Al Jazeera Shows Evangelizing U.S. Troops in Afghanistan

Al Jazeera recently released documentary footage of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan being urged to embark on an evangelical mission to "hunt" misguided Afgans and share the word of Jesus.

Now, we all know that good, moral people of many faiths want to save their brothers and sisters from the hell fire, but should American troops overlap military objectives with proselytizing?

A U.S. church certainly hoped so, since it generously sent a stack of Bibles to an American soldier on duty in Afghanistan. The bibles were conveniently printed in local Afghan languages.

Proselytizing is against U.S. military rules, but perhaps the chaplain in the video below got confused. Or maybe it's understandable that the line gets crossed when one finds himself confronted with the axis of evil. After all, former President George W. Bush famously stated about Afghanistan, "This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while. And the American people must be patient. I'm going to be patient."

He wasn't kidding. Eight years after making this historical observation, the war in Afghanistan is still going strong. But it's not the U.S. that needs patience – it's the Afghans.

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Added: May 08, 2009. 09:19 AM CST

Insulting

Proselytizing is obviously against military regulation, I don’t know how this can be justified by anyone.

People like this (and they usually are Christians), must have enormous ego’s to think their religion is superior to the point were they must ‘spread the word’ and ‘save people’.

What an insult!

Robby

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Added: May 08, 2009. 07:38 AM CST

Failures of Intelligence has reaped the Militarization of Christianity

"The Crusade for a Christian Military: Jesus Killed Mohammed" by Jeff Sharlet in HARPER'S May 2009 edition is a chilling clarion call regarding the entrenchment of Christian fundamentalism in the USA military beginning during the Cold War that accelerated during the Vietnam era which has now wrecked havoc on the very soul of our nation.

Fundamentalist [referred to as evangelical by Sharlet] Chaplains began to join the military in droves as they aligned themselves with the Industrial Military Complex in opposition with Catholics and mainline moderate Protestant denominations such as Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians who were of one voice speaking out against American terrorism in Vietnam and for following in the ways of the nonviolent Jesus.

“Starting in 1987, Protestant denominations were lumped together simply as “Protestant”; moreover, the Pentagon began accrediting hundreds of evangelical and Pentecostal “endorsing agencies,” allowing graduates of fundamentalist Bible colleges—which often train clergy to view those from other faiths as enemies of Christ—to fill up nearly the entire allotment for Protestant chaplains. Today, more than two thirds of the military’s 2,900 active-duty chaplains are affiliated with evangelical or Pentecostal denominations." [1]

"For decades, the military built a sense of solidarity out of a singular purpose, the Cold War struggle between free markets and state-planned economies—the shining city on a hill versus the evil empire…meshed neatly with ideologies [that connected] nationalism and fundamentalism…Communism…the dark alternative should we fail to unite. Fundamentalism thrived…a neat, black-and-white [theology and] a foreign policy. The end of the Cold War deprived militant evangelicals of that clarity [and] the emergence of “radical Islam” [became] the object of a new Cold War." [Ibid]

The roots of American evangelism sprang from the original altar call for Christians to stand up against slavery. What has been passing for Christianity in our military today is the antithesis of what Jesus was all about.

The Rest:
http://www.arabisto.com/article/Blogs/Eileen_Fleming/Failures_of_Intelligence_has_reaped_the_Militarization_of_Christianity/35514

eileen fleming

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Added: May 08, 2009. 07:31 AM CST

The battle is not between cultures

The battle is between fundamentalism and ALL people of conscience. I am a committed Christian-meaning I try to FOLLOW what Jesus taught and modeled and he was always NONVIOLENT!

I am aggrieved over the flaming fundamentalism that has spread into The Body of Christ via the Military Industrial Complex and in 'Christian' Zionist churches who ignore the New Testament, for they have replaced Jesus with the apartheid state of Israel!

And, the term 'evangelical' is incorrect-these soldiers and those who 'think' like them are Fundamentalists-meaning they do NOT do much thinking!...The Pentagon loves these soldiers and "Everybody but Christians understands that Jesus was NONVIOLENT."-Gandhi

eileen fleming

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