Army deserter Bergdahl connected to ballet and Calvinism

Five years ago, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl reportedly laid down his weapons and quietly vanished into the night from his small military outpost in the Yousaf Khel district of Paktika. Several hunts for him ultimately led to several deaths of American soldiers who tried to find their comrade in arms.

Three years later, a story in Rolling Stone magazine entitled “America’s Last Prisoner of War” featured Bergdahl as our last prisoner of war turned into a political pawn to end the war against terror.

One of the most interesting captions concerning the POW who apparently also is a deserter and traitor according to a New York Post article¹ is the description by the late Michael Hastings in the Rolling Stone piece. Speaking of Bergdahl’s upbringing, Hastings writes:

Rather than put their kids in the local school system, Jani and Bob home-schooled Bowe and his sister. Devout Calvinists, they taught the children for six hours a day, instructing them in religious thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine. “Ethics and morality would be constant verbiage in our conversations,” his father recalls. “Bowe was definitely instilled with truth. He was very philosophical about perceiving ethics.¹ 

Hastings went on to suggest,

By the time he was 16, Bowe had grown restless with his home-schooling – and his parents. He began to explore the wider world, and became obsessed with learning how to fence. At a nearby fencing studio, which also offered ballet classes, he was recruited by a beautiful local girl to be a “lifter” – the guy who holds the girl aloft in a ballet sequence.¹

Why being “devout Calvinists” seems significant enough to put in a description of Berdahl’s upbringing is anyone’s guess. Deserting and Calvinism do not necessarily go hand-in-hand, do they?

Ah, but Calvinism and ballet. Now there’s a likely match!

With that, I am…

Peter

¹as with many mainstream media venues, the Rolling Stone article possesses language which may be offensive. Otherwise, I found the article helpful in offering a thorough analysis of Berdahl’s desertion of the United States military.