Tag Archives: Religion

Rep King: Extremists have Joined US Military

Update:  Members of the joint Congressional committee “blasted” the Department of Defense for downplaying talk of terrorism and referring to the Fort Hood massacre as “workplace violence.”  The DoD was accused of being “politically correct” in avoiding association of the terrorist attacks with Islam — the same thing it was found at fault for in the months leading up to the Fort Hood shooting.

US Representative Peter King (R-NY), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is holding another hearing on “homegrown terrorism.”  While he was criticized for his earlier hearings on the subject for the implied negativity toward American Muslims, these new hearings are a joint meeting between the House and Senate committees, showing “threat is legitimate,” according to King.

King and Senator Joe Lieberman, his Senate counterpart from Connecticut, both agreed that US military soft targets are “increasingly in the terrorists’ scope.”

There is growing evidence that homegrown terrorists see military personnel and bases as legitimate, high-value targets, lawmakers Read more

Walter Reed Rescinds Ban on Bible

Update: More than 20,000 people signed a petition in less than 24 hours to “help end the ban” on Bibles at Walter Reed.

A US Army officer “in disbelief” forwarded a Walter Reed National Military Medical Center memorandum regarding patient visitation to the Family Research Council.  The memorandum said:

f. No religious items (i.e. Bibles, reading material, and/or artifacts) are allowed to be given away or used during a visit.

The ban was so broadly written it would prevent even families from providing Bibles to their wounded family members, and it banned priests from bringing the eucharist or providing last rites.  Notably, while the policy banned all religious items, the Bible was the only religious text specifically mentioned.

The FRC circulated the memorandum at Capitol Hill, and Rep Steve King (R-Iowa) took to the House floor and “blasted” the policy:

Mr. Speaker, these military men and women who are recovering at Walter Reed and Bethesda have given their all for America…They’ve Read more

Jewish Chaplain Gets Waiver for Beard

Rabbi Menachem Stern previously sued the US Army for accepting him as a chaplain candidate — and then unaccepting him when they realized he intended to keep his beard.

The Aleph Institute, a Chabad-Lubavitch organization that assists Jewish military personnel, Jewish inmates and their families, and Sens. Charles E. Schumer, Kristen Gillibrand and Joseph Lieberman sought to persuade top brass that the rabbi should be able to keep his beard.

As have many others, they cited Chaplain Goldstein Read more

ACLJ: Michael Weinstein’s MRFF is Radical, Bullying

Yesterday the American Center for Law and Justice’s David French wrote a scathing (and accurate) critique of Michael Weinstein’s Military Religious Freedom Foundation (though it never mentions Weinstein by name).  The piece is entitled “The Campaign Against the Cross is Not About “Freedom,”” and its genesis is the current controversy over the cross at a memorial on Camp Pendleton.

French minces no words:

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) is perhaps the most deceptively-named organization in the United States.  Its tone is hysterical (it actually calls those who complain about religious influence “spiritual rape victims/tormentees”) and its methods Orwellian.

French also noted an example of the MRFF’s practice of publishing letters from those who claim to be active servicemembers, with their names redacted.  Chris Rodda published a letter from a Marine senior NCO that French called “incredibly profane and unprofessional.”  The redacted writer even said would probably be “kicked out” of the Read more

Fighter Pilot’s Family Finds Solace in Faith

The widow of US Air Force Capt Eric Ziegler, killed in June in a crash due to G-LOC, has demonstrated a calm reliance on her faith.  When asked about knowing the circumstances of her husband’s death, Sarah Ziegler said she found them “kind of irrelevant.”

“I’ve always believed, and still do, that everything happens for a reason and a purpose, and so I didn’t need a source or object to blame or anything like that,” she said.

While there is still grief, faith can help people deal with such loss.  Why?  Knowing there is an ultimate purpose, and the grief is temporary.  Sarah understands the fact that she and her husband had — and still have — a platform for Christ:  Read more

In Reversal, Weinstein Defends Christian Military Service

In a stark departure from his normal incendiary vitriol, Michael Weinstein recently took the unprecedented step of defending Christians serving in the US military.

Read carefully [emphasis added, as quoted at the American Muslim]:

Muslim-American service members, as well as their comrades-in-arms of all faith groups, know full well that the sworn oaths of loyalty to the mission of serving the American people and protecting our cherished constitutional freedoms take precedence over religious identity.

This is a complete reversal of prior accusations that Christians in Read more

Military Atheists Rally Around the Crossbuster

As noted before, some atheists, like many political or social activists, can sometimes become so engrossed in their presumed persecution they see offense where none exists.

Military atheists, for example, took a General officer to task when she made the fairly benign statement that military service requires you to believe in things “bigger than yourself.”  They derided a US military Chaplain for describing his duties as required by regulation.  In both cases, statements were attributed to the officers they didn’t actually say — it was just what the atheists thought they heard — a perception apparently skewed by an assumption of persecution.  Most recently, atheists brought up an old story about a Navy atheist who was “forced to permanently cover” a tattoo.  CTR2 Michael Wheeler had the logo of the band Bad Religion, the “crossbuster,” tattooed on his arm where it was visible, even in uniform:

Naturally, there was much consternation and implication of persecution on the part of the atheists.  In the end, a few who commented did correctly note a Read more

Despite Weinstein Threats, USAFA Supports Local Food Bank

Just days after Michael Weinstein claimed the US Air Force Academy was inappropriately asking USAFA cadets to donate toys to needy children, a news article was published indicating what Weinstein describes as a “cancer” is, indeed, widespread:

The cadets are even making donations to a local food bank.

Air Force Academy chaplains and the Cadet Interfaith Council [presented] a $1,200 check along with 125 cans of food to the Care and Share Food Bank of Southern Colorado at the food bank’s site in Colorado Springs, Colo.

By its nature the Cadet Interfaith Council obviously had a connection to the chaplains, but the food drive was a cadet-initiated, cadet-run event:  Read more

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