Hey, he was taking it easy on the Midianites. You should see what he ordered his people to do to the Amalekites.
Plus He ordered them to burn the Cellulites.
Lincoln wouldn’t want the office. Why, I can almost hear him saying “I need to be POTUS like I need a hole in my head.”
pssst, over here
And even though they were only fat enough to burn for 1 day, they lasted for 8.
Don’t s’pose the Holy War on Terror has anything to do with the current crop of recruits and their attitudes about their chosen religion…
I haven’t seen much either way. Prayers do not penetrate HY-80.
If I were in the military, we almost got hit
by a rocket in a humvee and my partner asked
if I believed in Jesus now, I’d say,
“I believe the guy with the rocket gun
can’t shoot!”
Wouldn’t that be an appropriate military response?
Sounds like it would draw applause in an LA movie theater.
Message to the world: Christians have always been
subconciously directed to violent behavior.
First shouting, then shouting quotes…
to battle cries. Pun intended.
They’re not a very important part of the religious/political power matrix that’s been running the country these past 8 years. There’s been a sense that it is evangelicals’ “time,” and so they assert themselves more freely.
Besides, the moral, ethical, and spiritual backbone of our armed forces has always been white, male, Protestant, and Southern, the kind of folks who put Honor very high on the list of important things and don’t truck with debating the meaning of the word.
Of all my military experiences, I have never seen anything like the stories everyone is describing. I suppose I’ll take it from the top.
Scumpup- “No preference” on a dogtag has never been interpretted by anyone I know to be anything other than Atheist. Do you know anyone who thinks it means “Any religion will do”?
DrCube-
Snipped heavily. The quote, that is, not the Jewish servicemen. Anyway, the reason there’s only Christian services in the chapel are because there are so many Christians. The other services are available but they’re outsourced to the local towns because there’s only, like, 5 Jews et. al. in a Battalion. Sure, there’s rarely a Jewish Chaplain but they do exist. As for keeping it to yourself, when is religion and politics ever a good thing to talk about in a business environment?
Everyone about cleaning on Sundays- They don’t put non churchgoers on “the shittiest” details, just the ones that need done. In Basic, you know what I did after I went to church? Details. Going to services got you out of, at most, 2 hours of work. Then it was back in the work pool like everyone else. Big deal. Half of you are exaggerating to the point of falsehood.
Lastly, as for the verbal abuse from seniors…Half of those trainee verbal beatdowns are just to say something, as long as it’s insulting. I bet most of those sergeants didn’t even really believe what they were saying anyhow. For those that did…well, there’s assholes in every crowd.
Folks, the main reason it looks like the military is biased is because it’s shear numbers. There’s a tiny tiny percentage of religious nonChristians and there’s not many ways for an atheist to be ‘ministered’ to. It’s hard to include everybody and cover all bases.
I guess what I’m saying is: Outright discrimination is rare and being nonbiased is logistically infeasible.
Sorry, but I don’t believe you. It was an overtly religiose and explicitly Christian culture when I was in. I didn’t dream it. Maybe your apologetics will sound convincing to people who haven’t served but I know what it was like when I served and I can’t believe you never saw it. It was too commonplace. maybe you just never appreciated how the culture seems to non-Christians. Are you telling me you never witnessed or participated in the mandatory group prayers in Basic? That some of us are making it up that we got assigned shit details for not attending services, that my CC called us heathens and dared us to sue? hell, there was at least one CC when I went through Basic who was an ordained minister and I know for a fact he proselytized recruits and browbeat those who weren’t interested.
Things weren’t as bad after Basic, but there was still a thick, overtly Christian culture. It wasn’t as aggressive (or even threatening) as some of these recent stories suggest it may be now. it was more thoughtless than hostile, but it existed. I didn’t imagine it.
Heck, at my unit’s last Christmas dinner I got called on (rather unexpectedly) to lead the prayer. I atheistically winged it, no problem: “Dear Lord [more or less], we ask for your protection as we have sworn in Your name to protect our nation and its people. Amen.”
Y’all have gotta stop being so offended by everything. Military life is just full of pointless rituals, what’s wrong with a few more?
If you are going to call me(and others) a liar, please take it to The BBQ Pit. Unless you were in the U.S.A.F. when I was, you have no idea what went on. I guess it was just a coincidence that the bathrooms needed cleaning during church service, and I suppose the listing of barracks that had 100% church attendance on the community board didn’t mean anything, either.
Funny thing is, while I was in, it never occurred to me to be offended. I just accepted it as the the way things were, and to be honest, I was young enough and the culture was such that being openly atheistic seemed more transgressive, even rude, than it seems now. I didn’t fully appreciate that I had a right to be a non-believer without being hassled about it. For a few years, every time I told someone that i didn’t believe in God or that I wasn’t a Christian, it felt a little bit shocking even to me. It seemed, I don’t know, brash, “naughty,” delinquent. I felt almost like I was an asshole for not believing. It was only in retrospect, years later, that I started to realize how biased and insensitive military culture really was when it came to religion.
I was in the Army before you were born. Guess you weren’t there, then, were you? So don’t tell me what it was like.
It’s possible it varied from camp to camp depending on who the officers were. The same in active duty. An ordained minister who is an officer should not be using his position to preach.
Well, unless he’s a chaplain, I assume.
Actually, the chaplains I’ve met over the years have uniformly been polite, respectful guys.
Bryan: Are you an American and/or are you talking about experience in the US military? I only ask because your location says Montreal, and I’ve been assuming you are Canadian.
I’m a bit late to this party, but I have to chime in with the rest and disagree with you here too. Our choice in basic was go to church or get stuck with nasty-assed details and attitude from the drills. On the first night of basic right after shakedown, the drills pretty much warned us about that and said that everybody in the platoon had better worship something or they’d get the shit assignments. I’m no Minervo the Mindreader, but it sure as hell didn’t seem to me that they were messing around. To be fair, they didn’t try to push Christianity in particular; they just wanted us to go to some sort of religious worship every week. FTR, it didn’t affect me, because I was a practicing Catholic at the time. I didn’t lose my faith until later into my service, but still . . . What you’re saying is wrong, pure and simple. Oh, also I didn’t suffer any discrimination after I lost my faith, but then again, I wasn’t in combat arms.
As for what I think about Jeremy Hall, hell yeah, he should sue. That’s the only way this bullshit is going to stop. Again, it’s too early for me to make a hard decision one way or another, but it certainly rings true. By all accounts, he seems like a good soldier, and getting discriminated against for lack of faith isn’t exactly a stretch of the imagination as far as I’m concerned. No way should he have religion shoved down his throat.
I don’t hate the army as a whole for this. The army–like every other institution on earth–is a fallible institution filled with fallible human beings, and sometimes it takes a Specialist Hall to set things right. Bravo for him.
I’m entirely Canadian. If there’s some philisophical difference between the Canadian military and the American military, I figure it’s not a military thing at all, but that Americans are jerks.
Problem is, suing the army (successfully) is a very difficult thing to do. Courts historically have been very wary of second guessing the military on its internal policies.