Bibles in the Barracks: God and the Military

NEWS

Bibles in the barracks. Revival and baptisms aboard ships at sea. Christian coffeehouses run by GIs in West Germany and South Viet Nam. Evangelist Nicky Cruz in the stockade. Prayers among the top brass. Bible studies in the locker room and Jesus rallies after the game. “Bombing” North Vietnamese villages with the Gospel.

In interviews with dozens of chaplains and lay workers both inside and outside the military, CHRISTIANITY TODAY discovered all this and much more. The remark of a Navigators staffer at Annapolis was echoed almost verbatim by others across the country: “God is doing a fantastic thing at our base; there’s more openness among the guys than I’ve ever seen before.”

Right in the thick of things is the man over all the armies in the United States: Ralph E. Haines, Jr., 58, commanding general of the Continental Army Command, a post he assumed sixteen months ago. Haines is a Christian, and he says so. “The United States is not neutral about God,” he told reporter Harry Covert of Newport News, Virginia, recently, “so I have no bashfulness about expressing my convictions for the Lord.”

Haines hosts a 6:15 A.M. prayer breakfast every Friday for upper-echelon officers on his staff at Fort Monroe, Virginia. An Episcopalian, he has preached and testified often since receiving the charismatic experience last July. He openly encourages prayer and Bible-study groups in all the sixty-six army posts under his command.

“My responsibility for the moral and spiritual well-being is perhaps greater than my responsibility for the mental and physical welfare of the troops,” he told Covert.

He thinks the drug problem in the army is overstated, but he also thinks the time has come to battle the problem on “strictly moral grounds. We can detoxify a young man, rap with him, use halfway houses, but he has to substitute something for drugs. We’re coming to grips with the drug problem, but the only way in the final analysis we’re going to lick it is to try and reach the individual with the Lord.”

Overseas, command officers have noted dramatic changes in lives of many soldiers, especially in behavior patterns and deliverance from drugs, as a result of coffeehouse ministries. Correspondent Billy Bray reports that Christian halfway houses are operated on every one of the dozen or so major U. S. bases in South Viet Nam. Brig. Gen. Harold Aaron has seven coffeehouses under his command in the Frankfurt, Germany, area. He says the coffeehouse ministry is “one of the best things to happen in the Army.”

Official responsibility for a spiritual ministry to the military lies with the chaplaincy, but increasingly laymen in uniform are getting involved. Churches and para-church organizations are also a part of what is happening.

Among major para-church groups are Officers Christian Fellowship (OCF), the Navigators, Campus Crusade for Christ, and Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), all evangelical agencies. Most evangelical chaplains welcome any help they can get and often work closely with the para-church groups. But, says a Pentagon spokesman, some theologically liberal chaplains have apparently felt threatened by the flurry of evangelical activity and have reacted. In a few cases, senior chaplains have restricted activities of subordinates and have banned para-church groups. Others fear too much evangelistic activity and involvement by outsiders may raise church-state questions, and they simply don’t want to rock the boat.

Nevertheless, revival tides seem to be flowing. The following is a sampling of spiritual activity at some bases:

Fort Bliss, Texas. Revival is surging in nearby El Paso (population 375,000) and has spilled onto this installation, where 25,000 troops and dependents live. In a weekend door-to-door “Evangelism Module” this month, fifty-four prayed to receive Christ. Maj. Gen. Raymond L. Shoemaker, base commander, and two chaplains—Col. Frank Gosser and Capt. Charles Moreland—sponsored the module, and the chaplains helped out on visitation teams. Several, including a Catholic chaplain, had gone to Campus Crusade headquarters for training in the method.

Shoemaker, much influenced by Haines, hosts a prayer breakfast and Bible study for his command officers twice a month.

A Jesus chapel is sponsored on Monday nights by chaplain Warren Stewart, with Pvt. Charles McNinch in charge. McNinch had been AWOL in the drug scene four years, was recently converted, and has already led many of his buddies to Christ, according to a friend.

The Pentagon. Prayer groups, Bible studies, and guest-speaker breakfasts and luncheons are held regularly. Several well attended luncheon meetings are sponsored monthly by International Christian Leadership and by the Christian Men of the Pentagon group. Teams of Two, an informal outreach group, has been quietly evangelizing. Gen. Clay Buckingham coordinates a twice-monthly combination prayer breakfast and Bible study for top Defense Department officers. The recent presidential prayer breakfast was piped in via TV to a similar Pentagon affair attended by hundreds.

Armed forces information director John Broger, an evangelical who cofounded the Far East Broadcasting Company, sees to it that White House religious services as well as the major prayer-breakfast functions are broadcast to bases throughout the world. He is currently pushing for more Bible reading by servicemen. He has taped name personalities reading the Bible and broadcasts the program (“Look Who’s Reading the Bible”) over armed forces radio.

Fort Sill, Oklahoma. “So many things are happening I can’t keep track of them,” exclaimed Maj. Joe Porter, 31, a lay leader. He and a chaplain last year were sent to the West Coast to check out the Jesus movement, mostly to investigate what spiritual principles were involved in deliverance from drugs and violence-bent extremism. “The army is searching for answers,” says Porter. “There is tremendous openness.” A number of Jesus-movement music groups and leaders have been invited to hold meetings at the base. Jack Sparks of Christian World Liberation Front deeply moved a contingent of officers last month; some confessed they had to re-examine their own ideals and honesty, according to Porter.

The Marines. Women marines at California’s Camp Pendleton have a thriving Bible-study group. Chaplain J. C. Williams, a black who has received Campus Crusade training, is reportedly conducting an effective ministry, especially among blacks. Para-church groups are generally banned, but a Navigators spokesman said outreach is occurring.

Chaplain Ernie Marsh has operated a popular coffeehouse named Inn Sight at a San Diego base.

Marines are tough customers, but they accept Christ too. Navigator Doug Benshoof led twenty key Marine believers at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, on a one-night mission last month; twenty-five whom they contacted prayed to receive Christ.

The Navy. Chaplain David Meschke says chapel attendance has increased by 50 per cent at San Diego’s naval amphibious base. “The guys are doing it now,” he says of outreach. He credits training by the Navigators and Campus Crusade, and says a lot of witnessing is going on.

During Meschke’s recent hitch on the Coral Sea, an aircraft carrier, sixty-five made decisions for Christ. The crew invited missionaries on board for conferences, held spiritual-life retreats, helped build orphanages, and raised $10,000 for missionary work. Similar things are happening aboard the Enterprise and other ships.

The academies. Hundreds are involved in barracks Bible-study groups at West Point, report phys. ed. teacher Gwynn Vaughan, a leader in the Christian movement there. There are similar groups in every squadron at the Air Force Academy, and at Annapolis a football coach leads Bible study for his team members. Post-game evangelistic rallies at the academy have been both popular and effective. Several evanglical chaplains at Annapolis have been quietly leading numbers of men to Christ. Chaplain Henry Duncan had Billy Graham speak in chapel last month to more than 3,000, including many VIPs from Washington. OCF next month will host a Spring Leave Conference for army, navy, and coast guard cadets.

The list is endless. Three weeks of one-day spiritual-life retreats at Fort Hood, Texas, drew 3,000, and Chaplain Carl McNally expects 300 to attend Explo ’72. Nearly 900 from a number of bases attended a Congress on Discipleship Making at Fort Monroe in January. Chaplain Curry Vaughan says several command officers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, received Christ recently and are involved in Bible-study groups. Evangelist Nicky Cruz preached to 200 Fort Bragg stockade prisoners, and half said they wanted Christ. Christian staffers and patients are evangelizing at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington. In an unofficial love-your-enemies act, a reconnaissance pilot is said to have dropped 1,000 copies of Campus Crusade’s Vietnamese version of “Four Spiritual Laws” on a flight over North Viet Nam.

There are, of course, issues and tensions. Chaplains and lay leaders alike say the major issue raised constantly concerns the morality of war and the killing and maiming that goes on in war. In short, can a serviceman serve both God and country? Most of those interviewed said they searched and struggled deeply to find the answer. General Haines says he finds nothing in the Scriptures demeaning of military service, and he points to the converted centurian. Broger has an hour’s lecture that states there is no scriptural inconsistency to serving God in uniform. “Every man must find his own answer in prayer and in the leading of the Spirit,” said a former officer now with the Navigators.

Civilian religious leaders are split on the issue, with pacifists and anti-war groups in the front ranks of those for whom the answer is negative more often than not. And they too want to be heard.

Morals Charge Stirs Row

The United States Navy’s decision to court-martial a 43-year-old chaplain on charges of “wrongfully engaging in sexual intercourse” has resulted in the American Baptist Convention’s withholding endorsement of any more clergymen to serve with the Navy.

The problem stems from the case of Commander Andrew Jensen, senior chaplain at Cecil Field, a training base for fighter pilots outside Jacksonville, Florida. The Navy alleges that Jensen had affairs with the wives of two other officers over a one-year period.

American Baptist officials maintain that the “usual custom” observed by the Army and the Air Force is for morals cases to be referred first to the churches for action. In this case, they report, the Navy didn’t officially provide the denomination with information about the charges before initiating court-martial proceedings.

The American Baptist action means that while the denomination will continue to endorse its thirty-four chaplains now on active duty, it will not replace any who are separated or retire.

“It’s becoming increasingly clear,” says Charles E. Wills, secretary of the denomination’s chaplaincy department, “that the churches must exercise greater control of the chaplaincy.”

JOHN V. LAWING, JR.

Humanitarian Brotherhood At $253 An Acre

Can you name this man?

His great-grandfather founded Park College, the Missouri Presbyterian-related school, in 1875.

His grandfather headed the then foreign-missions society of the Synod of Missouri, Presbyterian Church, and founded First Presbyterian Church, Berkeley, California.

His cousin is Dr. Robert McAfee Brown, Stanford University theologian and writer.

He and his wife, Darlene, and his parents run an 1,100-acre cooperative farm and dairy seventeen miles southwest of Fresno in rich San Joaquin Valley farmland.

He is an outspoken Communist.

A final clue for those still stumped: he put up 405 acres of his land as collateral on a $102,500 bail bond for radical Communist instructor Angela Davis, on trial in San Jose on charges of murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy.

He is Rodger McAfee, 33, scion of a prominent religious family, target of obscene and threatening calls and letters, and champion of the view that “humanitarian Communism is exactly what the Bible teaches.”

How do you account for this pilgrim’s progress? McAfee, friendly and good-natured, talked at length about his political and religious beliefs in an exclusive interview.

McAfee’s roots go back to Scotland and the Reformation, to a clan that emigrated to Missouri. There great-grandfather John Armstrong McAfee founded Park College as a “small farming cooperative” and trade school. His grandfather, Dr. Lapsley Armstrong McAfee, was associated with overseas missions and the beginnings of the Berkeley church.

His parents, Mr. and Mrs. Ray McAfee, became disenchanted with Presbyterianism, he says; they thought the church had become so wealthy it had quick-frozen into formalism. Thus the switch to the Covenant church—now the Evangelical Covenant denomination.

When he was 15, Rodger went to Israel and was much impressed with the kibbutzim movement. “I saw the real teachings of Christ in the cooperative movement.… In the kibbutz I found a true brotherhood like it’s taught in the Book of Acts,” declares the Raisin City-Caruthers farmer.

The cornerstone of McAfee’s beliefs—he insists he finds his religion and Communism completely compatible—is that Christ brought everyone “into one cooperative brotherhood.”

When the McAfee family lived near Chowchilla several years ago, they joined the conservative Church of the Nazarene. McAfee freely speaks of evangelicalism—but he couples this with humanism.

And he carefully differentiates between Stalinist Communism and his “soft” variety: “I’ve never said that I wanted the violent overthrow of governments when it was unnecessary, and I feel that it is unnecessary in the United States.…”

But he laments that “instead of good, honest hard-working people who go to church on Sunday running the country, we end up having the big-powered money people and the criminal element in control.” And to restore the brotherhood of humanity “as Christ taught it” means that the power of land, factories, and production must be in the hands of the people.

That’s where Angela fits in. McAfee met her two years ago at an anti-war protest at Fort Ord, California. She is “absolutely innocent” of the felonies she is accused of; it’s “a frame,” McAfee feels. “Angela is a very sincere, warm, and honest individual who is attempting to teach her people and us—because she is not a racist at all—to change our economic system to a better form of life.”

McAfee vows he’ll stay in “that hotbed of conservatism,” Caruthers, despite problems. He says folks are beginning to overcome mental blocks to the word Communist. His children’s classmates are even asking what “humanitarian Communism” means, he exults.

Biblical Breakthrough?

If Spanish professor Jose O’Callaghan of Rome’s Pontifical Biblical Institute is correct, he has made the biblical find of the century: the oldest fragments of the New Testament ever discovered.

Writing in the current issue of Biblica, the institute’s journal, the priest says tiny fragments of Mark’s gospel dating from about 50 A.D. are part of the Dead Sea Scrolls collection. The scrolls were found in 1947 in clay jars hidden in eleven caves near Jericho.

O’Callaghan says that he has identified three verses from the fourth and sixth chapters of Mark, and that he will identify six others in later articles. The papyrus fragments are among nineteen, all containing Greek script, found in cave number seven. The other caves yielded mostly Hebrew and Aramaic scripts.

Until now the oldest New Testament fragment has been a papyrus scrap containing part of John 18. It was found in Egypt, and scholars date it no earlier than 135 A.D.

Meantime, he is in demand on the liberal speaking circuit. The weekend of March 12, for instance, he had a covey of appearances in New York City. “If you need to reach me,” he told a reporter, “you can contact me through Gus Hall” [chairman of the U. S. Communist party].

With his soft-spoken manner, his espousal of conservative theology, and his faith that Angela will be exonerated if “twelve honest persons [jurors] hear both sides,” there is little doubt that Communism, brotherhood style, has an articulate spokesman in the man from Raisin City.

RUSSELL CHANDLER

Catholic Pentecostal Parish

The surging Catholic Pentecostal movement (see July 16, 1971 issue, page 31), which shows no signs of abating, has been granted a historic “first”: establishment of a Catholic Pentecostal parish in St. Charles, Illinois. The parish (Community of the Holy Spirit) has neither boundaries nor property; parishioners meet in rented quarters in a Catholic school.

The parish was set up by Bishop Arthur J. O’Neill of Rockford and is pastored by the Reverend William F. McMahon, who had the charismatic experience during a prayer conference at Oral Roberts University in 1969. More than 100 persons of the 500 in area prayer groups have signed up for membership, says McMahon.

Meanwhile, each of three regional conferences for leaders in the Catholic Pentecostal movement drew more than 1,000 for training, reflection, and outreach strategy, and at least 8,000 are expected to attend the national conference at Notre Dame in June. No one knows how many are in the movement, which began in 1967, but the figure may be approaching 100,000.

Triumphant In Tragedy

Three California teen-agers were killed outright this month when a church bus carrying fifty-five teen-agers and adult counselors to a skiing weekend in the High Sierras overturned and smashed into trees. A fifteen-year-old girl died days later, and another was not expected to live.

Police quoted the driver as saying he hit a soft shoulder after swerving to avoid an oncoming car in a sharp curve. The accident occurred just after dawn on a back road northwest of Sacramento. The bus belonged to a Christian and Missionary Alliance church in nearby Chico.

Reporter Dave Oliveria of the Chico Enterprise-Record, a member of the church, says the tragedy has brought families and other members closer together in a common bond of love and concern.

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