Military Evangelism Deeper, Wider Than First Though

[Quixote1818]

For US Army soldiers entering basic training at Fort Jackson Army base in Columbia, South Carolina, accepting Jesus Christ as their personal savior appears to be as much a part of the nine-week regimen as the vigorous physical and mental exercises the troops must endure.

That's the message directed at Fort Jackson soldiers, some of whom appear in photographs in government issued fatigues, holding rifles in one hand, and Bibles in their other hand.

Frank Bussey, director of Military Ministry at Fort Jackson, has been telling soldiers at Fort Jackson that "government authorities, police and the military = God's Ministers,"

Bussey's teachings from the "God's Basic Training" Bible study guide he authored says US troops have "two primary responsibilities": "to praise those who do right" and "to punish those who do evil - "God's servant, an angel of wrath." Bussey's teachings directed at Fort Jackson soldiers were housed on the Military Ministry at Fort Jackson web site. Late Wednesday, the web site was taken down without explanation. Bussey did not return calls for comment. The web site text, however, can still be viewed in an archived format.

More: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122107J.shtml

[Squatch]

1. That's a bit over the line.

[atreides1]

10. Look at the picture

The "soldier" one level up between the two is either making the sign for Texas A&M or he's having fun!

[YOY]

2. No offense to folks in uniform...

but the guys in the picture don't look like they are "being all they can be." The guy on the left looks like he's being about 50% and the one of the right about 25%.

[Squatch]

3. That's so 1991.

Our new motto is "Army Strong"...whatever the fuck that means.

[Deep13]

5. I guess they realized they need more than "an army of one." nt

[alfredo]

7. Mongo Army Strong

[patrice]

4. Something wrong with how they are handling their weapons, right? nt

[alfredo]

6. Kill for Christ. Remember that same crap from my time in. Us who did

not go to chapel in basic training had to crawl from one end of the company to the other until they told us to stop. By the time we were finished, our elbows and knees were bloody. If you were a Jew, tough. You couldn't go to temple, and did not go to Christian churches on Sunday. So it was us Atheists and Jews crawling over gravel.

[atreides1]

8. Wasn't that bad for me

I went through basic in 1978, and you had the choice of going to church or area beautification, sometimes I attended services and other times cleaned around the area.

[alfredo]

13. This was the mid sixties at Fort Jackson

[grasswire]

9. isn't that the hand sign for "devil" behind them?

Look at the hand of the guy behind them. I'm pretty sure it's not a hook'em horns sign.

Crazy.

[Quixote1818]

12. Thats funny

Good catch.

[dgibby]

17. signs

It's American Sign Language shorthand for "I Love You"

[seemslikeadream]

11. 6,000 complaints from soldiers who claim to have been persecuted by Christian evangelicals;

http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2007/11/anti-crusader-mikey-weinstein.html

The Anti-Crusader


Weinstein is the middle rung in three generations of soldiers. A former Air Force JAG and White House attorney for Ronald Reagan, he has adopted a shock-and-awe approach to battling efforts by the military to impress Christianity upon American soldiers. "We have the Christian Taliban and the Christian Al Qaeda inside our military," says Weinstein, the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, "and they really have WMD, unlike Saddam."

An amateur pugilist with shoulders like a butcher block and a head like a cannonball, he several times challenged evangelical minister Ted Haggard to a boxing match. (Haggard declined.) His adversaries call him, to his great delight, "The Field General of the Godless Armies of Satan," though his friends prefer nicknames like "Ticktock" and "Motor Mouth." During one of his trademark rapid-fire, profanity-laced diatribes, he proclaimed," Our job here is to kick ass, take names, and leave sucking chest wounds on the people who are trying to engage the machinery of the state to push their biblical worldview." To allies who suggest that perhaps Weinstein should appoint someone more diplomatic to lead the foundation, he offers, "First they will have to prove to me that what we are engaged in is a polite exchange of views" with right-wing Christians," instead of a bloody battle that only ends with the last person standing."

Weinstein is certain that fundamentalists will stop at nothing to transform the United States military into an army of God. He notes that Officers Christian Fellowship, with chapters in every major U.S. military installation in the world, envisions—and here he quotes its mission statement—a "spiritually transformed military, with ambassadors for Christ in uniform, empowered by the Holy Spirit." The group has helped boost fundamentalist Christianity among the armed forces from a negligible presence 20 years ago to a faith currently held by 30 percent of U.S. soldiers, according to Weinstein. He adds that many of those soldiers—hardcore end-timers and Dominionists—desperately want America to invade Iran, thereby triggering the biblical prophecy of the Rapture.

This summer he uncovered plans by the Pentagon to ship "freedom packages" to soldiers in Iraq that were to contain Bibles, proselytizing material in English and Arabic, and Left Behind: Eternal Forces, a video game inspired by post-Rapture novels in which "soldiers for Christ" hunt enemies who look suspiciously like U.N. peacekeepers. Partly due to Weinstein's efforts, the packages were never sent. "It's not just the Holocaust or the inquisition or the pogroms or the nine—count 'em: nine—crusades," Weinstein cautions. "It's everything that's happened since then. Whenever a virulent form of any faith has engaged the machinery of the state, in the words of the U.S. Supreme Court, we have ended up with tidal waves of blood."

And so Weinstein is laying sand bags. He has fielded more than 6,000 complaints from soldiers who claim to have been persecuted by Christian evangelicals; 95 percent of the complaints come from mainstream Christians. Tipsters helped him catch uniformed military officers publicly endorsing an evangelical group and ferret out an anti-Semitic Bible study guide on an army base website. In September, he shunted many of the complaints into a massive lawsuit against the Department of Defense. His lead plaintiff, U.S. Army Specialist Jeremy Hall, alleges that a major at Iraq's Speicher base threatened to block his reenlistment in the Army in retaliation for organizing a meeting of atheists.

[Karenina]

14. . .

[Fire Walk With Me]

15. "The Handmaid's Tale"

[balantz]

16. Religious zealots from both Christianity and Islam

tell their young soldiers to sacrifice themselves for their god, be it putting themselves in danger to kill others, or strapping on a bomb to kill others, or whatever the method. Interesting that these gods are supposed to be one and the same, meaning having the same origin.