Bibles and guns.
[For picture involving Korans and guns, see bottom of post]
You might call the image, to the right, the ghost of Christmas future. Let me suggest a productive frame for the picture which depicts a parallel that is both real but which has not yet fully emerged as a dominant dynamic.
The dynamic is that of religious war, a phenomenon that has an old and evil history especially in the Middle East.
But, that future - religious war - does not have to prevail. It is a danger as long as there are US troops in Iraq, because US troops in basic training, as detailed in a new Military Religious Freedom Foundation report, are being indoctrinated in the ideology of religious war and the cultivation of the mentality of religious war, between Christianity and Islam, is exactly what many leaders on the American Christian right and Islamic religious extremists including those of Al Qaeda want more than anything - to provoke a full blown religious war between Islam and Christianity.
Beyond merely that aspect of this issue, there's another dimension of this which is crucially relevant, which I did not include in my original post:
Many of the leaders of the American Christian right, including the Founder Of Campus Crusade For Christ, Bill Bright, held and promoted a 'narrative of cultural complaint' very similar to that which fueled the hatred, in Pre-World War Two Germany, which led to the Holocaust (that wiped out much of wife's entire extended family).
My original post has been wildly controversial-- because I originally illustrated it with a picture that showed a Hamas suicide bomber - holding an automatic weapon and a Koran - alongside a picture of US soldiers in basic training who were holding automatic weapons and Bibles-- I've decided the only thing to do is to deepen the controversy, and also to make it a bit personal...
My intent wasn't to hurt anyone's feelings and, if I did so, I apologize.
But, I take the abuse of religion, to justify killing, very seriously. For about the past two months I've been studying specific aspects of the Holocaust quite heavily. Part of my motivation stems from the fact that my wife is, on both sides of her family lineage, Askhenazi-Jewish and part of the baggage which comes with that background is that she will inherit, one day, a shoe box filled with photographs - all that remains of most of her extended family which lived, prior to World War Two, in Germany, Eastern Europe, and Russia.
Most of my wife's extended family outside of those members who lived in the United States, was wiped out in the Holocaust and she does not make a major point of that. But it is significant to me because many of the leaders American Christian right have, for years now,
been promoting a narrative of cultural complaint that is startlingly similar to that which facilitated the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party and also fueled the hatreds that led to the Holocaust. Christianity played a far greater role in feeding the hatreds that led to the Holocaust than has generally been acknowledged, and I take the religious indoctrination - of US soldiers in training - very seriously both on its own terms, as the teaching of a theology of war - but also because those who are doing the teaching very likely are also promoting a cultural narrative that is very similar to that which led to much of my wife's extended family that was wiped out in the Holocaust.
That the narratives promoted by many leaders of the American evangelical right are very similar to the narratives promoted within German society prior to World War Two and the Holocaust is not merely my own opinion - that view was aired, prominently, in a series of talks given by the conservative Baptist scholar David P. Gushee in 2006. [link to PDF file of an Address Gushee gave at the Andover-Newton Theological Seminary]:
It was this cultural despair—a toxic brew of reaction against secularism, anger related to the loss of World War I, distress over cultural disorientation and confusion, fears about the future of Germany, hatred of the victorious powers and of those who supposedly stabbed Germany in the back, and of course the search for scapegoats (mainly the Jews)—that motivated many Germans to adopt a reactionary, authoritarian, and nationalistic ethic that fueled their support for Hitler's rise to power. A broadly appealing narrative of national decline (or conspiratorial betrayal) was met by Hitler’s narrative of national revenge leading to utopian unity in the Fuhrer-State.
Conservative American evangelicals in recent decades have been deeply attracted to a parallel narrative of cultural despair. Normally the story begins with the rise of secularism in the 1960s, the abandonment of prayer in schools, and the Roe decision, all leading to an apocalyptic decline of American culture that must be arrested soon, before it is too late and "God withdraws his blessing" from America. While very few conservative evangelicals come into the vicinity of Hitler in hatefulness, elements similar to that kind of conservative-reactionary-nationalist narrative can be found in some Christian right-rhetoric: anger at those who are causing American moral decline, fear about the future, hatred of the "secularists" now preeminent in American life, and the search for scapegoats. The solution on offer—a return to a strong Christian America through determined political action--also has its parallels with the era under consideration.
Further, as I've recently written, the founder of Campus Crusade For Christ, Bill Bright, embraced and furthered that very narrative of cultural complaint described by David P. Gushee.
And, my point wasn't to stigmatize American soldiers but, rather , to underline the fact that they are being taught a theology of war and that there is ugly precedent for the teaching of the theology of war, within the Christian tradition, that goes back all the way to the First Crusade. And, the founder of Campus Crusade For Christ held, as I've written, that very narrative David P. Gushee described, above.
Although I did not mention this in my original post, the "Military Ministry" at Fort Jackson has been advertising its course, "God's Basic Training", using the flier below:
The Crusades...
Indeed, Gary Bussey's course, taught at Fort Jackson, was advertised with a flyer using imagery that's evocative of the Crusades especially given that the parent organization behind Bussey's ministry is named Campus Crusade For Christ.
The use of the word "crusade", to describe evangelical campaigns aimed at religious conversion, is endemic to contemporary Christianity and especially on the American Christan right. But that invocation of the historical Crusades is deeply anti-Semitic in light of what the Crusaders did ; in the first Crusade, as described below, the Crusaders, upon breaking through the defenses of the city of Jerusalem, slaughtered the Jews and Muslims living in that city. They hacked those defenseless civilians apart with swords, and burned them alive as well, so that the streets of Jerusalem were filled with blood.
Evangelical campaigns might not, some would argue, be inherently anti-Semitic but use of the word "crusade" as a term for evangelical conversionary campaigns is deeply, inherently anti-Semitic in the most accurate, comprehensive sense : it is both anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim.
Let's look at what the Christian Crusaders did in the First Crusade:
"Along their bloody swath through the region towards Jerusalem, the crusaders hacked apart Muslims with abandon and, on arrival, locked Jews into synagogues and burned them alive. In the First Crusade, after breaking through the walls of the city of Ma’arra, starving crusaders boiled residents in cooking pots, roasted impaled children on spits, and feasted."
Soldiers in basic training at Fort Jackson are being taught theological justification for killing, and here is an historical example of where the abuse of religion, the authority of the Christian church in particular, can lead:
Who killed Anne Frank ?
That was not a casual question for Doris Bergen, author of "Twisted Cross"; it was an exercise Bergen designed for teachers in a course she was leading, for schoolteachers, that was called "Teaching The Diary Of Anne Frank", to raise their awareness of the "chain of complicity" that led to the Holocaust...
Bergen wrote out, on cards she passed out one by one to the teachers, "identities" of different people who each played a part in the death of Anne Frank - Hitler, Himmler, the person who snatched a scrap of bread from Anne Frank's hand in the concentration camp, the Dutch couple who turned Frank's family in to the Nazis, and so on. There were about 15 teachers, 15 cards. The assignment was that the teachers, based on their given "identity" written out on their card, should line up in order based on the relative responsibility each bore for Anne Frank's death, from greatest responsibility to least responsibility.
As Bergen describes the results, in Steve Martin's documentary "Theologians Under Hitler":
"My expectation was that the person who held the card that said 'Adolf Hitler' would immediately march to the front of the line and stay there and the others would line themselves up behind that person. That's not what happened. Instead the teacher who had a card that said 'a German pastor who preached hatred of Jews, from the pulpit, in the 20s and 30s', that person marched immediately to the front of the line and refused to cede that position. No matter who came along, the person with the 'Hitler' card, the person with the 'SS' card... that woman said 'this person is the most responsible, this person who used the power of the pulpit, who used the authority of the Christian Church, of Christian tradition, to teach that it was not only acceptable but desirable to hate fellow human beings, to hate Jews, to fear Jews, to fight against them to attack them - this person is as responsible and more responsible than anyone else.' "
That is where such abuses of religion can lead.
[ note : credit for the (original image) juxtaposition of the two images belongs to Jason Leopold, of Truthout.org, who used the two pictures to illustrate a Friday, December 21st story entitled Military Evangelism Deeper, Wider Than First Thought ]
The soldiers shown in the photo, who are being indoctrinated in the ideology of religious war, are <victims> no more at fault than the young female Hamas member in the photo. Those truly at fault for any resulting strife and violence are the people who are doing the indoctrination.
Action Items
One way you can help is to give phone cards, through MoveOn, so US troops in combat theaters can call friends and relatives in the US. The underlying ideology behind Campus Crusade For Christ demonizes the American left, and one of the best ways to undercut such demonization is to let US troops in combat theaters know that Americans on the left and on the right who oppose the war in Iraq (most Americans, that is) nonetheless support US troops fighting there.
Another thing you might consider is to send the short news story I've appended, to the end of this post, to your pastor, minister, rabbi, imam, or other religious leader ( not to mention family and friends ) : the US military should NOT allow the active promotion of the theology of war, religious war, to US soldiers in basic training, and we should be calling for Congressional investigations.
So, you might consider writing to your representatives in Congress and the Senate - in the end, the only thing that will bring an end to the effort to convert the US military into an appendage of politicized, fundamentalist Christianity will be the sort of substantial public political pressure that will give politicians cover to take on the issue.
As a final action item, if you can, please try to help out MRFF with financial support so it can continue its vital work.
The American soldiers-in-training in the image were photographed as the graduating class of a course, taught by a "military ministry" of Campus Crusade For Christ, entitled "God's Basic Training" [see story at Military.com ], and a recently released MRFF report, on the latest of MRFF accumulated evidence, on the conversion of the US military's basic training facilities into religious and ideological indoctrination centers, notes the curriculum outline for that course:
From the "God's Basic Training" Bible study outlines, developed by Campus Crusade for Christ's Fort Jackson Military Ministry director Frank Bussey for basic trainee Bible studies.
From the "Can a Christian Soldier Kill?" outline:
III. In Public State Service, NO to murder, YES to killing
A. Gov. Authorities, Police, and The Military = "God's Ministers"
Rom 13:1-7 1 Pet 2:13-17 Tit 3:1 Dan 2:21 Acts 23:5
Acts 16:12
1. Two primary responsibilities
a. To praise those who do right
b. To punish those who do evil - "God's servant, an angel of wrath"
Other examples, of how such religious ideology gets expressed on US bases, detailed in the MRFF report include MRFF's discovery of a poster, on a military police office door at Fort Riley in Kansas, with a beautified drawing of Anne Coulter alongside a now infamous Coulter quote, that the United States should "kill their leaders [of Islamic countries] and convert them to Christianity" and also MRFF's discovery of that, at one of the US military bases covered in the MRFF report, a base PX sells "The Politically Incorrect Guide To Islam alongside copies of the "Soldier's Bible".
Early last November, while I was researching the background of Campus Crusade For Christ founder Bill Bright, I happened across a ~12 minute promotional video, shot at the US Air Force Academy, that is a major feature of the MRFF report and which has been picked up by ABC News, in December 21st ABC News report by Anna Schector entitled Evangelist Video Shot at Air Force Academy Exposed. The video contains the same sort of constitutional violations in inherent in the infamous "Christian Embassy" video - the endorsement, by officers in the US military and while in uniform and on US government property ( military bases or, in the case of the "Christian Embassy" video ), of fundamentalist Christianity. Below is a transcript of a portion of the speech track I made of the video:
Head Chaplain Col. Scott Sill:
"Well, we're very pleased with what Campus Crusade does here, along with a lot of other organizations. We have one night of the week especially which is set aside by the academy for the cadets to be involved in religious education, Bible studies, those kind of things. So what they really do for us is extend ministry to people that we would never be able to reach, because of there being so many cadets, if we were only to rely on what our chaplains can do."
CCC director at USAF Acad, Scott Blum:
"Campus Crusade has always been very intentional, I feel, about going after the leaders or the future leaders and that's why Dr. Bright initially picked the college campus, because it's the future leaders. As I look at the Air Force Academy, where else can I have an impact for 4,000 future leaders ? And it's not just the Air Force Academy. My vision is to reach the world through the Air Force."
narrator [ speaking of Blum ] "and, he's also a trusted friend who's always Just a phone call away."
Blum also says "...there's a real sense of loneliness, and being isolated by being a cadet, especially the younger classmen, the freshmen and sophomores, who can't leave that often - even on the weekends."
narrator : "Every Monday evening, the Academy encourages participation in a spiritual program called SPIRE. Para-church organizations like Campus Crusade are invited to come in and to lead Bible studies for the cadets. Campus Crusade's meeting is known as "CRU" - short for "crusade"....
Blum:
"Our purpose, for Campus Crusade For Christ at the Air Force Academy, is to make Jesus Christ the issue at the Air Force Academy and around the world. And I think that we're seeing God do that. We're seeing kids come to Christ, being built up in their faith and being sent out to reach the world. They're government paid missionaries when they leave here."
These are yet more data points in a increasingly detailed case, arising from MRFF's research, on the astounding extent to which America's military, from its headquarters in the Pentagon to its basic training facilities, is being converted to a vehicle for the promotion of an ideology of religious war by those who seek the sort of terrible conflict that can occur as religious beliefs and warfare mix.
***
Below is a short encapsulation of the story, above, through the lens of the promotion of a "theology of war", and which I've desgined more specifically for religious audiences. Please feel free to circulate it.
Fundamentalist Ministries At US Basic Training Facilities Promote "Theology Of War"
As detailed in recent reports from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), a 501c(3) nonprofit organization which fights for freedom of religious and philosophical belief in the US military (web site address http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.... fundamentalist Christian ministries promoting what can be described as a "theology of war" have increasingly been invited onto US military basic training facilities such as Fort Jackson in South Carolina, and Fort Sam Houston and Lackland Air Force Base (both based in Texas), with the apparent endorsement of commanders at those bases.
The most prominent of these ministries is the ‘Military Ministry’ of the immense, 1/2 billion dollar a year Campus Crusade For Christ, a global nonprofit evangelical organization founded in 1951 with the financial help of key John Birch Society funder Nelson Bunker Hunt. In the 1970s Campus Crusade’s founder evangelist Bill Bright called his group a "conspiracy to overthrow the world", and a 1998 book Bright co-authored declared the Theory Of Evolution to be a fraud. Bright was one of the signatories of an October 2002 letter sent to President George W. Bush, along with Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, Chuck Colson, D James Kennedy, and others, asserting that the Bush Administration’s intended war with Iraq would fall under traditional Christian "just war" theory.
Materials discovered by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, on the web site of Campus Crusade’s Military Ministry at Fort Jackson, include pictures of US soldiers-in-training holding both assault rifles and Bibles (provided by Campus Crusade), and a promotional flier for the Ft. Jackson ministry’s Bible study course, entitled "God’s Basic Training", features a drawing of a Roman Legionnaire holding a sword and a shield emblazoned with a Christian cross. Frank Bussey, director of Military Ministry at Fort Jackson, has reportedly told soldiers at the base that "government authorities, police and the military = God's Ministers."
Another Campus Crusade ministry, the Washington DC based "Christian Embassy", evangelizes in the Pentagon and recently became embroiled in controversy because of a promotional video, filmed in the Pentagon, in which top Pentagon officials in uniform were filmed providing glowing testimonials to the work of "Christian Embassy". A Pentagon Inspector General report subsequently concluded some of those appearances violated Department Of Defense regulations concerning the endorsement of religious groups. The recent MRFF findings included discovery of a similar promotional video, filmed by Campus Crusade at the United States Air Force Academy, in which USAF officers in uniform praise the work of Campus Crusade at the Academy, also in apparent violation of DoD regulations concerning the endorsement of religion, and a Campus Crusade employee ministering at the Academy declares that cadets are "government paid missionaries" by the time they graduate.
MRFF has received, according to founder Michael 'Mikey' Weinstein, thousands of complaints from active duty US military personnel who describe being persecuted and harassed for their religious and philosophical beliefs, and 90 percent of those complaints have come from Christians.
Below:
Hamas suicide bomber holds copy of the Koran, and an automatic weapon