A reader sent me this some time ago, but never got around to writing about it. Now it seems that the military is trying to queitly sweep it under the carpet, but the group Jews on First, the organization that broke the story about the Delaware Pogrom, has taken up the issue. It seems that chaplains at Ft. Levinworth were giving lessons with anti-Semitic messages. And this is where our tax money is going! Truthout ran the story a few days ago.

At the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Army base, military chaplains have been holding Bible classes for US soldiers using study guides that appear to be anti-Semitic. The Fort Leavenworth chaplains have posted these lesson plans on the Internet under a web address that is maintained by the federal government, giving off the appearance that the religious materials in question are endorsed by the Pentagon. Moreover, disseminating the ideology via a government funded web site may violate the law mandating the separation between church and state. The nonprofit watchdog group, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an organization that seeks to enforce the law mandating the separation between church and state in the US military, discovered the documents late last week. The anti-Semitic materials are posted as PDF files at the web site, Command Chaplain Bible Studies, which is maintained by the US Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth. The Officers Christian Fellowship Neighborhood Study Guides quote portions of the New Testament and were written by Major George Kuykendall, the leader of Fort Leavenworth's Officer's Christian Fellowship (OCF) who died in 1998, according to Chris Rodda, a senior researcher at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Rodda said, "The study guides also encourage soldiers to engage in an unconstitutional level of proselytizing to fellow military personnel in the Fort Leavenworth Community."

Our tax money going to teacn soldiers to proselytize and to believe, as the study guide suggests, anyone who turns from Christianity to Judaism "should be condemned to spiritual death and hell." By the way. That statement covers a friend of mine who married a Jew and converted to Judaism. After her husband was killed in the WTC on 9/11, she remained Jewish, even going through with her bat Mitzvah almost as a personal act of defiance to Osama bin Laden. According to the Ft. Levinworth chaplains, my friend is condemned to hell. And that is what my tax money is going to teach our soldiers. The army at frist said it would not remove the materials. Then they did. Yet at the same time, according to Jews on First:

Ft. Leavenworth officials took the position that "the material was part of a Protestant study of the Bible and as such, contains theological material related to the New Testament. The purpose of the material was to foster an understanding of historical context and contemporary application and was not intended to demean or be offensive to any other faith tradition or community." The statement also says: " This material is made available on a public web link because there was a need for it among study groups and it was a way of getting the information out to the community."

According to Rabbi Schwartzman, a former chaplain, "given the purposes of the United States military and the necessity of that military hierarchary to build team work rather than to encourage disparagement and dissension, the textual studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, are deeply disturbing and wrong headed." For more, including screenshots and links to the removed material (should you want to make your own decision) go to Jews on First. But I think a couple of key points need to be made. First, our tax money is going into these lessons. What ever happened to the wall of separtion that James Madison and Thomas Jefferson considered CRUCIAL to American democracy? Second, this is by no means an isolated incident. Right wing religious extremism is infiltrating every level of our government (e.g. here and here)...often with the blessing of the Republican Party. This is unConstitutional and unAmerican. But god forbid someone wants to show publicly that they aren't Christian. That will get you condemned or driven out of town. Our Founding Fathers would not be pleased.