{"id":11943,"date":"2011-07-21T02:30:07","date_gmt":"2011-07-21T07:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=11943"},"modified":"2015-06-27T19:15:16","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T22:15:16","slug":"jfw-the-religious-rights-of-those-in-uniform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/21\/jfw-the-religious-rights-of-those-in-uniform\/","title":{"rendered":"JFW: The Religious Rights of Those in Uniform"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Journal of Faith and War<\/a> <\/em>has published a lengthy set of articles on “The Religious Rights of those in Uniform<\/a>.”\u00a0 The series was written by Jay Sekulow and Robert Ash.\u00a0 Dr. Sekulow is chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice (and debated Michael Weinstein<\/a> at the US Air Force Academy in 2007).\u00a0 Robert Ash (USA, Retired) is a West Point graduate, served 22 years in the Army, and teaches law at Regent University.<\/p>\n

The articles originally appeared as “Religious Rights and Military Service” in Attitudes Aren’t Free: Thinking Deeply about Attitudes in the US Armed Forces<\/a><\/em>, which contained the infamous article by Chris Rodda denigrating the celebration of Easter<\/a> by Christians in the military.<\/p>\n

The publication is a refreshingly positive perspective on what men and women of faith can <\/em>do while serving in the US military.\u00a0 So often critics have emphasized (or created an environment focused on) impermissible conduct; as a result, some military members (or religious persons considering military service) may assume their religious exercise is restricted<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That is not the case, as the JFW articles show.<\/p>\n

The first article covers the “General Legal Principles” forming the foundation of future discussions.\u00a0 It has a fascinating take on the oft-heated debate over “separation of church and state” — which starts with an astute observation:<\/p>\n

Rather than wasting time trying to determine the meaning of a phrase that does not exist in the Constitution, time would be better spent determining what the drafters of the First Amendment meant by “establishment of religion,” a phrase that does exist in the Constitution.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article then uses US Supreme Court cases to help communicate what the First Amendment was intended <\/em>to mean by those who created it and lived under it in the late 18th century.<\/p>\n

This is the\u00a0first<\/a> article in the series<\/a> that will cover<\/p>\n

(1) the importance of the free exercise of religion <\/strong>to developing and strengthening the warrior ethos;
\n(2) the role and responsibility of military commanders <\/strong>and other leaders in maintaining and protecting the moral and spiritual health of their units, including protecting the free exercise rights of the men and women they lead;
\n(3) the general role of chaplains <\/strong>in assisting commanders in executing the commanders\u2019 programs to protect and assist free exercise of religion and the role of the individual chaplain in meeting the unique needs of service members from the individual chaplain\u2019s own faith group while assisting adherents of other faith groups, and of no faith, to obtain the specific help they may be seeking;
\n(4) the rights enjoyed by all members <\/strong>of the armed forces to exercise their faith;
\n(5) specific examples of permissible religious exercise <\/strong>in the military;
\n(6) specific examples of impermissible religious conduct <\/strong>in uniform; and
\n(7) recommendations <\/strong>to policy makers on how to protect the religious rights of men and women in uniform while maintaining good order and discipline.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Journal of Faith and War has published a lengthy set of articles on “The Religious Rights of those in Uniform.”\u00a0 The series was written by Jay Sekulow and Robert Ash.\u00a0 Dr. Sekulow is chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice (and debated Michael Weinstein at the US Air Force Academy in 2007).\u00a0 Robert Ash (USA, Retired) […]<\/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":[458,88,175,96,4,78,82,1347,19,277,85,2,5218,7,17,10,171,1949,457,65,101],"class_list":["post-11943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-aclj","tag-army","tag-chris-rodda","tag-christian","tag-churchandstate","tag-congress","tag-constitution","tag-first-amendment","tag-government","tag-jay-sekulow","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-robert-ash","tag-supreme-court","tag-usafa","tag-west-point"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11943","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=11943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11943\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}