Aroma of Jesus [VIDEO]

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 2:07 PM on December 12, 2006.

Many are up in arms about the Christian Embassy's corporate promo Pentagon Christ-tacular (video right), including the The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which is seeking an investigation.

Essentially: did Defense Dept. employees break the law by appearing in uniform, explicitly lending the military's name to the Christian group?

It should be noted that Jeff Sharlet was the first journalist to mention the existence of the video in this month's Harper's cover story.

They should, of course, litigate -- it's important.

But the question goes deeper. What happens to Christianity and Government (never mind the military...) when one strand of Christianity has unusual access to power?

Sure, this video is bound to end up an essential part of any atheist-porn collection, but it ought to be as frightening to Christians as to atheists, agnostics, Jews, Muslims, and Americans who oppose the state establishment of religion -- which this approaches.

How the words of Jesus are compatible with the compromises of power are beyond me. History does not look highly upon past marriages of Christianity and Power and there's no reason to claim exception here.

It's also an awful blow to anyone trying to disabuse whole populations of the notion that the "war on terror" is actually a war of Christians on Islam. So it actually undermines national security as a bonus!

I'm just curious whether the director's cut will include Tom DeLay.

Tagged as: jesus, pentagon, christianity, church and state

Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.