Jason Torpy, a former US Army Captain and current atheist, recently claimed that Christians in the US military are “play[ing] the victim” while atheists are the real victims:

“We are not alone in suffering from what has been a largely successful tactic for a subset of Christians to play the victim,” said Jason Torpy.

Journalist Leo Shane of the Military Times made the regrettable decision to drop any qualifiers, presenting Torpy’s assertions as fact [emphasis added]:

Torpy and his group are hoping…the [IG] will go beyond the unsubstantiated problems posed by Congress and include some of the actual discrimination faced by humanists and atheists that he detailed in conversations with the office.

“We need to redirect to real problems,” [he said].

Some of the issues raised by Congress have indeed been anecdotal, just as some atheist claims are. Torpy seems to dismiss out of hand those issues that are clearly “substantiated,” however, as if it is necessary to demean what he calls a “Christian victimhood agenda” to elevate the status of his own complaints.

And what are his complaints?

They include the inability of troops to list “humanism” as their religious preference and the lack of chaplain assistance for atheist and humanist service members.

So Torpy thinks Christians are “play[ing] the victim” when, say, a chaplain is punished for mentioning the Bible — Chaplain Joseph Lawhorn is a point of fact, not conjecture — but Torpy isn’t “playing a victim” because atheists can put “atheist” on their dogtags but not “humanist”? (Full disclosure: Jason Torpy runs the organization cited in Chaplain Lawhorn’s punishment.)

And, in the never-ending argument over atheist chaplains: atheists and humanists have precisely the same access to chaplains as any other non-religious group.  To use Torpy’s language, where are his “real problems”?

For a “freethinker,” Torpy isn’t being very rational.

Shane closes with an interesting claim:

Christian groups have already criticized the report for focusing too much on administrative actions against troops and not enough on subtler intimidation and discouragement of displays of faith, a much more widespread problem in the ranks in their view.

Oddly, Shane doesn’t name or cite any of the “Christian groups” he is vaguely characterizing.  Searching the traditional ones who might speak up on this issue (FRC, AFA, Liberty Institute, etc.) doesn’t yield an obvious “criticism.”

On the other hand, more than one site has pointed here.

ADVERTISEMENT

---

---