Something from a footnote in an article by Jeff Sharlet about the Christian fundamentalist movement in the Armed Forces in the most recent Harper's Magazine (May 2009) caught my eye, and I think it needs more exploration. Specifically, it's a troubling connection between Christian fundamentalism and torture, a connection embodied in General William "Jerry" Boykin.
Boykin, as we might all remember, was the Army General who, not long after 9/11, caught flak for going in uniform on the "prayer breakfast circuit," and saying that
I knew that my God was a real god and his [Somali warlord Osman Atto] was an idol (p. 36 n. 4)
Here's the part of the note that is really troubling:
Under fire from congressional Democrats, Boykin claimed that he hadn't been speaking about Islam, but in a weird non sequitur he insisted, "My references to our nation as a Christian nation are historically undeniable." These strategic insights earned Boykin promotion to deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, a position in which he advised on interrogation techniques until August 2007. (p. 36 n.4)
The article itself, "Jesus Killed Mohammed," is a frightening exploration of the Christian fundamentalist efforts to use the military for missionary purposes, to "reclaim territory for Christ in the military." In short, fundamentalists, many of whom historically were pacifist shifted midway through the cold war and began "infiltrating" the military and other secular institutions -- that's their word for it, "infiltration" according to Sharlet -- with what he calls "undercover missionaries" whose aims are to turn the military into a body of missionaries. We've seen the fruits of this with our military repeatedly falling back into the language of crusade when talking about action in the middle east and the "war on terror."
It does not take much to connect the dots in between the theology of Christian exceptionalism and the ideology of American exceptionalism that becomes embodied in General Boykin, who must have known and approved of the torturing of Islamic detainees. The most frightening conclusion of Sharlet's article is that Christian fundamentalists in the military have divided loyalties. As Sharlet writes,
The first casualties of the military's fundamentalist front are not the Iraqis and Afghans on the wrong side of an American F-16. They're the spiritual warriors themselves, men and women persuaded that the only God worth believing in is one who demands that they break — in spirit and in fact — the oath to the Constitution they swear to uphold on their lives.
In fact, I think it's fairly clear, given the religious loyalties of the previous administration, that some of the first casualties were, if not the constitution itself, then the secular enlightenment principles about the inviolable rights of the individual upon which the Constitution is based. And it may be that this connection between the fundamentalist reorganization of loyalties in the military and in the Bush administration in general to the torture of Islamic detainees that has so many Republicans worried about the possibility of torture prosecutions. Prosecutions for torture will expose a very basic anti-American-ness in the American Inquisitors.