Christian Armies

After a much-publicized revision of its policies to ensure religious freedom at the Air Force Academy, the brass has backpedaled bigtime, at the command of guess who -- Focus on the Family. From WaPo:

Michael L. "Mikey" Weinstein, an Albuquerque lawyer who is suing the Air Force over its policy on religion, questioned the sentence allowing commanders to share their faith when it is "reasonably clear" that they are speaking personally, not officially.

"Reasonably clear from whose perspective, the superior's or the subordinate's?" asked Weinstein, a 1977 Air Force Academy graduate. "When a senior member of your chain of command wants to speak to you 'reasonably' about religion, saying 'Get out of my face, sir!' is not an option."

John Cole at Balloon Juice has full coverage. It seems that the services aren't too happy about the whole issue either. See these letters from Stars & Stripes, responding to this one, from a chaplain.

The chaplain's letter is more revealing than he expected, mainly from this assertion:

Our country was founded by Christians on the principles of the Holy Bible, not the satanic bible, by pagans or Wiccans.

He flunks history. This is a statement that has become another mantra for the Christianists, even though it's demonstrably not true. The country was founded by Deists who were very suspicious of organized religion, at best, and especially Christianity. (I had a whole list of quotes from Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, etc. about this, but I don't feel like spending the next two days trying to find them. I blogged on it way back when. Trust me.)

So, if an army chaplain, either through ignorance or deceit, comes out with a statement like that, how responsible can we expect him to be when it comes to respecting others' beliefs?

Not.

We know the preznit has made political use of the military (see this bit from Josh Marshall), but apparently he's now thrown that option open to the Christianists as well.

I shudder to think of the damage these goons have done to this country.