Rap-ture, be pure.
Posted by unbrand on 29 March 2003 | 16 Comments
Our troops in Iraq have been given pamphlets which ask them to pray for President Bush. I am not making this up:
US soldiers in Iraq asked to pray for Bush
From the article:
Thousands of marines have been given a pamphlet called “A Christian’s Duty,” a mini prayer book which includes a tear-out section to be mailed to the White House pledging the soldier who sends it in has been praying for Bush.
“I have committed to pray for you, your family, your staff and our troops during this time of uncertainty and tumult. May God’s peace be your guide,” says the pledge, according to a journalist embedded with coalition forces. Also: Sunday’s is “Pray that the President and his advisers will seek God and his wisdom daily and not rely on their own understanding”.
Monday’s reads “Pray that the President and his advisers will be strong and courageous to do what is right regardless of critics”.
The people who made this pamphlet are In Touch Ministries. They’re a southern baptist church with tv/radio programs that reach “every major market” in the U.S. They also have a “presence” in every nation on earth.
Why would Bush want to have troops pray for him? Multiple reasons:
- He wants to maintain the god connection between the troops and christianity while the soldiers are away from their churches
- He wants to reinforce the Bush-god connection that he’s been pushing recently on TV and in speeches. Bush wants everybody convinced that he is god’s right-hand man.
- Bush actually wants non-Christians to find out about this and become enraged.
Now, I am not religious, in the traditional sense. I believe in basic things, like the golden rule, and karma. For a long time now, I have believed that the Bible is a book of stories, of metaphor, not be taken literally. Unfortunately, some folks are taking this book a little too seriously.
The above list of prayer reasons ties into Bush and his fundamentalist Christian cronies wanting, hoping, and actually planning the Rapture, or End of Times.
One of the more upsetting aspects of this is that putting those pamphlets out there, Bush has now upped the validity that this will, in fact, be a Holy War. Did our soldiers ask to be a part of a Holy War? I thought we were getting rid of Weapons of Mass Destruction. No, wait, we’re liberating the Iraqis. No, wait, we’re doing BushGod’s work.
How long will it be before people say to themselves, “Oh shit, we are now at war with over a billion people”?
Do you think these events aren’t planned, designed, and then executed according to an over-arching strategy?
Rap-ture. Be pure.
There’s a lot more great background info on this topic at Bushwatch.com. -more-> More about the pamphlet:
In the “Prayer Reminder Card” portion of the pamphlet, there’s a place where the soldier can fill in the day(s) on which he or she is fasting. Soldiers in the desert fasting for BushGod does not exactly fill me with confidence in any number of important efforts the U.S. is currently undertaking.
There was recently a bill that just went through Congress about setting aside a day for prayer and fasting. Congress has not done something like this since the Civil War.
Interesting that that bill and the pamphlet story are hitting at about the same time.