{"id":2768,"date":"2009-12-28T00:30:52","date_gmt":"2009-12-28T08:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=2768"},"modified":"2015-06-27T19:16:25","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T22:16:25","slug":"military-religion-question-answered-beliefs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/28\/military-religion-question-answered-beliefs\/","title":{"rendered":"Military Religion Question Answered: Beliefs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The recent Military Religion Question of the Day involved\u00a0accusations that an Air National Guard Chaplain, LtCol Dan Hornok, was &#8220;blatantly proselytizing&#8221; in a commentary he published on an Air Force website.\u00a0 The article and initial commentary can be <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/18\/military-religion-question-of-the-day-beliefs\/\">seen here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The basic questions were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Was the Chaplain &#8220;blatantly proselytizing?&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>What if the writer had not been a Chaplain?<\/li>\n<li>What do the Chaplain&#8217;s words\u2014and the critic&#8217;s\u2014say about the spiritual environment in the military?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><em>Was the Chaplain &#8220;blatantly proselytizing?&#8221;<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The shortest, most accurate answer: <!--more--><em><strong>no<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>First, it is necessary to determine\u00a0the precise accusation.\u00a0 Ignoring the unnecessary adverb, to &#8220;proselytize&#8221; means to &#8220;convert, attempt to convert, or recruit.&#8221;\u00a0 In a religious connotation, &#8220;convert&#8221; means to &#8220;cause to adopt a different religion.&#8221;\u00a0 After parsing the dictionary, it appears the Chaplain stands accused of causing, or attempting to cause, others to adopt a (different) religion.<\/p>\n<p>By what means did he attempt to convert his readers?\u00a0 Ignoring the context of the article, as the critic did, the offensive quote was<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>God sent his son Jesus into the world so that through his death on our behalf, we could have a personal relationship with him. Lest we forget, Christmas speaks of that birth and of the happiness that came from that<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The offensive quote was <em>declarative<\/em>; that is, it served to &#8220;make known, or explain.&#8221;\u00a0 It was not <em>imperative<\/em> or <em>injunctive<\/em> (expressing a command).\u00a0 It wasn&#8217;t even <em>inductive<\/em>, meaning it did not attempt to persuade, lead or influence.\u00a0 Thus, the critic accusing the Chaplain of impropriety would contend that the Chaplain was attempting to convert his readers by the statement of facts; specifically, Biblical beliefs.\u00a0 Such an accusation is ludicrous and is an insult to the intelligence of the article&#8217;s readers.<\/p>\n<p>The next question was slightly academic:\u00a0 <em><strong>What if the writer had not been a Chaplain?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>In short, it is irrelevant.\u00a0 While the expectation is somewhat higher that speech of religious content would come from a Chaplain, there is no restriction in the US military that would have prevented a non-Chaplain from writing an identical article.<\/p>\n<p>To make the point clear:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong>No military regulation, Constitutional provision, or other public policy restricts the expression of religious belief by military officers in official publications<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The final question, however, is quite important.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>What do the Chaplain&#8217;s words\u2014and the critic&#8217;s\u2014say about the spiritual environment in the military?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Chaplain Hornok&#8217;s article is a wonderful example of the official culture of spirituality within the US military.\u00a0 The US military holds the religious liberties of its members, as protected by the US Constitution,\u00a0sacred.\u00a0 It vigorously protects their rights to free exercise, expression, and personal belief,\u00a0qualified\u00a0only by military necessity.<\/p>\n<p>As a result of those freedoms ensured by the spiritual climate in the military, the Chaplain was able to speak from his personal spiritual paradigm and make his beliefs known.\u00a0 However, in another example of the institutional religious environment in the US military,\u00a0he expressed his personal religious beliefs\u00a0in a way that was inoffensive to other belief systems.\u00a0 This is a careful balance of religious freedom and sensitivity to others&#8217; beliefs, a sometimes difficult balance that Hornok achieved quite well.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The critic&#8217;s words speak less to the spiritual environment that <em>exists<\/em> in the military, and more to the environment some would <em>like<\/em>.\u00a0 Over the past few years there have been implications that the mere statement of religious belief by a military officer, even as a personal biographical descriptor, was impermissible.\u00a0 (For example, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianfighterpilot.com\/religionandmilitary.htm#other\">complaint against the US Air Force Academy<\/a> by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State specifically cited &#8220;faculty members [who] introduced themselves to their classes as born-again Christians.&#8221;)\u00a0 The critic in this case appears to believe that an officer\u00a0publishing\u00a0a statement of a religious tenet is an attempt by that officer to convert others to his belief.\u00a0 The only logical solution to that complaint is to prohibit military members from making <em>any<\/em> religious statement\u2014a suggestion that would be laughable were it not an affront to the Constitution.<\/p>\n<p>Notably, however, while no lawsuit has successfully achieved that end, some have skillfully waged public relations campaigns to achieve similar goals.\u00a0 While it is unlikely the critic&#8217;s complaint would stand up in court, it is far easier to try it in the court of public opinion, especially when the US military is the defendant.\u00a0 Historically, the US military is averse to negative public perception&#8211;even when that perception is based on misinformation.\u00a0 The &#8220;scandal&#8221; at the US Air Force Academy several years ago, for example, was directly responsible for the Air Force writing (and re-writing) &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianfighterpilot.com\/religionandmilitary.htm#af\">religious guidelines<\/a>&#8221; for its Airmen&#8211;even though the investigation found no institutional Air Force issues.\u00a0 In this specific situation, if critics can successfully stigmatize benign\u00a0public religious statements by military officers, the military may very well restrict such statements&#8211;even though they\u00a0are permissible by any current standard.<\/p>\n<p>As an aside, it is worth noting that while the critic incorrectly accuses the Chaplain of &#8220;blatantly proselytizing,&#8221;\u00a0he does <em>not<\/em> say that such &#8220;proselytizing&#8221; is wrong&#8211;with regard to military regulations, the Constitution, or any other standard.\u00a0 He simply leaves his readers to draw the &#8220;blatant&#8221; conclusion.\u00a0 Thus, he attempts to stigmatize a legitimate activity without even justifying the accusation.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Situation Exposed<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>To return to the dictionary, &#8220;blatantly&#8221; means &#8220;obviously,&#8221; and as shown, the Chaplain&#8217;s commentary\u00a0was not &#8216;obviously attempting to convert.&#8217;\u00a0 It was obviously a statement of personal\u00a0religious belief, and nothing more.<\/p>\n<p>The critic in this case is Michael Weinstein, creator and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.\u00a0 The statements quoted above were posted under his name on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Michael-L-Weinstein\/7515233409\">his public Facebook page<\/a>\u00a0(<a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianfighterpilot.com\/images\/facee.jpg\">static version<\/a>), and appear to be a part of the second leg of his stated method of &#8220;litigation and agitation&#8221; to impose his political agenda on the US military.\u00a0 As noted above, if he can successfully &#8220;agitate&#8221; the military to the point that public expressions of religious beliefs are stigmatized, the military may become hypersensitive to such incidents and restrict them as a result.<\/p>\n<p>This incident once again highlights Weinstein&#8217;s double standard:\u00a0he criticizes Christian military members for acts in which other faiths also partake.\u00a0 Statistically, Chaplains of other faiths are less likely to quote their faiths in military publications simply due to their fewer numbers.\u00a0 That doesn&#8217;t mean they fail to do so, however.\u00a0 In one example, Chaplain (LtCdr) Abuhena Saifulislam, a US Navy Imam, has had a veritable series of articles on the Islamic faith published in local military publications.<\/p>\n<p>Compare, for example, this statement by Chaplain Hornok (in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.151arw.ang.af.mil\/news\/story.asp?id=123179378\">the commentary<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Bible tells us that 2,000 years ago, God sent his son Jesus into the world so that through his death on our behalf, we could have a personal relationship with him.\u00a0 Lest we forget, Christmas speaks of that birth and the happiness that came from that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dcmilitary.com\/stories\/102308\/southpotomac_28121.shtml\">this one by Chaplain Saifulislam<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In the Qur&#8217;an, people are asked to look around them for the signs of God in the natural world\u2026This order and balance are neither haphazard nor random. The world, and everything in it, has been created with a perfect plan, by the One who knows all. Islam is a natural faith, a religion of responsibility, purpose, balance, discipline and simplicity. To be a Muslim is to live your life remembering God and striving to follow his merciful guidance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Any reasonable reader would conclude that <em>both<\/em> Chaplains were simply describing their systems of belief.\u00a0 Yet, for some reason, Weinstein considers the first &#8220;blatant proselytizing&#8221; and has said nothing about the second (or the multiple other articles that Saifulislam has written on the tenets of his faith).<\/p>\n<p>Context is also important.\u00a0 Though Weinstein links to the article, his selective quote removes the qualifiers within the commentary.\u00a0 Similarly, Chaplain Saifulislam published the statement that &#8220;Allah is the proper name of the One True God,&#8221; but the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dcmilitary.com\/stories\/102308\/southpotomac_28121.shtml\">context on either side of that statement<\/a> is quite relevant to the reason he was writing.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of being an innocent display of myopia, however, this obsession with one religion (while ignoring others) is simply the latest example of Weinstein&#8217;s &#8216;laser-beam&#8217; focus on Christianity.\u00a0 In fact, while his organization is named for &#8220;religious freedom,&#8221; he readily admits that the reason he <em>created<\/em> the MRFF was to fight Christianity:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Hello, I&#8217;m Mikey Weinstein. I started the Military Religious Freedom Foundation to fight back against the rampant and virulent spread of dominionist, fundamentalist Christianity that is infecting the United States Armed Forces&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>His singular focus appears\u00a0so obsessive that he even managed to lay <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/11\/11\/weinstein-emphasizes-proselytization-factor-in-massacre\/\">some blame for the Fort Hood massacre<\/a> at <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/11\/09\/harassment-christianity-blamed-for-fort-hood-shooting\/\">the feet of\u00a0Christianity<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, despite Weinstein&#8217;s accusations to the contrary, military members\u2014including Chaplains\u2014are permitted to speak and write about their religious beliefs, even if their religious beliefs are part of an exclusive faith system.\u00a0 Neither Chaplain Hornok nor Chaplain Saifulislam is wrong to write public commentaries that describe their belief systems, even when they do so from their uniformed, official military positions.<\/p>\n<p>As ongoing events\u00a0continually demonstrate, the US military can learn much about itself and its adversaries through discussions about culture and religion.\u00a0 These conversations should be encouraged, not silenced.\u00a0 The military is proudly diverse; it is\u00a0made up of members who espouse varying belief systems.\u00a0 The US military reflects the society from which it is drawn&#8211;and that society holds sacred its human liberties.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of stigmatizing the public expression of belief systems, the US military (and the US public) should proudly highlight the religious freedoms present in our country and in our military that allow such expressions\u2014freedoms that exist to this scale <em>only<\/em> in the United States of America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The recent Military Religion Question of the Day involved\u00a0accusations that an Air National Guard Chaplain, LtCol Dan Hornok, was &#8220;blatantly proselytizing&#8221; in a commentary he published on an Air Force website.\u00a0 The article and initial commentary can be seen here. The basic questions were: Was the Chaplain &#8220;blatantly proselytizing?&#8221; What if the writer had not been a Chaplain? What do [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[1484,60,23,4,82,70,19,44,85,2,5218,7,17,10],"class_list":["post-2768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-regulations","tag-abuhena-saifulislam","tag-americans-united","tag-bible","tag-churchandstate","tag-constitution","tag-evangelism","tag-government","tag-islam","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2768","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=2768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}