Some would say it’s been a while since we had a proper holy war (the kind of conflict that pits believer against believer in a race to see who can be martyred first) – though it seems that others may disagree: the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East are jihad or a crusade.
If there are no atheists in foxholes… the truth – agents of religious organizations working to repurpose a war founded upon empty rhetoric – may be as incendiary as any munition:
Now here is a strange and disturbing twist in the evolution of Special Ops culture. When I was there, some years back now, we were mostly reprobates — hyper-profane macho drunks a lot of us — with no time for religion.
Over time, reports are indicating, the End Times Weaponized Jesus religion has gained a lot of ground in Special Operations and in the military generally. So now we are growing a culture within the military that doesn’t obey rules (impunity), that kills to prove masculinity, and that fuels bloodlust with a crackpot philosophy that tells them killing Arabs, et al, is a deliverance of God’s justice.
If you believe that cultures mix, and sometimes badly, wait until we see the fruition of this hybrid of gunfighter practice with Rapture-ite ideology.
- McChrystal & Pelosi at FeralScholar.org
In one recorded sermon, Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Hensley, the chief of the US military chaplains in Afghanistan, is seen telling soldiers that as followers of Jesus Christ, they all have a responsibility “to be witnesses for him”.
“The special forces guys – they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down,” he says.
“Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the kingdom. That’s what we do, that’s our business.”
- Witness for Jesus in Afghanistan
at AlJazeera.net
Surely the sane outnumber those who “hunt men for Jesus”?
J. E. Wadkins, vice president of student life at Ecclesia College who oversees the International Missions Network Center … estimates between 100,000 and 500,000 Arabic Bibles were distributed in under one year, beginning not long after Saddam Hussein’s ouster. “It was a really early effort there,” says Wadkins, “when things first opened up.”
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, and a marked decline in chaplains from Catholic and mainstream Protestant churches, this ideal is suffering.
- Christian Soldiers at Newsweek.com
… maybe not for long.
Consider assisting the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (purportedly working against the religious agenda – though, like the Center for Consumer Freedom, its name belies otherwise) or take it as evidence that the time or reckoning is at hand.
Me? I’ll chalk up another win to the mindless, brutal, thought-numbing realities of unbridled egotism coupled with blind faith.
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