Who are “they”? Well, high-level Pentagon officials, who are imposing fundamentalist Christianity on our soldiers. The following excerpt is from a report by Truthout.org:
On the heels of a scathing report issued by the Defense Department’s inspector general that took high-level Pentagon officials to task for allowing an evangelical Christian organization unfettered access to the Department of Defense (DOD) to promote its fundamentalist agenda, comes word the Pentagon’s top chaplain opened its doors yet again to another evangelical group whose leader recently spent two days at the facility proselytizing, passing out Christian literature, and “saving souls.” . . .
According to documents obtained by the watchdog group the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and made available to Truthout, David Kistler, President of Hickory, North Carolina-based H.O.P.E. Ministries International, embarked on a “DC Crusade” along with dozens of members of the evangelical organization for two weeks that included two days inside the Pentagon proselytizing and preaching the “gospel” to government employees and “saving souls.”
Kistler is a somewhat controversial figure whose sermons contain apocalyptic messages and bizarre prophecies. He believes certain Democratic lawmakers will burn in hell while “good Christians,” such as President Bush, will be swept up into the heavens. The Rapture will soon vacuum up good Christians, including George W. Bush, to Heaven, he said in a past sermon to his congregation. Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton will not be Raptured up to Heaven. Following The Rapture, the Anti-Christ will appear and children will be “micro-chipped.”
Well, a little religion never hurt anyone, right? Even while working at the Pentagon. Maybe, then, it’s time to tell those dissenting soldiers to shut up worship Jesus Christ. Mikey Weinstein, the president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation Weinstein said he and his legal staff are still preparing to file a comprehensive federal lawsuit against the DOD
for widespread First Amendment and Bill of Rights violations as well as similar violations of Clause 3, Article VI of the Constitution, which prohibits any “religion test” for any position in the federal government.
Weinstein said the lawsuit has been delayed only because of the “overwhelming, non-stop reports of out-of-control Christian fundamentalism his organization has been receiving” from soldiers who indicated to Weinstein’s staff that rampant Christian fundamentalism has plagued the halls of the DOD and soldiers on the battlefield in Iraq are being forced by their superiors to accept Jesus Christ as their saviors. Weinstein, a former White House attorney under Ronald Reagan, general counsel H. Ross Perot and an Air Force Judge Advocate (JAG), has called for Congressional hearings into the Pentagon’s attempts to “Christianize” the military and the DOD.
“We need immediate and sustained bipartisan and Congressional oversight coupled with no-holds barred federal litigation to stop this unconstitutional, fundamentalist, Christian contagion and its military lick spittle sponsors from the West Wing to West Baghdad,” Weinstein said.
As I write this, I’m wondering what effect it has on our soldiers to convince them that the people they are trying to save over in Iraq are inevitably hell-bound for their Islamic beliefs. Perhaps, if they convinced me that the Iraqi civilians I’m allegedly assisting are going to burn in hell forever anyway, I would tend to mistreat Iraqi civilians, shooting at them, kicking in their doors and throwing thousands of innocent men in prison without charge.
Perhaps this is a good reason for erecting a high wall between government and religion, especially at the Pentagon. Then, perhaps, the soldiers will be better able to see that all of us, even the Iraqi Muslims, are human beings deserving of respect.
First of all, the North Carolina-based H.O.P.E. Ministries International is a strange institution at best. It has decided on its own that all Christians are to be held to a criterion of values of three scriptures out of the thousands of scriptures in the Bible. Who decided that these were the scriptures to be followed, would probably the Church leaders, sans God. If the article is accurate then these people have decided for themselves who will go to heaven and who will not (and according to that churches doctrine, Bush is not going to heaven, which shows a bit of duplicity on the church’s part.)
Next, would be the concept of raptures is not any kind of Christian belief except for maybe a Rastafarian Christian belief. The idea of the rapture seems to have sprung up within the last 20 or 30 years and looks of a New Age belief and has no bases on the Bible itself. Furthermore, doomsday prophesying and forced conversions are not what God wants. According to the Bible, if God wanted forced coverts he would have made robots instead of man and that would have saved everyone from umpteen zillions of years of suffering. Then God would say, “Number 240,342,354,654, a glass of water please.” That would be the end of the question of “Good Christians.”
Unfortunately, the idea of sadistic brutes in the military comes from human nature not Christianity or the Bible. It is a good excuse and I am sure as long as people are unable to take responsibility and not want to look bad or evil, this will continue. If not Christianity, it would be Judaism, Buddhism, evil spirits or whatever and if you believe them then you would be chasing your tail to no end. It is easy to blame a concept or a thing because they cannot say, “I didn’t tell him to do it.” What does happen is that the military draws in a lot of self righteous and sadistic people into its fold. Those people joined the military on the hopes that they can beat up, torture, rape and murder the gooks, japs, gerries, frogs, or whoever is on the menu for the day. It has happened and will continue to happen as long as Homo sapiens continue to be Homo sapiens. One small fact on war, people who are fighting an enemy that looks like your friend, the innocent do get hurt. In the Korean War there were American soldiers who would not shoot a pregnant Korean girl. The Koreans would shoot her on the fact that she should not be there and is an enemy infiltrator with hidden weapons. In many cases they Koreans were right. As a friend told me, “The bad guys don’t always wear black.”
In conclusion, according to one of the church leaders, Satan is the beautiful one. Probably, he looked good, kindly and was the perfect angel. Yet, he decided for himself that he wanted to be above God and decided to usurp his position. Now, Satan is in a bad place. What we see here is that the North Carolina-based H.O.P.E. Ministries International has on its own initiative decided who is a Christian and who is going to heaven. It has even decided the time table and the method. The Bible states that that is God's job. It seems that the leaders of the North Carolina-based H.O.P.E. Ministries International are mimicking someone who currently is living in the basement. Definitely, not a place anyone who is following them wants to go. As for war and politics, religion is not the place for it. Nor is religion the problem with war and politics. Even without religion, wars and politics will continue to be messy and idiotic as long as people don’t really look at what is going on.
This post on the off marriage between evangelicals and the Pentagon only scratched the surface. Ebonmuse (of Daylight Atheism) dug much deeper and collected incidents and allegations that are much more disturbing. http://www.daylightatheism.org/2007/09/theocracy-…
Spc. Jeremy Hall and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation filed a lawsuit against Maj. Paul Welborne and Defense Secretary Robert Gates in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kansas, this past week. It alleges that Welborne threatened to pursue military charges against Hall and to block his reenlistment because he was trying to hold a meeting of atheists and non-Christians in Iraq.
The suit also alleges that Gates permits a military culture in which officers are encouraged to pressure soldiers to adopt and espouse fundamentalist Christian beliefs.
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/09/ap_jeremyha…