"I appreciate your performances for our soldiers and their families. Your support is enormously important to those who wear the uniform and to their families. Thanks very much!"

General David Petraeus

U.S. Commander, Iraq 2007

Eric Horner's  personal web page features Petraeus's endorsement above along with Petraeus's picture, also above. Horner has recently had the chance to meet President George W. Bush.

The Musical Ministry Of Eric Horner

As detailed in a new new Mother Jones article "Saving Our Troops", and written by Mother Jones journalist Josh Harkinson, evangelist Eric Horner's pop-rock fundamentalist Christian ministry has been doing a thriving business lately as Horner brings his concert-based ministry to US military bases and VA hospitals to croon and growl out his goulash of "God, USA, more God, and more USA" ballads and rock numbers before wounded vets [who may or may not feel that Horner's hefty dollops of musico-religious syrup help sooth their pain] or before US troops who, according to Horner's own writing, were coerced to attend a concert of Horner's at Fort Benning.

Fundamentalism Targets The Military

[image, right, comes from a  flyer, advertising a religious course, recently posted at a US military base]

As I have recently written, a welter of fundamentalist ministries, some of which have been invited right onto the US military's basic training facilities, target US military members for evangelism, and the church-state separation and DoD regulation violations inherent in the presence of such ministries are especially grevious given the endorsement of those ministries by high ranking military officials on such bases and also statements  , from such ministries, that state they seek to convert US military personnel into "government paid missionaries".

In the story, I detailed how beliefs that were once espoused mainly by fringe groups have moved now into the US mainstream and were also held by key Christian right leaders such as Bill Bright, who founded the 497 million dollar (FYI 2006) Campus Crusade For Christ which maintains, as part of its sprawling stable of fundamentalist ministries, a division of ministries that target the US military, including the Pentagon, and which have been invited into the Pentagon and also, recently, onto US military basic training facilities.

A recently released Military Religious Freedom Foundation report describes, an extensive and well funded effort has targeted the US military for religious (read: ideological) conversion. Meet the leader of one of the organizations in the forefront of that effort:

In other words, General Petraeus's apparent endorsement of predatory evangelism can be viewed not as an anomaly but rather as part of a pervasive pattern in which the US military is rapidly being transformed into a [Christian] "army of God".

Petraeus Endorses Christian Nationalism ?

[image, right: The introduction to Former Southern Baptist Convention President Bobby Welch's recent book You The Warrior Leader: Applying Military Strategy For Victorious Spiritual Warfare opens with the following quote:'Our church is not a passive, milquetoast organization to be tossed about by the whims of a pagan world. But the church is a militant, aggressive army, marching against the enemy... The battle is won. The victory is ours!... That is the church. Militant ! Aggressive ! Victorious !'. Welch's book  espoused a militant Christian theology of war. During the years of George W. Bush's presidency and especially since 2004, SBC chaplains moved into top postions in the US military chaplaincy.

General Petraeus's endorsement of Eric Horner's music casts doubt on the general's basic judgment given that many Muslims in the Middle East and around the world are already becoming convinced that the US presence in Iraq, which has led to more than, it is estimated, 1.2 million Iraqi deaths and, per a UN estimate, made roughly 5 million Iraqis into refugees, has the overtones of a Christian crusade. David Petraeus' endorsement of Eric Horner sends exactly the wrong message at exactly the wrong time - it risks undercutting the mission in Iraq that Petraeus has been charged to carry out.

Below: a passage from the Mother Jones story written by Josh Harkinson describes how Eric Horner, under the guise of singing "patriotic" concerts, smuggles his Christian nationalisty ministry - which sells T-shirts featuring a cross superimposed over an American flag - onto US military bases. Is General David Petraeus endorsing militant Christain nationalism ?  

It's hard to tell how many other "secular" Horner concerts have included religious songs, but evidence suggests that he has difficulty drawing a firm line. A promotional video shows him playing before a crowd of troops, flanked by an enlargement of his 2006 For God and Country album cover. Photos show concert booths offering Bibles and "United We'll Stand When Together We Kneel" T-shirts, which feature a cross superimposed over an American flag. "We have the opportunity to encourage and share the Gospel with about 10,000 troops at one time with this one," he told the Paducah Sun last year before a concert in Fort Jackson. In an April 2007 interview with a Christian website, he said, "We go in as a patriotic concert most of the time, but we are allowed by song to share our faith with them."

US General David Petraeus did not likely get to his current position through being oblivious, and he would have to be oblivious not to have notice the ruckus kicked up by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation in the wake of the scandal that erupted when top US Pentagon officials appeared in a promotional fund raising video, filmed inside the the Pentagon, to plug Campus Crusade For Christ's fundamentalist "Christian Embassy" ministry that targets Pentagon members, capital hill politicians, and foreign diplomats.

Petraeus is especially unlikely to be oblivious given that a Pentagon Inspector General report, which came out earlier this year, has supported MRFF's charges that officials appearing in the video, some of whom Petraeus almost certainly knows, broke Department of Defense regulations concerning the endorsement of religion.

Country rock singer Eric Horner has openly stated that he considers his music a (fundamentalist Christian) "ministry" and in process of "ministering" to US troops and basic training recruits, who sometimes apparently are coerced to attend Horner's pop-music "ministry", through concerts at US military bases Horner has built up some notable connections, as detailed in this lead from the Mpther Jones article:

Early this month, Eric Horner, a Christian country-western singer, was preparing for a concert in North Carolina's Outer Banks when he received a phone call from the United States military. President George W. Bush had just announced that he would deliver a speech to graduating Army recruits at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, in three days; the military wanted to know if Horner could play the gig.

...Afterward, says Horner, he, his wife, and the couple who chartered the plane were the only non-officers allowed to meet with the president. The singer, whose religion-infused performances have previously been part of boot camps at Fort Jackson, the largest Army basic-training base, thinks the general there most likely "pulled some strings."

Predatory Evangelism

Why do I include that word "predatory" in my title ?

Well, very simply because the evangelical singer Eric Horner considers his work playing at US Army basic training bases such as Fort Benning, Fort Jackson, Fort Sill, and elsewhere to be his "ministry" and Horner has also written that concerts he's played his openly Christian songs at, before thousands of troops, were "mandatory".

As detailed in Mother Jones's "Saving Our Troops", Horner's own writing implicates him in foisting his own brand of hyper-patriotic pop-rock - that fuses themes of God, country, patriotism, and a divine war on evil forces that beset America - at a concert at Fort Benning before US troops whom Horner says were forced to attend. That is the essence of religious coercion and Eric Horner was thus engaging, by his own description, in predatory evangelism:

image, right: French Catholics "press on in the name of Jesus", against French Protestants, in 1572

"On September 29, Horner delved into his religious repertoire during a POW/MIA commemoration service attended by 5,000 troops at Fort Benning. The day after the show, a posting by Horner's wife on GoArmyParents.com listed among the songs Horner played the track "Press On," in which Horner exhorts troops to "press on in the name of Jesus." (In response to this story Horner asserted that the version of "Press On" sung to troops does not reference Jesus, and denied singing either version of the song at the show). Though Horner claimed on a listserv that attendance at the event was mandatory, Fort Benning spokesperson Elsie Jackson told me that it was strictly optional."

Eric Horner and His Wife Weigh In

In a fascinating new development, Eric Horner and his wife have left extended comments in response to the Mother Jones article in question. The two accuse Mother Jones and Josh Harkinson of numerous lies. The Horner's comments have, in turn, been rebutted in two extended subsequent comments by MRFF researcher Chris Rodda. [ see comments at the end of the Mother Jones article "Saving The Troops" ]

Picture, below: Carving from WW2 era German Deutsche Christen church. The temptation to mix Christianity with the state has an evil history.