Trouble in the military

We have heard the stories before. Bibles handed out to soldiers sent to Afghanistan. High ranking officers talking of the coming End Times. And some of us have heard the stories of those who enlist and eagerly serve, but are made to suffer for not joining in. Being made to stand outside chapel while others are inside praying, being informed that it will impact their promotions, etc. In Colorado Springs, around and within the military apparatus there, are churches and missions and centers focused on spreading their word in the military. And they are being heard and embraced.

This is a severe issue...in the U.S. military. Not some other nation, not some other military, here, we are seeing these severe issues here. They just seem full of fear and ridiculous revulsion.

Since his last combat deployment in Iraq, Jeremy Hall has had a rough time, getting shoved and threatened by his fellow soldiers. The trouble started there when he would not pray in the mess hall.

"A senior ranking staff sergeant told me to leave and sit somewhere else because I refused to pray," Hall, a 23-year-old US army specialist, told AFP.

Later, Hall was confronted by a major for holding an authorized meeting of "atheists and freethinkers" on his base. The officer threatened to discipline him and block his re-enlistment.

"He said: 'You guys are being a problem and problems can be removed,'" Hall said. "He was yelling at us and stuff and at the very end he says, 'I really love you guys, I want you to see the light.'"

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The group's founder, former Air Force lawyer Mikey Weinstein, said he has documented 6,800 testimonies by military personnel -- nearly all of them Christians -- of sometimes punitive or humiliating attempts to make them accept a fundamentalist evangelical interpretation of Christianity.

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He singles out one of the major Christian groups in the military, the Officers Christian Fellowship (OCF).

The group represents 15,000 US military personnel around the world, according to its director, retired Air Force general Bruce Fister.

"It is not the position of OCF to try and coerce people to believe what we believe," Fister told AFP.

OCF's aim, as stated on its website, is to achieve "a spiritually transformed military, with ambassadors for Christ in uniform, empowered by the Holy Spirit."

It professes belief in "the eternal blessedness of the saved; and the everlasting, conscious punishment of the lost."

Fister emphasized the group's work to support families of soldiers deployed in the "global war on terror."

"People make mistakes. There's probably been some instances where people have wrongly spoken," he added. "We'd like them not to, but that's life."

"Our checks within our equal opportunity channels identified fewer than 100 formal complaints over a two-year period," said Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez.

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But Weinstein argued that most personnel are "too terrified" to speak out.

"When you actually fight against them, they make your life hell," said Hall, adding he has been passed over for promotion since launching his lawsuit. "I can't get a leg up no matter what I do."

A former military chaplain of a prestigious US military college reported being prevented from leading worship after disagreeing with the fundamentalist stance of other officials.

"I am not ready to say that if someone does not profess Christ as their savior that they are going to hell ... That got a lot of people angered," the minister told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation against a spouse who is a senior officer.

"The leader of the youth group that ministered to the teens (at the academy) said that Catholics were not Christians and that Muslims hated Christians, and that created a lot of tension," the ex-chaplain added.

"As a soldier, many times you want to believe you're fighting on the right side. It's easy to kill someone if you believe that they're going to hell and that they are religiously opposed to you."

Time and again they make excuses for embracing bigotry. Can't have blacks. Can't have women. Definitely can't have homosexuals. And, all along, if you ain't on your knees praying, you aren't fit to wear the uniform. Yet when the military is forced to surrender its traditions, it has come out fine on the other side. What seems clear is that this is more an excuse to maintain the status quo, ignorance, and intolerance than it is about the best interest of the fighting forces.

In these cases it is just embarrassing to see my military cowering behind those traditions, fearful of the sight on the other side. It is sad to see the military and those claiming to support it justify rapes, beatings, murders, and suffering as an natural outcome. No. It is evidence of a flawed system.