{"id":266,"date":"2008-12-06T00:30:08","date_gmt":"2008-12-06T07:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=266"},"modified":"2015-06-27T19:16:53","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T22:16:53","slug":"support-for-military-marriages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/06\/support-for-military-marriages\/","title":{"rendered":"Support for Military Marriages"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A recent Armed Forces Press <a href=\"http:\/\/www.af.mil\/news\/story.asp?id=123126771\">article<\/a> notes the efforts by military leaders to stave off increases in military divorce rates.\u00a0 According to the article, approximately 58% of military members are married, and there is an approximately 3.5% divorce rate.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>While praising the benefits these programs offer families, officials said they recognize that strong marital and family relationships make better Soldiers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>It also has an important impact on a soldier&#8217;s decision to re-enlist&#8230;The Army recruits Soldiers, but it retains families.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There are\u00a0a wide variety of programs, many of which are run by the Chaplaincy.\u00a0 The article includes praise for the US Army&#8217;s &#8220;Strong Bonds.&#8221;\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.strongbonds.org\">Strong Bonds<\/a> is a Chaplain-run program that has come under fire<!--more-->\u00a0from Weinstein&#8217;s Military Religious Freedom Foundation for its religious content.\u00a0 The MRFF describes the program as<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>an evangelistic Christian program operating under the guise of a pre-deployment and post-deployment family wellness and marriage training program. [It is] run entirely by chaplains, eliminating the important physical and mental health aspects provided by public health nurses, and turning the whole thing into a program of Christian religious retreats&#8211;paid for with tax dollars.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Notably, the voluntary offering of Strong Bonds is one of a variety of programs offered for support to Army personnel.\u00a0 However, the MRFF has indicated that the program is &#8216;so enticing&#8217; that it &#8220;coerces&#8221; people to go and see religious content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A recent Armed Forces Press article notes the efforts by military leaders to stave off increases in military divorce rates.\u00a0 According to the article, approximately 58% of military members are married, and there is an approximately 3.5% divorce rate. While praising the benefits these programs offer families, officials said they recognize that strong marital and family relationships make better Soldiers. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4,2,5218,7,10],"class_list":["post-266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chaplain","tag-churchandstate","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266","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=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}