{"id":6561,"date":"2010-07-28T00:30:24","date_gmt":"2010-07-28T06:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=6561"},"modified":"2015-06-27T19:16:05","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T22:16:05","slug":"jewish-chaplains-atheists-and-the-mrffs-reza-aslan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/28\/jewish-chaplains-atheists-and-the-mrffs-reza-aslan\/","title":{"rendered":"Jewish Chaplains, Atheists, and the MRFF’s Reza Aslan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chaplain (Col) Jacob Goldstein often attracts attention when he visits military units, as he is one of the few personnel sporting a full beard in his Army fatigues.\u00a0 Goldstein is one of seven orthodox Jewish Chaplains serving in the US Army.<\/p>\n

A recent article notes his presence at a local training event in California.\u00a0 In the article, Goldstein takes an interesting view on spirituality in the armed forces<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“The military gives great deference to religion,” said Goldstein, “You ask any commander – any Soldier that is spiritual and has some religion makes for a good Soldier.\u00a0 The fact the Soldier has some kind of comfort and has some faith – regardless of that faith – if you believe in something, that’s important.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Such a statement — a spiritual soldier makes a good soldier —\u00a0might ordinarily draw a stern and caustically worded rebuke from Michael Weinstein or his Military Religious Freedom Foundation, if it came from a Christian.\u00a0 This is\u00a0particularly relevant since two of his litigation vehicles have been atheists.\u00a0 (Interestingly, Goldstein has previously defended\u00a0the military against Weinstein’s<\/a> accusations.)\u00a0 Ironically, though, a member of the MRFF has recently been taken to task for degrading<\/em> atheists.<\/p>\n

Reza Aslan is reportedly a recognized religious scholar.\u00a0 He is also a member of Weinstein’s MRFF advisory board<\/a> (though that detail is curiously left off\u00a0the bio page of Aslan’s personal website, and even his Wikipedia page).\u00a0 Aslan has even appeared with Weinstein<\/a> at an event at the US Air Force Academy on Islam (an event that generated one of the most read articles<\/a> on this site).<\/p>\n

Aslan was recently derided for writing a “horrible<\/em> piece” (emphasis original) at the Washington Post<\/em><\/p>\n

regurgitating every nasty atheist stereotype you can think of.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The criticism came from Hemant Mehta<\/a>, a recognizable name in atheist, or “skeptic,” circles.<\/p>\n

It turns out the article at the Washington Post<\/em> wasn’t a standalone work but was actually adapted from the book Religion and the New Atheism<\/em><\/a>, where Aslan is one contributor among many.\u00a0 Mehta may have missed that part, but his criticism is sharp all the same:<\/p>\n

This is an irresponsible piece written by a person who knows nothing about the subject he’s writing about.\u00a0 Refute him, ignore him, but don’t take him seriously anymore.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, that last sentence is just as valid to Weinstein’s MRFF, of which Aslan is a part, as it might be to Aslan himself.\u00a0 Weinstein has already made his organization largely irrelevant with regard to religion in the military;\u00a0if his advisory board\u00a0member’s words are any indication, Mehta’s response seems to indicate he has\u00a0succeeded in doing so with regard to atheism as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chaplain (Col) Jacob Goldstein often attracts attention when he visits military units, as he is one of the few personnel sporting a full beard in his Army fatigues.\u00a0 Goldstein is one of seven orthodox Jewish Chaplains serving in the US Army. A recent article notes his presence at a local training event in California.\u00a0 In the article, Goldstein takes an […]<\/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":[20,5284,829,827,39,85,2,5218,7,10,828],"class_list":["post-6561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-atheism","tag-chaplain","tag-hemant-mehta","tag-jacob-goldstein","tag-jewish","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-religion","tag-reza-aslan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6561","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=6561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}