As reported last week by the Wall Street Journal and many other news outlets: "CNN Segment Convinces Majority of Non-Christians that Army Discriminates: Nearly Half of Christians Agree."

(This is an adaptation of two pieces I wrote last month, titled "Obama Bashing Message from Pentagon Connected Ministry" and "Son of Obama-Bashing Minister Lies about Bibles for Our Troops." My initial reasons for writing these pieces were the clear 501(c)3 violation of Cecil Todd's political sermons and Tim Todd's lies about the military's distribution of Bibles, but, in light of the recent revelation of the Army's Public Affairs Office linking to an Obama-smearing blog in it's "Stand To!" news roundup, I think it's important to keep an eye on other Pentagon connected forces at work in the campaign against Obama, in this case a Pentagon connected ministry. At the next Revival Fires campmeeting, scheduled to be held the last week of this month in Branson, Missouri, Cecil Todd will be delivering a sermon titled "America's Biggest Nightmare!" to a crowd of thousands. I don't think it's too much of a leap to suspect that this upcoming sermon will be similar to the sermon excerpted below.)

A few days ago, a tip was sent to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) research department to check out an organization called Marshall Minute Military Ministries. MRFF has investigated a seemingly endless stream of evangelical ministries and para-church organizations operating within the military, from small Mom and Pop church groups to large scale, military-wide operations like Campus Crusade for Christ's Military Ministry, who are well on their way to accomplishing their goal of turning our military into a force of "government-paid missionaries for Christ." Marshall Minute, however, had escaped our attention -- until now.

The almost incomprehensible attack on Barack Obama below is excerpted from a "Sermon of the Month" by Dr. Cecil Todd, founder of Revival Fires International, a 501(c)3 ministry which, "at the request of the Chief Chaplains of the Pentagon," has been shipping Bibles to Iraq, via military airlift, since 2003. According to a Revival Fires press release this "full Bible is designed and authorized by the Chief Chaplains of the Pentagon." This Pentagon involvement and Bible distribution led Navy chaplain LCDR Brian K. Waite to Revival Fires.

In 2001, LCDR Waite, then a mega-church pastor and reserve chaplain, published a virulently anti-Muslim book titled Islam Uncovered -- a book which was pulled from the shelves in 2002 due to plagiarism and faked endorsements. A few months later, Waite was accepted into the Naval Chaplain Corps. As an active duty chaplain, Waite has not only endorsed Revival Fires in uniform on the ministry's website, but appeared on advertisements for, and as a featured speaker at, their 2006 and 2007 campmeetings. He is also scheduled to appear at their 2008 campmeeting, to be held in June. Past speakers at Cecil Todd's campmeetings have included both John Hagee and Rod Parsley.

Watching the PBS series "Carrier" was a revelation, but not always a pleasant one...

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation lawsuit against the Department of Defense got some long overdue mainstream media coverage this weekend, in print and on network TV.

As much as I admire Jim Webb and Chuck Hagel for their efforts to reform the military, I respectfully submit that the bill they're proposing doesn't go far enough...

There are times when ordinary citizens need to step up and serve notice on our government that the very cornerstone of our national existence depends upon neutralizing the religious extremists currently holding sway on many of our institutions, particularly the military. What follows is an attempt to help get this message out...

In a press release grossly distorting an event to be held today, April 9, 2008, at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Catholic League president Bill Donohue has accused Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, of an "outrageous assault on Catholicism." In addition to Donohue's misleading description of the event and unfounded accusations, the Catholic League's press release completely omits the reason this event is even taking place, and instead focuses entirely on a film, one short clip from which will be shown as a small part of the overall presentation.

[image,right: USAF Academy Chapel]

Officially encouraged Bible classes, at the United States Air Force Academy, taught by instructors bused in from James Dobson's Focus On The family ?

That's where the USAF Academy was at in 2004, according to David Antoon.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation [ here's the donation page, if you can offer financial support] came about, really,  through the shared experience of several parents who attended the United States Air Force Academy in the 1950s through the 1970s, founder Mikey Weinstein and others, who hoped their children would follow that path as well but discovered that in the years since they'd been at the academy the institution had changed in a disturbing and radical way. Those changes convinced these Air Force graduates that American Democracy itself was at risk.

UPDATE: for more deeply researched speculation on the beliefs of George W. Bush, see this post, by dogemperor. While my interpretations are not synonymous with dogemperor's, few I'm aware of research the religious right, as a subject, in closer detail. Is George W. Bush an Assemblies Of God "Manchurian candidate" ? (my characterization, not dogemperor's) I reserve judgement on that but dogemperor's intensely researched post suggests, at the very least, that Americans should be far more concerned about the beliefs of the current American president than they appear to be. I've been pursuing a parallel track to dogemperor's research, on Bush's religious beliefs, and we've both come similar conclusions, quite independently ; that George W. Bush does hold religious belief and that his form of belief is dramatically more extreme than has been previously recognized. And, that this should be a cause of concern to the American public.

So....

"Gog" and "Magog" ?

That's the claim...

THE PROBLEM...

It's showtime, folks...

And the show is about our collective futures...

[A quick assertion: war with Iran = nothing done to address Global Warming = functionally, slow motion apocalypse]

The US military, its leadership, seems to be powering up for an apocalyptic clash of civilizations - a religious war in short. The Bush Administration must not push the US into war with Iran.

This post concerns:

1. Influence which the Christian fundamentalist, apocalyptic right has developed in the US military.

2. What MRFF is doing [currently, a wave of lawsuits] to combat a pervasive climate, in the US military, under which the religious freedom rights, of minorities of religious and philosophical belief, now get routinely violated. MRFF's position is not "anti-Christian". Indeed, over 90% of the 6,000 or so complaints MRFF has received come from Christians. MRFF fights for the religious liberty rights of all - including apocalyptic, fundamentalist Christians.  

3. Where I fit (along with my fellow MRFF researcher Chris Rodda) into this story.  

Maybe "fake American history" and "apocalyptic theology" sound like wonkish abstractions, but when one demonstrates the pervasive presence of those at upper reaches of US government and in Pentagon, they're no longer abstractions but, rather, direct, dire threats to world peace and the health of American Democracy.

And, that's what Chris Rodda and I did with our summer non-vacations.

There was, and is, no precedent.

A lot of the stories I'm alluding to, in this post, in my tally of Chris Roddas' and my research findings over the past 5 months have been released, from MRFF, under other names - by Max Blumenthal, from Truthout.org... basically, my concern was that I've been generating far too many discoveries than would be good for my well-being. But, I've come to the conclusion that my best protection and smartest course of action is simply to claim the territory I've pioneered. Celebrity (even a small amount) can confer a certain measure of immunity from being harassed. So, I'm 'fessing up to the work I've been doing.