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Crazy Ex-Navy Chaplain Prays For
Death Of Guy Fighting Crazy Chaplains

Monday, April 27, 2009

Gordon PhotoClick here to listen to this past Saturdays April 25th
1 minute prayer

The new Harper's has a really scary piece on the evangelical Christian radicalization of the US Military, and to celebrate, here is an ex-Navy chaplain issuing a fatwa against one of its subjects.

This is Lt. Gordon J. Klingenschmitt, an evangelical Episcopal Navy chaplain who got himself court-martialed and kicked out of the Navy for appearing in uniform at a political rally, against orders.


IMPRECATORY PRAYERS AGAINST ANTI-JESUS
BARRY LYNN AND MIKEY WEINSTEIN

Saturday 25 Apr 09 One-Minute Prayer:

Let us pray. Almighty God, today we pray imprecatory prayers from Psalm 109 against the enemies of religious liberty, including Barry Lynn and Mikey Weinstein, who issued press releases this week attacking me personally. God, do not remain silent, for wicked men surround us and tell lies about us. We bless them, but they curse us. Therefore find them guilty, not me. Let their days be few, and replace them with Godly people. Plunder their fields, and seize their assets. Cut off their descendants, and remember their sins, in Jesus' name. Amen.

**Listen below! And call & ask your local Christian radio station to broadcast this 60-second prayer many times throughout the day on Saturday, 25 Apr 09.

Yes, that sounds a bit like praying for Barry Lynn and Mikey Weinstein to die, right? What did they ever do?

Barry Lynn is the head of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Mikey Weinstein, hero of the Harper's piece, is the president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Even though he helped defend Regan during Iran-Contra and worked for Ross Perot, he is pretty awesome.

He is the most prominent voice fighting the growing influence of evangelical nutcases in the military, who believe in making holy war and think the Constitution establishes a Christian nation. How did this happen, exactly? Didn't you think chaplains were all boring milquetoast mainstream protestants, like Chaplain Tappmann? They used to be. Then:

"The next turning point occurred in the waning days of the Reagan Administration, when regulatory revisions helped create the fundamentalist stronghold in today's military. A longstanding rule had apportioned chaplains according to the religious demographics of the military as a whole (i.e., if surveys showed that 10 percent of soldiers were Presbyterian, then 10 percent of the chaplains would be Presbyterian) but required that all chaplains be trained to minister to troops of any faith. Starting in 1987, however, 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. "In my experience," Morton says, "eighty percent of the Protestant chaplaincy self- identifies as conservative and/or evangelical."

So. This Mikey guy. Back when he was an 18-year-old freshman at the Air Force Academy, he got the shit beat out of him for reporting antisemitic comments. Thirty years later, his son Curtis was still dealing with getting called a "fucking Jew" by cadets and officers. And now he fights prominent military officials who promote crazy Holy War ideas and forcefully proselytize to underlings. He foolishly thought he might get a Pentagon job in the Obama administration but instead we still have Petraeus and Gates.

Click here to see readers comments.


Klingenschmitt Prays for
Death of Weinstein, Lynn

Monday, April 27, 2009

By Ed Brayton

Uber-wingnut Gordon Klingenschmitt is now praying -- in Jesus' name, of course -- for God to strike down Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. You can listen to the prayer here. It's what they call an "imprecatory prayer," the same thing Southern Baptist Convention officer Wiley Drake did against Barry Lynn and others before. It's basically a curse, praying to God to kill those you pray against. Here's a transcript:

"One-Minute Prayer: Let us pray. Almighty God, today we pray imprecatory prayers from Psalm 109 against the enemies of religious liberty, including Barry Lynn and Mikey Weinstein, who issued press releases this week attacking me personally. God, do not remain silent, for wicked men surround us and tell lies about us. We bless them, but they curse us. Therefore find them guilty, not me. Let their days be few, and replace them with Godly people. Plunder their fields, and seize their assets. Cut off their descendants, and remember their sins, in Jesus' name. Amen."

Klingenschmitt has now crossed the line from being merely a nut and an idiot to being a complete fucking lunatic.


Selected reader comments:

Monday, April 24, 2009

At what point does this cross into the realm of a death threat? He is asking God's to kill this two men, in front of a crowd of people who think it is their personal mission to to God's work for Him.

Can I say, "It is God's work to harm or kill x and y. And in a unrelated note, go out and do God's work." Without getting into some sort of legal trouble?

Posted by: Thoracantha


Monday, April 24, 2009

This says a lot, not only about Klingenschmitt himself, but about the company he keeps: who is he hanging with, that he can let such infantile hatefulness come from his lips and not feel ashamed or be afraid of ostracism?

Unlike Christianity, some Pagan beliefs recognize that curses have real power, and are sometimes approppriate. But even that kind of Pagan would consider it necessary to judge you by the curses you utter, and would not take kindly to Klingenschmitt's curse -- if only out of fear of blowback.

I guess Klingenschmitt is lucky that Christians don't believe in the Treefold Law. Oh wait, they do believe it, just in different words -- "Do unto others" and "you reap what you sow." So I guess that means Klingenschmitt is doubly screwed, first by sowing what I'm sure he'd never want to reap, then by acting outside his God's mandate, and thus outside his protection. If his God is real, it's gonna suck to be him, very soon.

Posted by: Raging Bee


Monday, April 24, 2009

Perhaps you are getting a clear picture of what I had to deal with for 2 years as this guy's supervisor. He was like a "bull in a china shop" as he created adversarial relationships throughout the command. I had never seen anyone become "persona non grata" on such an immediate and grand scale. And yet, recognizing that he was inexperienced and had a woefully inadequate theological education, I tried to mentor him and assume some responsibility for his development. All my efforts were frustrated by his idiotic actions at practically every level. There was no doubt in my mind that I was dealing with a certain level of certifiable mental and psychological pathology but I refrained from recommending psychological evaluation because our self-anointed prophet, priest, messiah and king would have declared our attempts to help him as "reprisals" against him.
I am not surprised by anything that he does or says. Each sick action merely confirms my initial assessment that this person is in serious need of help.

Posted by: Norm Holcomb, CAPT, CHC, USN (Ret)


Monday, April 24, 2009

Wow. When I read that prayer, I see a sad little man with no self-esteem using God as a personal vendetta weapon. Notice how he's saying that they issued press releases against him and that's why he's invoking God in the first place (apparently not because of any presupposed wickedness)? It's the theological equivalent of "I'm gonna go get my dad and you'll be really sorry!", complete with the cover-your-ass factor ('find them guilty, not me', a tacit admission of some form of guilt).

Posted by: Brian D


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