The Christian Embassy

[NathanATX]

Check out this video... http://movies.crooksandliars.com/CEWebMed.wmv

Talk about treachery.

[Steven E. Webster]

Nathan,
Thanks for sharing this. I think this is a little better link to the same article/video.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/1...-loyalty-list/

When I used your link I had to scroll a long way down the blog page to find it--this link takes you right to it.

Steven Webster

[suzer1013]

Another article on the same subject -- this one from Salon.com.

This is truly frightening. If I thought Christian dominionists within our secular society were troubling, it is even moreso if they are infiltrating the military.

"These people should be court-martialed"
Former Air Force officer Mikey Weinstein says evangelicals are trying to turn his beloved military into a "frickin' faith-based initiative."
By Alex Koppelman

Dec. 13, 2006 | When a Christian group shot a video inside the Pentagon that featured uniformed senior military officers talking about their evangelical faith, Mikey Weinstein went on the attack. Himself a former Air Force lawyer and Air Force Academy grad, Weinstein, who is Jewish, is the founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. He founded the MRFF earlier this year to oppose the spread of religious intimidation in a military increasingly dominated by evangelical Christians.

On Monday, Weinstein held a press conference in Washington, D.C., to announce that he was asking the Department of Defense's inspector general to look into the video, and determine whether the people who appeared in it -- Air Force Maj. Gen. Jack J. Catton Jr.; Army Brig. Gen. Vince Brooks, the former public affairs director of the Army; and Undersecretary of the Army Pete Geren -- had violated military regulations. He also filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the government to find out who, if anyone, had approved the video shoot.

Bob Varney, the executive director of Christian Embassy, the group that made the video, tells Salon he believes no regulations were violated, and he says Weinstein's allegations about increased evangelical influence within the military are wrong.

"I don't understand how one could come to that kind of conclusion," Varney says. "The military believes in religious freedom, it offers religious freedom, it therefore offers people of different religions to express them, and we're one among a number of different religions that are working in the Armed Services."

Weinstein spoke with Salon Tuesday afternoon.

The Christian Embassy is now saying it had permission to film this inside the Pentagon. Were you surprised to hear that?

Not at all. They're damned if they do, they're damned if they don't. If they said they didn't have permission, they would have been blown away. Having permission, to me, just shows the complicity. We have a systemic problem. You sound like you're too young to remember Robert Redford in "Three Days of the Condor," but the premise of that movie was that there was a CIA within the CIA. We have a virulently dominionist, fundamentalist evangelical Christian element within the Pentagon. They would prefer this to be the "Pentecostalgon," not the Pentagon. That's what they would prefer. They're trying to turn the Pentagon into a frickin' faith-based initiative, and that is not what our military is about.

These are the people who, when I talk to senior members of the military at the flag-level rank -- I don't know if you're familiar with what that means, that means admiral or general -- that have looked at me and said, "Come on, Mikey, what's your problem? We have the cure to cancer. If you had the cure to cancer, wouldn't you want to spread the word?" They don't realize when they say it, they don't have the mental wherewithal to understand that to a person who isn't an evangelical Christian, you're calling our faith a cancer.

What's wrong with this video?

I'm trying to think where to start. It is absolutely violative of a mountain of Department of Defense internal regulations, guidelines, core values, instructions, making it very clear that members of the military can not endorse any one particular political position, partisan religious view, they can't hold up a tube of toothpaste like Colgate and push it. Irrespective of that, it's also blatantly violative of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, and at least as important it's violative of Clause 3, Article 6 of the Constitution -- you don't even have to get into the Bill of Rights -- which states that we will never have a religion test for any position in the federal government, which was brilliantly prescient of our Founding Fathers.

This, to me, constitutes as much of a national security threat to this country as al-Qaida. In fact, the video itself, to me, would be the No. 1 recruiting tool that I would expect bin Laden, the followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, although he's dead, Ayman al Zawahiri, Hezbollah with Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, Hamas, the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, to get angry young Islamic men and women in Iran, Syria and Lebanon to join the insurrection and jihadi terrorist activities. This would be a perfect accelerant to create even further conflagration.

Now, I was a JAG [judge advocate general, the lawyers who act as prosecutors and defense attorneys within the military] in the Air Force. I spent three and a half years as a lawyer for President Ronald Reagan in the West Wing, I've been Ross Perot's general counsel. I know the religious right would love to vilify me as a tree-hugging Northern California Sierra Club membership chardonnay-sipping liberal -- not that there'd be anything wrong with that, to wax Seinfeldian -- but I'm not. I'm a Republican. And my family has a very, very long and distinguished military history. We have three consecutive generations of military academy graduates, and my youngest son, who's at the Air Force Academy now, he's a senior, what's called a first classman, is the sixth member of my family to attend the academy. We have 115 years of combined active-duty military service to this country in my immediate family from every combat engagement from World War I to the current one, and this is a pernicious torturing of what our military is supposed to be about.

Of course, I realize people have religious rights. We only have about 2,200 chaplains in each of the military branches; every base has multiple chapels, and these people can pray all they want to themselves, like kids in school can pray to themselves, but when you're in the military, and you're coming in like that one person, Catton, whom I knew when I was a kid at the [Air Force] Academy, and he goes, "I share my faith, that's who I am, and let me tell you right now, the hierarchy as an old-fashioned American is that your first duty is to the Lord, second to your family and your third is to your country." That is the exact opposite of what is taught, and for anyone who understands anything about the military, it is always the country first. When you're told, "Troopers, we're going to go take that hill," you can't stop, fall to your knees and see what your particular version of Moses, Vishnu, Satan, Jesus, Mohammed, Allah, whatever they're going to say, and then quickly make a cellphone call to your family. So it is beyond-the-pale egregious, it is a national security threat every bit as bad as al-Qaida, and these people should be court-martialed.

Forty percent of active-duty military personnel consider themselves evangelical Christians. Is your position popular in the military?

We have 702 U.S. military installations scattered in 132 countries around the world, and I get calls 24/7 from the soldiers, Marines and airmen. Unlike cops, they don't have a union, they have my foundation, that's it. They're being tormented. And 96 percent of those who come flooding in, on fire with torment, are Christians, three-fourths of whom would be traditional Protestants: Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians. The other one-fourth are Roman Catholics. These are Christians being preyed upon by evangelical Christians -- pray and prey -- and being told that you're not Christian enough, therefore you're going to burn in a hell of fire.

Many [evangelical Christians] tell me, "Mikey, OK, Anne Frank, Dr. Seuss, Jack Benny, Gandhi, they're all burning eternally in the fires of hell." And here's the distinction they just don't fucking get, these cocksuckers do not get this: I would give my last drop of blood and my last breath, and I would commend my three children in the Air Force -- one of whom's going to be heading to Iraq in a few months -- to give their last drop of blood and their last breath to support the rights of these people to believe that Anne Frank is burning eternally in hell … If they want to believe that their version of Jesus has her burning eternally in hell, I'd give my life for that. But I will not do that if my government tells me who are the children of the greater God and who are the children of the lesser God or no God at all. And that's what these monsters are doing.

Is there pressure on the non-evangelicals in the military to convert or keep quiet because some of their superiors have these views and are talking about these views?

Oh, absolutely. Like I said, in the military, many of your constitutional rights are gone, because it's necessary. Look, let's make sure your readers understand something, OK, put it in perspective: The U.S. military, which I consider a noble and honorable institution, is technologically the most lethal organization ever created by Homo sapiens. When you have the leadership believing that to be a good soldier, good Marine, good airman or sailor you have to be not just a Christian but the right type of Christian, we're no better than al-Qaida. And it's hideous, beyond belief. My kids were called "fucking Jews" and accused of total complicity, they and their people, in the execution of Jesus Christ, by superiors up and down the chain of command at the Air Force Academy.

But like I've said before, most of the people who've come to me are Christians. That's been the big sea change here. Look, Sinclair Lewis said it best, in [the 1930s]. He came back from Germany, he was observing it for a number of months ... and he [said] that he had now seen fascism up close and personal, and he knew that when it came to America it would be wrapped in the American flag, carrying a cross. And you know what? He's right.

It's one thing to be pushing evangelical Christianity on prisoners in a penitentiary and to be pushing intelligent design in public schools. That's bad enough, but that's not our fight. My foundation focuses, with laserlike precision, on the Marine Corps, Army, Navy and Air Force, because if we lose them, we lose everything.

Your youngest son is at the Air Force Academy, which has been the focus of a lot of the allegations about evangelical proselytizing. With you being so out-front on this, has he been the target of any reprisals?

No. I think that they realize if they touch a hair on his head, I will open up the skies and bring down a hammer and tongs like they've never seen before. There have been some snide remarks, but in the main it's steady cruising.

Now, my older son and his wife have had a few things. They're both first lieutenants. In the military, you wear a name tag, and their name is Weinstein. My daughter-in-law has had senior officers walk up to her and say, "I know who you are, and I know what you're family is all about." She's a junior officer, so she just looks at them. In the main, it's been fairly calm, because they're not that stupid to think that my kids wouldn't make a phone call, and then I'm going to do what I have to do.

But I can tell you that I get -- I don't think I'm in double digits, but it started at about 10 o'clock last night; after the press conference in the morning, I've had nine death threats since about 10 o'clock last night. I usually get about two or three a week. They're very grotesque, everything from wanting to gas all the Jews in America and send the corpses back to Israel to threatening to blow me up, threatening my house will be blown up, raping my wife, blowing up my house. We've had our tires slashed, we've had feces and beer bottles thrown at the house, we've had dead animals placed on the front door of the house.

I was in Topeka, on a book tour, and the local Episcopal priest came out to support me and five hours later his church was burned down. And the local synagogue in Topeka, where I was to speak that night, was desecrated with spray paint saying, "Fuck you, Jews" and "KKK," all that stuff.

So if this is a nice, Christian response, my response is take a number, pack a picnic lunch and stand in line, because we're not going to stop, we're not going to ever stop, we're going to lay down a withering field of fire and leave sucking chest wounds on these people that are trying to destroy our Constitution. This is not a Christian-Jewish issue, and it's also not a political spectrum, left or right issue, it's a Constitutional right and wrong issue. These officers, and what's happening in that video, simply by appearing in a video that is blatantly and vociferously sectarian, by simply doing three things in that video, they should be court-martialed. That would be circulating blood, reflecting light and breathing. That's all they had to do and that alone would have been enough. You're not Jewish, are you?

I am, actually.

You understand the word "dayenu"? Well, it's dayenu -- the dayenu factor is simply by letting the light reflect off you, circulating blood and breathing in that video. Everything else beyond that is extra. Dayenu's my favorite song at Passover, that's why I use it.

My response is I've given the new secretary of defense 20 days to answer the Freedom of Information Act request, which the law gives him, and at the end we intend to get as much information as we can, fashion it into a dagger and then stab at the heart of this unconstitutional, wretched, vile, darkness at the Pentagon. This unconstitutional darkness, we will stab at it with our dagger until we kill it.


-- By Alex Koppelman

[BruceChris]

EDIT, Tuesday, 1/2/07: This is a very powerful posting to read, and it triggered in me something that I have wanted to say for a long time. However, I realized too late that what I really wanted to respond to is the synergism between the religious right and the moneyed classes ON OUR GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY, and not really on the military, per se.



But that is only about half of what is going on. Please bear with me, and take a look at another set of data.

1. While most of the working and middle class has been getting along pretty much O.K., their standard of living hasn't improved noticably in the last 30 years, while the wealth of this country has been increasing by amazing amounts.

2. The ratio of the pay of the lowest paid worker to the compensation of the CEO's and owners has gone up by several orders of magnitude in that same time. The poor may or may not be getting much poorer, but the rich are getting one HELL of a lot richer.

3. Right after 911, congress passed an "anti-terrorism act", which was little more than a fig leaf for the $100 Billion tax cut for the rich, which almost no one seemed to notice.

4. I believe that this country is not so much being run into the ground by the Republicans, as by the People Who OWN the Republican party, all too much of the Democratic party, and far too much of the rest of the country. - Please go back and read that a second time.

5. So to simplify, let's call these people the Neocons, and Suzer's bunch the Theocons. We can then pretty much see, or at least begin to learn that the Neocons believe that they are using the Theocons, and the Theocons believe that they are using the Neocons. However, it is ourselves, the rest of the non-rich, the rest of the world, the environment, and anyone unlucky enough to be labeled a terrorist that are really going to suffer from all of this.

Your thoughts and comments would be greatly appreciated.

Concern, Bruce Chris

[Jamie McDaniel]

Originally Posted by BruceChris

So to simplify, let's call these people the Neocons, and Suzer's bunch the Theocons. We can then pretty much see, or at least begin to learn that the Neocons believe that they are using the Theocons, and the Theocons believe that they are using the Neocons. However, it is ourselves, the rest of the non-rich, the rest of the world, the environment, and anyone unlucky enough to be labeled a terrorist that are really going to suffer from all of this.

I watched the full 12 minute video (thanks Steven for the direct link.) I read the article Susan posted from Salon (it was a little confusing as posted, it needed the questions in bold or italics like the original.)

I also briefly looked at the Christian Embassy website. Their about us page now reads:

Out of respect for those we serve, we have removed the promotional video from our website until further notice.

On that same page, I also read:

We were founded by Washington officials, concerned business leaders and Dr. Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ International.

Ah, the Campus Crusade for Christ. I'm still on their mailing list from when I gave to their Jesus video project.

When I was a Southern Baptist, receiving these mailings from fundamentalists is what, I think, really awakened the liberal in me. I specifically remember getting a survey from the Alliance Defense Fund in 1998 or 1999 about the homosexual threat. I wrote Alan Sears a strongly worded letter along with my survey responses. Whereas I once naively thought all Christian groups had good intentions, I started to wonder whether Jesus was now being used as a Trojan horse for beliefs totally at odds with the life he lived.

I'm thinking some of these people in the promotional video from Christian Embassy are likewise naive. Their faith is important to them, but unfortunately not important enough for them to be knowledgeable about historic Christianity so that they might be on guard for when the Bible is used to justify oppression and war.

Their careers take them to Washington and a group with a diplomatic-sounding name introduces themselves as ministering to U.S. decision makers and military leaders.

From the video:

I would say Christian Embassy, in my interaction with my fellow flag officers, has helped inspire some of that. You know we talk about that kind of stuff and I think it is a huge impact because you have many men and women who are seeking God’s council and wisdom as we advice the chairman and the secretary of defense.

I rather like people saying their faith helps guide their decisions when I know such faith is rooted in the God of justice, the inclusive Spirit, the Prince of peace, the loving Creator who watches over all. However thanks to the fundamentalists of today and to history books which reveal the fundamentalists of yesterday, I'm no longer naive. I don't want leaders who are either. I know for the theocons, God's "council and wisdom" equals a harmful religion about Jesus rather than the healing religion of Jesus (thanks to Nathan's post.)

I'm still waiting on the leaders who will state, "Upon reflecting on the things close to God's heart, we have decided to scale back U.S. military spending 20% over the next 5 years in order to provide resources for education, health care, and urban renewal. This world may never allow all our swords to be beaten into plowshares, but we've tried violence and found it failed to establish peace. Let us try a new way."

[andrewlittle]

I'm certainly not a Marxist, but I do agree with Marx on some issues. One of those is that economics is at the root of (almost) all action. We are witnessing, I believe, the results of a long-planned, badly executed, purely self-serving process for economic hegemony that has been cloaked in ideological and religious rhetoric.

The majority of the U.S. population has allowed this process to occur out of fear for loss of advantage and security - out of self-interest it has turned a deaf ear and blind eye to the rampant abuse of the majority of the world's poor. Why? Because consumerism - the flawed idea that constantly increasing consumption of goods is economically beneficial - requires inequitable transactions, or those in which more resources are gained for less than they are worth. Our addiction to "more for less" is based on the world's poor getting less for more. It is based on economic exploitation.

And, as long as it was "them" getting the disadvantage so we can reap advantage, it was okay. We could give to Third World charities and pretend we were doing something that helped. Meanwhile, we didn't have to look at our own complicity as we went to buy the cheap products of economic slavery from our favorite retailers.

But now the effects of globalization are coming home to roost - actually they have been for years, but "spin" has painted a brighter picture. Globalization has been designed and fed by the same groups that have spouted Neocon and Theocon rhetoric - it is the result of dominion theology being applied to economics.

But, globalization is not about a "God-blessed elite country (U.S.)" deserving power and privilege, propelling all U.S. citizens into a higher standard of living. It is about a much smaller "God-blessed elite citizenry" achieving hegemony at the expense of all others. The general population of the U.S. is also expendable as "collateral damage".

Originally Posted by BruceChris

1. While most of the working and middle class has been getting along pretty much O.K., their standard of living hasn't improved noticably in the last 30 years, while the wealth of this country has been increasing by amazing amounts.

In December 2005 I wrote:

With the availability of a global supply of cheap labor to fill the decreasing number of job openings required to generate profits, the populations of the dominant nations run the risk of seeing an erosion of income and welfare. Between the years 1999 and 2004 the average U.S. family income decreased 8.8% and all segments of the U.S. population, except the top 15%, experienced increased poverty and/or decreased earnings. Along with the income trend is the reduction of benefits of many U.S. workers, a pattern that is, as yet, difficult to quantify. The reliance of U.S. companies on U.S. labor is significantly decreasing. While various sources, such as Bureau of Labor Statistics and Business Week, are citing growth in both high and low paying jobs, they also report that the high paying jobs require considerable re-education as they are in areas like healthcare and computer industries. The segment seeing the most significant decline is medium and high-medium paying positions, with many workers formerly in this category accepting lower paying jobs or experiencing long-term unemployment. The benefits of economic power for the populations of the dominant nations may be in decline along with their understandings of identity and security - in short, long-term they may be facing dehumanization from globalization.

From the National Poverty Center of the University of Michigan (http://www.npc.umich.edu/poverty/):

In 2004, 12.7 percent of all persons lived in poverty. In 1993 the poverty rate was 15.1 percent. Between 1993 and 2000, the poverty rate fell each year, reaching 11.3 percent in 2000. Poverty has risen in each of the last four years.

Poverty is, in fact increasing, and the purchasing power (and hence, standard of living) of average U.S. citizens is decreasing.

Originally Posted by BruceChris

2. The ratio of the pay of the lowest paid worker to the compensation of the CEO's and owners has gone up by several orders of magnitude in that same time. The poor may or may not be getting much poorer, but the rich are getting one HELL of a lot richer.

The ELITE few are controlling more and more of the wealth of this country and the world. When I studied economics (too many years ago to remember), one definition of "Third World" was "any country in which more than 90% of the resources were owned or controlled by less than 5% of the population." That stopped being a working definition in the very late 1990's because, by definition, the U.S. would have been a Third World country. The latest estimate is that 90% of the U.S. wealth is controlled or owned by slightly more than 2% of the population.

Originally Posted by BruceChris

4. I believe that this country is not so much being run into the ground by the Republicans, as by the People Who OWN the Republican party, all too much of the Democratic party, and far too much of the rest of the country. - Please go back and read that a second time.

This is old news now, but it hasn't changed for the better.

It is a given that the world’s dominant cultures are largely defined by economic supremacy. Of the world’s top hundred economies in 1999, the last year readily available online for analysis [as of 2003], 51% are non-governmental transnational corporations (TNCs). Imagine 51 companies - each with economic systems bigger than those of three-quarters of the world’s nations. Combined, the top 200 TNCs made up 27.5% of the world’s economic activity (GNP) while employing only 0.78% of the world’s workforce. Despite Charles Wilson’s declaration as CEO of General Motors that “what is good for General Motors is good for the country” , GM and a host of other TNCs fail even the most rudimentary test of good citizenship, payment of taxes. In the 1998 tax year, 44 of the US based top 200 TNCs paid well less than the normal 35% rate of tax on profits, and seven - GM, Texaco, Chevron, PepsiCo, Enron, Worldcom and McKesson - paid less than zero after receiving tax rebates. This is significant because, next to employment, taxes are the most basic way in which companies participate in the social infrastructure. TNCs, as dominant cultures, thus have a history of minimizing both employment and financial support of society in relation to earnings.

Neo-conservative economics at their finest. A good source for brushing up on who really owns the U.S. and world economies is http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/tncs/index.htm

Originally Posted by BruceChris

5. So to simplify, let's call these people the Neocons, and Suzer's bunch the Theocons. We can then pretty much see, or at least begin to learn that the Neocons believe that they are using the Theocons, and the Theocons believe that they are using the Neocons. However, it is ourselves, the rest of the non-rich, the rest of the world, the environment, and anyone unlucky enough to be labeled a terrorist that are really going to suffer from all of this.

We already are - the question is will we be smart enough to realize it before its too late?

[BruceChris]

The Romans used to pacify and distract the masses with "Bread and Circuses". These days, the methodology seems to be a lot more complicated, but it still boils down to being misled and being distracted. (Am I just being paranoid here, or was the decline of the Soviet Union very convieniently followed by the rise of terrorism, as a unifying issue for Republicans?)

I also made a significant tactical error in attaching my reply to a thread about CC's or Theocons In The Military, instead of to a thread about the influence of Theocons In The Government, and society in general.

Suzer, I guess your excellent post was what triggered my response.

The conclusion is still the same: Neocons and Theocons have a synergistic effect, working together, and the rest of us are becoming the losers.

Peace, Love, and Class Conciousness, Bruce Chris