A quick update to the piece of this week's FundamentaList on the Al Jazeera story which showed a top military chaplain, Lt. Colonel Gary Hensley, urging military personnel at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan to "hunt people for Jesus." The Pentagon is denying that proselytizing or anything improper took place. It further claims that the Bibles written in Dari and Pashto for distribution to Afghans were not distributed but rather were destroyed.
But Al Jazeera has released unedited video showing Captain Emmit Furner telling personnel how to evade military rules prohibiting proselytizing: "Share the word of God, but be smart about it."
For more, don't miss Mikey Weinstein's and Jeff Sharlet's appearance on Democracy Now today. Sharlet calls the video "the tip of the iceberg" but adds that President Obama is taking a "hands off" approach to the problem.
The newly appointed head of the Air Force Academy (ground zero for Weinstein's battle against evangelism in the military), Gen. Mike Gould, is a devotee of Obama's friend Rick Warren. Sharlet writes in his piece in Harper's that "the general was so impressed by a presentation Pastor Rick Warren gave to senior officers that he sent an email to his 104 subordinates in which he advised them to read and live by Warren’s book The Purpose-Driven Life."
--Sarah Posner