Michael “Mikey” Weinstein’s “charity,” the MRFF, recently published a bit of fan-mail from a person excoriating President Trump’s Tuesday proclamation of Religious Freedom Day.

And even Weinstein’s own research assistant, Chris Rodda, probably grimaced.

The letter, written by a “30-year Active Duty Air Force Officer”, lambasts Trump’s proclamation, claiming it is a “dog whistle of Fundamentalist Christian Dominionism.” As proof [formatting original]:

To understand his real declaratory intent, we need only look at his last paragraph in which he says, “I have hereunto set my hand this sixteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand eighteen…”

…[Trump] ENLARGES the views of those that see 2018 as ‘The Year of Our Lord,’ i.e., Christians only.

Longevity in the military is clearly no guarantor of intellectual acuity.

As anyone with an elementary education and an internet connection could tell you, the “in the year of our Lord” has been used in those proclamations for years — and they started in 1993. Where was this Air Force officer’s conspiratorial fear last year, when then-President Obama made his “real declaratory intent” clear by saying “in the year of our Lord”? Or how about when President Clinton did the same? Both were this 30-year military member’s Commander in Chief at one point. Why is it only now that he fears the great Christian Inquisition — when the only change is President Trump being the one to say it?

Could it be his own prejudice and bigotry, perhaps?

Further, the MRFF’s own Chris Rodda has been on the warpath against those who attach religious “significance” to the phrase that has commonly, if not completely, been in the valediction of official state documents for centuries. To wit, Rodda has repeatedly belittled David Barton’s highlighting of President Thomas Jefferson signing documents closing with “in the year of our Lord Christ”, and Rodda proudly notes she “devoted an entire chapter” of her book to his discussion of the “in the year of our Lord” that closes the US Constitution.

Yet now her own boss is proudly highlighting an MRFF acolyte who advocates the very claim Rodda said was “utterly ridiculous”.

The anonymous writer made one more claim that was just as asinine:

Many of those that serve in his military grow even more fearful of expressing anything but mainstream Christian belief.

This career officer seems to have a serious case of projection. Those in the military who “express[] [a] mainstream Christian belief” are the ones being ridiculed, attacked, and fired — not the other way around. See Col Daniel Murray, Col Leland Bohannon, LtGen Chris Burne, Chaplain Wes Modder, Chaplain Sonny Hernandez, LtGen Steven Kwast, LtCol Michael Kersten, MajGen Julie Bentz, MSgt Nathan Sommers, Maj Christina Hopper, and Lt Austin Krohn, just to name a few of the most recent. By contrast, those who express a religious view that’s far more socially progressive — or simply express an ideologically divisive view that’s progressive at all — can expect validation, promotion, and celebration. They can even be a Service Secretary — and the Air Force will actively recruit them for their “progressive” religious views.

Remember, too, that while the President proclaimed a single Religious Freedom day, prior presidents proudly proclaimed entire months as celebrations of sexual behavior — something clearly not consistent with mainstream religious values.

Where’s that “mainstream” Christian supremacy again? Seems the MRFF fiction writer got ahead of himself.

President Trump’s use of the phrase “in the year of our Lord” isn’t code language for an impending Armageddon. Those who would claim it is are either so deeply bigoted they are blind to objective facts or they are intentionally ignoring the truth so they can advance their ideological agenda.  Or, more innocently, they’re just idiots.

And, of course, that the MRFF would so proudly publish such tin-foil hat rantings while Chris Rodda simultaneously belittles similar claims is comedy of the highest order. Mikey Weinstein is so giddy in his attacks on Christians he doesn’t seem to mind bruising his own staff.

For those who pay Mikey Weinstein’s $22,000 per month salary, these are your tax-exempt dollars at work. Enjoy it.

ADVERTISEMENT

---

---