Hunting for Jesus

Despite being aware of evangelical efforts to use the United States military for proselytization purposes (something that is antithetical to the principles upon which this nation was founded,) recently surfaced footage of a military chaplain in Afghanistan encouraging soldiers to hunt persons for Jesus in order to convert them to Christianity is truly shocking. What's even worse is that while listening to a podcast of the Democracy Now episode about this incident I was introduced to an even more egregious incident that occurred in Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: The title of your piece in Harper’s is called “Jesus Killed Mohammed.” Tell us where this comes from.

JEFF SHARLET: Well, after about a year of interviewing military personnel, this was, in some ways, the most frightening story that I encountered. A man named Staff Sergeant Jeffery Humphrey, one of the very few soldiers who, in this military climate, had the courage to come forward and speak out about what he had seen, he had been stationed in Samarra. It was Easter. The day began calmly. A chaplain brought around a copy of Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic film Passion of the Christ, which they then put on constant play throughout the day.

When they came under attack, the Special Forces, Army Special Forces to whom he was assigned, had their Iraqi translator, an Iraqi American Christian, paint in giant red Arabic letters on the side of a Bradley fighting vehicle the words “Jesus killed Mohammed.” Then, while they put the translator on the roof with a bullhorn, shouting in Arabic, “Jesus killed Mohammed,” and then training their guns, training American guns on anybody who responded, the Bradley fighting vehicle rolled out into the city of Samarra and drawing fire everywhere it went, leading the Special Forces to conclude that every single Iraqi who took offense at these words, “Jesus killed Mohammed,” was part of the enemy and therefore needed to be destroyed.

And I spoke to the man who drove that Bradley, Lieutenant John DeGiulio, now Captain John DeGiulio, promoted since. And he describes wreaking almost biblical destruction on one whole block, blowing up every single thing he saw. And he said he was able to do this, because God was on his side and because he had been spiritually armored by watching Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. And then he thanked his chaplain for preparing him for that kind of spiritual battle on the streets of Iraq.

I'm sure that went a long way towards winning hearts and minds.

Maybe these soldiers and chaplains on a mission from God can have a get together with their Israeli counterparts and see who can be the most eliminationist.