{"id":6341,"date":"2010-07-19T00:30:08","date_gmt":"2010-07-19T06:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=6341"},"modified":"2015-06-27T19:16:05","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T22:16:05","slug":"military-paper-religious-coercion-vs-religious-expression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/19\/military-paper-religious-coercion-vs-religious-expression\/","title":{"rendered":"Military Paper: Religious Coercion vs Religious Expression"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the continuing theme of military papers discussing religion in the military<\/a> comes Lt Col Jimmy M. Browning’s “Religious Expression or Religious Coercion: Commanders Caught in the Crossfire<\/a>.”\u00a0 LtCol Browning, a Colonel-select,\u00a0was an Air War College student when he published the paper in February of this year.\u00a0 He is also a USAF Chaplain.<\/p>\n

The paper brings an interesting perspective to the “conflict” between those who believe in a right to religious expression and those who believe religious expression is de facto<\/em> coercion in a military environment:<\/p>\n

[The] Military Religion [sic<\/em>]\u00a0Freedom Foundation (MRFF) is one group that describes itself as a watchdog against religious coercion…These groups are especially leery of evangelical Christians.\u00a0 In contrast, evangelical Chrisitians feel equally strong they are within their guaranteed First Amendment rights when they exercise their faith tenets of following Christ’s commandment of making disciples.\u00a0 The result is a collision between religious coercion and religious expression.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He also noted the result of accusations — even unfounded ones — on the military culture:<\/p>\n

The National Association of Evangelicals believes MRFF’s efforts are having a chilling effect on free exercise of religion and constitutionally-protected religious speech…Following a\u00a0[commanders’ briefing] all questions from commanders related to their concerns about expressing anything spiritual as a military leader.\u00a0 Additionally…many commanders [have a] growing hesitancy to express their faith or anything spiritual within a military setting.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Finally, Chaplain Browning makes an astute observation: To many critics, offense<\/span> is<\/em> coercion<\/span>:<\/p>\n

After careful analysis, the issue is not coercion but offense. For many, including MRFF, being offended<\/em> becomes the standard to determine coercion.\u00a0 With individual expression, the problem is someone will always be offended.\u00a0 Religion creates passion for those who adhere to it as well as those who want nothing of it. (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At 17 pages the paper is a brief and interesting read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the continuing theme of military papers discussing religion in the military comes Lt Col Jimmy M. Browning’s “Religious Expression or Religious Coercion: Commanders Caught in the Crossfire.”\u00a0 LtCol Browning, a Colonel-select,\u00a0was an Air War College student when he published the paper in February of this year.\u00a0 He is also a USAF Chaplain. The paper brings an interesting perspective to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[752,5284,4,750,85,2,5218,7,17,10,751],"class_list":["post-6341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-caught-in-the-crossfire","tag-chaplain","tag-churchandstate","tag-jimmy-m-browning","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion","tag-religious-coercion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6341","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=6341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}