and waiting. It's got to be the soft but intelligent sell of the facts.
AMANPOUR: And so the courts became the new battleground over the unborn. But year after year, the religious right lost every Supreme Court decision on abortion. Falwell and others were determined to reverse that, using their political clout to make sure new justices...
SEN. ARLEN SPECTER (R-PA), JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: Do you solemnly swear...
AMANPOUR: ...passed the Christian conservative abortion litmus test. The two men president George Bush nominated to the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts...
GEORGE BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I had a cup of coffee with the nominee.
AMANPOUR: ...and Justice Samuel Alito.
SAMUEL ALITO: I, Samuel A. Alito, Jr. do solemnly swear...
AMANPOUR: ...met their test.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: The U.S. Supreme Court today handed a major victory to abortion rights opponents.
AMANPOUR: A month before Falwell died, the Supreme Court, on a 5- 4 vote, did put an end to one practice called partial birth abortion. Justice Alito became the decisive fifth vote.
FALWELL: That is the culmination, for me, of about 35 years of work.
AMANPOUR: A welcome victory for Jerry Falwell, but not yet enough.
FALWELL: I don't think we have five votes on "Roe v. Wade". I think we are probably one or two votes short.
AMANPOUR: As we talked that last week of his life, Falwell seemed to recognize that his battle to end all abortions would have to be won by the next generation of "God's Warriors".
FALWELL: My children are more likely to see this victory won than I am. I think we're 50 years away. We've got to just stay with it, stay with it, stay with it and never give up.
UNIDENTIFIED WORSHIPERS (SINGING): Praise God for all blessings (INAUDIBLE)...
AMANPOUR: If this graduation sounds like a religious ceremony, in a way it is.
UNIDENTIFIED WORSHIPERS (SINGING): Hear me, Lord.
AMANPOUR: This is the first class of lawyers to emerge from Liberty University's new law school.
UNIDENTIFIED WORSHIPERS (SINGING): Amen.
AMANPOUR: It was Jerry Falwell's final creation -- a law school where the Ten Commandments are found carved outside these classroom doors.
MATTHEW STAVER, DEAN, LIBERTY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW: This is our Supreme Courtroom. It's modeled after the United States Supreme Court.
AMANPOUR: Nine chairs for nine justices -- a classroom that's meant to be a clone.
(on camera): And, obviously, it's no accident, because you want to change what the Supreme Court has ruled on.
STAVER: We do. We say that the Supreme Courtroom reflects our supreme vision to restore the rule of law.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Mathew Staver is dean of the law school -- a minister who became a lawyer because of abortion. He says no such right is written into the constitution.
STAVER: That doesn't sound like a rule of law to me. That sounds like somebody making their own ideology under the guise of the rule of law.
Please be seated.
AMANPOUR: It is Staver whose training what the late Jerry Falwell called his next generation of pit bulls.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: May it please the court. AMANPOUR (on camera): What are the pit bulls to do?
STAVER: Well, the pit bulls, according to Dr. Falwell, and, really, what our vision is, is to raise a new generation of people that understand the rule of law, that are taught that from our Christian traditions and world view.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Staver does more than mold minds. He also runs Liberty Counsel -- a legal group which takes its fight over religious freedom into the courts all over the country. Twice he has argued before the real Supreme Court...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Consider adoption. We would love to adopt your little baby.
AMANPOUR: ...the first time against restrictions on picketing at abortion clinics.
Staver's words that day...
STAVER: Abortion speech or speech about abortion lies at the very core of the first amendment.
AMANPOUR: The last time on behalf of the laws of God.
STAVER: This is the United States Supreme Court when I argued the Ten Commandments case out of Kentucky.
AMANPOUR: At issue -- the public display of the Ten Commandments inside a county courthouse. Staver lost in a 5-4 ruling.
But there's nothing in the bible that would say to Staver thou shalt not litigate again. And so, way down on the Suwannee River, Dixie County, Florida has become the dean's new battleground over the Ten Commandments.
This six-ton granite monument carved by the local gravestone salesman sits on the courthouse steps. It is a clear example of what the Supreme Court has disallowed -- a standalone monument on government property with an obvious religious message -- love God and keep his commandments.
TOBY DICKEY, LOCAL RESIDENT: Maybe some of the things in the constitution need to be changed, such as this right here, you know?
I'm not an authority on law or nothing like that. But I know for a fact that the people in this county right here are in favor of it.
AMANPOUR: This time Staver expects to win.
Why?
STAVER: There is absolutely no question that the court has a different makeup and will likely come to a different decision.
AMANPOUR: The Supreme Court has become ground zero in this combat between law and religion -- the final word on God's place in public life.
I went there with CNN's senior legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin.
(on camera): So here is this phenomenal bastion of jurisprudence.
Inside are the Ten Commandments.
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: In several different places, including very prominently on the ceiling of the courtroom.
AMANPOUR: How do the Ten Commandments get onto the Supreme Court building?
TOOBIN: Well, the constitution has never been interpreted to mean that you could have no reference to God anywhere. I mean and many courtrooms say "In God We Trust."
AMANPOUR (voice-over): "In God We Trust" is part of the American dialogue.
and yet, the religious right would have you believe there's no mention of God anywhere in our public sphere. It's on the currency.
TOOBIN: It's on the currency and they say because it's on the currency, there's nothing wrong with it being in the schools or in the courthouses or in the Capitol.
AMANPOUR: But they also play the victim somewhat.
Are they victimized?
TOOBIN: Well, they feel like they're losing the culture wars. They feel like it's an increasingly secular society and keeping prayer out of the schools, keeping the Ten Commandments out of the courthouses, is part of how they're being victimized.
MANDY CHAPMAN, LIBERTY UNIVERSITY STUDENT: It's just more of a respect for God.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): At Liberty University, twin sisters Mandy and Megan Chapman feel they were victimized by a court ruling against religion. It happened at their graduation in 2006 at Russell County High School, back home in rural Kentucky.
Megan was the class chaplain.
MEGAN CHAPMAN, LIBERTY UNIVERSITY STUDENT: My faith is my life. It's what you live by.
So when you get out in the world and things get hard...
AMANPOUR: She wanted to offer a prayer at commencement but a judge ruled she could not.
MEGAN CHAPMAN: We talked to the seniors and one person suggested that we all do the Lord's prayer together, you know, as a senior class.
AMANPOUR: Defiantly, the seniors stood up in prayer.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.
MEGAN CHAPMAN: And then you see the rest of the 3,000 people that were in our tiny gym stand up and just cheering and we're just -- it was just amazing.
MANDY CHAPMAN: Once you choose Christian faith, once you realize that is the way, you are God's warrior regardless. And so it's just whether you're going to pick up your sword and go for it or not.
AMANPOUR: Recognizing two future Christian warriors, Dean Staver arranged scholarships for both sisters to come to Liberty University. Megan hopes to go to law school.
(on camera): What do you think God called you to do with a law degree or a lawyer?
MEGAN CHAPMAN: To defend Christians, to defend just civil rights in general.
AMANPOUR: So what issues are important to you, moral issues?
MEGAN CHAPMAN: The abortion issues, the gay marriage issues, the -- just situations like that.
AMANPOUR: Megan and Mandy pledged themselves to God in church at the age of seven. Their dorm room is a testament to their faith.
(on camera): Why do you say that you're worried about, you know, the country's reaction to Christians?
Because you are able to practice freely. You're able to worship. You're able to follow the faith as you see it.
MEGAN CHAPMAN: It's not that way everywhere and we're not oblivious to that.
MANDY CHAPMAN: And it's not that it's already happened. It's just like small things lead up to bigger things.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): These days, they may find a Supreme Court more sympathetic to conservative religious concerns like their own. In its first full year with Chief Justice John Roberts and his newest colleague, Samuel Alito, the Court has tilted noticeably to the right.
STAVER: It's a new court, a new ballgame, a new outcome not only in public expressions of religion, but in many other areas, as well.
AMANPOUR: Yet all the changes have come in close 5-4 decisions. And so it's clear that whoever wins the 2008 presidential election could sway the court's direction one way or the other for years to come. TOOBIN: You know, the two biggest liberals on the court are John Paul Stevens, who is 87-years-old, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who is 75- years-old. If the two of them were replaced by justices similar to Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, the religious right will have won in the Supreme Court and the law will be transformed beyond recognition.
AMANPOUR: So what will that mean to America?
TOOBIN: You're going to have abortion illegal in large parts of the country. You're going to have schools allowing a lot more religious observance within them.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): That is music to Matt Staver's ears and division of America that he and his students would embrace -- the answer to their prayers.
STAVER: There's no question we'll keep fighting at the Supreme Court until we have a new day. We never ever, ever give up.
JIMMY CARTER, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's always good to see you.
AMANPOUR: How are you?
Very good to see you.
(voice-over): Still to come, I meet a former president fighting to reclaim his faith from the right.
CARTER: It's impossible for a fundamentalist to admit he is ever wrong because he would be admitting that God was wrong.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I say unto you, the hour is coming.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): America is a nation of faith -- a landscape dotted with houses of worship, from mega churches to countryside chapels...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our greatest (INAUDIBLE)...
AMANPOUR: ...on the radio and on television...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Give him praise and glory (INAUDIBLE).
AMANPOUR: ...religion provides the soundtrack to much of American life.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The chaplain will lead the Senate in prayer.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Father in heaven...
AMANPOUR: But America is also a country where faith and politics go hand in hand, where members of Congress pray on the steps of the Capitol.
REP. RANDY FORBES (R), VIRGINIA: We will build a spiritual prayer wall around America.
AMANPOUR: And where presidential expressions of faith...
BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Thank you and God bless you.
AMANPOUR: Are an American tradition.
RONALD REAGAN, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: May God bless America.
AMANPOUR: But I wanted to meet the president who experienced firsthand Jerry Falwell and the birth of the religious right, and who is still concerned about their influence today.
(on camera): Thank you for doing this for us so early in the morning.
(voice-over): I met former president Jimmy Carter at the Carter Center in Atlanta. He himself is the product of a strong Christian upbringing. His father, a deacon and Sunday schoolteacher, who taught his son that faith and politics should not mix.
CARTER: I've always remembered that Thomas Jefferson, claiming to speak on behalf of all the founding fathers, said we should build a wall between the church and the state.
AMANPOUR: Carter was open about his faith while running for president, describing himself as a born-again Christian and winning a majority of the Evangelical vote in 1976.
CARTER: We never had any religious services in the White House. I never expressed any preference for my own Christian faith compared to others.
AMANPOUR: But his presidency would be defined, in part, by religion and the emergence of God's warriors on the world stage, most notably during the Iranian Revolution, where a religious fundamentalist took over a nation, making God and country truly one in the new Islamic Republic of Iran.
CARTER: I experienced fundamentalism and the Islamic faith when the Iranians took American hostages. And the Ayatollah Khomeini, who was a fundamentalist felt that it was all right to hold foreigners hostage.
AMANPOUR: Fifty-two Americans held captive for 444 days. It was a major reason that Carter was a one-term president. And religion in America also played a role in ending Carter's presidency. Many Evangelicals who supported this committed Christian Democrat in 1976 switched to the not-so-churchgoing Republican, Ronald Reagan, four years later.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I congratulate you, sir.
AMANPOUR: Many had been swayed by Jerry Falwell and his moral indictment of American culture.
FALWELL: Inside, they're selling the poison that cripples America's children.
AMANPOUR: Did you ever think that Jerry Falwell and the religious right would get so involved and become so powerful in American politics?
CARTER: No. That was a surprise to me of some degree.
AMANPOUR: Out of office, Carter returned home to Plains, Georgia, and to his church.
CARTER: This is the first real indication of God's will for women to play a leading role in the early church.
AMANPOUR: He taught adult Sunday school and still does. But in the 1990s, he watched the Southern Baptist Convention he belonged to grow progressively more conservative and more political, contrary to his faith.
CARTER: And they were, in my opinion, a radical departure from what, to me, the Baptist faith had always represented. In effect they adopted a creed that said if you don't agree with this written document in its entirety, you cannot be a pastor in a Southern Baptist Church.
AMANPOUR: Especially troublesome to the president, an amendment in 2000 to the group's statement of beliefs on the role of women. From now on like Muslims and Orthodox Jews, Southern Baptists would restrict the role of women.
CARTER: Women must be submissive to their husbands and no woman can be a leader in the church as a pastor or deacon in the church and that women are precluded from instructing men. So those things have been of great concern to me.
AMANPOUR: The Southern Baptist Amendment on a woman's role passed in 2000. Carter then publicly broke with the convention. He's continued to speak out against what he sees as the growing influence of fundamentalism in many religions characterized by rigidity, male domination, and exclusion.
CARTER: And it's impossible for a fundamentalist to admit that he is ever wrong because he would be admitting that God was wrong.
AMANPOUR: Jimmy Carter is working to reclaim his faith. CARTER: I think the primary crisis that faces the Christian church in its totality is division.
AMANPOUR: Along with former President Bill Clinton, they formed what they call the celebration of a New Baptist Covenant calling on Christians to focus on issues like poverty rather than on divisive issues like abortion and gay marriage.
CARTER: We have adopted as our guidelines a gospel based on peace and justice and humility and service and love that really helps people who are in need.
AMANPOUR: Rather than?
CARTER: Rather than more of a fundamentalist commitment where you define who can be and who cannot be a member of your organization.
AMANPOUR: Critics say Carter is playing political games of his own trying to mobilize a liberal Baptist vote. He denies it. But the president, who came into office with evangelicals behind him and left with the religious right opposing him does have hopes for the next election.
CARTER: I really believe that the high power of being a fundamentalist has reached its peak and it has passed.
AMANPOUR: When we return, a Christian fighting to protect the Jewish state.
JOHN HAGEE, PASTOR: The sleeping giant of Christian Zionism has awakened. We are united. We are indivisible and together we can reshape history.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Welcome to Texas where horses, cattle, and cowboy hats are a way of life. And probably not the first place you'd expect to see this.
This is a night to honor Israel, Texas style. But here's where it gets even more unusual, the people sponsoring this affair are Evangelical Christians. The man in charge, Pastor John Hagee, a Christian warrior for Israel.
HAGEE: Send a message to America, send a message to the enemies of Israel, send a message to the people of Israel. Israel, you are not alone.
I believe that the Bible, the Torah, is the truth. I believe there's the Torah way and the wrong way.
AMANPOUR: And the right way says Hagee is to protect and defend Israel at all costs. Hagee is a Zionist, a Christian Zionist.
HAGEE: A Christian Zionist is someone who believes that the Bible supports Israel. God begins in the foreign policy of Israel in Genesis 12:3 saying, I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you.
AMANPOUR: You said God's foreign policy statement?
HAGEE: Yes.
AMANPOUR: God has foreign policy statements?
HAGEE: Absolutely.
AMANPOUR: And his is pro-Israel?
HAGEE: Concerning the Jewish people, that's his foreign policy statement.
AMANPOUR: Hagee's devotion to Israel began in 1978 when he first visited the Jewish state.
HAGEE: While I was praying at the Wailing Wall, I turned and saw a Jewish man. He had a prayer shawl, reading the Bible, rocking back and forth, and I just felt that that man is my spiritual brother.
AMANPOUR: Hagee tried to re-create the experience in his own church in San Antonio, Texas.
HAGEE: Put your head together.
AMANPOUR: Where his evangelical congregation numbers nearly 20,000.
HAGEE: I saw Yitzhak Rabin. I met with him in Houston.
AMANPOUR: A great man.
HAGEE: He was a great man.
AMANPOUR: There is a hallway lined with pictures of Israeli prime ministers. And outside Hagee's masterpiece, a replica of Jerusalem's wailing wall.
Now pastor, what is happening here? We're in a Christian conservative church and it looks like a little bit of Israel?
HAGEE: We sent to Israel and got all of these stones and put them in place here so they could have this opportunity of praying at the wall as close as we could replicate it.
AMANPOUR: But this is more than just a tribute to the Jewish faith. If Israel is at the heart of God's foreign policy, Hagee wants to make sure it shapes America's foreign policy, too.
HAGEE: There are voices in the State Department calling for the city of Jerusalem to be divided, to make way for a Palestinian capital. Let us make this clear, there shall be one Jerusalem that shall never be divided not now and not ever.
AMANPOUR: He's got his own pro-Israel lobbying group. Their recent meeting in Washington included a written greeting from President Bush.
NEWT GINGRICH, FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER: Thank you.
AMANPOUR: And it drew people like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senators Lieberman and McCain.
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: If we fail in Israel, where will we succeed?
AMANPOUR: Hagee's group also went to Capitol Hill, telling members of Congress of their strong support for Israel. Their visit last year coincided with fighting between Israel and Lebanon. They made it clear what they expected America to do.
HAGEE: We asked them to give Israel the opportunity to respond to those people that had attacked them not to send someone from the State Department over there to get the war stopped.
AMANPOUR: So you were pro that war?
HAGEE: We are never pro-war. We are for Israel having the opportunity to respond to those that attack them.
AMANPOUR: Israel can do no wrong in Hagee's eyes, and he's identified his enemy. Hagee sees Iran and its defiant president as a threat to both the U.S. and Israel.
HAGEE: He is threatening to wipe Israel off the map. He has said that he can see a day when there will not be a United States of America. He's racing to obtain nuclear weapons and if he obtains them, it will be the western world's worst nightmare.
AMANPOUR: This is how Hagee thinks Iran's nuclear ambitions should be thwarted.
HAGEE: Well I think America should do everything in its power to make sure he never gets nuclear weapons whatever that takes. If they cannot do it through diplomacy, then I think there needs to be a military preemptive strike to deny them nuclear capability.
AMANPOUR: Fighting words for a man of the cloth but this pastor thinks war is part of God's plan. In his recent book, "Jerusalem Countdown," which has sold more than a million copies, Hagee mixes biblical prophecy and current events and outlines a violent showdown for the end of days.
In his scenario, Russia and its Arab allies invade Israel. The antichrist appears as the head of the European Union. Armies mass and there's a final battle at Armageddon resulting in a sea of human blood before Jesus returns to slay nonbelievers and reign over an era of peace.
HAGEE: You have not read -
AMANPOUR: It's a controversial theological stance and critics accuse Hagee of supporting Israel and favoring war with Iran to hasten the second coming.
HAGEE: I would make it very clear for you. Our support of Israel has absolutely nothing to do with the prophecy.
AMANPOUR: Some Jews have also been wary of Christian support for Israel.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You stand for the reading of the word of God.
AMANPOUR: Since many believe Jews must accept Christ in order to be saved.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The one thing that Jews and Christians disagree about is who the messiah is.
HAGEE: He is the sovereign god.
We just have to agree to disagree.
CROWD: Shalom!
AMANPOUR: Hagee does not try to convert Jews, but he's confident that when Jesus does return, the Jewish people will also recognize and accept him as their messiah.
HAGEE: And as I tell the Orthodox rabbi friend here in San Antonio that when we're both standing in the streets of Jerusalem and messiah is coming down the road, one of us has a big theological adjustment to make.
AMANPOUR: Which of you is going to make the adjustment?
HAGEE: Oh, I think he is, of course, and he thinks I am. It's going to be an exciting day. The sleeping giant of Christian Zionism has awakened.
AMANPOUR: For now, Hagee's battle is political rallying Evangelical Americans for Israel.
HAGEE: Let it echo down the marble halls of the presidential palace in Iran. Israel lives. Israel lives. Israel lives.
AMANPOUR: When we return.
RICK SCARBOROUGH, PASTOR: To endanger us for a Christian not to vote is a sin.
AMANPOUR: This man is trying to raise an army of Christian voters to take back America at the ballot box.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SCARBOROUGH: We need to realize the seriousness of the hour. It is not the left that is wrecking the country. It is the Christian who is doing nothing.
AMANPOUR: Pastor Rick Scarborough is on a crusade across America.
SCARBOROUGH: For a Christian not to vote is a sin.
AMANPOUR: He's traveling the country holding church rallies from now until Election Day 2008.
SCARBOROUGH: Here is the danger you need to see.
AMANPOUR: Like many of his Christian counterparts, he believes America has lost its moral footing.
SCARBOROUGH: Christians don't lose until they quit.
AMANPOUR: And his mission is to raise an army of Christian voters to fix that.
SCARBOROUGH: Evangelical Christians are estimated between 50 million and 80 million. We are the largest voting bloc in America. If 75 percent of them vote their values, we win.
I'm not a Republican. I'm not a Democrat. I'm a Christ-ocrat. My allegiance is to Jesus Christ. Whenever there is a party that presents itself as a party of values, they're going to benefit from what I do.
AMANPOUR: Rick Scarborough is a Baptist preacher by trade.
SCARBOROUGH: We were making progress. We have a conservative Congress. We're losing ground now.
AMANPOUR: And author of books with provocative titles such as "Enough is Enough" and "Liberalism Kills Kids."
His interest in politics began when he attended an AIDS prevention lecture at his daughter's public high school in Texas, which he felt was too explicit and sent an immoral message.
SCARBOROUGH: Every form of sex is fair game, just make sure you use a condom.
AMANPOUR: Scarborough took his indignation to his congregation.
SCARBOROUGH: Never my entire life have I seen a group of Baptists get so mad. We wound up encouraging our people to run for public office.
AMANPOUR: Church members took over the local school board and the city council and while their victory was short-lived, Scarborough had found his calling. He turned to Jerry Falwell for guidance to take his message national.
SCARBOROUGH: He said, Rick, he said since you're not well known what you need are visible people who will lend you their name and recognition.
AMANPOUR: With Falwell's blessing and support, Scarborough started Vision America in 1998.
SCARBOROUGH: Talk about 70 weeks to save America, a one-day crusade and so forth.
AMANPOUR: Its goal? Get pastors out from behind the pulpit and involved in politics.
SCARBOROUGH: In this wonderful system that we have, he who has the most votes wins. Where better for a pastor to be involved?
AMANPOUR: He's a fixture at places where he sees America's religious foundation under assault. Places like Alabama, where a court ruled that a monument with the Ten Commandments placed on public property was illegal.
SCARBOROUGH: If people of faith in this country don't understand at this point, it is time to stand up and say enough is enough, then it is lost as a culture.
AMANPOUR: Carrying on the religious right's war on liberalism, Scarborough accuses America's activist judges of being the problem.
SCARBOROUGH: In 1962, it was the judges and not the people who said you cannot pray in public school. In 1973, it was the judges not the people who said that a woman had the right to kill a baby in their womb. It was judges not the people in Massachusetts who opened the flood gate for homosexual marriages.
AMANPOUR: Scarborough's solution?
SCARBOROUGH: One impeachment of a judge legislating from the bench would serve notice to all the judges that it's no longer going to be tolerated and once again you have judges put there to do what they should do.
On its face it is an evil, wicked law.
AMANPOUR: He gets riled up about pending congressional legislation that would expand federal hate crimes law to include homosexuals.
SCARBOROUGH: I have nothing against homosexuals as people but it's going to declare that if you preach God's word and say that Romans I is applicable to this society and homosexual is in fact a sin as the Bible says, you're speaking hate speech and the next step then is finding the preacher or incarcerating the preacher for speaking out to what he typically believes.
AMANPOUR: Critics call that scare-mongering, a conservative Christian who wants to impose his values on the entire culture -- a man who infuriates people.
SCARBOROUGH: I'm very sorry about that. I'm infuriated that my children were forced into sex education that taught them that anal sex, oral sex, and other forms of sex was just fine. God almighty is calling us to be the church of the living god in the public place as well as in the worship place.
AMANPOUR: Between now and Election Day, Scarborough hopes to speak in person to 140,000 people.
SCARBOROUGH: As the watchmen, we must shout the word of warning as we see the danger coming.
AMANPOUR: Getting them to vote their values and change America.
SCARBOROUGH: We believe our vote is a sacred trust and we are going to vote for Republicans and Democrats and Independents who share the values we hold dear.
AMANPOUR: But can pastors in America really change an election?
RUSSELL JOHNSON, PASTOR: This is the Norman Rockwell view of our community. You see the steeple there for miles in both directions.
AMANPOUR: Pastor Russell Johnson of Lancaster, Ohio, may have done just that. He brought me up to this hilltop where he says he often prays for his community below.
JOHNSON: There are generations of hard working people here and that have basic, core, fundamental and conservative values.
AMANPOUR: Johnson is a senior pastor of the Fairfield Christian Church and an outspoken figure in Ohio politics.
JOHNSON: Jesus said all his life have convictions, pray for your community, serve the elderly, reach for children and yes, get registered and go out and vote.
AMANPOUR: Johnson runs his own Christian school and he, too, doesn't like the direction he sees America taking.
JOHNSON: In this county, there are times when children have been told don't write the name much Jesus because -
AMANPOUR: Are you talking about in public schools?
JOHNSON: In secular schools supported by public dollars. They have become secular not public. If they were public, then children could sing "Silent Night." They could say the pledge of allegiance. They would hear both creation and evolution being taught. That's public.
AMANPOUR: Johnson blames evolution for a number of America's problems.
JOHNSON: We've taught them they came from animals. For 50 years, now they're acting like animals and they have a problem with that and we have a problem with that.
AMANPOUR: So evolution is the problem for anti-social kids?
JOHNSON: Is a part -- social evolution, survival of the fittest, social Darwinism has brought upon America serious problems when it comes -- if you don't respect God and you don't respect your teachers, you don't respect your parents.
AMANPOUR: Johnson wants to make sure his voice and those of other religious leaders are heard loud and clear in the political process.
JOHNSON: We invite pastors to get involved in their constitutional rights of freedom of religion. I don't from the pulpit do this kind of endorsement of candidates.
AMANPOUR: But you do endorse issues?
JOHNSON: I do endorse issues -- life, marriage, those kinds of things. Let's get it done in Ohio.
AMANPOUR: In 2004, Johnson's community was a political battleground. Ohio was considered the crucial state for electing the next president. And Johnson waged a campaign that helped swing Ohio towards President Bush. The issue -- gay marriage.
JOHNSON: It is with great joy and happiness that we now pronounce you married.
AMANPOUR: He supported a state amendment defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman.
JOHNSON: 3.3 million people in Ohio in '04 showed up to vote for a marriage amendment. Not against people but for marriage.
AMANPOUR: It was against same-sex marriage, is that what you're talking about?
JOHNSON: It was for marriage. Not one thing says against anybody in the article. I read it carefully.
AMANPOUR: The measure passed with almost two-thirds of the vote.
JOHNSON: Afterwards we did the surveys. They voted 6-1 for President George W. Bush.
JOHN GREEN, PEW FORUM ON RELIGION AND PUBLIC LIFE: And of course you can always have a great debate over exactly how a ballot issue or anything in politics influences a very close election.
AMANPOUR: John Green is a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
GREEN: But at the minimum, it motivated many thousands of activists to get out and work hard to turn out the conservative Christian vote. And in the end that probably contributed to President Bush's victory.
JOHNSON: And some day the ACLU will go into the history and the Christ of Christmas will still stand tall. AMANPOUR: As the 2008 election approaches, Russell Johnson and Rick Scarborough are on the road again, looking for pastors and voters who share their Christian beliefs and who are willing to act on them.
JOHNSON: We are going to stand by our convictions. We are not owned by any political machine. We have the freedom to vote our conscience and we will, by the millions.
DANILLE TURISSINI, POSITIVE CHRISTIAN AGENDA: Hello, this is Danille.
AMANPOUR: Next, how phone calls and e-mails change America.
TURISSINI: It just makes that connection for you.
AMANPOUR: Christian grass roots politics in action.
And later.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me hear your battle cry tonight.
AMANPOUR: An army of teenagers fighting secular society in the name of God.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The reality is, you need to believe in the man Jesus Christ.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): In America, conservative Christians have altered the political and cultural landscape. They are on the front lines of divisive issues that touch everyone.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: We are pro-life!
AMANPOUR: Should abortion be legal?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you...
AMANPOUR: Should gays have the right to marry? What should your child be taught in school? How should judges interpret the Constitution?
God's Christian warriors say they have the answers. They believe modern secular society has corrupted America, and that there must be a return to what they call the religious foundations of the country.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: People have experienced extreme disappointment with secularism. And, so, there has developed this countercultural protest.
AMANPOUR: As America enters another election season, nothing less than the social, political and cultural direction of the country is at stake. God's Christian warriors know where they want the country to go. And they're not going to stop fighting until their battle is won.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: Christ is king. Christ is king. Christ is king.
DANILLE TURISSINI, GRASSROOTS DIRECTOR, POSITIVE CHRISTIAN AGENDA: This is Danille Turissini with Positive Christian Agenda.
AMANPOUR: Danille Turissini is trying to change America, one phone call, one e-mail, one law at a time.
TURISSINI: OK. You can call him, and have him call me?
AMANPOUR: This is what grassroots politics is all about.
TURISSINI: Let me just make that connection for you.
AMANPOUR: And God's Christian warriors are masters at it.
TURISSINI: Hello?
My job is, I deal with getting Christians involved in the public process.
AMANPOUR (on camera): Right. For what reason?
TURISSINI: To influence government.
AMANPOUR: To do what?
TURISSINI: To be we the people, to influence government, as citizens of this country.
And then we also provide you with the hundreds of bills that they are trying to pass.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): We first net Danille at a conference where Pastor Rick Scarborough was speaking.
PASTOR RICK SCARBOROUGH, FOUNDER, VISION AMERICA: Will you be impacting elections when the candidates are being selected?
(APPLAUSE)
TURISSINI: If you go to the Web site...
AMANPOUR: Turissini was working, getting Christians to use their voices to influence politics.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. So, I'm doing the pro-life works.
AMANPOUR: I traveled to her home base, outside Seattle, Washington, to get an inside look at how she does her job.
TURISSINI: So, this is my office. AMANPOUR (on camera): Yes, where you rally the troops?
TURISSINI: Yes.
AMANPOUR: What is that picture back there?
TURISSINI: This -- this is a picture at the East Wing of the White House in the Blue Room. I was the Washington State church outreach coordinator.
AMANPOUR: There's the president there, who is thanking you...
TURISSINI: There's the president.
AMANPOUR: ... for your hard work, great job, George Bush.
TURISSINI: Right.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): On the walls, maps of Washington State's legislative districts, photographs of all the legislators she's targeting.
TURISSINI: But I like to have the pictures here, because we're dealing with human beings. So, if you want o...
AMANPOUR (on camera): But whose minds, many of them, you're trying to change.
TURISSINI: Yes, absolutely, absolutely, and understand, and -- you know, and inform.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): During the past legislative session, her organization says it facilitated nearly 59,000 phone calls and sent twice-weekly e-mail alerts to nearly 100,000 people.
TURISSINI: We actually sent out a reminder. We had to send out a big alert on Friday.
AMANPOUR (on camera): About the domestic partnerships.
TURISSINI: Yes, that was the domestic partnership.
AMANPOUR: And how long, I mean, do you spend -- well, how many hours a day doing this?
TURISSINI: During session, I work on average probably about 12 hours a day. It's nonstop.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Turissini is a mother and a grandmother who became involved in politics more than 20 years ago. At that time, she supported a woman's right to abortion, until she saw an ultrasound image of her second child.
TURISSINI: All of a sudden I was, like, whoa. Wait a minute. This is a baby. I remember driving home from the clinic that day and thinking, they're killing babies. Abortion kills babies. So, naturally, I started thinking, well, what can I do about that?
AMANPOUR (on camera): So, you wanted then to change the law?
TURISSINI: I realized...
AMANPOUR: The antidote.
TURISSINI: ... the antidote to this travesty was to change the law.
DR. JOSEPH B. FUITEN, LEADER, POSITIVE CHRISTIAN AGENDA: They don't want anything to slow down abortions.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Turissini was working for a group called Positive Christian Agenda.
FUITEN: And what do we need Danille to do here, to round up the troops?
AMANPOUR: That's her boss, Joe Fuiten, a politically-minded pastor who leads one of the state's most influential mega-churches.
FUITEN: We're trying to hold back the barbarians who want to encroach upon the empire, if you will. And we're saying, no, the values of Christianity should be in the marketplace of ideas. They should be out there for all to see and to contemplate.
Well, congregation, let's dedicate Hannah (ph) to the lord.
AMANPOUR: Fuiten was instrumental in the fight to define marriage in Washington State as one man, one woman. And, although American law prohibits him from endorsing candidates from the pulpit, he gets around that by referring parishioners to a personal Web site to see his "Pastors Picks."
FUITEN: The secularists always say, you're trying to set up a theocracy. You're trying to put your values on us.
And I say to myself, hey, wait a second here. This is the way it's always been in America. You come along with your secular agenda. You're the ones trying to put your values on America, not me. Our values are native here. It's yours that are foreign. You're the illegal alien here, not me.
AMANPOUR: Danille and her group also would bring their concerns directly to legislators.
TURISSINI: Can you meet us in the middle of the Rotunda, kind of near the gold seal?
AMANPOUR: This session, they lobbied for parental notification for abortions, against a domestic partnership bill, and against a sex education bill. Small groups such as hers can have a big impact.
TURISSINI: Yes, sure. Thank you. MARK MILOSCIA, WASHINGTON STATE REPRESENTATIVE: People don't understand the power they have by just getting involved. And you just get a few friends with you, and then it quickly rises to the attention of people like me and other elected officials.
AMANPOUR: Perhaps nobody in America knows that better than Ralph Reed, one of the most influential Christians in American politics.
RALPH REED, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: You know, one of the reasons why it's hard to build a moderate or centrist political movement is because moderates are moderate. You know, they're just moderate.
I mean, what -- you know...
(LAUGHTER)
REED: ... what a -- what do you get excited about, you know, whereas, on the left or the right, people are really committed.
Can you get me the zip code ranges for the district?
AMANPOUR: Reed was the mastermind behind the Christian Coalition, the grassroots organization that transformed American politics. It was founded in 1989, on the coattails of Pat Robertson's failed bid for president.
REED: The conservative Christians in the '80s, prior to Robertson, were voting Republican in the general election, but they weren't really involved in the machinery of the Republican Party. Robertson really changed all that.
AMANPOUR: Reed turned them into a political force. He mobilized voters using direct mail, sending on millions of voter guides that focused on the smaller, local races. It was a new type of campaign: stealth politics, conducted under the radar.
REED: And, if you sort of show up in Washington and hold a news conference and say, I'm in charge now, a lot of people shoot at you.
(LAUGHTER)
REED: So, it might be smarter to go out and run 1,000 people for school board and state legislature and city council, and nobody really shoots at you.
AMANPOUR: By 1994, the Christian Coalition claimed 1.3 million members. And, that fall, its influence was really felt.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NEWT GINGRICH, SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Last night was one of the most decisive off-year elections in American history.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Republicans won a majority in Congress for the first time in 40 years. And Christian conservatives were credited with winning half those races.
God's warriors were now a force to be reckoned with in Washington. Bush, today, in Washington State, the Democrats are in charge. And Danille Turissini's agenda faces a losing battle. Here, she's getting a reality check from Republican leader Richard DeBolt.
RICHARD DEBOLT (R), WASHINGTON STATE REPRESENTATIVE: You're not stopping anything this year. I mean...
TURISSINI: OK. So, there's no chance?
DEBOLT: No. Their train is running. They have their agenda. They -- you know, they have kind of focused in on what they're going to do. They're not really open to moderating that at all.
AMANPOUR: His words proved correct. This year's Positive Christian agenda did not go forward.
For Danille, the setback is just part of the process. There are many battles still to be fought.
TURISSINI: And so, no, I will not stop. As long as I feel compelled in my heart to continue along this path, I will continue to work the grassroots.
Hello. This is Danille.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're here today to proclaim that there's going to be a sweeping of the Holy Spirit across this nation of ours.
AMANPOUR: In America today, is it even possible to separate faith and politics? I traveled to Minnesota to meet a preacher who put his parish on the line to do just that.
PASTOR GREG BOYD, WOODLAND HILLS CHURCH: If you will just join hands to the person to your right and to your left, and just join with me in your heart and in your mind.
AMANPOUR: Greg Boyd doesn't look like a fire-starter.
BOYD: The enemy is evil, but you are good.
AMANPOUR: But don't let appearances fool you.
BOYD: There is a spiritual war going on. There is a corrupting influence of having power over others.
America is not the kingdom of God.
AMANPOUR (on camera): So, Greg, if I were to Google you, all it says is heretic, heretic, heresy.
(LAUGHTER)
BOYD: That's not all it says. Come on. It can't be that bad.
AMANPOUR: You stirred up a bees nest.
BOYD: Yes. There's a certain amount of controversy that surrounded some of my ideas on stuff.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): In American society, where conservative Christianity and right-wing politics have become married, Greg Boyd wants a divorce.
BOYD: I am very concerned about the extent to which what's called the kingdom of the world, the politics of the world, is being fused with our faith, in some cases, almost like a Taliban, an Islamic state, where, you know, it's like we want to run a Christian society and enforce Christian laws. And my concern is that that is very damaging for the church and it's also very damaging for society.
AMANPOUR: Boyd was raised a Catholic, lost his faith as a teenager, and then was born again at age 17. He studied religion at the Yale Divinity School and Princeton's Theological Seminary. As a professor, he taught theology for 16 years, before feeling the full- time pull of the pulpit.
BOYD: Be blessed.
AMANPOUR (on camera): How many people do you count in the flock here?
BOYD: Judging from how full it is, whatever, on a typical weekend, it's around 4,000, I guess. So...
AMANPOUR: That's a lot, 4,000.
BOYD: Yes.
(CROSSTALK)
BOYD: Get your life from Jesus Christ. Get your life from Jesus Christ, all your life from Jesus Christ.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Visit Boyd's church, and you will hear a Christian message with a strong focus on personal relationships with Jesus Christ.
BOYD: On the one hand, I'm a conservative Christian. And I am pro-life to the core of my being. I also believe that homosexuality misses God's ideal.
AMANPOUR: But listen to what Boyd says next.
BOYD: But the Bible also says that gossip -- in fact, right next to homosexuality, it mentions gossip, and it mentions greed, and it mentions gluttony. In fact, greed and gluttony are -- are two of the most common sins, held up in the ancient world as the supreme sins. And they're frequently mentioned in the Bible, way more than homosexuality.
I never quite understand what sin gradation scale some people go by where they decide that certain sins are worse than other kind of sins, and those are the ones we need to go against.
AMANPOUR (on camera): Be specific. In order to be pro-life, do you then have to support a candidate whose mission is to overturn Roe vs. Wade?
BOYD: Christiane, I -- I don't think so.
To be pro-life is not just to be about -- concerned about the womb. It's to be concerned about life. For example, what's the relationship between poverty and abortion? And studies show that there's a direct correlation there. So, maybe the best way to lessen abortion in society is to go for the candidate that you think is going to do the most for poverty.
And, so, we need to take great care not to naively think that we can translate our particular value into a particular vote. Don't label your way of voting Christian.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Boyd's concerns over the fusion of faith and politics began building shortly after the first Gulf War, when he attended a video presentation at a Fourth of July service at another church.
BOYD: And there was patriotic music playing and a flag waving in the background. It showed a silhouette of three crosses. And four fighter jets came down over the crosses and split, with a flag waving in the background.
And there were some people who stood up. They were ecstatic. And I started crying, because I -- I wondered, how is it possible that we went from being a movement of people who follow the messiah, who taught us to love our enemies, to being a movement that celebrates fighter jets, that fuses Jesus' death on the cross with killing machines?
And that was, I guess, a -- a wakeup call to me about how serious this problem is among evangelicals in America.
AMANPOUR: Those feelings were reinforced prior to the last presidential election.
BOYD: I, like many -- probably most -- evangelical pastors, were -- I was getting a certain amount of pressure to steer the flock in a certain way: Here's how you should vote.
And it was, in fact, the Republican way.
AMANPOUR (on camera): How does it work? What do they do? They call you? Tell me how that works.
BOYD: What happens is, there's a lot of Christian leaders out there on Christian radio and Christian television, and people in your congregation watch them. And, so, a lot of the questions come from the congregation, saying, aren't you going to -- going to tell us how to vote, and aren't you going to this or whatever? The enemy isn't the liberals. And the enemy is not the conservatives. The enemy is not the abortionists. The enemy is not the gay-rights activists.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Instead, Boyd did something radically different. He preached a series of six sermons called "The Cross and the Sword."
BOYD: Whenever we find politicians who start quoting Bible verses to support their agenda, we ought to be the ones saying, uh-uh!
AMANPOUR: Many members of his congregation disagreed, and told him so.
BOYD: And, after the message, a lady came up, a wonderful lady, sincere. You know, God bless her heart. But she was livid, because she was saying, if you don't stop preaching liberal politics on the pulpit, I have got to leave.
And I said, ma'am, I'm quoting Jesus. Jesus said this.
AMANPOUR (on camera): A lot of your flock walked out, didn't they?
BOYD: Yes. We, over the long haul, lost roughly about 1,000 people, in the light of this message.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): But, as that 1,000 left, another 1,000 took their place.
BOYD: But I will tell you, I don't regret a thing. It was -- it was a turning point for our congregation. I felt that we got a clarity about a vision of the kingdom that we're supposed to be furthering.
AMANPOUR: Greg Boyd is a different kind of pastor, a man fighting to keep partisan politics out of the church, a man who dismisses the question, how would Jesus vote?
BOYD: Jesus never so much as commented on the politics of his day. And he lived in a politically hot time. I mean, it was hot, a lot of hot-button issues. And Jesus consistently refused. We're to follow his example.
AMANPOUR: When we return: Would God be an environmentalist? I meet a Christian under fire for saying yes.
RICHARD CIZIK, VICE PRESIDENT FOR GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF EVANGELICALS: He told us to do that, to watch over and care for it, right in the Book of Genesis, right there.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) AMANPOUR (voice-over): It's a windy spring day in Washington, D.C., and this man is creating a storm in the world of Christian politics.
(on camera): Where are you on abortion?
CIZIK: Conservative, pro-life. Have been for 25 years.
AMANPOUR: On same-sex marriage?
CIZIK: Conservative. Oppose gay marriage.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): So, with statements like those, why are some of the biggest names of the religious right denouncing Richard Cizik? Because of statements like this:
CIZIK: And, in fact, God's own word says, "I, God, will judge those, destroy those who destroy the Earth."
AMANPOUR: Cizik is preaching the gospel of saving the planet.
CIZIK: It's biblical environmentalism. It's biblical. It's being a steward of the Earth. It's caring about issues that will impact millions of people, like climate change.
May we embrace your charge to watch over and care for all the creatures of the Earth.
AMANPOUR: Cizik is a minister and vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group that represents 45,000 churches and tens of millions of American Christians. He believes God created the Earth and that man is failing to take care of it. Cizik calls his crusade creation care.
CIZIK: There's a reason why Jesus refers to hell in the New Testament as Gahanna. Gahanna was a garbage heap outside Jerusalem. So, as evangelicals, don't want to turn this Earth into a garbage heap, a hell on Earth.
AMANPOUR: Cizik became an environmental activist reluctantly. He was invited to a conference on climate change in England in 2002, not expecting to be moved by what he would hear.
CIZIK: I'm listening to the best scientists in the world, assembled at Oxford, present science that says the planet is at risk. And I'm literally having the scales come off my eyes.
AMANPOUR (on camera): You're saying it's the science that led you to this conclusion, whereas some of your fellow evangelicals, those who criticize your position, say it's the precisely the science and their suspicion of science which cause them to doubt and to reject what you're doing.
CIZIK: Yes, because, historically, evangelicals have reasoned like this: Scientists believe in evolution. Scientists are telling us climate change is real. Therefore, I won't believe what scientists are saying. It's illogical.
It an erroneous kind of syllogism. But is that what's been occurring? Absolutely.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): That attitude has been changing. According to a recent poll, 70 percent of evangelicals now see global warming as a serious threat to future generations.
But listen to the late Jerry Falwell, who thought the jury was still out on global warming.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REVEREND JERRY FALWELL, CHANCELLOR, LIBERTY UNIVERSITY: And, when you look at who is promoting it, the United Nations, no friend of the U.S. in most cases, and liberal clergymen, and some evangelicals who are uninformed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: By uninformed, he meant the likes of Richard Cizik. And, sure enough, 25 other prominent evangelical leaders have called for Cizik's resignation.
They accuse him of using global warming to -- quote -- "shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time, notably, the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage, and the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children."
Cizik calls protecting the environment a great moral issue today.
CIZIK: They say, oh, Rich Cizik is singularly responsible, they say, for redefining evangelicalism away from being a social and political conservative movement.
And I'm saying, now, wait just a minute. Since when has evangelical been defined by a political term or an economic term? It's primarily a theological term.
AMANPOUR (on camera): And this falls into the rubric of theology?
CIZIK: Oh, absolutely. And, if they are defining it politically or economically, they are heretics, ultimately, in my opinion, and in the minds...
AMANPOUR: You are saying they're heretics?
CIZIK: They're the heretics, oh, absolutely.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): What's at stake is the direction of the conservative Christian voting bloc in America, a group that isn't the monolith it's often portrayed to be.
JOHN GREEN, SENIOR FELLOW IN RELIGION AND AMERICAN POLITICS, PEW FORUM ON RELIGION AND PUBLIC LIFE: There's a lot of diversity there. AMANPOUR: John Green is a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
GREEN: That's not all evangelicals, and it's certainly not all Christians in the United States, many of whom have a much more moderate agenda, and some of whom actually have strongly liberal positions on a variety of issues.
(APPLAUSE)
AMANPOUR: In the past two presidential elections, conservative Christians were among President Bush's strongest supporters. And voting trends suggest they will remain predominantly Republican in the near term, an association that's been political gospel since Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority.
But even that is not written in stone.
GREEN: And it may very well be that, in the future, if social issues become less prominent, that other questions, such as the environment and economic issues, will lead evangelicals to vote more Democratic than they have in the past.
AMANPOUR: Cizik says he's not trying to convert Republicans into Democrats, just to convince them of what he believes to be at the center of God's agenda: saving the Earth.
CIZIK: He told us to do that, to watch over and care for it, right in the Book of Genesis, right there.
AMANPOUR: Up next: a family who believes American culture is so harmful to their children, they had to step out of it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Where do you -- where do you start for your little A?
AMANPOUR: And later: 22,000 Christians and their battle cry.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
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AMANPOUR (voice-over): From Washington state to Washington, D.C., we have met people who believe their faith compels them to change American culture and politics. But there are also people who are fighting in a very different way, by turning inwards.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Five times one is five. Three times zero is zero.
AMANPOUR: It's a familiar scene.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Five times ten is 50.
AMANPOUR: But they aren't doing homework.
JENNIFER NEVARR, HOME SCHOOLING CHILDREN: When you start for your little "A."
AMANPOUR: This is school. And their mother is the teacher.
J. NEVARR: You have an eraser. There you go.
AMANPOUR: Jennifer Nevarr, and her husband, Mike, are quiet warriors against a culture they feel is dangerous for their children. They're fighting back by opting out. Teaching their children at home because, for them, public schools are faithless and morally bankrupt.
MIKE NEVARR, HOME SCHOOLING CHILDREN: Most of the schools are secular in their thought in the direction, very humanistic. Those are things that we wouldn't want to raise our children under.
AMANPOUR (on camera): What is it about the sort of public sphere that you don't want to expose your children to?
M. NEVARR: It's more of what we want to expose them to here. What they wouldn't get there, is what we want to teach them here. And that would be a Christian moral view.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Mike runs a landscaping business. And is also a part-time preacher at a small, local church. Jennifer stays at home and is the primary teacher of their five children: 9-year-old Lucas, 7-year-old Eden, 5-year-old Trinity, 3-year-old Ariel, and 1- year-old Daniel. And they say, God willing, they'll have more.
Jennifer's days are hectic. Especially with two toddlers running around. But whether she's being a mother or a teacher...
J. NEVARR: Let me see you do your "E".
AMANPOUR: ... the focus remains strictly on God.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
J. NEVARR: What happened? God put them out of the garden because they did not obey, right?
AMANPOUR: The home school movement has been growing since the 1980s. An estimated two million children are taught at home, many for purely religious reasons.
It's become a $1 billion industry: books, magazines and Internet resources designed to help home schooling parents.
J. NEVARR: We don't just do math because you need to know math so you can go to college and get a job. We study math because God created math. And God loves math. AMANPOUR (on camera): Do you like being home schooled? Do you ever feel a bit different?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No. Not at all.
AMANPOUR: What do you learn here at home?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I learn math, science, geography, history and Latin.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): And science, specifically Darwin's theory of evolution, is a battleground for many conservative Christian parents. It's not in the Bible. And so, they think it's wrong.
(on camera) What will you teach your children about science? About where we all came from?
M. NEVARR: We'll teach them the truth, that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And we will certainly teach them about evolution, about the theory or hypothesis of evolution.
AMANPOUR: Hypothesis?
M. NEVARR: Absolutely. It's an unproven hypothesis. I think that's safe to say.
AMANPOUR: Will you tell them it's wrong?
M. NEVARR: You know, yes. We will.
AMANPOUR: How can you be so sure?
M. NEVARR: Well, because the word of God is truth.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Fifty-three percent, that's more than half of all Americans, believe in creationism, that God created the earth and everything on it, as it says in the book of Genesis.
One third of Americans feel so strongly about it, they want to banish evolution from the classroom and replace it with creationism.
I spoke with religious historian Karen Armstrong about why feelings on evolution run so strongly in America.
(on camera) What do you think accounts for more than half of America believing in creationism?
KAREN ARMSTRONG, RELIGIOUS HISTORIAN: Once you say that the first chapter of Genesis is not literally historically and scientifically true, then the whole Bible becomes a nonsense.
So, Darwinism became -- it was no longer just a scientific hypothesis. It became a symbol of everything that was wrong with the modern world.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): God's warriors have fought the teaching of evolution in the schools and in the courts many times over the years. The most notable recent case was in Dover, Pennsylvania.
The fight was over the theory of intelligent design, which maintains the universe is so complex, there has to be a master architect. The Dover school board said it could be taught. But opponents charged it was just creationism in disguise.
STEPHEN HARVEY, PLAINTIFF'S ATTORNEY: Intelligent design and religiously-motivated attacks on evolution have no place in our public school science classrooms.
AMANPOUR: And in December 2005, a judge agreed.
Eugenie Scott directs the National Center for Science Education.
EUGENIE SCOTT, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL CENTER FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION: What the Dover decision did was discourage other school districts from passing policies like Dover, where teachers would be required to bring intelligent design into the curriculum.
AMANPOUR: But Scott, who monitors the creationist movement, says the Dover decision still hasn't stopped the controversy from reaching into the classroom.
ARMSTRONG: There are some teachers, I'm told, who just routinely skip evolution. But it's the perception that evolution is very controversial that makes a lot of teachers just not want to teach it.
AMANPOUR: At the Nevarrs' house, the lessons continue.
J. NEVARR: And what time is it now?
AMANPOUR: An education grounded in God. A protective shield against what they believe to be a hostile, secular world that can harm their children.
M. NEVARR: You know, honestly, we like to be able to control what we're exposed to. I don't know that it's healthy for a child who hasn't developed a framework of understanding to be exposed to a whole myriad of ideas.
AMANPOUR (on camera): What do you think he wants for you, God?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think he wants me to be home schooled.
J. NEVARR: Whatever God calls him to do, I want him to do it with integrity and with honor. And do his job well. So, at the end of the day, he can stand before the Lord and say, you know, "I used my time and my talent and my treasure, and I use it all for your glory, today."
AMANPOUR: And what do you think he wants for your life?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To be a preacher, like daddy.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): From the Nevarrs of Virginia, and their battle against the secular world, to San Francisco, for a radically different call to action.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me hear your battle cry, tonight!
RON LUCE, BATTLECRY FOUNDER: Whoever speaks up most gets to shape the culture. I'm looking at a whole army of young people who want to speak out.
AMANPOUR: San Francisco, AT&T Park. This is BattleCry. And these 22,000 screaming teenagers and adults are Christian conservatives, armed with their faith and prepared for battle, in, perhaps, the most liberal city in America.
Ready to fight, what, to them, are the evils of secular society and pop culture. Sex, drugs, violence and pervasive pornography on the airwaves, the Internet, and in video games. They are God's warriors for Jesus.
LUCE: Rebellion. We're here to rise up, reject the pop culture and re-create it with the creativity that God has given us.
AMANPOUR: The man leading this struggle is Ron Luce.
LUCE: So, I have a question for you tonight -- do you have a voice?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
LUCE: I didn't hear you. I said, do you have a voice?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Christiane Amanpour, Ron Luce.
AMANPOUR: I traveled to San Francisco and met Luce, as he rehearsed for that night's BattleCry event.
(on camera) Like Sarajevo.
(voice-over) I wanted to know why he's declared war on the American lifestyle.
LUCE: We call them terrorists. Virtue terrorists that are destroying our kids.
AMANPOUR (on camera): Virtue terrorists?
LUCE: They're raping virgin teenage America on the sidewalk. And everybody's walking by, acting like everything is OK. And it's just not OK.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): The language is extreme. But many Christian parents agree with Luce. They don't like a culture where kids know more about Paris Hilton than the Bible.
But his hard line against abortion and homosexuality is what draws the controversy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: BattleCry is not a harmless movement. Its program is fiercely anti-woman, anti-gay, pro-war and pro-obedience.
AMANPOUR: Critics say Luce, under the guise of saving teenagers, is imposing his conservative values on the rest of society.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It represents a far bigger agenda, a Christian right theocratic agenda, that goes from Ron Luce, leader of BattleCry, to Pat Robertson, all the way up to George Bush.
AMANPOUR (on camera): How do you answer that? They say this sounds like a message of, you know, bringing back your values. But it's actually a message of intolerance and of hate.
LUCE: Then you can say it's divisive? Well, maybe it needs to be divisive.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Luce is 46 years old, an evangelical preacher and founder of ministries that he calls Teen Mania.
LUCE: We're fighting for those who don't know they have a voice, that are being manipulated by our pop culture. Indulging in things that really they're not even mature enough to be thinking about yet.
AMANPOUR: Like many of the Christian warriors I met, Luce had a troubled past.
LUCE: I was one of these kids. I'm a party animal. I'm messed up. Parents were divorced. I ran away when I was 15 to go find my dad. And I'm doing drugs and stuff and smoking weed. And, you know, my life was messed up.
AMANPOUR: Which is when he says he found God. A friend had invited him to church.
LUCE: God began to heal me, and my brokenness, my path. And really, I think, now, Teen Mania and BattleCry is a reflection of what God really did inside me.
AMANPOUR: His ministry is located on 472 acres in rural east Texas.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's going to be an amazing time where we to come and learn about how to be better leaders and warriors of Christ.
AMANPOUR: Here, he trains teenagers how to spread his message.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: To be able to be connected with other teenagers.
LUCE: We tell them that their cubicle is their pulpit. This is your chance to use technology to change your generation.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just open up the floodgates.
AMANPOUR: It costs each student about $650 a month to be here. They are the foot soldiers in Ron Luce's army for God.
LUCE: We have 720 students that come for one year, learning about honor, and character and passion for God.
AMANPOUR: They also serve as the backbone for BattleCry. They plan the events, act in them and even create their own media to combat today's mass media.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It just shows, like, statistically where teens are at. At the very end, just one girl is holding a sign. It says, "All of us need to be reached."
LUCE: Can we just talk straight here? Pornography has nothing to do with you.
AMANPOUR: The day we visited Luce in Texas, he was warning students that pornography can be addictive.
LUCE: And don't be thinking, well, as soon as we get married, it will all be over, because then I'll be there for him now. In fact, you will never be able to live up to stuff that he's seen.
AMANPOUR: On campus, students must follow a strict set of rules.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good morning.
AMANPOUR: No secular music or television. No "R"-rated movies. No alcohol. No drugs. No dating.
(on camera) When I, you know, read that women have to wear skirts of a certain length. And guys aren't allowed to, you know, go on the Internet, unsupervised. And I think, you know, totalitarian regimes.
LUCE: No. It's about learning to have disciplines that communicate purity. You know? The skirts' length are to keep guys from -- you know, any man on the planet can be distracted. And we don't want to unintentionally create distraction.
AMANPOUR: But, Ron, that's what the Taliban said. They kept women in their house, because men couldn't be trusted around them.
LUCE: Well, there's extremists. You came to our campus. They did, your team did. They can see that we're not extremists. The kids are normal. And they have fun. And they wear normal clothes. It's just not -- it's not -- they've not adapted. We haven't adapted the dress code to the sexualization that's happened in our culture.
MINDY PETERSON, PARTICIPATING IN BATTLECRY: I'm really excited. San Francisco's huge. And there's going to be, like, 26,000 kids there.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): We met one of Luce's lieutenants, 22- year-old Mindy Peterson, at the academy in Texas. And we followed her to BattleCry in San Francisco.
PETERSON: Phyllis (ph), it's Mindy. AMANPOUR: Mindy, too, has a troubled history. She's the product of an affair between her mother and a father she never knew.
PETERSON: My father, he was an abortionist. He's a doctor. He does abortions. And so, finding that out was kind of hard for me. Oh, yes. Your father was married. And your mom got pregnant. And he wanted to abort you.
I believe abortion's wrong. And all I can say is that could have been me.
AMANPOUR: Before her senior year in high school, Mindy went on a weekend church retreat. There, she found God.
PETERSON: I just started praying to God. And everybody had that choice. You have the choice that you're going to believe or you're just not going to believe.
AMANPOUR: Her mission, now, to spread the word to other teenagers in trouble.
PETERSON: Yes. I do consider myself one of God's warriors. A warrior is someone -- you know, a soldier who wants to fight.
There's God and then there's an enemy. And, like, God is, like, fighting for your life. And that's the battle right there.
AMANPOUR: Armed with their faith and ready to spread their truth.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They don't belong here.
AMANPOUR: When we come back, BattleCry goes to war.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Militarism is not love. Marriage, one man and one woman equals a narrow and hateful plan of Christianity.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And a hateful plan of Christian hate (ph).
AMANPOUR (voice-over): San Francisco. A protest against Ron Luce and his army of Christian conservative youth.
(on camera) We're heading to the rally.
(voice-over) I rode with Luce to city hall, where he and his followers were planning a demonstration of their own.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They want you to be part of God's army. AMANPOUR: He professes not to understand the anger.
(on camera) What do you expect? What did you have last year?
LUCE: Well, we were shocked last year, with the amount of anger and hostility from the protesters.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They don't belong here.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): But how shocked could he be? After all, BattleCry is being staged in arguably the most liberal city in America.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This city is all about joy. Not about hate.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: BattleCry, is it true you make the kids into little vicious zombies?
AMANPOUR: This year, their reception would be just as noisy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We won't be silent. Our voices will be heard.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We won't be silent. Our voices will be heard.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We won't be silent. Our voices will be heard.
AMANPOUR: This is the intersection of faith and the secular world.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jesus. Jesus.
PETERSON: Thank you, God, that we have freedom in this place, God.
AMANPOUR: Mindy Peterson, the student we met in Texas, was at the rally, leading a prayer for the BattleCry crowd.
PETERSON: God, I ask -- I ask at this BattleCry, Lord, that you reveal yourself to the teenagers out here, God.
LUCE: How many of you want to turn your generation around?
In the midst of a culture that mocks Christians, calls us bigots, puts us down, we cannot keep the good news to ourself.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We won't be silent. Our voices will be heard.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We won't be silent. Our voices will be heard.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We won't be silent. Our voices will be heard. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you consider being gay a crime or a sin?
LUCE: A crime?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A crime or sin?
LUCE: You know, we believe in purity. According to the Bible, it's not in God's plan. There's just a lot of data that shows that gay men have a significantly shorter life span.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Honey, it's fine.
AMANPOUR (on camera): I guess many people want to know why you would bring this message into this state, at this time, given the polarization. And the message they say is very divisive, rather than inclusive.
LUCE: The message of Jesus was divisive, as well. You know, so much of our culture has become gray, you know. There's really not a right. Really not a wrong. And really, that's not the message of the Bible. Wrong things will hurt you and destroy you. And -- and these kids are choosing the right thing and choosing to live for purity.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): I tracked Mindy down to get her take on the rally.
PETERSON: There's one misconception that has happened today at this really. And that is that these people think that our war is against other people. They think that our war is against man. And our war isn't.
Our war is against pain in teenagers' hearts and depression, alcoholism. Those things that are, like, tearing our teenagers apart.
AMANPOUR: Wandering through the crowd, I was surprised to find children as young as 11 enlisted in God's army.
(on camera) So, what is it like being a Christian at school?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It really scares me to see people at such a young age, at school age, having sex and getting pregnant.
AMANPOUR: People you know of your age?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I know someone in sixth grade. That's had sex.
AMANPOUR: Kids in your class are doing drugs and having sex?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They're doing drugs and having sex. They're not really even thinking anything about it. They're just saying, "Well, oh, well. It's just an action."
AMANPOUR: And what are you girls going to do? Be celibate until you're married? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're going to stay pure. We made a commitment. We had a purity night. And we made a commitment to God to stay pure until marriage.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): The demonstrations had ended, and BattleCry was about to begin.
For two days, I watched as teenagers head-banged their way through a combination rock concert and religious revival. Shouting out their morality.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Each of us needs to shape the culture.
AMANPOUR: And fighting back against what they call a toxic, secular society.
LUCE: What if we, right here tonight, in San Francisco, we kept this raw passion for God? I want something so real, in each and every part of my life, feel my passion for God.
AMANPOUR: But in the midst of all that fervor and noise, what struck me was one woman in the wings.
JODIE DICKENS, FORMER HONOR ACADEMY INTERN (singing): Take my breath away.
AMANPOUR: Alone and singing to herself, as if she were in a trance.
(on camera) Who are you singing to?
DICKENS: The lord. I'm just worshiping God.
This ministry changed my life. You know? And it's just really overwhelming because people come here, and their lives really get changed. And I sing because I know that what I have inside of me is real.
And it doesn't matter who protests. And it doesn't matter who asks questions. I know that what I have inside of me is real. It changed my life. And it's a man. And his name is Jesus Christ.
LUCE: Leave the old life behind. It's dead.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): On stage, Ron Luce was looking for commitment. He called his followers to the altar, asking them to embrace a life guided by God.
LUCE: If you're on your knees, would you just begin to pour your heart out to him? Just tell him.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're a spirit God (ph).
LUCE: Tell him, God, I'm yours. Think about it. And when you're ready to surrender, jump to your feet and scream as loud as you can, "I want the cross." UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I love the cross.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want the cross.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want the cross.
AMANPOUR: As the evening came to an end, Ron Luce walked through the crowd: hugging, touching, embracing, for Jesus.
LUCE: Kids are hurting. And as long as there are hurting, broken, young people, then I've got a job.
AMANPOUR: As we've seen over the six hours of our series on God's warriors, there are millions of people who feel their faith is being ignored, is being pushed aside and who are certain they know how to make the world right.
We cannot and should not ignore them. And with this report, we have tried to explain them.
I'm Christiane Amanpour. Thank you for joining me.
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