Evangelical Proselytizing in The Military

Lost in the current coverage of the fray between LGBT Americans and the DNC/Obama is a serious story in Newsweek that in some ways may explain some of the opposition to repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell ("DADT") within the military: the growing influence of far right evangelical Christians within the armed forces. I have written about this problem before because (a) it threatens the right to freedom of religion for our service members and (ii) it has the potential to seriously alienate citizens of countries with non-Christian populations. Now, Newsweek looks more in depth at this growing problem which is intensifying as evangelical chaplains increasing infiltrate the military. Combined with the far right lunacy of some of the senior officer corps and it is a recipe for trouble. Here are some story highlights:

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The growing controversy over military chaplains using the armed forces to spread the Word. . . Ever since former president George W. Bushreferred to the war on terror as a “crusade” in the days after the September 11 attacks, many have charged that the United States was conducting a holy war, pitting a Christian America against the Muslim world. That perception grew as prominent military leaders such as Lt. Gen. William Boykin described the wars in evangelical terms, casting the U.S. military as the "army of God."

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A May article in Harper’s by Jeff Sharlet illustrated a military engaged in an internal battle over religious practice. Then came news about former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s Scripture-themed briefings to President Bush that paired war scenes with Bible verses. . . . Later in May, Al-Jazeera broadcast clips filmed in 2008 showing stacks of Bibles translated into Pashto and Dari at the U.S. air base in Bagram and featuring the chief of U.S. military chaplains in Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Gary Hensley, telling soldiers to “hunt people for Jesus.”

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In the aftermath of that report, the Pentagon responded that it had confiscated and destroyed the Bibles and said there was no effort to convert Afghans. But while the military dismissed the Bagram Bibles as an isolated incident, a civil-rights watchdog group, Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), says this is not the case.

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According to the group's president, Mikey Weinstein, a cadre of 40 U.S. chaplains took part in a 2003 project to distribute 2.4 million Arabic-language Bibles in Iraq. This would be a serious violation of U.S. military Central Command's General Order Number One forbidding active-duty troops from trying to convert people to any religion.

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The effort is an example of what critics call a growing culture of militarized Christianity in the armed forces. It is influenced in part by changes in outlook among the various branches' 2,900 chaplains, who are sworn to serve all soldiers, regardless of religion, with a respectful, religiously pluralistic approach. However, with an estimated two thirds of all current chaplains affiliated with evangelical and Pentecostal denominations, which often prioritize conversion and evangelizing, . . . This imbalance was exacerbated by regulation revisions in the 1980s that helped create hundreds of new "endorsing agencies" that brought a flood of evangelical chaplains into the military

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Among the "endorsing agencies" is CFGC, which represents a conglomeration of independent Pentecostal churches outside established denominations. The group was accepted as a chaplain-endorsing agency by the Department of Defense in 1984, two years after it first applied. Since 1984, MRFF charges, Ammerman's agency has violated numerous codes that govern chaplaincies, including a constant denigration of other religions, particularly Islam, Judaism, mainline Protestantism and Catholicism, but also non-Pentecostal evangelical churches.

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Weinstein, an Air Force veteran who founded MRFF in 2005 after both he and his sons say they encountered anti-Semitic harassment and proselytizing in the service, has waged legal battles against what he sees as an improper mingling of church and state in the military, including a current lawsuit against the Department of Defense alleging service members' compulsory attendance at military functions that include sectarian Christian prayers and a broader "pattern and practice of constitutionally impermissible promotions of religious beliefs within the Department of Defense and the United States Army."

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MRFF is calling, in a letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, to strip the CFGC of its endorsing authority and to investigate its chaplains for various code violations. But they fear the Obama administration will not press this issue given the announced replacement of Army Secretary Pete Geren with Rep. John McHugh, a New York Republican with a conservative record on church-state separation issues.

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I believe that this is a very serious issue and I have little faith in the Obama administration's ability to reign in the out of control evangelical and pentecostal chaplains.