The U.S. military today denied the allegation made in this Al Jazeera piece that evangelical chaplains are urging U.S. toops in Afghanistan to protelytize for Christianity:

The reporting here does seem a little dodgy. The piece implies that this line from a U.S chaplain's sermon is a violation of U.S. policy:

"The special forces guys - they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down."

But it's not at all clear that this refers to converting Afghans and this seems like a line that one could hear in any evangelical sermon in the United States. None of the officers "caught on camera" in the segment ever actually instruct troops to proselytize, in fact the only discussion of the practice is about how it's against military rules. 

As for the bibles in Dari and Pashto, the conversations in the video actually seem to better support the military's explanation that a soldier had "showed them to the group and the chaplain explained that he cannot distribute them."

Afghanistan's former prime minister has called for an investigation after seeing the segment. This is a serious issue and one that has gotten the military into trouble before. But without more evidence, this particular case seems like a manufactured controversy.

 

CURIOUS OBSERVER

1:59 PM ET

May 4, 2009

Actually it could be worse

In yet another interpretation the chaplain's remarks could be taken to mean they're hunting down infidels on behalf of Jesus.

Just swell. That's all we need -- to confirm everyone's belief in that part of the world that this is just a continuation of the Crusades.

 

JKDUCK1

3:40 PM ET

May 4, 2009

If he's saying staff like

If he's saying staff like that when he al-Jazeera cameras are in the chapel, I can't imagine what is said when no one from outside is listening. A very damning report either way.

 

DOGMA

4:23 PM ET

May 4, 2009

Actually

the piece implied that distributing bibles in pashtu and dari were violations of U.S. policy, it only uses the sermon to present the difficulties in differentiating/separating proselytizing and evangelism, but in reality evangelism is just a christian form of proselytizing (see definitions of both). This particular article is what seems dodgy to me, not as much the al-jazeera piece. Possibly very volatile information to be broadcast on al-jazeera, no favors done here for U.S. PR in the ME.

 

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