MRFF's Inbox
May 21, 2009
From: "Episcopal Church Magazine"
By David Somerville
Is Fundamentalism Flooding our Military Chaplaincies?
Not likely, you might think. But consider my recently gained respect for the people of our northern midwest, and then read on.
Yes! I have cause to salute the good people of Fargo, North Dakota, and some other Minnesota neighborhoods as well, who earlier this Spring battled some very steep odds. The "Perfect Storm" of an unusually cold winter, heavy snow fall, and then a dramatic thaw caused the Red River to invade its valley to the level of a five hundred year flood. The people did not carry on any discussions with the Red River. They did not try to reason with it. They assessed the situation, and then united themselves in action. They set up a labor intensive, volunteer sand bag industry. They saved thousands of homes and other properties from the deluge. Their successes in coping as their levees failed was truly inspiring. They were victors in their faith.
But this article is not about North Dakota. It's about a very disturbing piece in the May edition of Harpers Magazine by Jeff Sharlett, "Jesus KIlled Mohammed: The Crusade for a Christian Military". These are seven of the points he makes:
1. The Officer's Christian Fellowship (OCF) is aggressive and coordinated in furthering their agenda by its influencing of assignments. Among their members are numerous powerful field and general grade officers.
2. Several high ranking officers have inappropriately used Pentagon facilities and other national symbols for their Christian propaganda in the media. They have been challenged legally and successfully.
3. A popular OCF Bible study, Mission Accomplished, grossly distorts the constitutional principle of the "Wall" between the state and religion in order to create the idea that the wall surrounds the state with its official true religion protected on the inside. The wall is also intended to protect America from all other outsiders who do not profess the fundamentalist creed.
4. The article documents the harassment of cadets who are not militant fundamentalists at the Air Force Academy in Colorado.
5. 80 % of the Protestant military chaplaincy self-identifies as conservative/evangelical.
6. 101st Airborne Division chaplain, and senior chaplain in the Afghanistan theater, LTC Gary Hensely, regularly used apocalyptic imagery, teaching the soldiers to equate spiritual evil with Islam.
7. The article brings to the reader's attention, Mikey Weinstein, a former JAG Corps officer and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), that legally challenges military leadership violations of church and state. He regularly documents in detail the level of rancor and anti Semitism that comes from fundamentalists as a result of his oppositional activities.
So then, I have to ask, Is there enough active concern about this movement on the part of those Christians, like us in the Episcopal church, who live routinely -- and lovingly -- with neighbors who are different, and who do not believe as we do? We may not be. I am reminded of how so many Jews of good will living in the Germany of the 1920's and 30's were also reluctant to believe how far the fascist rhetoric of Adolph Hitler in the beer hall would go. Their sentiment: Just ignore the nonsense. It will go away.
American fundamentalism will not go away. It has to be managed. I believe there is a need for a resolute stand to be taken with the gentle firmness that is a hallmark of our church. We need to manage the surge of fundamentalist triumphalism all over our country to be sure. But my first priority has to do with the endorsement of qualified chaplains. How can we do it? Like the way the people in the Red River Valley had to make and distribute sand bags to keep the waters out of their homes and schools. In other words, we must come to terms with our need to be persistent in finding qualified people in our ranks to fill chaplain quotas. Churches that fail to fill their allotted quotas end up having them filled by fundamentalists. We need to direct our good candidates to our Episcopal endorsing office. We should be recruiting them at every diocesan convention, and have a strong presence at the General Convention as well. We should be advertising and making contacts with people the way ordinary Fargo residents loaded one sand bag at a time round the clock until the surge had passed. We should continue with a contingency plan for the future just as the Fargo residents have for the next flood.
I hope this issue will be firmly addressed by all faith communities with sympathetic denominational endorsing agencies. Agencies, like ours, the American Baptist Convention, and the Jewish Welfare Board just to name two of them, represent faith communities that value the religious freedom and the diversity of our tolerant society. There are hundreds of other endorsing agencies authorized by the armed forces - one for every organized church or faith group by name except, of course, the Society of Friends or the Amish. Their members do not serve in the military. I suspect that there is a continuing need for endorsing agency executives to support one another in resisting the triumphalist error that the Harpers Magazine article documents. (Fundamentalists believe that their mission is not accomplished until all whom they engage have become fundamentalists). Our corrective mission will have to be disciplined. The unmanaged flood waters of a popular movement can be relentless.
The Presiding bishop's suffragan, the Right Reverend George Packard endorses Episcopalians for chaplaincy. He is well aware of the situation I describe. It has been with us for much longer than the Red River Flood to be sure There are too many chaplains on active duty that come from backgrounds that are inflexibly biased with racially white, heterosexist American delusions of superiority. What I hope to do is help the general readership of our church become more aware of the swelling river of this triumphalism, a movement that is both naive and arrogant that is at work, eroding the constitutional wall set up by our founding fathers between the government of the United States and religion. This in no way is like Nehemiah's wall. After reading the Sharlett article, I began to wonder: Could this wall fail through neglect like a levee in the Red River Valley?
Some might be inclined to say, "Oh, calm down David! The traditions of our social order will survive the ravings of these Bible thumpers!"
Well, I hope so. But I am not sure. Fundamentalism is a disease like Rickets. Except It is not a calcium shortage problem. The problem is a shortage of emotional security for a portion of our society that is under-educated for the twenty-first century milieu. I believe that portion is growing. It is anxiety, feelings of helplessness, and the loss of control people get which come from changes in the world they are not prepared to cope with, and do not feel they can manage. All this predates the current economic down turn by many years. But the down turn can only aggravate the problem.
Sharlett's observations in Harper's reminded me of another article I had read the week before. In the April 13th edition of Newsweek, Jon Meacham offers significant encouragement with his review of American religious history, entitled "The End of Christian America". Meacham, an active lay leader in the Episcopal Church, reminds us that an America that is not Christian is the only kind of place where Christianity in its best forms can flourish. What I just observed looks contradictory, but it is not. It is a paradox.
Paradoxes are a problem to deal with. But they can be dealt with so long as individuals challenged by them have the resources of a community that is open, embraces ambiguity, and values diversity. The problem with fundamentalism is that it is populated by frightened people (They won't admit it, of course. After all, that would be a sign of weakness). They struggle to be rugged individualists in their campaigns to make those who are different from them into their clones. They hate ambiguity. For them there is no community. What they might argue to be community are really loose networks of mutually agreed upon factions.
I have read both articles, and I've got Meacham's American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation on order from Amazon. So I am not finished with my study and prayer over the fundamentalism problem that I find so disturbing.
But I have an observation taking shape in my mind. Let me share it as a tentative conclusion. It is a variation of the paradox I noted above. We, as American citizens need to support and defend the very thing that guarantees a particular freedom that is actually in the best interests of the fundamentalists -- the free practice of religion, What do we need to do? Get to work setting in place the sand bags to manage the flood of their current popularity. So where do we start? Recruit chaplains who understand what their job description truly is. Encourage and fund Bishop Packard's work in communicating this concern with the many highly competent endorsing officials in the other mainline churches with executive ministers whose job descriptions parallels Bishop Packard's.
Finally, check out the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) and that nemesis to the religiously arrogant, Mikey Weinstein. Go to www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org. Consider your active participation in the MRFF.
Finally, here is a quick postscript: Do you know what happens nearly every year? Some fundamentalist chaplains actually grow and learn in what I believe to be the fuller stature of our Lord Jesus Christ, and ask to become Episcopal priests! This happens much more frequently in Bishop Packard's office than the rare departure of an Episcopalian to become a fundamentalist!
