With no major attacks on U.S. soil in the nearly five years since the history changing date of Sept. 11, 2001 it appears, at least for the moment, that we may be winning the War on Terror. However, just as the vast Roman Empire fell ultimately due not to invaders from without but from moral decay from within so too America finds itself on the brink of a disaster of our own making. An increasingly decadent culture is inflicting casualties at a catastrophic rate. And those caught on the frontlines of this Culture War are our own children.

   The statistics are staggering – and frightening -especially for Christian parents.

   •80% of 15-17-year-olds have had multiple hard-core porn exposures (“Pornography Statistics 2003”-Family Safe Media)

   •One in five children ages 10-17 who regularly uses the Internet has received a sexual solicitation while online (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children).

   •One in four children were unwillingly exposed to images of naked people or people having sex (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children).

   •90% of 8-16-year-olds have seen porn online, most while doing homework (“Pornography Statistics 2003” Family Safe Media

   “Today’s kids are faced with a number of things that no generation has ever been hit with,” said Ron Luce, one of America’s foremost Christian youth leaders. “It’s a spiritual war and a cultural war,” Luce emphasized. “And we as Christians have to flight on both fronts and win on both fronts. We need to win kids to Christ and pray for them, but we also need to be actively involved in the cultural war to prevent a lot of this garbage from getting to our kids. We don’t want that stuff to be the norm in our society.”

   In order to equip young people with the spiritual weapons they need to combat the immoral and amoral cultural influences that seem hell-bent on dragging society to the bottom, Luce founded Teen Mania and its offshoot organizations, BattleCry and Acquire the Fire. At the age of 25 Luce launched Teen Mania with the dream of “raising up an army of young people who would change the world.”

   Luce and his wife started out by organizing mission trips that took teens all over the globe to work and witness to those in need of help – and in need of a Savior. “Over the years God just helped us little by little. We didn’t know what we were doing. Things had grown to where we are now.”

   And where they are now is an impressive place indeed. Since those inauspicious beginnings in 1986 Luce has spoken to over 12 million teens in more than 50 countries. Today Luce and his Teen Mania team hold 33 events per year drawing an average annual attendance of nearly 130,000 youth seeking to fill the God-sized hole in their lives. His weekly television show - Acquire the Fire TV – which features interview segments with musical artists and experts on topics ranging from music and movies to the adverse effects of sex and alcohol-is currently broadcast on five different cable networks and reaches 2.5 million homes.(In this area Acquire the Fire TV can be seen on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN).

   Headquartered near Dallas, Texas, BattleCry is a national movement of hundreds of thousands of teenagers who, fueled by their Christian faith, are taking a stand against the pop-culture forces that have such a pervasive influence with their secular counterparts.

   In the past three months BattleCry rallies have been held in arenas and stadiums in San Francisco (March 24-25), Detroit (April 7-8), and Philadelphia (May 12-13). At these events tens of thousands of teens from throughout the U.S. have come together to take a stand for purpose-filled lives shaped not by popular culture, but by God.

   With two teenage daughters and a 10-year-old son Luce’s own stake in this battle is high.

   “There is a war going on and unless we engage, we’re gonna lose,” Luce said emphatically. “Christians have been complacent for far too long while the Enemy is hammering our kids.”

   With Luce as facilitator, Teen Mania is comprised of 30 different ministries “…who have rallied together to say, ‘We’d better focus on kids right now or we’re going to lose America as we know it.’’

   Teen Mania/BattleCry Ministry partners include Chuck Colson, Kay Arthur, and Jerry Falwell.

   Luce said today’s youth are under daily attack from those he terms as “virtue terrorists.” Virtue terrorists exploit children for monetary gain. “They’re out to make a buck and they don’t care what they do to the hearts and minds of a whole generation.”

   “It’s pretty horrendous what’s coming against these kids,” said Luce, adding that the list of those guilty of corrupting our youth is almost too numerous to mention. “The media that’s aiding in the sexualization of the culture, online pornography, violent video games that teach kids how to kill and desensitize them to even the most extreme violence."

   Left unchecked, Luce maintains this virtue terrorism will soon result in an America plunged into a “horrible moral chaos” and a darkness from which we may never recover.

   Data compiled by the George Barna research and polling firm, which focuses on Christian related issues, supports Luce’s contention.

   Statistics show that at the present rate of evangelism only 4% of today’s youth will grow up to be Bible believing Christians. By comparison, the WWII generation’s numbers were 65%. “So we’ve gone from 65% to 4% in one lifetime,” said Luce. “That’s startling.”

   Luce compared the alarming 4% figure to that of many European Union counties where Christianity has drastically declined or been replaced by Muslim Fundamentalism. “We’re at the brink of it (a near total atheistic youth population) right now,” Luce said, adding that statistics further show that, “Most kids come to Christ before they’re 20. Whatever they are when they get there (their 20’s) is what America will become,” Luce warns. “The urgency comes from the fact that we’ve only got five years to turn this thing around.”

   One teen who won’t be a prisoner of war in this clash of culture is Amanda Hughey, 18, of Orange County, California. Hughey, currently an intern with Teen Mania, is a young lady on fire for the Lord. Her fervent desire is to help her generation withstand and ultimately triumph over the daily onslaught of a culture that seeks to corrupt and pervert the minds and souls of her peers.

   “If nobody counters (the culture we’re in) and stands up against the virtue terrorists, than we are going to keep spiraling out of control,” Hughey said passionately. “We need to have a voice and speak up loud, now!

   “BattleCry is really about teenagers empowering (other) teenagers to have a voice. It's not just kids getting hyped up about something, and then dying out...this is for real. God is real, and he has changed my life, and I want teenagers everywhere to know that saving knowledge of his Son, Jesus Christ. I want teens to know that there is more than MTV, or media, or sex, or drugs, or anything else that the world says that you need to do to be happy.”

   Luce’s goal for this Christian teen revolution is for 100,000 churches to double the size of their youth groups and actively disciple them every year for the next five years.

   To accomplish this, Luce and his staff have compiled a detailed list of tools and program strategies on how to build and sustain a youth ministry available at the BattleCry website. Pastors and youth leaders are rapidly signing up at www.BattleCry.com with 50,000 churches from 56 different denominations on board thus far.

   “Pastors are saying, ‘O.K., I’m putting my name on the line’ and pledging that we as a local church are going to go after these kids,” said Luce.

   Though grateful for the enthusiastic response, he is far from satisfied. Luce Making a personal plea to everyone reading this article, Luce implored, “Get engaged right now to start rescuing our kids and be a part of this 100,000 church revolution. We need everybody reading this to get involved. The whole BattleCry movement is about waking up the church. There’s something for each of us to do.”

   Luce has been criticized by some liberals and the media for incorporating militaristic slogans and terminology into the teen evangelism lexicon. Luce points those critics to the Bible. “If you look in the Scripture you see, ‘Blessed be the name of the Lord who trains my hand for war.’ Look at ‘Put on the full armor of God.’ Why would He want us to put on armor if He didn’t expect us to be in a fight?”

   Like or not, Christian parents (and every American family) have a fight on their hands. Casualties are already high. Some more disturbing stats reveal that of high school seniors polled for a 2004 University of Michigan study sponsored by the National Institute of Drug Abuse:

   •70% reported using alcohol within the last year.

   •More than 45% said they used marijuana/hashish at least once that year.

   •8% reported having used cocaine at least once.

   Luce has “been there/done that.” Raised in a broken home, he ran away at the age of 15, becoming a drug and alcohol abuser. A life-changing experience with Christianity prompted him to dedicate his life’s work to reaching kids and pulling them out of the same circumstances from which he came. Now Luce is a familiar figure on Capitol Hill, meeting regularly with congress members to convey the urgency of the problems facing America’s youth. “Ron is educating and equipping parents to…help our children navigate the culturally hostile world that they and their peers live in 24 hours a day,” said Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.).

   Additional statistics on the devastating effect of promiscuous sex outside of marriage on “America’s Future” indicate:

   •An estimated half of all new HIV infections occur in people under age 25(Kaiser Family Foundation, January 2005).

   •55% of 15-19 year old boys and 54 percent of 15-19 year old girls have received or given oral sex (Centers for Disease Control, September 2005).

   •8,000 teenagers contract an STD every day (Heritage Foundation 2003).

   What the “virtue terrorists” who promote such lasciviousness among pre-adults don’t tell you is that such sexual freedom is killing the younger generation not only through disease, but also through the emotional burn-out and despair many inevitably feel. Despite what the sexual predators at “Girls Gone Wild” promote, today’s sexually permissive culture is exacting a heavy psychological toll.

   According to the national Center for Disease Control (CDC) suicide is now the 3rd leading cause of death among 15 to 24-year-olds. This year alone thousands of young people in that demographic will take their own life.

   But even Christian parents can not afford to let down their guard. Only 9% of born-again teens believe in moral absolutes.

   According to a Barna, of the 33 million teenagers in America today a disturbing 83% believe that “moral truth depends on the circumstances.”

   Hughey too has been there/done that. “I know what it's like to be in a downward spiral with no hope. To be high, broken, bleeding, But I know what it is to have life now, and that's Jesus Christ.”

   For Hughey BattleCry was first a lifeline to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Now it helps her to remain anchored in her faith and enables her to extend that same lifeline to other teens drowning in the pop culture cesspool.

   “Even though I hear the Battle Cry message regularly, it always touches something inside of me that makes me want to stand up and say ‘NO!’ No to MTV, no to being branded (and manipulated) by the media, no to sex, no to drugs, and no to everything that the Devil is shoving down our throats. “It just encourages me so much to be able to see these young people saying no too, and it impacts me in a way that I can know that I am not in this thing alone.”

   “You can see Amanda’s passion for the Lord, changed lives, and rescuing others from that which she has also been rescued,” said Jeff Johnson, spokesman for the DeMoss Group, the world’s largest public relations firm dealing solely with Christian ministries, causes, and Christian leaders. “It’s the message of Teen Mania’s BattleCry and it is spreading.”

   Faced with the cold hard facts laid out in his book “Battlecry for a Generation” The Fight to Save America’s Youth (Cook Communications, 2005) Luce said Christian teens are reacting forcefully. “A kind of holy indignation rises up in them and they say, ‘They’re doing WHAT to us? We refuse to be manipulated and shaped by these people who are making a buck off our destruction.’ They’re rising up and letting their voice be heard. They’re saying, “We’re not gonna let the culture shape us…we’re going to shape the culture.”