signalmankenneth
Verified User
Submitted by mark karlin on Sat, 01/08/2011 - 1:07pm.
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR FOR TRUTHOUT
Under the Bush administration, there was a creeping evangelical influence over the armed forces - much of it officially sanctioned.
One of the key public flashpoints of efforts to turn the military into a Christian crusade came through the statements of Lieutenant General William G. Boykin, who also served as deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence under Bush. Boykin was open in asserting that the "war on terror" was a battle against infidels, even declaring - in swaggering fundamentalist style - that his God was "bigger" than the Islamic God.
It was clear throughout the Bush administration that religious freedom was under siege in the armed forces.
According to Truthout's Jason Leopold, a religious influence remains in the military under Obama. One of the places it can be found - and this element is far from the only remnant of the Bush-era military religious outreach - is in an expensive GI "Comprehensive Soldier Fitness" (CSF) testing program that includes a "spiritual" component.
The problem is that it is a challenge to separate the spiritual from the religious in psychological evaluation questioning, so a GI who is not a cheerleader for Go is considered spiritually lacking.
As Leopold notes:
Last week, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) sent a letter to Secretary of the Army John McHugh and General George W. Casey Jr., the Army's chief of staff, demanding that the Army immediately cease and desist administering the "spiritual" portion of the CSF test. (Full disclosure: MRFF founder and president Mikey Weinstein is a member of Truthout's board of advisers.)
On January 6, a Keith Olbermann "Countdown" segment - in which the Truthout investigative article was prominently featured - revealed how the spiritual "testing" could be used as a recruiting tool for the evangelical movement in the military.
America just passed a major milestone by allowing gays to openly serve in the armed forces. Isn't it time that we also dropped religious coercion?
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR FOR TRUTHOUT
Under the Bush administration, there was a creeping evangelical influence over the armed forces - much of it officially sanctioned.
One of the key public flashpoints of efforts to turn the military into a Christian crusade came through the statements of Lieutenant General William G. Boykin, who also served as deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence under Bush. Boykin was open in asserting that the "war on terror" was a battle against infidels, even declaring - in swaggering fundamentalist style - that his God was "bigger" than the Islamic God.
It was clear throughout the Bush administration that religious freedom was under siege in the armed forces.
According to Truthout's Jason Leopold, a religious influence remains in the military under Obama. One of the places it can be found - and this element is far from the only remnant of the Bush-era military religious outreach - is in an expensive GI "Comprehensive Soldier Fitness" (CSF) testing program that includes a "spiritual" component.
The problem is that it is a challenge to separate the spiritual from the religious in psychological evaluation questioning, so a GI who is not a cheerleader for Go is considered spiritually lacking.
As Leopold notes:
Last week, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) sent a letter to Secretary of the Army John McHugh and General George W. Casey Jr., the Army's chief of staff, demanding that the Army immediately cease and desist administering the "spiritual" portion of the CSF test. (Full disclosure: MRFF founder and president Mikey Weinstein is a member of Truthout's board of advisers.)
On January 6, a Keith Olbermann "Countdown" segment - in which the Truthout investigative article was prominently featured - revealed how the spiritual "testing" could be used as a recruiting tool for the evangelical movement in the military.
America just passed a major milestone by allowing gays to openly serve in the armed forces. Isn't it time that we also dropped religious coercion?
