Tag Archives: Military

National Review: CNN Espousing “equivalency of ideology”

Joe Carter of the National Review wrote an article on CNN’s “God’s Warriors” in which he noted that while many people are concerned about CNN juxtaposing assassins and Falwell, what CNN is really doing is proposing “equivalency of ideology.”  That is, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity are “equal.”  He notes, for example, that while “theocracy” is a theology most aligned with Islam, it is more often attributed to Protestant Christians.  In fact, 

more than half of American evangelicals are either Baptists or nondenominational — groups that don’t even want a centralized church government much less a central government controlled by the church.

The Culture and Media Institute also wrote an article on the CNN series.  It contains some positive and negative things about the shows, including Amanpour’s comparison of Christian calls for “modest dress” as equivalent with the Taliban calls for burkas.

“God’s Warriors” on CNN, 21-23 August 2007

As previously posted, CNN’s special on “God’s Warriors” runs this week.

The CNN site lists the topics as:

Judaism: Murder in Hebron and Settler vs. Soldier
Islam: Holy Killing and Martyrdom
Christianity: Christians and Falwell and The Culture War

With murder and holy killing juxtaposed with Falwell and a culture war, it is fairly easy to see why some are worried that CNN will equate evangelical Christians with radical Islam.

Their “objectivity” remains to be seen.

ACLJ Represents Pentagon Officers

The ACLJ recently responded to the release of the Pentagon Inspector General’s report.  They said

We think the legal conclusions of the Department of Defense Inspector General are incorrect as a matter of fact and as a matter of law. 

They also stated that they represent two of the officers, including the retired Chaplain who was the focus of much of the report.

See the FRC response and original post below.

FRC Responds to Pentagon IG Report

According to One News Now, Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, is concerned that organizations like Weinstein’s MRFF may “extrapolate” the IG’s recent decision regarding Pentagon officers’ participation in a Christian Embassy video (see recent post below).

The IG found that the officers violated Joint Ethics Regulations regarding endorsement of a “non-federal entity while in uniform,” but also noted that the violations had nothing to do with religion.  Weinstein has proclaimed on his website that the report proves

…the intentional dismantling of the Constitutionally mandated wall separating church and state by some of the highest ranking officials in the Bush Administration and the U.S. military…

Perkins points out that the issue at stake was not Constitutionality or the Establishment Clause, as Weinstein insists, but non-religious ethics regulations.

Perkins expressed concern that “extrapolation” to the appearance of punishing the officers’ involvement with a religious organization (which was not the case) may “intimidate…military personnel from being associated with religion.”

Tikkun Covers Weinstein…with a Catch

Tikkun, which describes itself as a “progressive Jewish magazine,” recently gave an interview to Michael Weinstein in which he repeated many of his standard lines (America is equivalent to Nazi Germany in 1937, on a train to Slaughterville, withering fields of fire and sucking chest wounds, etc).

When Weinstein couldn’t come up with one, Tikkun told him it believed that the reason for the rise of the “Christian Right” was that only Christians were adequately responding to a “spiritual crisis” in America.  Weintein was asked how he would address this “crisis:”

How do you build character in this multi-religious, pluralistic way, that is feminist, that is sensitive to people, and yet is part of this huge, military, dominate-the-world force that seems to be what the American military is up to now?

His response:  Read more

Pentagon Report on Christian Embassy Completed

As noted recently in Time magazine (and the Washington Post, as of 6 Aug), the Inspector General completed its investigation (on July 20th) into the participation of military officers in a Christian Embassy promotional video.

No “official” release of the “Official Use Only” report could be found, though a few sites have scanned copies–most notably, Michael Weinstein’s MRFF, which claims credit for instigating the investigation. [Edit:  The IG has released a public version on their website.  It is now available here.]

Notable quotes from the report:

Military officers who appeared in a promotional video for Christian Embassy improperly endorsed and participated with a non-federal entity while in uniform.  (Violates JER Sections 2635.702b and 3-300a, and DoD and Service Regulations on uniform wear.)

Two participants were found not to have violated any rules, because though they personally endorsed Christian Embassy  Read more

Appeal Dropped in Government/Religious Speech Case

The Defense Logistics Agency has ended its appeal of a case in which an employee was barred from posting a “religious” message on an employee bulletin board.  (See the ADF article.)  (The case was decided in District Court in March in favor of the employee.)  The case involved an employee who posted a message stating that supporting the Combined Federal Campaign could result in support of abortion and homosexuality, among other things.  Read more

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