I have to admit that, outside of tales involving Gordon Klingenschmitt, I am pretty much ignorant of what goes on in the military’s chaplaincy service.
Fortunately, there is the Military Religious Freedom Foundation which focuses on these sorts of topics and via whom we found out about this recent Kathryn Joyce piece in Newsweek exposing the efforts of Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches and its founder Jim Ammerman:
According to the group’s president, Mikey Weinstein, a cadre of 40 U.S. chaplains took part in a 2003 project to distribute 2.4 million Arabic-language Bibles in Iraq. This would be a serious violation of U.S. military Central Command’s General Order Number One forbidding active-duty troops from trying to convert people to any religion. A Defense Department spokeswoman, in an e-mail to NEWSWEEK, denies any knowledge of this project.
The Bible initiative was handled by former Army chaplain Jim Ammerman, the 83-year-old founder of the Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches (CFGC), an organization in charge of endorsing 270 chaplains and chaplain candidates for the armed services. Ammerman worked with an evangelical group based in Arkansas, the International Missions Network Center, to distribute the Bibles through the efforts of his 40 active-duty chaplains in Iraq. A 2003 newsletter for the group said of the effort, “The goal is to establish a wedge for the kingdom of God in the Middle East, directly affecting the Islamic world.”
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Among the “endorsing agencies” is CFGC, which represents a conglomeration of independent Pentecostal churches outside established denominations. The group was accepted as a chaplain-endorsing agency by the Department of Defense in 1984, two years after it first applied. Since 1984, MRFF charges, Ammerman’s agency has violated numerous codes that govern chaplaincies, including a constant denigration of other religions, particularly Islam, Judaism, mainline Protestantism and Catholicism, but also non-Pentecostal evangelical churches. In a 2008 sermon, Ammerman described a CFGC chaplain at Fort Riley, Kans., who demanded the 42 chaplains below him “speak up for Jesus” or leave his outfit. In a video for an organization called the Prophesy Club, CFGC chaplain Maj. James Linzey called mainstream Protestant churches “demonic, dastardly creatures from the pit of hell,” that should be “[stomped] out.” But the primary target of CFGC’s ire is Islam. A 2001 CFGC newsletter asserted that the real enemy of the U.S. wasn’t Osama bin Laden, but Allah, whom the newsletter called “Lucifer.” A 2006 issue argued that all Muslim-Americans should be treated with suspicion, as they “obviously can’t be good Americans.” In a 2008 sermon, Ammerman called Islam “a killer religion” and Muslims “the devil.”
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Ammerman and chaplain Linzey have espoused conspiracy theories about “Satanic forces” at work in the U.S. government facilitating a military takeover by foreign troops; Ammerman even appears in a video favored by militia groups titled The Imminent Military Takeover of the USA. In 2008, Ammerman implied that four presidential candidates should be “arrested, quickly tried and hanged” for not voting to designate English America’s official language, and speculated that Barack Obama would be assassinated as a secret Muslim.
Bruce Wilson has a related piece up on Huffington Post featuring various video clips of Ammerman, Linzey, and the Prophecy Club, including this one from 1997 where Ammerman claims that the US economy is controlled by Jews and says that Bill Clinton and Jane Fonda should have been executed:
Jim Ammerman from Bruce Wilson on Vimeo.
UPDATE: Newsweek has issued the following correcting regarding the excerpted article above:
In an earlier version of this story, NEWSWEEK should have identified Pastor James Linzey as retired from active duty when he spoke to the Prophesy Club. We also should not have characterized him as having said that mainstream Protestant churches are “demonic, dastardly creatures from the pit of hell,” that should be “[stomped] out.” The pastor was referring to demonic forces he says are within the mainstream Protestant Church, and not the Church itself. NEWSWEEK regrets the errors.
