'The weaponized gospel of Jesus Christ'

http://newhumanist.org.uk/1681

Yesterday's Democracy Now! featured a poignant discussion of the alarming evangelical influence within the most technologically advanced killing force known to man--the US Army. The initial Al Jazeera report -- decried by the military as out-of-context -- showed then top military chaplain of Afghanistan suggesting that the role of the armed forces is to proselytize:

The Special Forces guys, they hunt men, basically. We do the same things as Christians: we hunt people for Jesus. We do. We hunt them down, get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into kingdom. Right? That’s what we do. That’s our business.

In response to the harsh accusations that the journalism was 'inappropriate' and 'irresponsible', Al Jazeera released additional footage:

By all means, do as scripture tells you to do and share the word, but be careful how you do it. Do it professionally; represent the Christian faith in a professional manner. Proselytizing is against the rules. That means going out and just actively seeking out somebody. I’m not going to say a lot about it. Just be careful. Remember to represent the Christian faith in a respectable, professional manner. And there are ways to win people to Christ that not overbearing or offensive to people. There are ways to do it.

...Alright, let’s talk about it. What do you think? Our ability to interact with the culture here is important for our mission in this country, so we can eventually hand this thing back over them to let them do their own thing. The more that we win over the hearts and minds, the better we’re going to be in accomplishing our mission to eradicate insurgents and Taliban and everybody else who’s bad. We want more on our side, and we’re not going to have more on our side if they see us as Bible-thumping, finger-pointing, critical people. I’m not saying you don’t share the word. That’s what you do as a Christian. But you share the word in a smart manner: love, respect, consideration for their culture and their religion. That’s what a Christian does is appreciation for other human beings. But at the same time, I’m not telling you not to share the word of God. I’m telling you to share the word of God, but be smart about it, please.

Despite calls for the 'professional' persuasion, soldiers continue to act as armed preachers and provocateurs. For instance, Jeff Sharlet tells the story of a lieutenant John D. Degiulio painting his Bradley fighting vehicle with the message 'Jesus killed Mohammed.' The predictable response to the provocation:

Then, while they put the translator on the roof with a bullhorn, shouting in Arabic, “Jesus killed Mohammed,” and then training their guns, training American guns on anybody who responded, the Bradley fighting vehicle rolled out into the city of Samarra and drawing fire everywhere it went, leading the Special Forces to conclude that every single Iraqi who took offense at these words, “Jesus killed Mohammed,” was part of the enemy and therefore needed to be destroyed.

The standard military line is of course to deny these cases or to marginilize them by playing the 'bad apple' defense. However, new revalations revealing the military's support of various Christian television shows, with "extreme missionaries" -- who embed themselves with US army units and "travel the globe to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth and encourage the church to be active in the Great Commission" -- suggest the barrel may be to blame for these crusading bad apples.

Sharlet on the pervasivness of the fundamentalist elements within the military:

And then things really picked up after 9/11, when this group, Officers Christian Fellowship, started seeing America’s conflicts as what they described as “spiritual war.” And what’s really frightening is they describe it as a spiritual conflict between good and evil. They describe Mikey Weinstein as Satanic. This show would be Satanic from their perspective. And that’s the problem. They see—not only do they see those whom they’re fighting overseas as part of the opposition, but they see even those within the military who are not a part of their movement as, at best, unwitting tools of Satan.

I mean, this sounds like loony stuff, but then you look at the size of the organization. It’s 15,000 members. It’s growing at three percent a year. It’s represented on 80 percent of military installations around the world. And you see, really, the fruition of a very long campaign that predates George Bush, to view the military as what missionaries called a mission field, not a branch of government, but as a place to go and harvest souls. And they’ve been successful now. And as Mikey Weinstein says, they’re so dominant within the military that they have become, in some ways, the mainstream rather than the fringe.

"Hundreds of thousands" of translated bibles being dropped in America's obliterated theaters of war could not be a worse way to win over the 'hearts and minds' of those ravaged by American occupation. The brazen fundamental elements within the military who have ambitions to delivery the word of God while fully equipped with the most technological advanced tools of war can only serve as agitators. Shockingly, these evangelic elements -- who make it their priority to spread to word of God -- are being institutionally embraced, says Jeff Sharlet:

After Vietnam, you stopped seeing a lot of liberal chaplains from the liberal Christian denominations. They didn’t want to serve in the military anymore. It really accelerated under Ronald Reagan, who took away all the restrictions and regulations that ensured, when you saw a chaplain in the military, it really was a little bit like Father Mulcahy, you know, someone who—Father Mulcahy in MASH is Catholic, but, of course, he can help and minister to everybody, and he’s trained to do that. Reagan wiped that out, so that the Chaplain Corps became predominantly fundamentalist. Some chaplains estimate today it’s about 80 percent fundamentalist.

The military cannot assume the affectation of being a force of democratization and freedom in the Muslim world as long as it institutionally embraces staunch Christian denominations and overlooks the contemptuous machinations of its crusaders. The alarming instances that have been surfacing can only be truly confronted if they are understood with respect to a systemic insensitivity to the Muslim world. This must be repaired, the military cannot be complacent. The only remedy is to embrace liberal values, even at the steep price of compromising the religious ambitions of its fundamental elements. If sensitivity and modernity are the causalities of radical fervor, moderate Muslims will become increasingly alienated and those that raise arms to American empire will only be provided with additional fodder.