The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, created and run by Michael “Mikey” Weinstein, falsely claimed yesterday that the US Navy had “banned” a Christian Bible. The context was the presence of a “missing man” or POW/MIA table at the Navy Operational Support Center (NOSC) in Alameda, California. (A NOSC isn’t a Navy base, but a small facility that helps Navy Reservists maintain their readiness.) The MRFF routinely complains about Bibles being included in the displays, and this time also took issue with the specific Bible on the table. Weinstein’s sometime-research assistant Christine “Chris” Rodda put it this way [emphasis added]:

A POW/MIA table in the facility’s break room not only contains a Christian Bible, but the particular Bible displayed is the Holman “Sailor’s Bible,” one of the Holman military Bibles with the official branch emblem that MRFF got banned by the military back in 2012!

Someone must have had an old edition of this Bible…and decided to add it to the display, not only turning the table, which should honor ALL POWs and MIAs, into a divisive display of Christian privilege but doing so with a Bible that has been banned by the Navy for nearly a decade.

Later, Mikey – who never met an adjective he didn’t like – claimed the Bible had been “explicitly banned.”

One would think that a branch of the US military “banning” a Bible would be big news, but for some reason it’s never come up.

Probably because Chris Rodda isn’t telling the truth (again).

In 2004, B&H Publishing Group received permission to add official military emblems to Service-specific editions of the Holy Bible. They sold without incident for years. In 2011, the MRFF began filing FOIAs about the Bibles to learn about how they were able to have the emblems. Sometime during that period – probably when the MRFF started pinging each of the branches – the Services chose not to renew the trademark permission to B&H, though the DoD specifically said B&H could continue to sell the Bibles until it had exhausted its supply. For its part, the publisher replaced the trademarked symbols with generic Service symbols (which are, quite frankly, indistinguishable to most people). Nearly a year later, the MRFF did a victory dance and claimed they were responsible for the end of the “unconstitutional” Bibles, though the DoD said otherwise.

No part of that sounds like a Bible “ban,” explicit or otherwise, by the Navy or anyone else.

When the Sailor’s Bible sitting on that POW/MIA table was published, it included the emblem of the US Navy – by permission of the US Navy. Neither Chris Rodda nor Mikey Weinstein provided any evidence to support their claim that Bible was ever banned, disallowed, or otherwise restricted in any way, shape, or form.

It appears they simply made it up.

In all likelihood, Rodda and Weinstein know the general public people has grown tired of their attacks on POW/MIA tables. Even if people agree with the MRFF, the standard battle cry of “I’m offended by a Bible” probably doesn’t bring in the donations it once did. The “banned Bible” trope was probably an effort to add spice to an otherwise bland announcement, to take advantage of cancel culture opposition and create scandal and gain publicity where there is otherwise little interest.

As for the POW/MIA table itself, it’s worth remembering that the point of the memorial is to honor those who were Prisoners of War and Missing In Action. The MRFF has tried to claim that by having a Bible in the display, a POW/MIA table doesn’t represent all POW/MIAs and must therefore be modified to their approved criteria.

But for all its supposed offense, the MRFF has never once provided a statement from a former POW who supported their attacks on the memorials. By contrast, there are former POWs who have supported having a Bible on their memorial table. In fact, the MRFF is currently supporting a lawsuit by non-POWs to have a Bible removed from a POW/MIA table. The Bible in that POW/MIA display came from a former POW.

How’s that for chutzpah?

For all the smoke (apparently coming from Mikey’s ears), there is little fire. If the most egregious example Mikey can find of “noxious illegalities” violating religious freedom is a Bible on a table in the break room of an obscure Navy facility, things don’t seem to be that bad. (Of course, Weinstein is willfully ignoring US troops who are actually filing real complaints about violations of their religious freedom because they don’t meet his criteria of the “right” religious beliefs.)

And, amazingly enough, despite the fact Weinstein is sorely lacking for actual religious freedom issues to “fight” in the US military, he still manages to pay himself hundreds of thousands of dollars a year – out of the “donations” contributed to his tax-exempt “charity.”

Would you stoop to accepting nearly a half-million dollars a year if it required you to bloviate about non-existent crises every couple of months? Weinstein’s supporters may not be getting their money’s worth: Seems like most people do that on Facebook for free.

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