Jeff Sharlet's "Jesus Killed Mohammed", published in the May 2009 issue of Harper's Magazine, is a stunning piece of journalism. The distinction between merely decent and stunning journalism rests on the ability to combine information in a way that offers a new perspective on disparate events and ideas without abandoning the structural charms of the story. By identifying and examining the "evangelical transformation of the military", which began during the Cold War, Sharlet digs into rocky and ungiving soil.
The development of a volunteer-based military in the post-Vietnam era made self-selection for military service the law of the land. But the end of the draft also signaled the end of a continuing public interest in the workings of the US military. Since most American men would never spend time in the military, the public lost interest in the details. Sharlet describes a current "civil war" between the "majority of military personnel, professionals who regardless of their faith and lack thereof simply want to get their jobs done" and the "small but powerful movement of Christian soldiers concentrated in the officer corps".
What men such as these have fomented is a quiet coup within the armed forces: not of generals encroaching on civilian rule but of religious authority displacing the military’s once staunchly secular code. Not a conspiracy but a cultural transformation, achieved gradually through promotions and prayer meetings, with personal faith replacing protocol according to the best intentions of commanders who conflate God with country. They see themselves not as subversives but as spiritual warriors—“ambassadors for Christ in uniform,” according to Officers’ Christian Fellowship; “government paid missionaries,” according to Campus Crusade’s Military Ministry.
Sharlet cites the Officers' Christian Fellowship as a key player in the "fundamentalist front" of the officer corps, with 15,000 active members at 80 percent of military bases and a recent annual growth rate of 3 percent.
Founded during World War II, OCF was for most of its history concerned mainly with the spiritual lives of those who sought it out, but since 9/11 it has moved in a more militant direction. According to the group’s current executive director, retired Air Force Lieutenant General Bruce L. Fister, the “global war on terror”—to which Obama has committed 17,000 new troops in Afghanistan—is “a spiritual battle of the highest magnitude.” As jihad has come to connote violence, so spiritual war has moved closer to actual conflict, “continually confronting an implacable, powerful foe who hates us and eagerly seeks to destroy us,” declares “The Source of Combat Readiness,” an OCF Scripture study prepared on the eve of the Iraq War.
In the context of the war on terror, the expansion of the spiritual warrior into a representative of US diplomatic policy threatens more than just the secular tradition of the military. Many Muslims believe that the war on terror is secretly a war against Islam-- against their culture, way of life, and community. Comments like those made by Army Lt. Gen. William Jerry Boykin serve to reinforce and validate such views. While US policy makers have insisted that this is not the case, that the war on terror is not a holy war in disguise, the beliefs and behavior of US troops abroad are far from persuasive on this point.
Threat perception plays a large part in the formulation of foreign policy-- "national security interests" and "threats" depend on where you stand, how much you fear the dark, how much you want to control, and your preferred methods of engagement. For many Muslims, the only palpable information about the US military's intentions abroad comes in the form of interaction with American troops.
Three significant and equally-destructive consequences would likely result from the US military's domination by Christian holy warriors. These consequences should be upsetting to Americans in general and American Christians in particular. The first consequence would be an insecurity-generating confusion over purpose and plans in the policy community. US foreign policy would no longer represent the security interests of the American people; instead, it would represent the particular policy agenda of a specific Protestant outlook. As such, US foreign policy could not be relied upon to serve the American public during a time of generalized international uncertainty. US foreign policy would not serve the interests of peace and freedom; it would serve the interests of Christians who consider military service a form of missionary work.
The second consequence easily follows. For many living in closed societies around the world, the introduction to Christ and the Christian faith would be a violent, coercive, and possibly even oppressive one. Professing to prosleytize with a gun on your shoulder can hardly be taken seriously; few of us will get into arguments about ethics with nice policemen that have glocks in their hands.
The recent experience of communism in the former Soviet Union and its satellite states showed that the majority of human beings are willing to espouse even vulgar Marxist materlalism to protect their loved ones and their lives. Remarkably few former citizens of communist regimes risked their lives or well-being to refuse the predigested promises of communist ideology. In fact, many actually chose to pay lip-service to the idols of communism to secure better schools, vacations, food rations, residential assignments, and career advancements. Those with a tendency towards opportunism will probably employ the same approach to a US military which attempts to win converts for Christianity, especially if increased access to financial goods, careers, and positions of authority are involved. Guns rarely make for good mission work.
This third consequence, the seeming militarization of Christianity, silently and covertly mainstreams an extreme and arguably blasphemous fundamentalist understanding of the Gospel. Since this mainstreaming is taking place within the closed, secretive culture of the US military, there is little opportunity for a presentation of alternatives. Once an officer begins to tell troops that they are fighting for Jesus by killing hostile Iraqis, honest discussion about the verity of such statements becomes impossible, given the high premium on hierarchy and order which dominates military life. So while the second consequence might be summarized as the imposition of the Christian religion in dubious scenarios where free will and choice cannot be assumed, the third consequence might be restated as political premium being placed on a modern, mongrelized, and militarized interpretation of the Gospel.
There is nothing profane-- no social or intellectual end-- that Christianity would be better prepared than temporal powers to defend. However much Christianity may wish to engage the things of temporal politics and social conflicts, it nevertheless must perceive all temporal goods as relative....... [W]e sense the temptation to subordinate [the vitality of the Christian message] to temporal ends-- that is, to the temptation to transform God into a tool, a potential object of human manipulation. The (weakened but not dead yet) theocratic tendency-- the disastrous, unsuccessful hope that humanity could be led to redemption through coercion-- and the apparently opposing effort to subordinate Christian values to this or that revolutionary ideology run together in their fundamental point of view. Both transform God into an instrument of ends that, whether justified or not, may never be considered final from a Christian perspective. Each of them runs the risk of converting the Christian community into a political party.
The wisdom of Kowlakowski's warnings written in 2003 find a disappointing confirmation in Jeff Sharlet's perfect (and perfectly sad) article. One can only hope that it receives more attention in DC policy circles and media outlets.
Sharlet's bio and butterflies for the chasing: Sharlet's first story for Harper's, "Jesus Plus Nothing", grew into a book about the theocrats filling the ranks of "the Family". As an insider, Sharlet provided privileged information about the secret movement of Christian power-brokers influencing US public policy. In addition to his work for Rolling Stone, Harper's, and the books he can't stop writing, Sharlet blogs at The Revealer, a daily review of religion and the press, and his more personal blog, Call Me Ishmael. You can explore more about Sharlet, his writings, and the ripe terrain of evangelical influence on the military via the following particulars (many of them used as examples in Sharlet's article):
- Watch video of US military commanders urging soldiers to "get em in the Kingdom"
- Listen to podcast with Jeff Sharlet from Writer's Voice
- Christian Embassy + Bible studies used in the Pentagon + Christian Military Fellowship + Peace Officers for Christ International
- A July 2007 interview with Shalet from Get Religion
- Firedoglake on Shalet and "the Family"
- "God's Senator" (Jeff Sharlet, Roling Stone, 25 January 2006)
- "Biblical capitalism" (Jeff Sharlet, Religion Dispatches, 3 October 2008)
- "Sarah Palin, American" (Jeff Sharlet, Religion Dispatches, 15 Sept. 2008)
- "Holy Fools" (Jeff Sharlet, The New Statesman, 25 October 2007)
- "Preachers of doom" (Jeff Sharlet, The New Statesman, 19 July 2007)
- Interview with Jeff Sharlet by The Wild Hunt, July 2008
- The Republic of T's take on the Christianized military
- Stephen Sizer on Christian Zionism
