Actor Stephen Baldwin Takes Christian Indoctrination to the Xtreme

[laststeamtrain]

Actor Stephen Baldwin Takes Christian Indoctrination to the Xtreme

Original investigative report: How a media-savvy, tough-talking duo are putting their knowledge of youth culture in the service of the paranoid Christian Right.

By Sarah Posner

Actor Stephen Baldwin has a message for the millennial generation: Jesus is cool, Jesus is rad, Jesus will kick your butt, Jesus will help you kick the butts of secular liberals. Yet while Baldwin seeks to be the hip new face of evangelicalism, promoting the Jesus of skateboarders and cool kids, beneath his radical chic is the ideology of the old men behind the Cold War-era John Birch Society and Christian Crusade.

Together with Christian activist and radio host Kevin McCullough, Baldwin launched a youth-targeted for-profit Christian media company, Xtreme Media, LLC, and the radio program Xtreme Radio with Stephen Baldwin and Kevin McCullough. The aim of Xtreme Media, according to Baldwin, is to create "a content reality we want to utilize to fire up the conservative movement to stand up and push back louder and more ferociously."

Addressing a 2008 religious-right conference, the annual Values Voter Summit sponsored by FRC Action, Baldwin -- the baby of the Baldwin brothers acting family first put on the Hollywood map by brother Alec -- explained that he uses "extreme sports" to recruit young evangelicals "because I believe the way to ensure a better America in the future is make more Christians." At religious right conferences across the nation, Baldwin struts before young and not-so-young audiences, deploying his uber-masculine Christianity as a rebuke to the Hollywood liberals he claims are ruining America.

"We are the hands of the Lord Jesus in this realm," he told the Values Voters. "And I don't know about you -- I'm not tryin' to be dramatic -- I'm puttin' some boxing gloves on mine."

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http://www.alternet.org/investigations/146033/actor_stephen_baldwin_takes_christian_indoctrination_to_the_xtreme

[hlthe2b]

1. Well, every family has its nut case....

Alec and Billy must just love family get-togethers with him

[WCGreen]

2. He's an actor?

You could have fooled me...

[MUAD_DIB]

3. Of course he is. Aren't all Televangelists?

[Bluebear]

4. He promised to leave the US if Obama got elected. Liar.

[wtbymark]

5. He's been completely off his rocker for a few years now

I heard somewhere that Alec refuses to talk about him with the media.
Not every family has a cookoo, but this one does

[no_hypocrisy]

6. I think Jesus would prefer hanging out with us Secular Liberals.

[Ilsa]

7. Is the Book of Asskicking in the New Testament?

I missed the Sunday School lessons where Jesus physically hurt people.

[Warpy]

8. At 44 he's going after the YOUTH?

Uh, what's wrong with this picture, Steve? You missed that train, oh, 14 years ago. You're a middle aged guy and there is no way you're going to tap into that youth market. You're OLD to them. Trying to learn their slang and pretend you're one of them is just creepy, man.

[glinda]

10. Not radical "chic" but radical "creep". He is scary.

[Edweird]

9. One of my bartender girlfriends and I would get fucked up and watch the 'youth' ministry

crap on TV. It's fucking hilarious.