God and Country

Despite claims that religious groups get favored or undue access to US military installations, the US military hosts many more non-religious events to support its troops.  Fort Carson recently hosted the Lt Dan Band, led by Gary Sinise, which seemed to be well-attended despite the inclement weather:  Read more…

Have a productive and joyful 2012.

The Top 10 articles from God and Country in 2011:

1. Fort Carson Supports Native American Spiritualism
2. “Terror Plot” Soldier Naser Abdo Defiant, Weinstein Equivocates
3. MRFF Petition Garners Signatures for White House
4. US Army Private Naser Abdo Arrested in Terror Plot
5. DADT: House Defense Bill, Colonels Punished, Lawsuit and More
6. Finding a Church, Part 1: The Military Chapel
7. Atheists Stretch for Something to be Offended By
8. Navy Blue Angels Commander Resigns over Incident
9. Women in the Military: Statistics, and the First Female JFACC
10. Defense Department Highlights Member-Designated Benefits

While those were the top 10 current events articles in 2011, they were not the top-visited pages on the site.  As noted Read more…

Continuing the US Army’s focus on Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, Fort Carson is closing one of its gyms to “transform” it into the “Forrest Resiliency Center.”  The center will be

the cornerstone of a Mountain Post Resiliency Campus that includes a super gym, a behavioral health facility and a child development center.

While the news release focuses largely on the “super gym” and health issues associated with deploying, the Resiliency Campus will include “spiritual” Read more…

USAFA has its “Falcon Circle,” and just down the street Fort Carson has its unique religious “chapel” as well.

As previously noted, the Turkey Creek ranch US Army facility of Fort Carson has been used for some years to support the religious freedom of men and women in the US military of all kinds. The kind of worship?  A native American sweat lodge.

Michael Hackwith is the local spiritual leader and leads the group in Read more…

In the wake of the article highlighting the Christian perspective on a neo-pagan congregation site at the Air Force Academy, a local military paper notes the presence of a Native American sweat lodge on Turkey Creek Ranch, an MWR facility of Fort Carson.  (Fort Carson was recently threatened over the cross on its hospital patch.)

Here, Airmen, Soldiers, Sailors and Marines, their families and supporters come to pray in a traditional Native American purification ceremony.

The religious site has been at the military facility since the 1990s:

The Turkey Creek Ranch sweat lodge was started in 1994 by two Native American military members who wanted a traditional place to pray. Fort Carson Army Installation gave them a permanent spot inside its Turkey Creek Ranch…

Though the military is sometimes accused of trying to Read more…

Previous articles have noted Michael Weinstein’s biased complaint about a red cross on the emblem of a military hospital in Fort Carson.

As reported by the Colorado Springs Gazette, Weinstein apparently had a personal audience with Fort Carson post commander MajGen David Perkins recently.  Weinstein indicated the General basically told him to pound sand, though the military only confirmed Read more…

Michael Weinstein is truly the gift that keeps on giving.  His latest attempt at infamy is to say that a red cross appearing on a military hospital’s emblem

violate[s] the constitutional requirement for separation of church and state and should be removed.

DoD Image

Apparently Weinstein has missed the long, international history of the cross in military medical use, as well as the US military’s equivalent treatment of Islam and Judaism that would allegedly “violate…separation of church and state,” pictured below.

Weinstein also objects to the emblem’s motto “pro deo et humanitate” or “for God and humanity,” despite the military’s description of the phrase as pre-dating Christianity.

The emblem in question is that of Evans Army Community Hospital at Fort Carson, near Colorado Springs.