{"id":10501,"date":"2011-03-28T02:00:43","date_gmt":"2011-03-28T07:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=10501"},"modified":"2011-03-27T23:54:20","modified_gmt":"2011-03-28T04:54:20","slug":"au-aclu-file-foia-over-rock-the-fort-rock-beyond-belief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/28\/au-aclu-file-foia-over-rock-the-fort-rock-beyond-belief\/","title":{"rendered":"AU, ACLU File FOIA over Rock the Fort, Rock Beyond Belief"},"content":{"rendered":"

Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed a Freedom of Information Act request<\/a> over recent concerts at Fort Bragg.\u00a0 (More accurately, they skipped the FOIA office everybody else has to use and sent a letter directly to the Secretary of the Army.)<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the letter presents a schizophrenic perspective.\u00a0 On one hand, they say Fort Bragg’s interaction with Rock the Fort was “unconstitutional.”<\/p>\n

we believe that the actions of [Chaplain (Col) David] Hillis and the Department of the Army, in coordinating, planning and supporting last year\u2019s Rock the Fort concert, violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the other, they demand to know if Rock Beyond Belief is truly being treated “equally” with Rock the Fort.\u00a0 Equally unconstitutionally?<\/p>\n

The letter also makes some outlandish claims about religion in the military:<\/p>\n

Religious endorsement is also forbidden in the statements of government officials, such as those found in Colonel Hillis\u2019s letter, referenced above, as well as in the countless emails obtained through our public records request.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Um, no.\u00a0 The letter to which the group is referring was from a Christian military Chaplain, to local Christian leaders, discussing a Christian event sponsored by the military Christian congregations.<\/p>\n

The ACLU and AU may be shocked to learn an Islamic military Chaplain can endorse Islam; a Jewish military Chaplain can endorse Judaism; in fact, any<\/em> Chaplain is free to endorse his own faith and the faith of his congregation.\u00a0 In addition, with some discretion, any<\/em> military member can “endorse” a particular religious view on “countless emails.”<\/p>\n

Just as President Obama, the US military Commander in Chief, can express his hope in his Christian faith<\/a> and encouragement to others of like mind, so, too, can his subordinates — even on “official” systems, consistent with governing regulations.<\/p>\n

To date, there has been no evidence provided to support the accusation the military interaction with Rock the Fort was “unConstitutional” any more than Chaplains themselves are unConstitutional.\u00a0 That hasn’t stopped people from accusing Fort Bragg of illicit conduct — even Rock Beyond Belief supporters.<\/p>\n

Despite efforts by Fort Bragg to get the accurate story out<\/a>, misinformation continues to be forwarded by those who likely\u00a0know better.\u00a0 Speaking of Fort Bragg and the RBB event, Jason Torpy of the MAAF recently claimed<\/a><\/p>\n

Fort Bragg leaders blocked the planned April date.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Actually, that couldn’t be further from the truth<\/a>.\u00a0 But the meme that atheists and Rock Beyond Belief are\u00a0somehow “victims” of the military-Christian complex\u00a0is\u00a0a far more compelling story line than is the truth.\u00a0 In fact, public interest in RBB has nearly doubled since it was “canceled,” meaning its planned September date may actually be able to justify a larger crowd estimate and potentially even garner the vaunted parade field.<\/p>\n

Of course, there’s still that issue of funding, but there’s an easy solution:\u00a0 Give exactly<\/em><\/span> <\/em>the same support.\u00a0 Have the Fort Bragg Christian congregations take a special collection to support Rock Beyond Belief.\u00a0 Then the atheist event — which currently claims it can’t generate enough funds from atheists to put itself on — can be funded instead by the Christian offering plate, just\u00a0like RtF.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed a Freedom of Information Act request over recent concerts at Fort Bragg.\u00a0 (More accurately, they skipped the FOIA office everybody else has to use and sent a letter directly to the Secretary of the Army.) Interestingly, the letter presents a schizophrenic perspective.\u00a0 On […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[88,5284,96,4,82,1023,2,43,10,171,1126,1056],"class_list":["post-10501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-army","tag-chaplain","tag-christian","tag-churchandstate","tag-constitution","tag-fort-bragg","tag-military","tag-obama","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-rock-beyond-belief","tag-rock-the-fort"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10501","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=10501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}