ZitatFor months, the Obama-Hagel Pentagon has promised that reports of military trainers teaching troops that traditional Christian groups are extremists akin to terrorists were isolated incidents by rogue instructors. Now an official Army document contains evidence to the contrary.
Fox News's Todd Starnes reported Wednesday on a Ft. Hood briefing where reportedly soldiers were told that evangelical Christians and Tea Party supporters are a threat to the United States and are “tearing the nation apart.” Soldiers were reportedly told that they could be charged with committing a military crime if they supported or donated to such organizations.
Ft. Hood denies these allegations, but a separate source claiming to have been present during the briefing asserts the original account is true.
ZitatAll this started in April, when Breitbart News broke the story of top Pentagon brass meeting with an anti-Christian activist calling for court-martialing observant Christians who share the gospel of Jesus Christ with others in the military. This activist calls them “fundamentalist monsters” who are “enemies of the Constitution” and should be punished for “sedition and treason.”
All along, the nation was told these were a series of isolated incidents, not authorized by military leadership. Now military documents suggest otherwise. Judicial Watch used a FOIA request (Freedom of Information Act) to obtain a document from the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI), which is part of the Department of Defense (DOD). In this 133-page training document, entitled “Extremism,” on pages 32-33, under “Lesson Emphasis,” it claims to:
provide[s] information that describes sources of extremism information, definitions, recruitment of DoD personnel, common themes in extremist ideologies, common characteristics of extremist organizations, DoD policies, and command functions regarding extremist activities.
On the same page, it cites the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as an approved source for information—and its affiliate Teaching Tolerance. It was SPLC that labeled the American Family Association a “domestic hate group,” along with the Family Research Council (FRC, where I do religious liberty work as a senior fellow), the Traditional Values Coalition, and various Tea Party organizations and conservative border-security/immigration groups. In short, SPLC labels as hate groups organizations that promote a traditional Christian view of marriage and other social issues, believe in border enforcement, or promote constitutional limited government.
Christ did promise that His people would be persecuted, but I have to tell you, I never thought I would live to see it here in the United States.
Exclusive: Army halts training program that labeled Christians as extremists
ZitatThe Secretary of the Army has ordered military leaders to halt all briefings on extremist organizations that labeled Evangelical Christian groups as domestic hate groups. The shutdown comes just four days after I reported exclusively about a briefing at Mississippi’s Camp Shelby that labeled the American Family Association as a domestic hate group.
“On several occasions over the past few months, media accounts have highlighted instances of Army instructors supplementing programs of instruction and including information or material that is inaccurate, objectionable and otherwise inconsistent with current Army policy,” Army Sec. John McHugh wrote to military leaders in a memorandum I obtained.
McHugh “directed that Army leaders cease all briefings, command presentations or training on the subject of extremist organizations or activities until that program of instruction and training has been created and disseminated,” Army spokesman Col. David Patterson, Jr., tells me.