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Campus Crusade For Christ Seeks US Military "Government Paid Missionaries"
Above: In YouTube videos above, posted by Military Ministry, ministry director retired Major General Bob Dees outlines Military Ministry's strategic objectives #1 and #6 and describes his ministry's presence on major US military basic training facilities. According to DoD regulations, the presence of Campus Crusade for Christ ministry's and employees on US military bases requires at least the initial approval of base commanders. Black Helicopters vs ICBMs Lately, principally through the pioneering efforts of journalist Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater International and Blackwater USA have received much needed American and world public scrutiny, and that is appropriate. Blackwater represents a menace to American constitutional democracy. Private armies and democracy do not mix. But, it's crucial to recognize that Blackwater is, for all of its menace, a minor threat compared to ongoing efforts to recruit the leadership, and the rank and file, of the US military to a politicized form of fundamentalist Christianity. That effort has been underway for several decades now but it has dramatically sped up during the two presidential terms of George W. Bush. This post concerns an organization that is in the forefront of those efforts as well as the beliefs of that organization's founder. Matched up against Blackwater's black helicopters is a United States military, supported by government spending that roughly matches the combined military expenditure of the entire rest of the planet, which possesses nuclear and conventional missiles that can lay waste to the planet several times over. It is well known that capturing the loyalty of a nation's military is key to any successful regime change or attempted coup. In its own words, Campus Crusade For Christ's Military Ministry seeks to indoctrinate the US military and so transform America as a nation. Helicopters armed with mini-guns shrink to insignificance, in terms of their destructive potential, as compared to ICBM's, cruise missiles, fighter jets armed with tactical nuclear weapons, carrier battle groups, B-1 and B-2 bombers, and submarines bearing MIRVed Trident SLBMs. The Fringe Beliefs Of 1959 Have Been Mainstreamed The Year was 1959...
In 1959, General Walker was sent to Germany to command the 24th Infantry Division. In 1961, however, he became involved in controversy. Walker was accused of distributing right-wing literature from the John Birch Society to the soldiers of his division. He was also quoted by a newspaper, the Overseas Weekly, as saying that Harry S. Truman, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Dean Acheson were "definitely pink", a slang term for communist sympathies. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara relieved Walker of his command... [ wikipedia ] Now, it's 2007... Fundamentalist, pro-war Christian groups such as the military ministries of Campus Crusade For Christ, whose founder Bill Bright espoused views little different from those promoted by the John Birch Society, held Evolution was an "anti-God" fraud and thought public education has been subverted by communist, "anti-God" ideology, have been welcomed onto US basic training facilities where now they seek, in their own words, to recruit and indoctrinate US military members as "government paid missionaries [for Christ]". Recruiting US Military Members As "Government Paid Missionaries" [for Christ] Campus Crusade For Christ is the biggest American Christian right organization you've barely heard about. With yearly revenue, in FYI 2006, of over 497 million dollars, Campus Crusade is one of the biggest philanthropies in the United States. It's much bigger, in fact, than Focus On The Family. Campus Crusade maintains a welter of interlocking ministries that target the US military for evangelism ("Christian Embassy", that evangelizes in the Pentagon, is one) and although the budgets are those ministries comprise only a relatively small fraction of the overall yearly organizational budget of the immense, global evangelical effort of Campus Crusade, in the past several years its Military Ministries have dramatically stepped up their efforts to integrate themselves into the US military and their budgets have swollen. Maj. Gen. Bob Dees, U.S. Army (ret.) is the Executive Director of Campus Crusade's Military Ministry. Tapped in 2005 to lead the ministry, Dees has moved aggressively to embed Military Ministry on US basic training facilities and so exploit their potential for indoctrination. He wrote, in Military Ministry's October 2005 "Life and Leadership" newsletter:
"We must pursue our particular means for transforming the nation -- through the military. And the military may well be the most influential way to affect that spiritual superstructure. Militaries exercise, generally speaking, the most intensive and purposeful indoctrination program of citizens...." In short, US Basic training facilities of the United States military are being co-opted, by fundamentalist organizations, such as Campus Crusade For Christ, to indoctrinate military personnel and basic training recruits in a form of Christianity that is almost certainly heavily politicized, if quietly so. The beliefs of Campus Crusade For Christ's founder William Rohl Bright extended to the claim that the Theory Of Evolution was a fraud and an "anti-God" religion invented specifically to undermine Christian beliefs, and also to the claim that American public education has become subverted by communist, atheist and humanist ideologies that were "anti-God" and had destroyed public education, "destroyed much of the moral and spiritual moorings of America", and rewritten American history to deny America's alleged Godly heritage. Bright saw two poles in a grand cosmological struggle, with fundamentalist Christianity on the side of good and, ranged against it on the side of evil, every other religion and belief system on Earth. The new Military Religious Freedom Foundation report (authored by Chris Rodda) details some of the salient aspects of Campus Crusades' Military Ministries and the report notes that Military Ministry's own website states, concerning its ministries that evangelize on the basic training facilities of Fort Sam Houston and Lackland Air Force Base:
"Responsibilities include working with Chaplains and Military personnel to bring lost soldiers closer to Christ, build them in their faith and send them out into the world as government paid missionaries." That statement, from Military Ministry, implies that Campus Crusade's ministries, and their evangelical mission as well, are becoming integrated into US military bases. The MRFF report also shines a light on the predatory nature of Military Ministry's recruiting tactics:
"Young recruits are under great pressure as they enter the military at their initial training gateways. The demands of drill instructors push recruits and new cadets to the edge. This is why they are most open to the 'good news'. We target specific locations, like Lackland AFB and Fort Jackson, where large numbers of military members transition early in their career. These sites are excellent locations to pursue our strategic goals." [printed on Military Ministry's website in 2002] Recruiting In The Pentagon, For a Right-Wing Jesus One branch of Campus Crusade For Christ's military ministries which targets Pentagon members, Washington politicians, and foreign diplomats for its evangelizing efforts recently came under considerable scrutiny because of a promotional video [click here to watch the "Christian Embassy" video] the organization filmed within the Pentagon. In the now notorious Christian Embassy video, made for promotional and fund raising purposes, top Pentagon officials testified to their enthusiasm about Christian Embassy's mission. A letter to the Pentagon, from a Washington legal firm representing the Military Religious Freedom Foundation helped trigger an investigation of the video incident, by the Pentagon's Inspector General and the report concluded that Department Of Defense regulations were in fact violated in the making if the video and participation by active duty military, uniformed Pentagon officials appearing in the video. In Inside Christian Embassy, Jeff Sharlet wrote up his impressions of Christian Embassy based on an interview with the organization's director, Sharlet characterized Christian Embassy as an influential, politically conservative "lobby in all but name" with international ambition, and Sharlet described the theological views of the organization and its parent, Campus Crusade:
Christian Embassy's theology, like that of Campus Crusade, might best be characterized as "ecumenical fundamentalism." They're not interested in denominational divides. Rather, they're invested in a critique of culture that sees the United States as in a state of "decay" as a result of inadequate Bible study. They believe the Bible was once part of public life and that it must be restored to its central role in order to achieve "revival." According to McCullough, separation of church and state has gone too far.
Meet the Founder of Campus Crusade Much of Bill Bright's career was bent on fighting, on not just at the American national level but actually on a global scale, a perceived communist, humanist, and satanic conspiracy against Christianity and God which Bright sought to combat by promoting, on a global level, a simplified, ecumenical form of fundamentalist Christianity that he hoped would eventually lead to Biblical, theocratic governance in every nation on Earth. Despite the scale of that ambition Bright seems to have been personally humble. But his methods were not always completely upfront, as Sara Diamond describes:
"Founder Bill Bright, a successful businessman, started Campus Crusade on the University of California at Los Angeles campus in 1951. With the idea of imitating communist recruitment tactics, he urged young Christian converts to form cell groups. Bright self-consciously promoted an image of his ministry as a revolutionary movement. In fact, twenty years after the founding of Campus Crusade, Bright described his staff of three thousand worldwide missionaries as a 'conspiracy to overthrow the world." Bright's goal was to recruit young people away from the Left and into a conservative brand of Christianity." Beyond founding Campus Crusade For Christ, Bill Bright was one of the key figures in the creation of the current Christian right. John Birch Society member and oil tycoon Nelson Bunker Hunt was a key early funder of Bright's efforts, and Bright helped enlist other key funders, such as the Coors Family, Arthur DeMoss, the DeVos family, and Holiday Inn founder Wallace Johnson, who financed the creation of Christian right infrastructure. As Dr. Bruce Prescott observes:
One of the key leaders of the Religious Right is often overlooked. Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade, had a larger role than a lot of people realize. Theology of War, Intelligent Design & Evolution as an "Anti-God" Fraud, Global Warming Skepticism... In his aforementioned article, Jeff Sharlet noted that Campus Crusade's Christian Embassy holds that the war in Iraq "may be biblically sanctioned", and his description is very consistent with views espoused by Campus Crusade's founder, Bill Bright, who has largely escaped the sort of scrutiny noisier and more obtuse or offensive leaders of the American Christian right have been subject to. Bright's relative obscurity (to those outside the movement) can be ascribed to his genial affect but beneath that Bright held views that, to out it mildly, were less than mainstream. Shortly prior to his death in 2003, Bright signed on to an October 2002 letter, headed by Dr. Richard Land, President of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, to George W. Bush stating that Bush's intention to invade Iraq in March 2003 would be theologically justified. The Southern Baptist Convention was the only major Protestant Christian denomination to support the planned war, which was opposed by most American Protestant leaders and also the Roman Catholic Church [Pdf file about letter] Besides holding what some might have called a "theology of war", Bill Bright signed on to the 1999 "Cornwall Declaration" which staked out a theological position, for conservative evangelicals, which downplayed the threat of Global Warming, opposed action to combat it, and suggested the science behind predictions on climate change from Global Warming was shaky [see article by Bill Berkowitz]. Bright's apparent skepticism of the science behind Global Warming was consistent with his decision, prior to his death, to "co-author" (commission, in reality) a book on Intelligent Design [see page 3 in this Pdf for a description), published by the Bright Media Foundation, titled "Y-Origins", that was targeted at young adults. But Bright's promotion of "Intelligent Design" may have been the camel's nose under the tent ; a 1998 book he co-authored with John N. Damoose and ominously titled "Red Sky In The Morning: How You Can Help Prevent America's gathering Storms" Bright and Damoose wrote:
"In the early years of American history, many who propagated anti-Christian goals were discreet and covert about their agendas. However, during the '60s, the scientific community began to attack Christianity and Biblical principals more boldly than ever. Bill Bright saw a vast, covert conspiracy, tracing back to the Renaissance, which advanced through humanist ideas, atheism, communism and socialism, later through public education and the teaching of Evolution, to attack Christianity and, in that, his views were strikingly similar to another Christian popularizer of the "vast satanic conspiracy" theory of history, Left Behind series co-author Tim LaHaye. Tim LaHaye, as Chip Berlet illustrates in his multi-part Talk To Action expose' on the Apocalyptic ideology behind Tim LaHaye's and Jerry Jenkins' "Left Behind" series, believes in a hundreds of years old satanic, Illuminatist conspiracy:
I myself have been a forty-five year student of the satanically-inspired, centuries-old conspiracy to use government, education, and media to destroy every vestige of Christianity within our society and establish a new world order. Having read at least fifty books on the Illuminati, I am convinced that it exists and can be blamed for many of man's inhumane actions against his fellow man during the past two hundred years (Rapture (Under Attack) by Tim LaHaye, 1992, p. 138). Bill Bright and the Satanic Communist, Humanist, Secularist, Atheist, Public Education, Hippie Attack on Godly Christian America The following is an excerpt from Bright's writing which Campus Crusade For Christ has been sending out, after his death, in a series called "Insights From Bill Bright":
Primarily during the past 50 years, militant anti-God forces, which have been active during and since the Continental Congress, have finally succeeded not only in rejecting our nation's biblical heritage and our traditional values, but in rewriting history and convincing our people, especially students, that we never had this wonderful heritage.... Bill Bright is far from the only writer to have alleged that John Dewey was part of a satanic conspiracy to corrupt American public education. In | |||||||||||
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