God and Country

Retired Chaplain (Col) Ron Crews of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty:

[Weinstein] is known for his activism to squash religious faith in the military. Why senior leaders in the Air Force would be meeting with someone to talk about religious liberty whose sole purpose it appears is to squash religious liberty, that’s a question that we have for Air Force officials.

Indeed. At FoxNews:

As an aside, a blogger made an interesting observation about the Read more…

Retired Air Force Capt Guy Gruters, who was a POW in Vietnam for 5 years, recently told his story to the 128th Air Refueling Wing in Wisconsin.

For a time, Gruters’ cell mate was Air Force Capt Lance P. Sijan.

Gruters told the audience, which also included…Janine Sijan Rozina, Sijan’s sister, that he and Sijan were in the same squadron at the U.S. Air Force Academy for three years. Sijan, a Milwaukee native, was solid as a rock at 210 pounds and had played football for the Academy.

“To see him hurt so bad was really difficult,” Gruters said. “They would torture him, and we would scream in our cells to get them to lay off him and they’d come beat us.”

Capt Gruters clearly conveys the faith that Read more…

Update: Listen to Admiral Lee’s message to the 2013 National Day of Prayer.  Noted at Baptist Press and Fox News.

As has now been widely reported, US Coast Guard Rear Admiral William Lee spoke “from the heart” — rather than his prepared remarks — at the 2013 national observance of the National Day of Prayer:

He recounted a recent meeting with a 24-year-old soldier who had attempted suicide but survived…Lee said when he heard the man’s story, he knew the rules said he should send the man to a chaplain, but his heart said to give him a Bible.

“The lawyers tell me that if I do that, I’m crossing the line,” Lee said. “I’m so glad I’ve crossed that line so many times…”

Lee pledged not to back down from “my right under the Constitution to tell a young man that there is hope…”

“As one general so aptly put it – they expect us to check our religion in at the door – don’t bring that here,” Rear Admiral William Lee told a National Day of Prayer gathering. “Leaders like myself are feeling the constraints of rules and regulations and guidance issued by lawyers that put us in a tighter and tighter box regarding our constitutional right to express our religious faith.”

Funny that he’d mention lawyers.  Didn’t the Air Force’s highest ranking lawyer, the JAG of the Air Force LtGen Richard Harding, just Read more…

In another setback for Michael Weinstein’s vitriolic assaults on religious freedom in the US military, the Department of Defense issued a clarifying statement (full text below) disavowing Weinstein’s characterizations and accusations.

It did so in a unique way, however:

Service members can share their faith (evangelize), but must not force unwanted, intrusive attempts to convert others of any faith or no faith to one’s beliefs (proselytization).

(The DoD statement would presumably override the one from the Air Force the day prior, saying troops couldn’t share their faith if it made others “uncomfortable.”)

It’s an awkward turn of semantics, since most dictionaries don’t define “proselytizing” as being “unwanted” or “intrusive” (its a neutral term “to convert”).  Over the past few years, the term has been so often associated with “coercion” it has come to have a negative connotation.  (Weinstein’s research assistant, Chris Rodda, actually agrees the Read more…

Today is the National Day of Prayer.  President Obama issued his proclamation, saying in part

All of us have the freedom to pray and exercise our faiths openly. Our laws protect these God-given liberties, and rightly so. Today and every day, prayers will be offered in houses of worship, at community gatherings, in our homes, and in neighborhoods all across our country. Let us give thanks for the freedom to practice our faith as we see fit, whether individually or in fellowship.

The National Day of Prayer Task Force highlighted the details of the NDoP observance at Capitol Hill.  President Obama will reportedly not attend.

Michael “Mikey” Weinstein, of his self-founded “charity,” the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, struck a desperate tone recently as he tried to fend off the blowback from his ego-stroking announcement that he’d had a private meeting with senior military leaders about “religious issues.”

More than any recent event, his own boasting has caused people to take notice of his trail of vitriolic op-eds pronouncing Christians ”monsters” or saying US military Christians are trying to institute what he calls “Plan B” — an American holocaust.

In other words, Weinstein’s “over the top” attacks on religious freedom are backfiring, and he’s back on his heels.

He and a few of his staff took to the internet to push back, claiming Read more…

The Air Force, DoD, and even the Obama Administration continue to be hammered by conservative media and religious freedom advocates over the decision to host Michael Weinstein at the Pentagon in a meeting about “religious issues.”

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council called it an “anti-Christian offensive” on the part of the US military.

And [Weinstein] is the man the Pentagon heeded to create its policy on faith? An anti-Christian militant who’s threatened by gift collections for needy children?

A Catholic blogger took Weinstein to task, as many did, for calling Christians “monsters” in a recent virulent op-ed.  While saying he didn’t necessarily agree with evangelical Christians, the blogger said  Read more…

According to his own statements reported at a Washington Post blog, Michael Weinstein (of his self-founded Military Religious Freedom Foundation) met at the

Pentagon on April 23 where they discuss[ed] religious issues in a group that included several generals and a military chaplain.

The blog was written by Sally Quinn, who has been friendly to Weinstein’s cause in the past.  Weinstein seems inimitably pleased at the invitation, as likely any private citizen in America might be if US Air Force leadership had a personal meeting with them on “religious issues in the military.”  It’s unclear what grants Weinstein that legitimacy, beyond a spate of failed lawsuits and a series of self-published op-eds that would put even the most advanced thesaurus to shame (save the one he apparently plagiarized).

It would seem at least one senior leader was there, as the article claims one attendee was LtGen Richard Harding — The Judge Advocate General of the Air Force, who is the senior legal advisor to the Chief of Staff, General Mark Welsh:  Read more…

The DoD has published a lengthy, two-part (1, 2) story on Chaplain Emil Kapaun, who will posthumously receive the Medal of Honor tomorrow.  The articles contain many details of his private and military life, as well as many photographs.

Read Part 1 and Part 2.

Update: The well-covered story by the Associated Press.  In addition, an Army.mil article notes a memorial in Kaiserslautern, Germany, where military facilities are named in honor of Kapaun, including a Kapaun Chapel that still hosts services.

In 1955, four years after his death, the Army named Kapaun Barracks — now Kapaun Administration Annex in Kaiserslautern, Germany — after him.

A Vietnam Veteran’s memorial erected in 1972 in Coos Bay, Oregon, is the focus of a complaint from the Freedom From Religion Foundation.  The FFRF is demanding the town remove the memorial because it has a cross.

The [FFRF] sent Coos Bay City Manager Rodger Craddock a letter saying the memorial itself isn’t the problem, it’s the cross resting on top.

They say it’s an “endorsement of Christianity over other religions and over nonreligion,” and must be removed “immediately”.

The presence of a cross on a public display does not “make [a] law regarding an establishment of religion.”  But these asinine attacks will continue, and in some cases Read more…

Dobbins Air Reserve Base, located in Marietta, Georgia, needed to modify its entry gate to comply with increased security measures.  As a result, the 60-year-old base chapel was slated to be demolished.

The chapel played an important role for more than 60 years as a spiritual home to airmen and their families. It was deployed to Europe during World War II. After the war, it was acquired by the Georgia Air National Guard through private donation. Placed on then active-duty Dobbins Air Force Base, it was dedicated to veterans who served their country in World War II by Army Brig. Gen. J.H. O’Neil, Third Army chaplain.

O’Neil is known for writing Army Gen. George Patton’s prayer for Read more…

As previously revealed, the White House officially announced Chaplain (Capt) Emil Kapaun will posthumously receive the Medal of Honor:

Kapaun will receive the award posthumously for his extraordinary heroism while serving with 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, during combat operations in Unsan, Korea, and as a prisoner of war, according to the White House announcement…

The commanding General of the unit in which Chaplain Kapaun served Read more…

Given recent news reports that have decried the presence of crosses on military chapels, it might be easy to think military chapels are bland, featureless office buildings designed to neutrally serve any function. While that may be the way things seem, it is the opposite of the history of military chapels.

As previously noted, Fort Bragg’s All American Chapel updated the Read more…

Last Friday Michael Weinstein sponsored a protest/picketing a few miles from one of the US Air Force Academy entrance gates.  Ostensibly, the objective was to make USAFA pull down a link to a website Weinstein had called “homophobic” and “misogynistic.”  This protest and the accompanying billboard (now a trend) were apparently the “action” he had ominously threatened.

The protest misfired on several counts, though the most entertaining by far was Read more…

The Vice Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mark Ferguson will be the “key note speaker” at the annual conference for the Jewish Welfare Board in April:

The theme of training will be Jewish Chaplains and Lay Leaders: Spiritual Resilience in Times of Transition. These courses will include distinct training tracks for chaplains and lay Read more…