Tom Carpenter of the Forum on the Military Chaplaincy was called out several months ago for his hypocrisy: Carpenter had joined Michael “Mikey” Weinstein in criticizing Air Force Chaplain Dondi Costin for attending an event in uniform, while Tom Carpenter had shared a stage with a uniformed chaplain under similar circumstances just a couple of months prior.

Hypocrisy, though, is often understood to be ‘holding others to a standard to which one does not hold himself.’

A more accurate word for what Tom Carpenter and his FOMC have displayed would be “bigotry” — or “intolerant devotion to one’s own opinions and prejudices,” in one definition.

You see, it wasn’t merely that Carpenter hosted one uniformed chaplain while criticizing another. His actual issue was the religious ideologies of the chaplains and the events they attended. Carpenter and the Forum on the Military Chaplaincy support tolerance for everyone — except those who do not hold the same religious beliefs they do.

And they recently made it quite clear.

Last weekend a pastor asked Read more