jesus loves nukes...,

Telegraph | For 20 years the course on “Christian Just War Theory” was taught by chaplains at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to those who would turn the key should World War III break out.

The training, which used passages from the Bible and religious imagery to demonstrate the moral justification for atomic warfare, has now been suspended.

The Air Force acted after receiving an inquiry from Truthout, a news website which first broke the story.

A PowerPoint presentation which was part of the course had consisted of 43 slides which included references to Biblical figures like Abraham and John the Baptist, and paintings of the Visigoths attacking Rome in AD410.

Instructors quoted St Augustine’s just cause for war, telling them it was right “to avenge or to avert evil, to protect the innocent and restore moral and social order.”

They also recounted how, in the Book of Genesis, Abraham had organised an army to rescue Lot, and how there were “Old Testament believers who engaged in war in a righteous way.” Officers were also told that in Judges, God is “motivating judges to fight and deliver Israel from foreign oppressors,” and that there was “no pacifistic sentiment in mainstream Jewish history.”

In the New Testament, they were told, Jesus used the Roman centurion as a “positive illustration of faith.” One slide read: “Revelation 19:11 Jesus Christ is the mighty warrior.”

The course literature also quoted Werner von Braun, the leading German rocket scientist who went on to work for the United States after the Second World War, saying that it was a “moral decision” to surrender his technology to the US.

Von Braun said: “We felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured.”

Before the the course was stopped 31 nuclear missile launch officers, including Protestants and Roman Catholics, had complained to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a group that campaigns for the separation of church and state.

Its founder Mikey Weinstein said the officers were being told that “under fundamentalist Christian doctrine, war is a good thing”.

He said the officers found that “disgusting.” Mr Weinstein said: “The United States Air Force was promoting a particular brand of right wing fundamentalist Christianity.

“The main essence was that war is a natural part of the human experience and it’s something that is favoured by this particular perspective of the New Testament.”

David Smith, spokesman for the Air Force’s Air Education and Training Command, said ethics courses were “especially important” for nuclear missile launch officers.

But he added: “Our commander here reviewed the course and decided immediately that it was not appropriate for what we want to do.

“The use of Bible passages and other elements was just inappropriate. The military is made up of people from all walks of life, all faiths.” However, critics accused the Air Force of bowing to political correctness.

Commander Daniel McKay, a retired US Navy chaplain, said: “Why is it inappropriate to give our people guidelines that have withstood the test of time, to give us moral guidance?

“History will prove that if you stay true to God’s wisdom, it will serve us well and it has served us well.”