Fundamentalist Forces?: New Report Highlights Ongoing Church-State Problems in America’s Military
What he has to say is disturbing. Parco’s report lists a series of problems. Here are some of them, taken directly from the report’s Key Findings:
• Institutional support for fundamentalist, evangelical Christianity in the military has spread and entrenched since September 11, 2001, beginning in haste during the Bush administration and remaining unchallenged by the Obama administration.
• Many of the military’s civilian overseers, along with many in the military’scommissioned leadership - to include flag officers, speaking on duty and in uniform - have repeatedly couched the American military’s civic and global role, and American military operations themselves, in the language of Christian religious crusades.
• Through explicit leadership messaging, senior officers have created cultures and atmospheres of religious sectarianism in their commands and institutions, including the various service academies, even instructing subordinates to partake in actions for the express purpose of Christian evangelizing and proselytizing.
• Officers who raise concerns about fundamentalist Christian proselytizing, such as Air Force chaplain Captain MeLinda Morton - when not ignored completely - have faced reassignment and other punitive actions.
• Fundamentalist evangelical Christian organizations are given preferential access to numerous military installations, including the Pentagon and the various service academies, and have had their activities sanctioned and even promoted - in uniform and on duty - by religiously aligned military leadership.
• Fundamentalist evangelical Christian organizations have attempted to use the deployed U.S. military as international missionaries, providing units in Afghanistan with Bibles printed in the native Pashto and Dari languages, the distribution of which is in direct violation of standing general orders.
Parco does more than just submit a list of problems. He also includes a series of 12 specific recommendations to fix things. One of my favorites is Parco’s recommendation that the military adopt a new version of “don’t ask, don’t tell” - for religion.
“As a commander, this is the best advice to guide discussions of your own spiritual beliefs or those of your subordinates - stop assuming others think like you, and don’t ask if you suspect they don’t,” Parco writes. “What religious beliefs they may or may not hold do not matter, precisely because the Constitution and human decency says they do not.”
Parco concludes his report with an eloquent plea for tolerance and diversity in the armed forces. He makes the argument that ending the inappropriate influence of Christian fundamentalism in the military isn’t just the necessary thing to do under our Constitution, it’s the right thing to do for moral reasons.
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