-Caveat Lector-
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: June 14, 2007 12:38:19 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Army Removes Bible Study Guides That Quote "Anti-Semitic"
Passages
As of 4:15 PDT this story has been updated with a statement by the
spokeswoman at the Fort Leavenworth army base.
See the Nehemiah file here.
See the Galatians file here.
"Anti-Semitic" Bible Teachings
Removed from Army Site
By Jason Leopold
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/printer_061307A.shtml
Wednesday 13 June 2007
(Photo: Photo: US Army website)
A series of Bible study guides were removed from the US Army's
Fort Leavenworth web site late Monday following a report by
Truthout that disclosed how the materials used by chaplains during
Bible sessions for soldiers appeared to be anti-Semitic, and that
disseminating it through a web site maintained by the federal
government may have violated the law mandating the separation
between church and state.
The Bible study guides were discovered last week by researchers
at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a government watchdog
group. The group's founder, Mikey Weinstein, said in an interview
Tuesday that scrubbing the web site does not adequately address the
problem of rampant evangelical Christian fundamentalism that
continues to ripple throughout the military. Weinstein, [a Jew and]
a former White House counsel under Ronald Reagan, still intends to
file a lawsuit against the US Army for alleged constitutional
violations.
Janet Wray, spokeswoman at Fort Leavenworth, confirmed that the
bible study guides have been removed from the chaplain's section of
the website and said that officials at the army base were reviewing
the materials. When contacted over the weekend about the study
guides and the apparent anti-Semitic content contained in the
documents, a person who answered the telephone at the Fort
Leavenworth chaplain's office refused to disclose his name when
asked for comment. The individual, a male, said there have not been
prior complaints about the Bible study guides and that "I would not
characterize the material as anti-Semitic."
"I guess if you're Jewish you may see it that way, but we're
discussing the Gospels as they appear in the New Testament," this
person said, who added that there was no plan at the time to remove
the study guides from the web site.
The study guides were posted at the link http://usacac.army.mil/
CAC/Staff/chaplain/studyguides.asp.
Late Monday evening the documents were quietly removed from
public view of the chaplain section of the US Army Combined Arms
Center at Fort Leavenworth website. On Tuesday, a visit to the web
address said "the page you are trying to find is unavailable or the
address has been typed incorrectly." On Wednesday morning a visit
to the web address prompted a request for a password. Truthout has
posted the study guides and screen grabs of the website before it
was scrubbed.
The Officers' Christian Fellowship Neighborhood Study Guides
quote portions of the New Testament and were written by Major
George Kuykendall, the leader of Fort Leavenworth's Officers'
Christian Fellowship, who died in 1998, according to Chris Rodda, a
senior researcher at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.
Rodda said, "The study guides also encourage soldiers to engage in
an unconstitutional level of proselytizing to fellow military
personnel in the Fort Leavenworth community."
In one of the study guides, Galatians, Bible study group
chaplains ask soldiers to provide an answer to the following
question, "How does the present Jerusalem represent slavery?"
In the study guide on Nehemiah, the chaplains ask soldiers, "Do
you see any similarity in the problems and attitudes that
confronted early Zionism, 24 centuries ago, and the conflict that
exists today between the Jews who have returned to their ancient
homeland to reestablish Israel and the long-time Arab inhabitants
of that same land?"
"As governor of Samaria, [Sanballat] apparently was at a
meeting of Samaritan leaders, including military leaders,
discussing the 'Jewish problem,'" the study guide says. "How do you
interpret Sanballat's reaction to the Jews' progress (vv. one and
two)? Angry suspicion and bitter mockery. In light of what we know
about the Jews' performance today, were his fears reasonable?"
Weinstein said the study guides, while blatantly anti-Semitic,
"clearly show that the goals of these study groups, often posed in
the form of questions, as in the following example, would require
an unconstitutional level of evangelizing of fellow military
personnel by the group members."
Indeed, the study guides ask soldiers whether they "think it is
possible for you to win one person to Christ this year?" The guides
ask: "How would you proceed to accomplish that?; 1. By making a
commitment to do that; 2. By learning how to present the gospel in
such a way as to challenge someone to accept Christ as Lord; 3. By
bathing my goal in prayer; 4. By praying for some specific person
to accept Christ; 5. By inviting and encouraging a specific person
to come to this Bible study, and continuing to pray for their
salvation and/or spiritual growth. What effect could our group have
on the population at Fort Leavenworth if we deliberately embarked
on such an effort and prayed for each other daily?"
While some may have a different opinion on whether the study
guides are anti-Semitic, Weinstein says the bigger issue is that
the US military, an arm of the federal government, appears to be
trampling on the Constitution by pushing a religious agenda.
"Today, there's a constant flow of religion into national
politics and the military," Weinstein said. "And not just any
religion either, but the dominionist, evangelical, Fundamentalist,
us-versus-them, my-God-is-bigger-than-your-God, steel-fisted
variety of Christian evangelism. There was a time, and not so long
ago, when this nation worshiped a humbler God, but this invidious
and cultish clan that is consuming our military believes they have
a God-given right to rule the country, create a Christian nation,
and eventually, a [global] Christian empire."
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