Michael Weinstein recently gave an interview in which he said absolutely nothing new (a surprisingly common occurrence, given that his “war” on religious freedom in the military is several years old).\u00a0 It remains amazing, however, that no one calls Weinstein out on his obvious disdain for Christians — for no other reason than expressing Christian beliefs.<\/p>\n
The interviewer\u00a0asked a simple question<\/a>:\u00a0 “What kind of complaints do you hear about?”<\/p>\n After his standard vagaries about assaults and ruined careers, he brought up Officers’ Christian Fellowship:\u00a0 <\/p>\n There are over two dozen parachurch organizations that run rampant through the military. One of them is the Officer\u2019s Christian Fellowship. It has about 15,000 officers of many ranks, some of them generals and admirals. Their purpose is to have Christian officers exercising biblical leadership to raise up a godly military. Their three goals are to spiritually transform the U.S. military with ambassadors for Christ in uniform empowered by the Holy Spirit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Read that again and try to figure out what exactly <\/em>Weinstein is saying he hears complaints about.\u00a0 It will be a challenge, as it seems Weinstein and his research assistant Chris Rodda share a propensity to assume it is obvious to the casual observer that having Christian beliefs in the military is somehow wrong.\u00a0 Rodda has, as an employee of the MRFF,\u00a0similarly targeted OCF in the past<\/a> and said, categorically,\u00a0it should be illegal for military officers to publicly express religious views.\u00a0 Yes, that’s a “religious freedom” group talking.\u00a0 (As proof of Weinstein’s jaded and repetitive nature, its worth noting OCF hasn’t used what Weinstein calls their “three goals” for years<\/em>.)<\/p>\n The closest Weinstein gets to an actual complaint is nothing more than an insinuation [emphasis added]:<\/p>\n Their chief Bible study that they push on their helpless subordinates <\/em><\/strong>is \u201cwe will not allow the opposition, all of which is spearheaded by Satan, to thwart or prevent us from regaining territory for Jesus Christ and the U.S. military.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If anything <\/em>was being “push[ed] on…helpless subordinates” it would be actionable — meaning Weinstein would be doing victory dances on obscure allied websites with evidence of this illegal OCF activity if it were true<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 But Weinstein is…”embellishing,” to put it nicely.\u00a0 He provides no proof this Bible study — or any other one — has been pushed on anyone<\/em>, much less a “helpless subordinate.”<\/p>\n As\u00a0this is the only<\/em>\u00a0thing in Weinstein’s\u00a0entire answer that may be an offense, why all the detail about OCF?\u00a0 Like Rodda, his primary effort, it seems, is to take issue with Christian beliefs<\/em>, not anything Christian officers actually do<\/em>.\u00a0 Why else, then, is this specific\u00a0Bible study\u00a0even relevant to the discussion?\u00a0 The answer is simple: Weinstein thinks those religious beliefs look bad.\u00a0 (The study is one of many offered on the OCF site, though it\u00a0isn’t a “chief” anything.\u00a0 The study\u00a0is here<\/a> (PDF<\/a>) if you fancy a study on Nehemiah.)<\/p>\n Yet, the self-proclaimed “religious freedom” advocate doesn’t defend those religious beliefs.\u00a0 Instead, he holds them up for derision, or, worse, would have his followers believe they are impermissible.\u00a0 After all, as the MRFF has routinely demonstrated, if you’re not the right kind <\/em>of Christian — as defined by Weinstein, of course\u00a0— you’re not entitled to “religious freedom.”<\/p>\n As an aside:\u00a0Weinstein did make one “new” comment about his self-founded charity:<\/p>\n We\u2019re a very militant and aggressive organization…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Straight from the horse’s mouth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Michael Weinstein recently gave an interview in which he said absolutely nothing new (a surprisingly common occurrence, given that his “war” on religious freedom in the military is several years old).\u00a0 It remains amazing, however, that no one calls Weinstein out on his obvious disdain for Christians — for no other reason than expressing Christian beliefs. The interviewer\u00a0asked a simple […]<\/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":[23,175,96,85,2,5218,7,2174,81,179,17,10,171],"class_list":["post-19680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-bible","tag-chris-rodda","tag-christian","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-nehemiah","tag-ocf","tag-officers-christian-fellowship","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19680","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=19680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}