{"id":29349,"date":"2014-06-26T01:15:14","date_gmt":"2014-06-26T04:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=29349"},"modified":"2016-11-25T22:42:37","modified_gmt":"2016-11-26T01:42:37","slug":"air-force-drafts-instruction-to-strengthen-religious-liberty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/26\/air-force-drafts-instruction-to-strengthen-religious-liberty\/","title":{"rendered":"Air Force Drafts Instruction to Strengthen Religious Liberty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In an interesting comparison on perspective, the Washington Times noted near the end of May that some were making an effort to &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2014\/may\/28\/groups-push-military-for-more-religious-liberty\/?page=all#pagebreak\">push [the] military for <strong>more religious liberty<\/strong><\/a>,&#8221; including members of Congress:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Rep. John Fleming, Louisiana Republican, criticized the military for appearing \u201czealous to shut down expressions of faith.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is our military telling service members to raise their hands and ask permission before they dare to utter an expression of faith,\u201d Mr. Fleming said during a speech at the Family Research Council.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Daniel Blomberg of the Becket Fund noted that Congress had twice passed laws requiring the US military to &#8220;be more accommodating to religious beliefs and practices,&#8221; laws <!--more-->that had apparently not been fully addressed.<\/p>\n<p>The Air Force now appears to be set to modify its current policy on religious expression, which has been described by critics as overly restrictive.<\/p>\n<p>In a contrasting perspective, the Air Force Times recently claimed the Air Force was &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.airforcetimes.com\/article\/20140606\/NEWS\/306060075\/AF-drafts-instruction-weaken-limits-religious-expression\">draft[ing] instruction to <strong>weaken limits on religious expression<\/strong><\/a>.&#8221; Of course, the government <em>removing<\/em> state restrictions on religious expression is a <em>good<\/em> thing &#8212; and it also complies with the supreme law of the land, the US Constitution.<\/p>\n<p>Aside from a quote from a letter, the Air Force Times article cited only a single person: Michael &#8220;Mikey&#8221; Weinstein. Weinstein apparently received a copy of the proposed changes to AFI 1-1 &#8212; the long-debated AFI that has apparently been &#8220;misapplied&#8221; where the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/14\/air-force-reverses-will-review-religious-freedom-policy-video\">rubber meets the road<\/a>&#8221; &#8212; through an MRFF contact connected to the US Air Force Academy.<\/p>\n<p>It may seem odd to see a self-described &#8220;religious liberty&#8221; advocate fighting <em>against<\/em> regulations that would expand protections for religious liberty. But that&#8217;s because through his MRFF &#8220;charity,&#8221; Weinstein has been fighting <em>against<\/em> religious liberty for years. This is only the latest example.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, efforts by <em>actual<\/em> advocates of religious liberty and members of the US Congress have often thwarted Weinstein&#8217;s attacks.\u00a0 With the upcoming Air Force policy revision, religious freedom may yet prevail.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-like\" data-share=\"true\" data-show-faces=\"true\" data-size=\"small\" data-action=\"like\" data-layout=\"standard\"><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"><strong>ADVERTISEMENT<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><!-- blogpost --><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block;\" data-ad-format=\"auto\" data-ad-slot=\"2728423835\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6450825356098669\"><\/ins><script>\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/script><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In an interesting comparison on perspective, the Washington Times noted near the end of May that some were making an effort to &#8220;push [the] military for more religious liberty,&#8221; including members of Congress: Rep. John Fleming, Louisiana Republican, criticized the military for appearing \u201czealous to shut down expressions of faith.\u201d \u201cThis is our military telling service members to raise their [&#8230;]<\/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":[3492,459,4,78,82,770,1146,3348,85,2,5218,7,17,10,171,65],"class_list":["post-29349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-afi-1-1","tag-becket-fund","tag-churchandstate","tag-congress","tag-constitution","tag-daniel-blomberg","tag-family-research-council","tag-john-fleming","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-usafa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29349","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=29349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}