Before I begin, I want to mention my use of
Harpers magazine for some information. My subscription to that magazine is worth much more than the annual rate I pay. From the Index to the indepth articles, I find it an invaluable tool and it is one of a few publications I really recommend.
That being said, thanks to Facebook, today’s topic is religion and my opinion thereof.
However, before I get to that, I thought I would discuss figures of speech. "Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader" another book in our bathroom contains many useless facts that always capture my attention. One of the topics discusses common phrases and where the originated. For example, “to give someone the cold shoulder” actually refers to the English hint to guests who overstayed their welcome. A welcomed visitor would be served a delicious hot meal, but a guest who overstayed his welcome or who was unexpected would get a cold shoulder of mutton.
“For the birds” was from city streets before cars. The visual and aromatic emissions of horses contained undigested oats, which attracted English sparrows and other small birds. So, the worthless meaning of the phrase really means it’s horseshit.
I remember an art class when we had to illustrate phrases, so I posted one of the ideas from that class as today’s photo.
Now to the day's topic: One of my interests is spirituality, but I have a dread of organized religion, which I think squelches the spiritual by regimenting it into a “you have to agree with our tenets or else situation.” True religion should be tolerant but that rarely happens. Religion, since it is based on faith, often resists being challenged by reason, so it allows people to put their prejudices and dislikes into a religious sinful category.
One of the quotes about religion that I find telling is by Anne Lamott: "You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image, when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." Think inquisitions, crusades, religious pogroms, jihad, the recent survey that showed that those who attend church most think the acts of torture carried out on “terrorists” were acceptable, etc. Oh, and don’t forget the Middle East. I have read books suggesting even monotheism gained power when secular rulers realized that the concept of one God could be used to argue for the concept of a supreme earthly ruler.
So you get religion mixing into politics . . . (think Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Concerned Women of America, Westboro Baptist Church, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, Traditional Values Coalition, Christian Coalition of America, American Family Association, the American Center for Law and Justice, and don’t get me started on the Mormon Church‘s recent funneling of money into states where marriage equality was a topic).
I believe there is a spiritual side of life, but that it is for each person to find individually. If a group of people hold the same spiritual beliefs, let them form an organization. However, the beliefs and opinions of that group are applicable to the members of the group and should not infringe on my beliefs or intrude into my life. I believe a society can be moral without being religious.
So, back to Facebook -- I listed spirituality as an interest. Unfortunately, the site is one of those sites that cues into certain words users say about themselves and those are the focus of ads aimed at your page. I wondered why I was getting Christian debt solution and dealing with Christian anxiety ads, until a friend who is into clarinets noted that he gets music related ads. For someone who works in marketing and knows all about target advertising, I can sometimes be a bit thick when I get home and relax. (I also suggested that the former not be solved by robbing the offertory and the latter not be drowned in extra sips of communion wine--maybe the ads will now stop).
Of course the exchange took place on Facebook, so suddenly an old friend with whom I just reconnected was asking if I really did list Jesus as an interest. [From my answer (which involved Dick Cheney and Jesus) I realized I had to become a fan of something on the same site, namely sarcasm, like it matters.]
My friends know that I read a lot. When I read about religious groups in
Harpers magazine, I worry: “The Family is, in its own words, an “invisible” association, though its membership has always consisted mostly of public men. Senators Don Nickles (R., Okla.), Charles Grassley (R., Iowa), Pete Domenici (R., N.Mex.), John Ensign (R., Nev.), James Inhofe (R., Okla.), Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), and Conrad Burns (R., Mont.) are referred to as “members,” as are Representatives Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), Frank Wolf (R., Va.), Joseph Pitts (R., Pa.), Zach Wamp (R., Tenn.), and Bart Stupak (D., Mich.). Regular prayer groups have met in the Pentagon and at the Department of Defense, and the Family has traditionally fostered strong ties with businessmen in the oil and aerospace industries. The Family maintains a closely guarded database of its associates, but it issues no cards, collects no official dues. Members are asked not to speak about the group or its activities. The organization has operated under many guises, some active, some defunct: National Committee for Christian Leadership, International Christian Leadership, the National Leadership Council, Fellowship House, the Fellowship Foundation, the National Fellowship Council, the International Foundation. These groups are intended to draw attention away from the Family, and to prevent it from becoming, in the words of one of the Family's leaders, “a target for misunderstanding.”
Now I get messages about attempted religious infiltration of the armed forces in a message from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation: Lt. Gordon J. Klingenschmitt, an evangelical Episcopal Navy chaplain got himself court-martialed and kicked out of the Navy for appearing in uniform at a political rally, against orders. Mr. Klingenschmitt recently requested that people call their local Christian radio stations and ask them to offer this 60-second prayer: “Let us pray. Almighty God, today we pray imprecatory prayers from Psalm 109 against the enemies of religious liberty, including Barry Lynn and Mikey Weinstein, who issued press releases this week attacking me personally. God, do not remain silent, for wicked men surround us and tell lies about us. We bless them, but they curse us. Therefore find them guilty, not me. Let their days be few, and replace them with Godly people. Plunder their fields, and seize their assets. Cut off their descendants, and remember their sins, in Jesus' name. Amen.”
Barry Lunn is head of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Mikey Weinstein is president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.
Harpers recently had an article about the evangelical Christian radicalization of the U.S. military, focusing on Weinstein's organization's opposition to this. I read about Mikey Weinstein being an Air Force cadet who reported anti-Semetic comments and faced retaliation from other cadets in the form of beatings. Thirty years later (after he served as a JAG, and then in the Reagan White House) his son was also a cadet at the AFA, and told his father about being called a “fucking Jew” by cadets and officers.
At an event held at Fort Bragg to promote his book
Never Surrender: A Soldier’s Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom, retired three-star general William Boykin (a founding member of the Army’s Delta Force and an ordained minister) commented on the MRFF statement: "Here comes a guy named Mikey Weinstein trashing Petraeus because he endorsed a book that’s just trying to help soldiers. And this makes clear what [Weinstein’s] real agenda is, which is not to help this country win a war on terror.”
It’s satanic,” called out an audience member
"Yes,” agreed Boykin. “It’s demonic.”
Weinstein responded that he considers Boykin a traitor to the oath that he swore, which was to the United States Constitution and not to his fantastical demon-and angel dominionism. He’s a charlatan.”
Weinstein 's organization has drawn attention to the Christian Embassy video that led to a DoD investigation. He was also instrumental in getting the Air Force academy to adopt classes in religious diversity and has drawn attention to proselytizing officers at a number of bases. One G.I. who was threatened when he declared himself an atheist, was allowed to live with theWeinstein family. The
Harper's author notes that this might not be the safest place as Weinstein's picture window has been shot out twice and a swastika and cross were scrawled on his front door. He has had dead animals thrown on his porch and beer bottles and feces thrown at his house.His mail often contains threats and negative comments:
“You little bald-headed fag, what the fuck are you doing with an organization of this title when the purpose of your group is not to encourage religious freedom, but to DENY religious freedom?.”
After he was on CNN; “You are costing lives by dividing military personnel and undermining troops. Their blood is on your hands,” reads another; and anti-Semitism raises it’s head: “Once again, the Oy Vey! Crowd whines. This jew used to be an Air Force laywer and got the email”—a solicitation by Air Force General Jack Catton for campaign donations to put “more Christian men” in Congress, which Mikey made public—“just one more example of why filthy, hook-nosed jews should be purged from our society.
“In the military, many constitutional rights that we as civilians enjoy are severely abridged in order to serve a higher goal: provide good order and discipline in order to protect the whole panoply of constitutional rights for the rest of us.” One of those rights is free speech: a soldier in uniform can’t endorse a political candidate, advertise a product, or proselytize. That rule is for the good of the public – no one wants men with gun telling them whom to vote for – and for the military itself. An officer can tell a soldier what to do, but not what to believe.
This was also in
Harpers: “Jesus Killed Mohammed:” Sergeant Jeffery Humphrey served in Iraq. His squad were part of the 1/26 Infantry of the 1st Infantry Division. The group to which he was assigned all used code names and called themselves “the Faith element.”Easter Sunday, along with the morning chow, the 109th National Guard Infantry dropped off a video of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of Christ” and a chaplain to sing the film’s praises.Rather than watch the video, Humphrey chose to take trash to the garbage pit. When he returned, the five-ton that the 109th had used to deliver the food came back, running on rims and spewing flames. The location, Samarra, had been quiet for a month except for some Iraqi reaction to the vandalizing of mosques by spray-painting crosses, something that Humphrey’s unit had been warned about.All of the rest of Easter was spent under siege. As ammo ran low , 4 vehicles were being used to drive away from the compound in an attempt to draw enemy fire. Humphrey found his lieutenant and a couple of sergeants snickering, they had commissioned the Special Forces interpreter to paint in Arabic script across the front of the vehicle: “Jesus killed Mohammed.”
Then I read about current officers in the military:
Major General Johnny A. Weida, commandant at the Air Force Academy, who made its National Day of Prayer serviees exclusively Christian, also created a code for evangelical cadets: whenever Weida said “Air power.: The cadets were to respond “Rock, sir.” A reference to Matthew 7:25 (KJV: “And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.”).
Major General Robert Caslen, commander of the 25th Infantry Division in 2007 violated military ethics by appearing in uniform, along with six other senior Pentagon officers, in a video for the Christian Embassy, a fundamentalist ministry to Washington elites.
Lieutenant General Robert Van Antwerp, the Army chief of engineers, has also lent his uniform to the Christian cause, both in a Trinity Broadcasting Network tribute to Christian soldiers called "Red, White and Blue Spectacular" and at a Billy Graham rally, televised around the world on the Armed Forces Network, at which he declared the baptisms of 700 soldiers under his command as evidence of the Lord’s plan to “raise up a godly army.”
What men such as these have fomented is a quiet coup within the armed forces: not of generals encroaching on civilian rule but of religious authority displacing the military’s staunchly secular code. They claim to not be a conspiracy but a cultural transformation, achieved gradually through promotions and prayer meetings, with personal faith replacing protocol according to the best intentions of commanders who conflate God with country. They see themselves as spiritual warriors—“ambassadors for Christ in uniform: according to the Officers’ Christian Fellowship (15,000 members at 80% of military bases with an annual growth rate of 3%) and as “government paid missionaries” by Campus Crusade’s Military Ministry.20 Percent of active duty personnel claim no religious preference (the general population polls at 16.1%). 22% identify as evangelical or Pentecostal. 19% are Roman Catholic, 20 % as Christian, 0.33% Jewish and 0.25 Muslim.
Air Force Lieutenant General (retired) Bruce L. Fister, the current executive director, feels the “global war on terror” is “a spiritual battle of the highest magnitude.”As jihad has come to connote violence, so spiritual war has moved closer to actual conflict, “continually confronting an implacable, powerful foe who hates us and eagerly seeks to destroy us,” declares “The Source of Combat Readiness, an OCF scripture study prepared on the eve of the Iraq war.
Another OFC Bible study, “Mission Accomplished:” (and was the Bush banner on board the ship a coded message for believers?) warns that victory abroad does not mean the war is won at home. “If Satan cannot succeed with threats from the outside, he will seek to destroy from within,” asserts the study, a reference to “fellow countrymen” both in biblical times and today who practice “spiritual adultery.” “Mission Accomplished” supports the wallbuilder inNehemiah 1-6, and calls for a wall within which church and state are one: “With the wall completed the people could live an integrated life, God was to be Lord of all or not Lord at all.” The study encourages military Christians to bring this Lord of all to the entire armed forces: “We will need to press ahead obediently, not allowing the opposition, all of which is spearheaded by Satan, to keep us from the mission of reclaiming territory for Christ in the military.”
In addition,
Harpers points out: After a recent scandal at the Air Force Academy (2005 reports of Christian proselytization), the Air Force now claims to have reformed, but the academy recently brought in three Christian evangelists who proclaimed that the only solution to terrorism was to “kill Islam,” and Christian cadets informed the article’s author that they operate covertly.
The academy commander, Lieutenant General John Rosa told an Anit-Defamation League that his “whole organization” had religion problems and that restoring constitutional principles to the academy would take at least 6 years. Rosa then retired and became president of the Citadel. Rosa’s replacement, Lieutenant General John Regni, spoke over the phone with the author of the
Harper's article, who asked: “How do you see the balance between the Free Exercise Clause (of the constitution) and the Establishment Clause?”Regni responded by saying, “I have to write these things down. What did you say those constitutional things were again?”
Regni will be replaced this summer by General Mike Gould. Nicknamed Coach, Gould enjoys public speaking and is famous for his 3-F mantra: “Faith, Family, Fitness.” He once advised his 104 Pentagon subordinates to read and live by Rich Warren’s “The Purpose-Driven Life.”
“Under the rubic of free speech and the twisted idea of separation of church and state there has evolved more and more anti-Christian bias in this country, “ claims Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William McCoy in his book
Under Orders: A Spiritual Handbook for Military Personnel. Making a case for religion, and he prefers Christianity, for a properly functioning military, McCoy writes that wrong beliefs will “bring havoc to what needs cohesion and team confidence.”
General David Petraeus, formerly the senior U.S. commander in Iraq and now in the top spot at U.S. Central Command, running operations for the country from Egypt to Pakistan wrote a blurb: “Under Orders should be in every rucksack for those moments when Soldiers need spiritual energy.” Petraeus claims his comment was supposed to be a private communication between one Christian officer and another.
Military Religious Freedom Foundation suggests that he is promoting an unconstitutional Christian exceptionalism as we are fighting Islamic fundamentalists who are telling their soldiers we are waging a modern-day crusade.
How did the military get that way, Scienceblog says, in part . . . “ The next turning point occurred in the waning days of the Reagan Administration, when regulatory revisions helped create the fundamentalist stronghold in today's military. A longstanding rule had apportioned chaplains according to the religious demographics of the military as a whole (i.e., if surveys showed that 10 percent of soldiers were Presbyterian, then 10 percent of the chaplains would be Presbyterian) but required that all chaplains be trained to minister to troops of any faith. Starting in 1987, however, Protestant denominations were lumped together simply as "Protestant"; moreover, the Pentagon began accrediting hundreds of evangelical and Pentecostal "endorsing agencies," allowing graduates of fundamentalist Bible colleges-which often train clergy to view those from other faiths as enemies of Christ-to fill up nearly the entire allotment for Protestant chaplains. Today, more than two thirds of the military's 2,900 active-duty chaplains are affiliated with evangelical or Pentecostal denominations. "In my experience," Morton says, "eighty percent of the Protestant chaplaincy self- identifies as conservative and/or evangelical."
Somehow the song title I used for today’s blog, sung in the Evangelical United Brethren Church (later merged with the Methodists) my family attended as I was growing up now sounds like a threat.
