The Air Force: Keeping the Crusades Alive

This is an interesting little ditty that many people may have not noticed (full story here). In short, an Air Force Academy graduate brought suit against the service to make Air Force Chaplains stop proselytizing personnel who didn't believe in good old Yahweh. Unfortunately, most people don't really understand the scope of this obscure word and practice. Basically, it means that Chaplains had the official authority to induce or coerce Air Force personnel into their religious sect if they didn't convert willingly. The Air Force has tried to semantically back away from 'proselytize' by using 'evangelize' in recent documents, but the case shows their tactics more matched the definition of the original term. Yep, that's what we're talking about here...required religion as part of volunteer service to the federal government. Yet another step towards the Government of God to one day come... Jage

As The Washington Post reported, “The document was circulated at the Air Force Chaplain School until eight weeks ago. It was a ‘code of ethics' for chaplains that included the statement ‘I will not proselytize from other religious bodies, but I retain the right to evangelize those who are not affiliated.'”

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In July, Brig. Gen. Cecil R. Richardson, the Air Force's deputy chief of chaplains, echoed the language in the directive, telling The New York Times, “We will not proselytize, but we reserve the right to evangelize the unchurched.”

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Weinstein, whose son Curtis currently attends the Academy, hailed the move. “They say the bad guys we're fighting, the jihadists, represent a theocratic, fascistic movement,” Weinstein told The Post. “If the United States Air Force, probably the most technologically lethal organization ever assembled by man, has a policy of evangelizing ‘the unchurched,' you tell me how that makes us look.”