When criticizing para-church organizations that ministered to servicemembers, MRFF creator Michael Weinstein used to cite the number of US military bases around the globe, as if the number somehow made the existence of the organizations more insidious. But as someone very recently said, the presence of groups of religious adherents at military bases arises from a far more basic human need: fellowship.
“If there’s one thing church groups get right is fellowship [sic],” Johnson said. “Everyone wants to be around people who are like them.”
The person quoted is supporting the existence of such groups, but she isn’t at all religious. She is Kathleen Johnson, founder of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers and currently Vice President and Military Director of American Atheists. She is reportedly a former Army first sergeant, retired after 21 years of service. (Her organizational profile pictures continue to show her in a military Read more…
The US District Court for southern California ruled in late February (pdf) that a school district erred when it demanded that a teacher remove banners from his room due to their “Judeo-Christian” and “particular sectarian viewpoint.” The banners contained quotes from American founding documents and mottos that made reference to God.
While the academic environment of the case may not seem relevant to Christianity in the military, realize that the school district (and occasionally the teacher) was treated as a government actor, as the military is (and often military members are). The government’s treatment of religion in this case, and the court’s response, was extremely enlightening.
The most interesting part of the case was the fact that while the school district said that the presence of the banners might raise concerns under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution, the court ultimately ruled that the school district’s actions actually violated the Establishment Clause. The reason was simple: Read more…
US Marine Corps pilot Maj Duane Litpak and his backseat weapons officer Capt Jonathan Hutchison reportedly ejected from their two-seat F/A-18D off the coast of South Carolina. Both were safely recovered by Coast Guard helicopters. Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, the jet’s home base, is a training base for Marine F/A-18 crews.
The public reaction from the Marines is an interesting contrast with the Air Force. In general, the Air Force will say only that an incident has occurred and that a board will convene to investigate it, while often keeping the crew out of the limelight. By contrast, the Marines almost immediately published photos of the two climbing out of the Coast Guard chopper, and explained in detail that the crew had to slow their aircraft to a safe ejection speed and abandon the aircraft due to a fire.
The US Air Force Academy recently awarded “UAS-RPA” wings to its first group of cadets. Cadets had already been authorized to wear glider wings if they were an Academy glider pilot or jump wings if they were parachutist qualified.
The display is the latest effort by the US Air Force to “normalize” the unmanned aerial vehicle career field and encourage its development within the Air Force culture.
US Army Chaplain (Capt) Carl Subler is profiled by the San Francisco Examiner in a revealing article that describes the comradery the Catholic priest shares with the Army troops he serves in Afghanistan.
His perspective on faith and suffering, while somewhat unique to hear someone say, is actually fairly commonly held:
I find the more creature comforts are taken away from us, in many ways, we look to God with even more hope.
Read more of the interesting article at the Examiner.
Via the Army Chaplaincy blog.
A unique ministry of Back to the Bible allows military members to sign up to receive a text message or a one minute phone call that includes a message about the “peace and hope found in God.”
411God Hope for Heroes was aimed at US military members, many of whom have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. It is part of the larger 411God ministry, which was geared toward a general audience.
Via the Christian Post.
The origin of ChristianFighterPilot.com is the misperception among some people that one cannot be both a good fighter pilot and a good Christian. The assumption is that the two are mutually exclusive; one must overpower the other. While the fighter pilot culture can be hostile to a Christian spirit, being both a fighter pilot and a Christian is not an oxymoron. In fact, the sometimes carnal nature of the fighter pilot profession makes it the perfect place for a Christian, not one to be avoided.
Former Presidential candidate and now Fox News commentator Mike Huckabee seems to agree: Read more…
US Army Chaplain (Maj) Julian Padgett served the men and women of Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, Iraq, in late 2009. In his proactive efforts to minister to those on Marez, he reportedly “made the rounds along the base perimeter to comfort troops and offer prayers,” as shown in this picture dated in September 2009:
(DoD Photo, PO1 Carmichael Yepez)
An important detail is that Chaplain Padgett ministered to all the men and women on Marez supporting the US mission, including the pictured security guard, a third country national (TCN) from Uganda with whom he shared Read more…
The story of how Army Sgt Jeff Strueker became US Army Chaplain Strueker is fairly well-known. Less publicized is the faith of Michael Durant, the helicopter pilot whose UH-60 Blackhawk was shot down over Mogadishu; the shootdown ultimately resulted in the deaths of his crew at the hands of the Somalis. Also killed were two Delta snipers, MSG Gary Gordon and SFC Randall Shughart, who received the Medal of Honor after volunteering to mount a vastly outnumbered defense for the beleaguered survivors.
Durant was a speaker at a National Prayer Luncheon at the US Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. He said that prayer was central to his survival: Read more…
By now most have likely heard about the air traffic controller, Glenn Duffy, who reportedly brought his 9 year old twin children to work and allowed them to make several radio transmission to airliners on the tower frequency. The FAA and ATC union were quick to respond, with the FAA suspending not only the controller, but also his supervisor, Rose Kelly. The union said the behavior was “not indicative of the highest professional standards” of controller operations.
Pilots and controllers sometimes have an adversarial relationship. Pilots get annoyed at being told what they think is the wrong thing to do, and controllers often get annoyed at pilots who always think they know better. (In that regard, ATC controllers and fighter pilots may have much in common.) Rightly or wrongly, some pilots also blame controllers for some fatal mishaps. Gallows humor asks Read more…
The military academies reserve some of their admissions for enlisted members of the military, allowing them to go to college and become officers. This has led to a unique cadre of combat-experienced cadets at the Academies.
However, a US Army news release says that those at West Point are going unfilled, potentially because servicemembers don’t know about them. Enlisted members of any of the services are encouraged to research the programs at each of the Academies designed to place aspiring enlisted members on the path to officership through a military academy experience.
A letter to the editor at the Stars and Stripes is attributed to LtGen Benjamin R. Mixon of Fort Shafter, Hawaii. LtGen Benjamin R. Mixon is the three-star commanding general of US Army Pacific. In that position, he is in charge of all US Army units in the Pacific theatre.
The General’s letter calls the proposed repeal of Don’t ask, Don’t tell, “ill-advised.” He encourages troops to write both their elected officials and their chain of command to let their views be known, with the potential outcome of correcting the misperception in the media that the majority of the military is in favor of ending DADT.
LtGen Mixon is the highest ranking officer behind Marine Gen James Conway to disagree with President Obama’s proposed repeal of the law, and he appears to be the first to encourage average military members to make their views known. As noted earlier, Read more…
A short article at Army.mil details the sermon of a US Army Chaplain to Haitians during his humanitarian deployment. Chaplain (Maj) Brad Baumann was invited to preach in a devastated church in Port-au-Prince. His Chaplain assistant, Spc. Midine Beauvais, grew up in Haiti and was able to translate much of the sermon to Creole.
The most interesting part of the article, though, was the Haitians surprise at the presence of a Christian Chaplain in the military:
The locals don’t expect people in the military to be Christian and take time for God while on a mission…so they appreciated that the soldiers attended the service at their church.
Though there is often an emphasis on the “risks” of associating Christianity with the US military, people often forget that there can be cultural advantages to the mission, as well.
Americans United for the Separation of Church and State has, again, filed a complaint with the IRS asserting that Liberty University is misusing its status as a tax-exempt (501(c)3) organization. The original complaint can be read here.
For its part, Liberty barely addressed the merits of the complaint, instead saying that this was simply another attempt by the AU to intimidate Liberty. In fact, Mat Staver, the Liberty School of Law dean, said the school was considering legal action in response to the AU’s attempt to intimidate Liberty students:
“We’re now looking at whether we are going to respond by filing some kind of civil action against Americans United — because what they’re trying to do is essentially intimidate Liberty University, particularly the students, from exercising their constitutional right to vote,” he argues. “We’re not about to allow this organization to do that to Liberty University students.”
As noted in the discussion last year when AU filed a complaint against Liberty, the AU is frequently associated with criticisms of Christians in the military. It remains a “partnering link” on the MRFF page, and Michael Weinstein has claimed AU membership at one point.
LtGen Robert Caslen assumed command of Fort Leavenworth, home of the US Army Combined Arms Center, this week. (Caslen recently returned from a year-long deployment to Iraq, and he pinned on his third star just prior to the assumption of command.) Home of 16 US Army professional military schools and centers, the CAC is the “intellectual center of the Army” and is responsible for much of the professional training of US Army leaders. It is also now creating a Mission Command center of excellence to focus on battle command and future Army leader needs. The CAC website says
CAC provides Army-wide leadership and supervision for leader development and professional military and civilian education; institutional and collective training; functional training; training support; battle command; doctrine; lessons learned; and other specified areas that the TRADOC Commander designates.
All of these are focused toward making CAC a catalyst for change and to support the development of a relevant and ready ground force to support joint, interagency and multinational operations anywhere in the world.
Now an influential military leader, LtGen Caslen is a model of professional success and Christian officership.
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