COMMENTARY: Onward Christian soldiers, indeed

(RNS) Two weeks ago, I wrote how the University of Florida’s star quarterback, Tim Tebow, had abused his celebrity fame in advertising a particular set of religious beliefs — however sincere — by painting Bible verses under his eyes before a game. But college football is not some cosmic metaphysical clash between good and evil, […]

(RNS) Two weeks ago, I wrote how the University of Florida’s star quarterback, Tim Tebow, had abused his celebrity fame in advertising a particular set of religious beliefs — however sincere — by painting Bible verses under his eyes before a game.

But college football is not some cosmic metaphysical clash between good and evil, the faithful and infidels, or the saintly and the sinners. Despite what frenzied fans and obsessive coaches may believe, it’s only a game.

Since that column, something more ominous than college football, or Tebow’s face-based evangelism, has emerged. It reveals, on a level that’s more than just skin-deep, the danger of employing exclusivist religious language, not in sports, but in warfare.


For more than 30 years, Michigan-based defense contractor Trijicon has systematically, and some would say covertly, encoded biblical verses on the weapons systems (including gun sights) it sells to the U.S. military.

The idea started 30 years ago with company founder Glyn Bindon, who died in a 2003 private plane crash. His personal project of placing scriptural citations on Trijicon’s products continued until mid-January, after several news outlets highlighted the practice, thanks to the watchdog efforts of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

For several years, the MRFF has exposed the aggressive and unconstitutional evangelistic conversion campaigns that operated at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo. Once Trijicon’s practice became public, the Pentagon demanded an end to the encoding program; the arms manufacturer quickly acquiesced.

Trijicon encoded at least seven different religious markings on weapons that are currently being used by our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. They include:

— An abbreviation for John 8:12, in which Jesus says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

— An abbreviation for 1 Thessalonians 5:5,”You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness.”


A range of faith groups — people of no faith, and people of ardent faith — lambasted the company. The MRFF charged that biblically encoded weapons put American troops at risk — “an action that clearly gave additional incentive and emboldenment to recruiters for our nation’s enemies.”

Some years ago, Brent Walker of the Washington-based Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty put it this way: “We have obligations to Christ and Caesar. They’re both appropriate and good things. But they’re not the same things.”

Trijicon’s actions are not, however, necessarily unique. They reflect a long-held position shared by many Christians who believe their faith’s compassionate portrayal of Jesus is too soft, too girly. Instead, they seek a warrior-like faith, one that wraps the Christian cross in the stars and stripes of Old Glory.

That bellicose Christianity is best expressed in the 1865 hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers”: “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, With the cross of Jesus going on before. Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe; Forward into battle see His banners go!’

Because of the hymn’s bellicose lyrics, there was an unsuccessful attempt in 1986 to remove it from the United Methodist Hymnal. The song was left out of the 1990 Presbyterian Church (USA) hymnal.

When I served as an Air Force chaplain in Japan and Korea, I learned an important lesson about religion and war. A Protestant chaplain and I were discussing the massacres of European Jews at the hands of medieval Christian Crusaders. He shuddered and expressed his abhorrence of the Crusaders, and he also admitted he dislike of “Onward Christian Soldiers.”


I still remember what he said next.

“Remember, we are always American soldiers representing the best in our nation,” he said. “We are not religious warriors.”

It was true then, and it’s even truer today.

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!