No Catchy Title

Couldn't think of one that wasn't too insulting:

The Army major general who commands Fort Bragg's training center for special operations forces has invited a group of predominantly Southern Baptist pastors to the base this month to participate in a military-themed motivational program for Christian evangelists.

The unusual collaboration is the result of a friendship between Maj. Gen. William G. Boykin, commanding general of the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg, and the Rev. Bobby H. Welch, a Southern Baptist minister in Daytona Beach, Fla., who has started an evangelistic campaign called FAITH Force Multipliers.

Hundreds of ministers received an invitation last month from Mr. Welch saying that participants would observe weapons demonstrations, sleep overnight on the base and "go with General Boykin and Green Beret instructors to places where no civilians and few soldiers ever go!"

But the marriage of military and ministry offended one Baptist pastor invited to attend. That minister, who said he did not want to be identified for fear of his colleagues' ire, informed Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an advocacy group in Washington.

[...] Reached at his church in Florida, Mr. Welch, the minister who runs the FAITH Force program, said he was a Vietnam veteran, who trained at Fort Bragg and sought to apply military principles to evangelism.

At first, he spoke openly about the coming session at Fort Bragg. Then he asked not to have it made public because "I'll get in trouble."

"I don't want to do anything that sounds as if we're connected to the military," he said. "That would be an error." He said the Fort Bragg event, which had drawn applications from 50 to 70 ministers, was no different from one he conducted at a race track in Daytona Beach.

He also volunteered that a previous FAITH Force session of 70 pastors was held at Fort Bragg last year, at General Boykin's invitation.

Pastor Welch has spoken at graduations at the special operations school the general commands, Major Kolb said. And General Boykin gave a speech in the pastor's church in Florida in April last year.

"Bin Laden is not the enemy," General Boykin told the packed sanctuary, according to an account on the church's Web site. "No mortal is the enemy. It's the enemy you can't see. It's a war against the forces of darkness. The battle won't be won with guns. It will be won on our knees."