Join the Military, Become a Missionary

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=6473

Join the Military, Become a Missionary

by Tommi Avicolli-Mecca‚ Jan. 09‚ 2009


An official military suicide prevention program that openly promotes religion over no religion and Christianity over other faiths? U.S. military personnel spreading the so-called word of God to Iraqis and Afghans via Bibles supplied to them by a fundamentalist group? A military cable channel that features fundamentalist Christians preaching the word of their deity to the troops?

Are these things kosher under the U.S. Constitution? Not according to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), a watchdog group that looks out for the rights of soldiers not to be proselytized while in uniform. MRFF recently amended its federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense to include what it terms “despicable unconstitutional promotions of fundamentalist Christianity in the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The original suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kansas in September, charged that co-plaintiff Spc. Dustin Chalker and a host of other service members, were unable to resolve, through military channels, their complaints of being pressured to convert to Christianity. Chalker is an out atheist.

The expanded suit contends that the Army went even further in violating the rights of atheists such as Chalker: It produced two cable programs on its military channel that violate the constitutional ban on the government promoting a state religion. One of the shows featured Christian extremists Will Decker and Tim Scott who have dedicated themselves to preaching the Christian gospel everywhere on the planet. The other is called “God’s Soldier.”

In the latter program, Capt. Charles Popov, a chaplain, is seen calling on his god to help a group of soldiers, in his words, “exterminate the enemy and to accomplish the task that they’ve been sent forth by God and country to do.”

It gets worse. The U.S. military has a special project to convert Iraqi citizens to Christianity, according to the suit.

[leftstreet]

1. K&R

[pleah]

2. Haven't there been other stories about pressering

service members to convert? It seems like stuff like this has been going on for a while now.:shrug:

And it really doesn't surprise me that this shit is going on. So, this really is turning into a holy war.

[Geek_Girl]

3. As a non christian I find this very scary

:scared: