Their platform is that messages in the media are corrupting young people, whether they're scantily clad spring-breakers on cable TV or raw lyrics on an iPod.

The two-day event is being called a "reverse rebellion," and has the official title "BattleCry." It is an initiative of the Christian youth organization Teen Mania and is designed to encourage young people to tune out and stand up.

"There is a bombardment of information from the media that we have never had in other generations" said Teen Mania founder, Ron Luce. "It's the Internet, iPods, nanos, podcasts, and it's bypassing parents' scrutiny."

This weekend's events are the third in a series of big-city BattleCry gatherings. Teen Mania launched the initiative in March and has held rallies in San Francisco and Detroit. The local event began yesterday with a rally at Independence Visitor Center in Philadelphia and continued last night with programs at the Wachovia Spectrum. BattleCry ends today with an all-day session at the Spectrum. About 15,000 are expected to attend.

"If you feed yourself a steady diet of something, that's what you become," said Daniel Serrano, 18, of Levittown, who is attending this weekend's events with a group of teens from his church, the Christian Life Center in Bensalem.

"If I'm always into rap and I hear them cursing all the time, it becomes a part of me," said Serrano. "If all I see is a girl's butt on TV, it becomes part of what I want."

Organizers of the BattleCry events cite statistics about teen pregnancy, violence and alcoholism coupled with the exposure of teens to pornography and violence to make their argument.

MTV is frequently cited as a major offender. A 2004 study by the Parents Television Council reported that there are nine "sexual scenes" per hour and more than eight "un-bleeped" profanities per hour on the cable network.

"To imply that young people are likely to base their opinions on important issues after watching one hour of television is ludicrous," James said. "The study gravely underestimates young peoples' intellect and level of sophistication."

Pop culture is a "two-way mirror," said Johnny Weixler, 17, of Myerstown, Pa. It not only gives young people what they want, but it also influences them, argues Weixler, who traveled to this weekend's events with 200 young people from On Fire Ministries in Myerstown.

"But when kids are really trying to fit in, it's easy to be swayed by pop culture," Weixler said. "No, it's not all bad, but kids should be aware of the messages that they are buying into."

Too often, those messages are sexually explicit and violence dominated, Luce said. Parents are often clueless about the technology, Luce said. Churches sometimes are afraid to broach uncomfortable topics including sex with their young people, said Steve Amaro, a youth leader at the Christian Life Center.

The BattleCry events use a combination of music, speeches, and multimedia to encourage young people to distance themselves from the bad influences and spread that message to other teens. This weekend's event includes scheduled appearances by evangelist Franklin Graham; music from TobyMac, Delirious? and Cross Movement; and hip-hop dance by Groovaloos.

BattleCry is but one part of the Texas-based Teen Mania organization, which also offers leadership training, mission trips, camping and stadium events called "Acquire the Fire." Philadelphia is the last stop on this year's slate of BattleCry events.

At a series of March rallies in San Francisco, the group received a welcome that was anything but warm. BattleCry youth traveled to the city after the distribution of a rally invitation calling one event location "the very City Hall steps where several months ago, gay marriages were celebrated for all the world to see."

The city's Board of Supervisors passed a resolution calling the event an "act of provocation" by a group whose agenda was "anti-gay," and "anti-choice." The rally was branded "fascist" by state Assemblyman Mark Leno and the teen attendees were met with a counter-demonstration.

"We love gay people. We love any person that God created," Luce said. "We believe in God's instruction book, which is the Bible. Anything that is hurtful, we will talk about. God talks about all kinds of things that are hurtful - lying, cheating and hurting your spouse and homosexuality. We will talk about it because we believe in God's word."

"I was a little sad that the impression of Christians that they had was that we were a bunch of haters," said Hughey, 19. "We weren't there to rise up against an agenda, but to rise up for teenagers."

Hughey is a student at the Teen Mania's leadership training program called Honor Academy. She is a success story. She was a cutter and experimented with drugs before her involvement in Teen Mania turned her around.

"We're just saying that we don't want to drink, smoke and sleep around. We don't want to do what they tell us it's okay to do," Hughey said. "Some people say, 'well you're just a teenager.' No, I'm not just a teenager."

This is cache, read story here