Give a salute, Christian soldiers are marching by

In this quiet valley between All Saints Day and Veterans Day, we pause to pay our respects to those who have brought honor to the 2,000-year-old image of the Christian as soldier.

Christ himself started this comparison, of course, explaining that if you wanted to follow him you needed to be like a commanding general with 10,000 men preparing to fight an army of 20,000. You know there'll be casualties, and before you charge in you'd better be sure that a victory is both possible and worth what the cost.

St. Paul expanded the idea of the Christian soldier with his cool description to the Ephesians of the full armor of God.

In England, the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould continued this image in 1865 when he wrote the hymn "Onward Christian Soldiers." That was the same year the Salvation Army was founded by William and Catherine Booth, bringing military organization to the cause of saving lost souls.

It is an enduring comparison, so today let us salute the many branches, units and ranks of the Christian army.

We salute the artillerymen, those theologians and apologists whose patient studies produce round of round of heavy-hitting defenses of the faith that reach from their ivory towers to enemy strongholds.

We salute the military engineers, those pastors and deacons with a perfect blueprint for the church's success and the know-how to get it build.

We salute the drill sergeants, the Sunday school teachers who humbly take generation after generation of raw recruits and prepare them for battlegrounds they can only imagine, somewhere off in the distant future.

We salute the air corps, those high-flyers who have the vision to see the amazing scope of Christendom, around the world and through the ages.

We salute the Marines, those adaptable souls who keep fighting for Jesus no matter what setting they find themselves in.

We salute the coast guard, out there on the edges of the kingdom, patrolling not to keep anyone out, but to perform search-and-rescue whenever a drowning man holds up a man.

We even salute the military police, those entrusted by the commander with the task of keeping the troops honest and true. No, we don't like it when they root out a lollygagger or a charlatan with the uniform but not the heart of the Lord's army, but we know it's a vital mission.

We salute the quartermasters, those potluck-dinner-cooking, bake-sale-organizing, food-bank-stocking, ice-cream-social-loving servants who understand that an army travels on its stomach, as does every person the army comes in contact with.

But most of all we salute the infantrymen, millions of them, who just keep stepping forward and forward and forward, letting the Spirit count cadence and resolving never to retreat from the lifelong struggle to which each Christian is called.

It is a pleasure to serve with you.

Doug Mendenhall started this weekly column in 2000 when he was an editor with The Huntsville Times and continues it in a new role as instructor of journalism at Abilene Christian University in Texas. E-mail him at doug.mendenhall@acu.edu. His favorite columns are collected in the book How Jesus Ended Up in the Food Court.