{"id":1005,"date":"2009-10-02T00:30:56","date_gmt":"2009-10-02T07:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=1005"},"modified":"2015-06-27T19:16:31","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T22:16:31","slug":"military-religion-question-answered-email","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/02\/military-religion-question-answered-email\/","title":{"rendered":"Military Religion Question Answered: Email"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US military has been accused of allowing its members to illegally use its official government email system to distribute messages with religious content (see background here<\/a>).\u00a0 These actions have been called “unConstitutional” and “a violation of military regulations.”<\/p>\n

This e-mail distribution has violated the separation of church and state [and] violates well established [military regulations].<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In one specific incident, a base Chaplain asked the staff to forward a Bible study announcement.\u00a0 Did that message violate regulations, or any other policy or standard?<\/p>\n

The shortest, most accurate answer: No<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Since the regulation that was allegedly violated was not cited (as is often the case, given the previous examples), it is difficult to know what, precisely, the offended persons felt was a violation of regulations.\u00a0 Was it the fact the email was a \u201cmass e-mail?\u201d\u00a0 Was it because it contained religious content?\u00a0 In one specific citation, Jason Leopold\u2019s article<\/a> did note that some people complained about<\/p>\n

the fact that religious announcements were not supposed to be circulated using e-mail accounts maintained by the federal government.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Were those people correct?<\/p>\n

Did the Chaplain\u2019s religious\u00a0announcement violate military regulations by being on a government system?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Contrary to the accusation, military regulations actually support<\/em> the actions of the Chaplain.\u00a0 Chaplains are directed<\/em> in the regulations of every service to create and maintain programs to support the religious needs of servicemembers.\u00a0 For example, Air Force Policy Directive (AFPD) 52-1<\/a>, which governs the Air Force Chaplain service, says<\/p>\n

Chaplains\u2026design and implement Chaplain Service programs to meet the spiritual and religious needs of assigned Air Force members, their families and other authorized personnel.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since the publicly available information indicates the Chaplain was announcing a \u201cprogram to meet the spiritual and religious needs\u201d of servicemembers, he was fulfilling<\/em> his duties under the regulations, not violating<\/em> them.<\/p>\n

In addition, in the original post of this question, USAFChaplain correctly noted<\/a> that current Air Force guidance<\/a> emphasizes that \u201cChaplain programs will receive communications support as would comparable staff activities.\u201d\u00a0 Thus, if other staff programs were entitled to receive base-wide email messaging (as they most certainly were), the base-wide distribution of the message was wholly within Air Force policy guidance.<\/p>\n

As with other accusations that only make vague allusions to military regulations, it is difficult to \u201cprove\u201d a negative.\u00a0 No military regulation, Department of Defense policy, or Constitutional clause restricts Chaplains (or others acting on their behalf) from announcing a Bible study in an email on a government communications system.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

While people may presume<\/em> “that\u00a0religious announcements [are] not supposed to be circulated using e-mail accounts maintained by the federal government,” that presumption is incorrect.<\/p>\n

The Chaplain\u2019s announcement was in compliance with regulations<\/strong> regarding the use of government email systems.<\/p>\n

Did the email violate military regulations due to its religious content?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

While this point is made moot by the discussion above, it is educational to note that there are no special regulations for email with religious content<\/strong>.\u00a0 The regulations regarding the government email system are the same regardless<\/em> of content (see DoD 5500.7-R paragraph 2-301.a, available here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Despite this rather obvious fact, \u201creligious content\u201d on a government system is a frequent \u201cviolation\u201d that the Military Religious Freedom Foundation cites.\u00a0 In 2006 the MRFF cited email content in a complaint<\/a> about the US Air Force Academy.\u00a0 In each of its three lawsuits since then (two dismissed, one in litigation), it has repeated the accusation that the military permits the \u201cunConstitutional use\u201d of government email that contains references to religion, as with the Chaplain\u2019s Bible study announcement.\u00a0 In its \u201cevidence\u201d that the military promotes religious beliefs, the MRFF lawsuit<\/a> cites<\/p>\n

Constitutionally impermissible support for illegal use of official military e-mail accounts to send e-mails containing religious rhetoric.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Like many of the accusations in the lawsuit, the vague allegation is supported by no specifics.\u00a0 However, the 2006 MRFF complaint cited an Air Force Academy\u00a0Staff Sergeant\u00a0who sent a \u201cHappy Thanksgiving\u201d email (that contained Bible verses) to a specific group of friends and co-workers.<\/p>\n

As noted previously, military regulations do not specifically address religious content, even in personal emails.\u00a0 The \u201cRevised Interim Guidelines<\/a>\u201d published not long after the Air Force Academy \u201cscandal\u201d made this rather apparent statement of the obvious:<\/p>\n

General rules regarding use of government computers apply to personal religious matters as they do for other personal matters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thus, any application of the regulations to a personal (unofficial) email, as with the Staff Sergeant\u2019s \u201cHappy Thanksgiving\u201d message, would have to apply equally regardless of the content<\/em>.\u00a0 The fact that the Staff Sergeant included religious text in her email is therefore irrelevant to any Air Force regulation.\u00a0 With regard to applying the rules, her message is the equivalent of \u201cHave a great four day weekend!\u201d<\/p>\n

The equal applicability of the regulations regardless of content sometimes gets missed (or intentionally ignored) by those on both sides of the debate.\u00a0 For example, an activist might complain about an Air Force member using a Biblical quote in their email signature block, using the same rhetoric about violations of military regulations, unConstitutional conduct, etc.\u00a0 Or, if an Air Force member who has such a signature block is told to remove it, they might respond as if they are being mistreated for their faith.\u00a0 In this particular example, neither is entirely correct.\u00a0 (An example of this type of\u00a0incident<\/a> occurred in 2004.)<\/p>\n

With regard to the Air Force, Air Force Instruction (AFI) 33-119<\/a> says that<\/p>\n

Users will not add slogans, quotes, special backgrounds, special stationeries, digital images, unusual fonts, etc., to the body of their electronic messages.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thus, a strict application of this AFI means that no one is allowed to have any<\/em> quote of any<\/em> content in their official\u00a0email signature block.\u00a0 The activist is correct, then, that the Bible quote violates the regulation\u2014but not because it is a religious<\/em> quotation.\u00a0 Conversely, the military member may have a legitimate objection if the regulation is selectively enforced and only their<\/em> signature block is restricted, while their peers are allowed to maintain quotes in their signature blocks. (That is a topic for another time.)<\/p>\n

This rule refers specifically to official<\/em> email (which is the context of the AFI).\u00a0 While possible, it is unlikely that this rule would be (properly) applied against a military member who used their email for an authorized unofficial use.<\/p>\n

The referenced email was in compliance with regulations<\/strong> with regard to the inclusion of religious content.<\/p>\n

In the referenced article, Jason Leopold also cites three other instances of ‘inappropriate mass emails,’ but there is insufficient publicly available information with which to draw a conclusion.\u00a0 Leopold cites no specific concern other than lamenting their wide distribution (specifically emphasizing the number of recipients) and the fact that they had Christian content.\u00a0 As noted above, wide distribution and sectarian content are not inherently prohibited on a government system.<\/p>\n

With respect to the incident at Creech, the Air Force ultimately opted to give the Judge Advocate General voluntary oversight of Chaplain distributions.\u00a0 They said:<\/p>\n

The Chaplain agreed to allow [the JAG] to review content of future publications\/flyers…[They] also reviewed the requirement for Chapel events to be sponsored and announced by the Chapel, not via command channels or \u2018spam\u2019 to avoid the appearance of leadership endorsement of any one faith, program or ideology…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There does not appear to be an Air Force-wide \u201crequirement for Chapel events to be\u2026announced by the Chapel.\u201d\u00a0 However, it could be a local Creech policy, which would be the Commander\u2019s prerogative.<\/p>\n

Requiring legal review of religious publications is a troublesome prospect, but is indicative of the defensive posture that the military has chosen to take in the face of public accusations.\u00a0 Regrettably, no military official defended the Chaplain, even though his actions were entirely within the bounds of all known policies and procedures.<\/p>\n

Two final notes.<\/p>\n

First<\/strong>,\u00a0Leopold’s article noted\u00a0that a portion of the advertised Bible study was\u00a0entitled \u201cMoses the Leader: How would you like to lead 1,000,000 whiners?”\u00a0 Leopold said this caused \u201cnumerous recipients [to complain] about the negative stereotype of Jews.\u201d\u00a0 Besides the fact that \u201cwhining\u201d does not appear to be a widely accepted Jewish stereotype, the same object lesson and the same terminology (\u201cwhiners\u201d or its equally negative derivatives) have been used in both Christian and<\/em> Jewish studies.\u00a0 In fact, with only the title it is impossible to know whether the study is Christian or Jewish.<\/p>\n

Second<\/strong>: the accusation that the email announcement violated the separation of church and state.\u00a0 Without going into excruciating detail, it is sufficient to say that if the military does not favor<\/em> a particular religion or ideology, then it is complying with Constitutional directives regarding church and state.\u00a0 Since government communication systems are open to the spiritual needs of all servicemembers (as shown by messages announcing Jewish, Islamic, Wiccan, Buddhist, Freethinker, and other meetings), the accusation that the Chaplain\u2019s use of the government\u2019s system violated church and state is \u201csensational\u201d but unfounded.<\/p>\n

The fallout from this incident did yield an interesting bit on the hypersensitivity and volatility of the topic of religion in the military:\u00a0 The founder of the MRFF, Michael Weinstein, emailed a heated message about Constitutional violations to the wing commander the same day<\/em> the original offending email was sent out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US military has been accused of allowing its members to illegally use its official government email system to distribute messages with religious content (see background here).\u00a0 These actions have been called “unConstitutional” and “a violation of military regulations.” This e-mail distribution has violated the separation of church and state [and] violates well established [military regulations]. In one specific incident, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,25],"tags":[20,23,37,4,19,44,39,2,5218,7,10,77],"class_list":["post-1005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chaplain","category-military-regulations","tag-atheism","tag-bible","tag-buddhism","tag-churchandstate","tag-government","tag-islam","tag-jewish","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-religion","tag-wicca"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}