US Air Force personnel taught Bible ethics to morally justify 'atomic warfare'

Washington, Aug 6 (ANI): Men and women of the US Air Force were taught passages from the Bible to demonstrate moral justification for atomic warfare.

The course, called 'Christian Just War Theory' was taught for over 20 years by chaplains at the Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, and used Scripture from both the Old and New Testaments to show that 'it can be moral to go to war'.

A PowerPoint presentation consisted of 43 slides that included references to Biblical figures like Abraham and John the Baptist, and paintings of the Visigoths attacking Rome in AD410, the Telegraph reports.

In the New Testament, they were told, Jesus used the Roman centurion as a 'positive illustration of faith.'

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

According to the paper, 31 nuclear missile launch officers, including Protestants and Roman Catholics, complained to the watchdog group Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the paper said.

Its founder Mikey Weinstein said the officers were being taught 'under fundamentalist Christian doctrine, war is a good thing'.

"The officers found that 'disgusting. The United States Air Force was promoting a particular brand of right wing fundamentalist Christianity," Weinstein said.

"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," he added.

The training course has now been suspended. (ANI)