This is a disgrace, General Chambers should be bounced out of the service.

It’s creepy thinking this crowd has the keys to all our military hardware.

The Air Force Academy similarly continues to push evangelical Christianity.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/08/18/air-force-academy-fundamentalist-proselytizing-is-a-four-star-mess

Onward Xtian soldiers and all that.

Between Doug Coe’s C Street “Family” church, which has it’s tentacles deep in both the governmental structure (many Senators and Reps belong/go/whatever) and many protestant churches (of different denominations), and christian military organizations like this (I believe the Air Force Academy in CO Springs has similar types of stuff going on), the so-called “Christian” church is being used as a strong-arm tool for indoctrination, manipulation and brainwashing.

The comparison to missionary work is apt bc a lot of missionary work is just the “front” for imperialism.

Thanks for the info. I think a lot of citizens are not aware of how firmly entrenched this type of “muscular” Xtianity is within both our gov’t and the military. Stuff like this has been going on for many years.

Our posts “crossed one another.” Yes, definitely. And yet, the Air Force Academy also has a huge problem with sexual harassment. Interesting – no?

I saw references to this the other day but did not understand the whole thing. Thanks for posting about yet another outrage. Incredible.

Is there anything we can do to support the soldiers who opted out?

Yawn.

Oh sorry. Are we disturbing you? If so, you can always spend your time elsewhere I’m sure.

Or do you think your religious beliefs are immune from the bigotry just because they’re yours?

this has the extra creepy feel of the desparation of a has been empire trying to reassert its old cultural values..there are simillar pathetic examples down history

What a travesty. Devolution in full swing.

Great post.

I got out of the USAF in ’82. There were folks like this general floating around then but they had to be quite a bit more discreet in those days.

It has been this way since the sixties. I am not surprised.

More than several commanders have told me that the best way to “progress” in the military was to cultivate a low but solid profile in a local “christian” church.

Pathetic that to this day, people like Boynton and Chambers get a star with such attitudes.

Another sleeping puppet. Ah, if he only had a heart…

I see that Mikey Weinstein’s Military Religious Freedom Foundation was contacted and is working on this. Good thing.

It would be very interesting to try and trace how this actually happened. Was it just sort of a drifting into place? Was it because people of other faiths drifted out of the service and no one pushed back?

Yup just and empty tin can…. Hollow devoid of heart or soul!
Sheesh wonder it got religion with NO soul…

No one is forcing you to read it. Oh, wait, you probably didn’t.

Xians interpret the 1st A as meaning, We all have the right to worship ( warship) whatever religion they choose for us.

A heart, a brain, some courage…we hit the trifecta with this one!

I think it is related with the conversion to a all-volunteer force. The self-selected enlistees who are there now, who usually have family connections to the service.

The military is becoming less like America, and when you add in the tea parties and the untreated PTSD and unemployment/lack of health care, it gives me a bad feeling.

That’s why media sensationalizing things such as the mosque in NYC will continue to happen.

Only one problem with that. They think they are the only real Americans and are the only ones that know how to run a country eg Iraq. They are coming for us.

Hasn’t this been going on for a long, long time. The military academies had a religious scandal about five years ago. What better way to keep the military peons looking towards heaven while they continue to kill innocents abroad. What would Jesus do? Jesus would reload.

Great catch. This says a lot about the deterioration of our armed forces that a pissant two star general would try and up to now get away with this kind of shit. The real questions are why Gates, Mullen, the Secretary of the Army and the three and four star generals over Chambers were negligent in not reining him in. This is not a one guy problem. It is a command failure. Chambers should be kicked out and his immediate superior reprimanded. You do that and you won’t see this kind of shit.

What’s really sad is, since Obama is in the middle of the “he’s a Muslim” meshugass, the White House won’t want to touch this with a hundred-foot telephone pole because it might be perceived as “anti-Christian.” And I haven’t been impressed with the amount of moral courage this White House is willing to expend for the causes that are seen as anti-establishment.

I think to some extent it has always been that way but not as visible as lately. IMO they gained momentum from Reagan and Bush appointments. Reagan was a big one to use religion as a military tool. I think it is Bernstein’s book on him that outlines his use of the Pope and other Christian leaders in the Cold War. I have seen it said it was a large part of the success of destabilizing the USSR.

creepy.

and a lot more.

anyone with these views, who thinks that the law of their particular god, is superior to the laws of the nation

should be prohibited from having any decision making power respecting nuclear weapons.

period.

-thanks

Hunh..I’ll bet you are right. The armed forces are, religiously, culturally, and educationally are probably a lot less diverse than they were during WWII and Korea.

I believe that the Obama administration is the most likely to loose control over the nuclear weapons since they don’t have the backbone to deal with these over the top Xtian warriors. There is nothing more dangerous than men filled with the power of God and WMD.

On the contrary. As an Air Force veteran from the late 70′s/early 80′s I can say that it definitely was not. If you were caught preaching while on duty in any way you could quickly find yourself in front of your squadron commander with the possibility of disciplinary action. LOR or even Article 15 depending on what you had actually done. What’s been happening in more recent years is a disgrace.

When I was on active duty in the Army, many years ago before this evangelical stuff got out of control, I was always uncomfortable with the systemic promotion of religion. Needless to say, there are no atheist chaplains. If you reject religion, the Army offers no support system. So I pretended to believe in God most of the time.

A while back on Keith Olbermann or Rachael Maddow, there was someone on who said that Sharron Angle was a “Deconstructionist Christian.” I’d never heard that term so I did a Google search. What I discovered was hair-raising.

According to Religioustolerance.org :

Dominionism, Dominion Theology, Christian Reconstructionism, Theocratic Dominionism, Kingdom Now theology, and Theonomy are interrelated Christian belief systems that are followed by members from a wide range of conservative Protestant denominations. They are not in themselves denominations or faith groups.

These belief systems find a voice in Christian Reconstructionism — a political movement to convert the United States — and eventually the entire earth — into a theocracy in which dissenters, adulterers, sexually active homosexuals, some sexually active bisexuals, witches, sorcerers, etc. would be exterminated.

Yikes! Not surprisingly this is also called, “Dominion Theology”.

The last thing we need are radical extremist Christian generals heading the military in an era where there are those who are stumping for a Christian American theocracy.

What’s interesting to me, is, have any of these Christi-nazi’s ever thought about which branch of Christianity would be chosen as THE “state” religion? Are Catholics going to go to war with Baptists or Mormons for supremacy? You know that would be the next step. But these people don’t read history books (they are written by heathens, you know) so they are ignorant about European history and why the Founding Fathers wanted no part in state religion.

General Chambers must be tried for treason.

I don’t want to see folks like this “liberated” to “Industry.” We’ve all seen how well that’s worked with Corporation-captured governance. It’s time for accountability.

Yes that’s been a long-standing issue, unfortunately, but I thought this kind of thing was pretty much confined to the Air Force–apparently, I was wrong.

Historically, when a military sets it’s sights on it’s own people especially under the guise of ‘religion’, it sets the stage for mutiny and distrust, and finally failure.

Asshats like General Chambers are a refection of that failure of leadership and completely misguided abuse of command. The kool-aid they drink is an insidious potion!

Lack of understanding of the true nature of happiness, it seems, is the pricipal reason why people inflict suffering on others. They think either that the other’s pain may somehow be a cause of happiness for themselves or that their own happiness and satisfaction is more important, regardless of what pain it may cause. But this is so shortsighted. No one truly benefits from causing harm to another sentient being…In the long run causing others misery and infringing their rights to peace and happiness results in anxiety, fear, and suspicion within oneself.

The Dali Lama

Here is an AP update to this story that I found on the MRFF site:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/08/20/national/a151658D07.DTL

Smith said he went up the chain of command and traced the concert edict to a captain, who said he simply wanted to “show support for those kind of events that bring soldiers together.”

While not accepting blame, the officer apologized to the soldiers who refused to attend the concert and said it was not his intent to proselytize, he said.

“But once you get in there, you realize it’s evangelization,” Smith said.

The story also says the military is investigating.

Whoops!

I joined the Army in 1965 and served for three years. The line on my dog tags for religious preference stated “no pref”. There were chaplains and chapels available everywhere I went but I never took advantage of them and was never required to do so. Today’s mercenary Army bears no resemblance to the vast army of young citizens that conscription made possible back in the day. My starting pay was less than $100 per month. The Army was not a job. It was service to the country.

Yes! The next step will be ‘witch trials, public executions, inquisition type tortures, and a myriad of other ‘dominion theocracy’ horrors in the name of a unforgiving ‘god’. These freakin people are seriously disturbed and find their faux religious dogma a convenient way to act out and materialize their sick and depraved craven fantasies…they get off with it! How are they any different from the Nazi SS and Goebbels or Himmler?

More interesting info on Sharron Angle and Deconstructionist Christianity in Slate.com: “Is Sharron Angle a Christian Reconstructionist?” http://www.slate.com/id/2264348

Hmmm … the base assumption of economics as properly run by “Zero-Sum-Gain” and “Quid Pro Quo” is neatly skewered.

This has been going on a long time. It began within the JBS umbrella. In my view it has always been in one paradigm or an other the inspirational core of most of the familiar “family friendly” right wing religious orgs such as the Christian Coalition and Family Research Council. Read Paul Weyrich’s history. Chilling for sure. MSM has always it seems lumped all of them together as defining for Christianity.

You were. There were indications a couple of years ago that the Army might embrace the Air Force’s faith-based suicide prevention program. Sadly I hadn’t followed up on that one, but as an example of how President Bush The Younger pushed people like this into positions of authority in the Army, it’s troubling. I haven’t noted any interest on President Obama’s part to change things there, nor does taking on an issue like that strike me as his style.

Thank you. I clearly misspoke.

My thinking is that at lower levels there has always been evangelizing but not until Reagan/Bush was it considered acceptable from the highest levels with civilian and military leadership. Chuck Colson led a similar movement in the prison systems.

Yes these are moves to extend the role of religion in AAA and expand it as ” therapy” into distant arenas.

Huff Po reported that the DoD has a $3.5mil contract out for “Spiritual Fitness” programs.

Here’s an article from Harpers that dealt with this very issue (5/09).

My sister and brother-in-law retired from the Air Force a few years ago. When they went in 30 years ago they were regular, white bread protestant democrats with liberal social views and slightly conservative economic views. When they came out they were rabid rightwing evangelicals and they raised their children that way too. All of them are Beck disciples and vote straight republican because “it’s God’s Own Party!” as they claim. I love them but don’t have much to do with them anymore.

This infiltration of the military was part of the longterm plan that included infiltrating local school boards, local and state governments, and any position of authority. It began with the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition, and the Deconstructionists/Institute for Religion and Democracy around the time of Reagan. Theocracy Watch is a great place to read up on the history of the movement and the things you read there will make your toes curl up.

They know that most Americans are very reluctant to criticize any form of Christianity, especially when they are providing services to our military so they very cunningly took over the chaplain corps knowing they would be fairly safe from any kind of real oversight or limits. These believers are out to win their war against secular America and they are fighting to the death. Never underestimate them or mistake their motivations. They are deadly, a true American Taliban.

The sad and deeply disturbing fact is that they have been immensely successful.

Seems to me best way to support the soldiers who were punished for opting out of Christian Fitness Concerts is to write in protest to the Commander-in-Chief Obama with links to this post, to the Air Force article link provided by Arbusto above, and to the riveting Harper’s article from last year by Jeff Sharlet (author of The Family about “C” Street), “Jesus Killed Mohammed: The Crusade for a Christian Military” (worth the trip to library unless you have subscription). At least that’s what I’m doing, copy to Gates and maybe to Hillary as well, as she has some influence with O. She attended prayer breakfasts sponsored by The Family but so did a zillion other pandering pols. I think she has the capacity to see the danger of a Christian military and act to intercede with Obama, so she gets a copy too.

Thanks for the post, Peterr. The Constitutional argument is one approach: no establishment of religion allowed by government, even within non-democracy of military which in essence runs like a dictatorship. From the latter point of view, another objective argument is to remind Obama that this Christian movement amounts to a form of insubordination to his command by interposing another command — from God or Jesus or whoever the “Christian Soldiers” decide to follow at any given moment besides their secular superior officer and civilian commander-in-chief Obama. That disrupts the “good order” of the military, which is not good.

The seething hatred of some evangelical Christian Soldiers who see themselves as “crusaders” against the Muslim world interferes with American policy that we are not at war with Islam. That’s insubordination, again. “End Times” beliefs among true believers in the military interfere with US policy with Israel as evangelicals are encouraging Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories to increase the size of Israel (and supposedly her survival odds although it seems to have backfired by increasing the violence) because in their religious belief system Israel must survive at all cost to be present, like a prop on a mythical stage, for the End Times prophesies to play out toward the Second Coming.

Obama needs to get it into his brain that he has a duty to shut down this cockamamie Christian Soldier routine rather than passively pretend it doesn’t exist. It is a direct threat to his authority as civilian commander of the military, and surely by now he has become quite aware of it.

I got out of the Army in late 1967. The draft was in full swing. The Army was far more diverse then. The USAF, USMC and Navy didn’t require a draft, because people not wanting to be drafted into the Army joined those services in sufficient numbers. (The USMC had two small echelons of draftees in early 1966, IIRC).

I haven’t been watching the growth of the power of evangelical Christians in the military as closely as has Weinstein, but I’ve lived in communities in Alaska with very high populations of serving military since 1983. Mostly USAF and Army, based at Elmendorf AFB and Ft. Richardson.

Many of the Wasilla area evangelical churches have military appreciation Sunday events that are openly Christofascist. I’ve been asked to play bugle at several of them over the years. The way they trot out old WWII vets at tea party events around here mixes prayer, C&W music, nutty ideas about the “founders” and so on into a strange brew.

Nationwide, it appears to me that the most infiltrated military branch is the USAF, followed by the Army, then the USMC, then the Navy. The USMC has always had more zealous members than the other services, but their zeal used to be less religious, more about the Corps itself being a religion (“you’re always a Marine”).

Unless we have different kinds of leaders, this is only going to get much worse.

Wow, they want to Christianize the Automobile Assoc. of America?? :-D I think you mean AA, right?

Talk about violating the “government shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion” part of the Constitution. You know, the thing that bothers me about this is that MY tax dollars are going to someone else’s religion. Do they fund atheist thinkers, too? If not, someone should challenge this.

Good, Priscilla above has the direct link into the Harper’s article by Jeff Sharlet. Must read. Thanks, Priscilla.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/05/0082488

Unless we have different kinds of leaders, this is only going to get much worse

It is so embedded in not only the military culture but the civilian culture of great swaths of the South and Southwest that a few elections, in my view, will not change it. As Lakhoff, Drew Westen and others are stressing it will take a robust liberal effort to promote more rational views to the world, and it will take years. As noted this whole agenda began with the Bircher groups.

The Army was not a job. It was service to the country.

true dat… I went in the year after you and I found it to be the same…

LOL My bad.

Here in the deep south you can’t be certain.

Thank you for that. Good links.

This all actually started happening a tad earlier in the 1970s with the start of Pat Robertson’s 700 Club. It has been a very well-thought out movement to infiltrate the gov’t, the military, the churches AND businesses/corporations with this Dominionist, muscualar Xtianianity (for fun, mucho profit and overriding control of everything).

Your story about your sibling & her family mirrors my experience with my own family members. None of my family are in the military but I’ve watched with horror and fascination as they’ve gradually morphed into facists bent on Dominionist domination of everyone, everything and every country. My family’s churches have all been infested by Doug Coe’s C Street “Family” “church.” Many of my family members are self-employed business folks, but they subscribe to a dominionist “Christian business” philosophy that is incredibly creepy and very Tabibangical in nature.

Almost to a person, most of my family (and extended family) are dedicated Glenn Beck watchers. My one sister watches and/or listens to Beck almost every waking moment (no exaggeration). They buy Glenn’s gold coins (no doubt with Beck laughing all the way to his off-shore account), and bury them in their backyards, no less!

It. is. seriously. creepy.

I feel like my family has been taken over by the pod people. They have grown odder, more nutty, more freaked out and certaily waaay more nasty and intolerant over the years. I live as far away from my family as I can but try to remain on cordial terms with them due to caring for elderly parents. Speaking of which, my parents’ church has been infested by C Streeters. It is a church serving an elderly community, and the name of the game there is: how to rip off the aged as much as possible. I won’t go on, but it’s pretty disgusting. And my parents friends are also dedicated Glenn Beck fans, who discuss Glenn’s latest insane tirades daily at dinner as if it were the tablets handed down from Mt. Sinai (wish I was exaggerating).

It’s creepy, and I feel that it’s worth being aware of this. These people are serious; they believe that only THEIR way is “correct;” and they are hell-bent on dominating everybody and everything. /rant off

Actually, yes: you’re correct (and I correct my last post). This does go back to the Birchers, which were prominent during the Joe McCarthy era. I can remember a neighbor of ours in the early 1960s ranting like Beck about junk like this (poor woman ultimately committed suicide, but that’s another story). But they really shored things up with the inception of Pat Robertson’s 700 club in early 1970s.

But Doug Coe’s been around since the 1930s or 1940s, I believe, and a lot of the deeper roots go back to him. BTW, Mark Sanford, John Ensigh, Jim Inofe, to name but a few, are big C Street “Family” guys. Rachel Maddow has done great work in exposing this group, but I don’t think it’s had much effect, other than educational.

From my perspective, this isn’t geographically isolated to certain parts of the country. It may be more prevelent in the South and Southwest, but it is everywhere. My family lives in the metropolitan NorthEast, and they are reasonably well-off and very highly educated. They like to consider themselves as “not racist,” but at the end of the day, they are.

It’s pretty insidious.

I got out of the USAF in ‘82. There were folks like this general floating around then but they had to be quite a bit more discreet in those days.

I worked for the US Army in Germany in the late 1970s, and I never witnessed anything like this. That was shortly after Viet Nam and the draft, so the composition of the armed forces was quite different in those days. Plus I think that our citizens had a much keener sense of what “separation of church and state” really meant.

What’s really sad is, since Obama is in the middle of the “he’s a Muslim” meshugass, the White House won’t want to touch this with a hundred-foot telephone pole because it might be perceived as “anti-Christian.”

Ahem: yes, indeed. Neat trick – eh? Obama’s a Muslim – as identified so by no less than Franklin Graham son of Billy Graham. This is no accident, believe me. Connect the dots.

Not a coincidence at all. Women are property as far as they’re concerned. Man’s value is measured by his control over his property.

It’s the word they use in place of the N-word.

But if you get upset over this kind of stuff you’re branded a conspiracy nut.

I guess it is only hope that it is limited to smaller areas. Your experience is not reassuring.

Yes, and no. I agree to an extent that Obama’s race has something to do with it, but under the present overriding circumstances, with respect, I suggest that this kind of fomenting against Muslims would be happening anyway. The right has just found a nifty way for them to kill 2 birds with one stone.

In the end, the bigger issue is fomenting against the Muslims (which I feel is just paving the way for war with Iran), plus the muscular Xtianity being foisted onto all walks of our lives these days: churches, businesses, military, government. They would certainly love to foist it on public schools, which is another reason why these types of Xtians hate the public schools so much.

This worries me. a lot.

The military is a danger to this democracy. The Xtians do not believe in democracy.

Our military is packed with nuts. Our government is packed with corporatists. Our citizens are poor and many jobless. The mix is as dangerous as oil and corexit.

No, it’s not reassuring at all, is it?? Sorry about that but there you have it. And my extended family has friends and other relations of similar ilk and persuasion all over the darn place. So, sadly, it is not isolated anymore.

Also I used to live in the Central Valley of CA, and they can compete any day of the week for being a real Bible Belt of the USA. One of Billy Graham’s last “crusades” was in Fresno some years ago.

Be aware.

Yes.

Sure. That’s part of the deal. But realize that this kind of Xtian really and truly believes that “their way” is “God’s way,” and that they are just doing what “God” wants. And that you – if you don’t agree – are being led by Satan. Not kidding. They don’t want you to come to harm, but they will NOT listen to you bc it is “Satan” who is talking.

Believe me, the demagogues and leaders have really figured this out.

Bc I know the Bible well, it makes it somewhat easier to talk to Xtians like this bc, really, I can only counter them with “words” that they can understand. Mind you, though, that can turn into “dueling Bible verses at the OK Corral.” But it’s the only way I’ve found to communicate meaningfully with such folks.

Don’t forget that Tom Coburn, the patriarch of C Street, is Obama’s best friend in the Senate.

It ain’t easy. I was a liberal Republican and in the early nineties participated in many debates in the old Compuserve forums and other places as these folks were taking over. They are relentless but they had brilliant leadership in media and politics, Buckley, O’Sullivan, Paul Weyrich, John Dobson, Fr John Neuhaus and a bunch more I can’t recall.

And of course the ever agile Pat Buchanan

Per the SFGate article, 80-100 out of 200 men (in this barracks, anyway) declined to attend, and pushed back when punished. If accurate, these numbers are heartening.

You know, I think this is the saddest part of the Christian Fundamentalist movement. How it has divided us not only politically, but families as well.

I come from a minimally religious environment but I married into a very Christian family. My mother in law embodied the best of Christians. She was open minded and accepting of everyone. My father in law was more of the bible thumper variety and saw himself as a amateur minister, but he wasn’t too bad.

But after my mother in law’s death, who I think was a moderating influence, my husband’s siblings (especially one sister) were swept up into the fundamentalist movement and have swung wildly into the fanatical Christian column — far more right than even their father. The most Christian sister in law sees herself as this “persecuted” Christian because even some of her siblings see her extremism as intolerance. They’ve all become anti-abortion (even though the oldest sibling had an abortion at her parent’s urging). And Ayn Rand is suddenly a virtuous paragon (the fact that she was an atheist is lost on these people).

As a result my husband and I can’t be around them anymore because when we visit it is expected that we with them to their church and no discussion of alternative points of view about Christianity are tolerate and treated with the same disdain as pedophilia.

What’s really infuriating about all of this is that they all live very non-conservative lifestyles. (Drug and alcohol use, pre-marital sex and promiscuity, prostitution, and possibly closet homosexuality.) The hypocrisy is unbearable.

You know, I’ve always said that if the Bible is right, and there really going to an Armageddon, it’s going to be the Christian who are are “of the Beast” as they say.

Actually, yes: you’re correct (and I correct my last post). This does go back to the Birchers, which were prominent during the Joe McCarthy era. I can remember a neighbor of ours in the early 1960s ranting like Beck about junk like this (poor woman ultimately committed suicide, but that’s another story). But they really shored things up with the inception of Pat Robertson’s 700 club in early 1970s.

The thing was, back then, these people were considered the “crazy fringe”. Now they are mainstream. shudder!

When I was at Parris Island in 1969 when Sunday came recruits had the choice to go to services or stay in the squad bay. I didn’t go to church and there was never any punishment. However, everyone got a copy of the New Testament in a package when we got our stuff. Aside from that there was no proselytizing and this was God, Corps, and country Marine Corps boot camp.

Snarrrk

I was raised catholic so I know how these things work. Satan has taken possession of the souls of the fundamentalist (protestant) Xtians. He will help them pursue control of the US and ultimately the world so as to unleash the powers of unfettered conservatism to destroy the environment and thereby the human race. His ultimate insult to the god. It’s working folks, they are well on the way, have been for a couple hundred years now. Where the Xtians are confused is they think the end times will be their salvation. Un uh, at the end time Satan swallows them up into everlasting hell. Don’t try to warn them, they’ll think you’re crazy.

I remember a line from the move “The Abyss” where Ed Harris’s character says to Hippie ” Ah, you think everything’s a conspiracy”, to which Hippie replied sincerely ” But everything is!”. At the time I was amused, now not nearly so much.

A very close relative of mine graduated from the USAF academy a few years ago just after the news about the evangelicals made headlines. Don’t believe for a minute that everyone in the Academy believes this drivel. Unfortunately there is a cadre of officers that are committed evangelicals,and it is not just the USAF. The Army has more than its share, too, including the general who was recently in command of the Army Corps of Engineers (VanAntwerp). I’ve met the man, and he is a consummate politician, but then most generals will fall into that category.

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=van+antwerp+christian

You are correct in every word. Danger to the freedoms we take for granted. The nut jobs will have civil war in the streets very soon.

But wasn’t the constitution delivered to the founding fathers by the original Founding Father YHWH sent down by the angel Gabriel and laid down upon the ark of the covenant to be signed by Thomas Jeffersons Holiest Pen followed by the Founding Apostles?

I lernd histry frum Glenn Beck and the Texas School Board approved textbooks.

I checked the Barlow Girls site…is it my bad eyes or is that a mullet on that one womans head?