Ben Carson’s New Manager Is An Anti-Gay Religious Warrior Fighting To Build A More Christian America

Ret. Major General Robert Dees Says Gays In The Military Are ‘Degrading’ America’s Physical And Moral Readiness

Dees: Greatest Threat To America Isn’t Terrorism But Decline Of ‘Spiritual Infrastructure’

Hours before the new year, three of Ben Carson‘s top advisors resigned. Another twenty staffers followed in their footsteps, leaving the sinking campaign in even greater trouble.

So the former pediatric neurosurgeon sent in the infantry – literally, almost.

The new Chairman for the Ben Carson for President 2016 campaign is retired Army Major Gen. Robert F. Dees, former commander of Second Infantry Division, a Texas native, and currently a vice president at Jerry Falwell’s Christian Evangelical Liberty University.

Dees, 65, has been working with the campaign after meeting Carson while attending services at the Second Baptist Church in Houston. The pair hit it off quickly and Dees began drafting policy positions for the candidate.

At the far-right Values Voter Summit, hosted by the anti-gay hate group Family Research Council, Dees told the audience last year that the American military is being “degraded by social experimentation.”

“Not only are we losing physical readiness to fight, we have to fix the problem of moral readiness,” Dees said of allowing open service by LGBT military members.

“I think the moral readiness of our forces is even more important than the physical readiness, which is very low,” Dees told CNS News in September. “The moral readiness is degraded by social experimentation within our military.”

Allowing gay people in the military “is not enhancing our readiness,” Dees said, insisting, “it declines our readiness. We’re spending more time on some of these social engineering projects than we are on developing and maintaining readiness in our force.”

The author of three books with a forward by Christian evangelist Franklin Graham, Resilient Nations, Dees further makes clear his extremist religious beliefs.

“In his 2014 book,” Nahal Toosi at Politico writes, “Dees argues that the biggest threat to the United States isn’t terrorism or China or Russia but the decline of its ‘spiritual infrastructure.’ Exhibit A in the argument is the Roman Empire:” 

“At the height of Roman decadence, good became evil and evil became good,” Dees writes in the introduction. “One can rightly argue that the United States is frightfully close to a similar fate. Prayerfully, it is not too late.”

“Resilient Nations,” part of a trilogy, contains a litany of grievances against President Barack Obama, including accusations that he provides “the Muslim religion ‘most favored status'” even as he pursues “anti-Israeli rhetoric and policies.” Obama, Dees writes, “has consistently denied ‘American exceptionalism’ and portrayed weakness.”

But Dees’ religious beliefs, and how he see the role of Christianity and the military go far, far deeper.

In a November profile in Foreign Policy, James Bamford writes Dees “told a gathering at Wildfire Weekend, an all-male religious retreat, ‘My greatest pleasure has been being a private in the Lord’s army.’ He also recounted being introduced to Jesus Christ by a math instructor at West Point not long after he enrolled there as a student in 1968. ‘Then I went off in the military,’ he said, ‘as an ambassador for the Lord Jesus Christ.'”

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Indeed, Dees believes it is the job of the U.S. military to evangelize the words of Jesus Christ, spreading Christianity throughout the world – making every war a religious one. Bamford adds, “Dees described his group’s goal of converting foreign countries to Christianity by evangelizing their militaries.”

Dees’ belief in evangelizing works universally – he also believes service members should spread Christianity and convert within the U.S.

For nearly six years, beginning in March 2005, Dees served as executive director of Military Ministry, a division of Campus Crusade for Christ, now called Cru, a Christian evangelical organization with an annual budget of almost half a billion dollars. His Military Ministry was dedicated to converting members of the military to Christian evangelicalism. Under Dees, the organization oriented its mission around “six pillars,” the first of which was: “Evangelize and disciple enlisted U.S. military members throughout their military careers.” According to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which worked closely with the organization on a conference, “retired Maj. Gen. Bob Dees, U.S. Army, outlined goals that [included] evangelizing all enlisted personnel in the U.S. military.

Dees has also described the military as a vehicle to eventually “indoctrinate” the American public at large to evangelical Christianity. “We must pursue our particular means for transforming the nation — through the military,” he noted in a 2005 newsletter published by Military Ministry. “And the military may well be the most influential way to affect that spiritual superstructure. Militaries exercise, generally speaking, the most intensive and purposeful indoctrination program of citizens.”

In addition to his work at Liberty University, Dees lectures at military bases around the country. In 2014, he delivered a PowerPoint presentation at West Point, his alma mater, entitled, “Resilient Life & Leadership ‘God Style.’” The presentation was filled with quotes from the Bible and Christian messages, including “JESUS was the ultimate Resilient Warrior & Leader,” “You are faithful, God, You are faithful,” and “Consider JESUS.”

 

Image: U.S. Army photo by Pfc. Lim Hong-seo