Robert Koehler has published a provocative essay entitled, "The Crusaders: 'The Christian Taliban is Running the Department of Defense'" Central to his essay is information in Michael Weinstein's new book "With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military." Here's a quote from Koehler:
Until I read the newly published “With God on Their Side” (St. Martin’s Press), Michael Weinstein’s disturbing account of anti-Semitism at the U.S. Air Force Academy, I shrugged off each of these remarks, and so much more, as isolated, almost comically intolerant noises out of True Believer Land. Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do . . .I've written blogs about "America's Thoroughly Evangelical Airforce" on several occassions.
Now my blood runs cold. Weinstein, a 1977 graduate of the Academy and former assistant general counsel in the Reagan administration, and a lifelong Republican, has devoted the last several years of his life to battling what he has come to regard as a fundamentalist takeover of the Academy, turning it, in effect, into a taxpayer-supported Evangelical institution. He charges that the separation of church and state is rapidly vanishing at the school, which routinely promotes sectarian religious events, tolerates the proselytizing of uniquely vulnerable new recruits and, basically, conflates evangelical interests and the national interest.
This Sunday, May 6, 2007, I will interview Weinstein and talk about his book on my "Religious Talk" radio program. The program airs live at 11:00 AM CST and is broadcast in streaming audio over the internet at this link.
Weinstein is a graduate of the Air Force Academy and a former Assistant General Counsel for the Reagan administration.
I'll also be posting a podcast of the interview on Sunday afternoon.
1 comment:
mmIn 2000 when I went to my son's graduation from Basic Training in Lackland AFB I noticed that numerous patches for different featured a skull. In the bowling alley there was on sale a clear plastic bowling ball with a skull inside it. The SS used the skull as it's symbol in the death camps, in Russia the Okhrana, Cheka, NKVD, and KGB used the skull. Is it any wonder that our military has added torture its repetoir. Most of the recruits were incouraged to attend John Hague's church while there as well. It's not just the academy where fundamentalism is pushed.
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