{"id":8834,"date":"2011-01-05T00:45:58","date_gmt":"2011-01-05T05:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=8834"},"modified":"2011-08-25T01:05:54","modified_gmt":"2011-08-25T06:05:54","slug":"rock-the-fort-counter-event-struggles-with-purpose-limits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/05\/rock-the-fort-counter-event-struggles-with-purpose-limits\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Rock the Fort&#8221; Counter-Event Struggles with Purpose, Limits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As previously discussed, US Army SGT Justin Griffith is trying to <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/27\/fort-bragg-atheist-celebration-gets-complicated\/\">organize a counter-event to &#8220;Rock the Fort.&#8221;<\/a>\u00a0 His &#8220;Rock Beyond Belief&#8221; event was part of a divorce from the atheistic Fort Bragg Freedom Festival.\u00a0 Based on public information, his event seems to be outdoing his former partners in spades.\u00a0 In order to get MWR &#8220;official&#8221; Army support and access to the parade field, they need projected attendance of 2500+ people.\u00a0 Based on the publicly available information, Griffith may be on his way to that number, though its difficult to say.<\/p>\n<p>Importantly, Griffith knows his event needs to remain non-offensive to his fellow Soldiers to obtain the official support of the military he so strongly desires.\u00a0 It is highly unlikely the Army would provide support to an event demeaning to others, regardless <!--more-->of attendance projections.\u00a0 Griffith has previously acknowledged that himself, pointing out the purpose of the event was not to be an &#8220;anti-&#8221; event.<\/p>\n<p>The recent <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/03\/military-atheists-stretch-for-something-to-be-offended-by\/\">&#8220;scandal&#8221; over the Soldier Fitness Tracker<\/a> may be a poor indicator, however.\u00a0 When he blogged on the topic, he appeared to choose words hostile to the military&#8217;s attitude toward religion, and he categorically referred to his critics as &#8220;fundies,&#8221; without having any knowledge of their actual beliefs.\u00a0 Griffith\u00a0appeared to intentionally choose words, even inaccurately, for the <em>intent<\/em> of stirring the pot of conflict.\u00a0 This is\u00a0not the environment he wants to create for &#8220;Rock Beyond Belief&#8221; &#8212; yet he wrote his comments on the <em>same\u00a0website<\/em> he <em>created<\/em> for the\u00a0planned &#8220;non anti-&#8221; event.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, in his comments on his Facebook site (also a site dedicated to his &#8220;non anti-&#8221; event) over this issue, he displayed a glaring ignorance (or\u00a0disrespect) toward Chaplains (a group whose support he has sought for his event):<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.christianfighterpilot.com\/images\/grifcom2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"407\" height=\"276\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The vocal Soldier appears to be unaware that military Chaplains &#8220;stumble onto&#8221; the battlefield <em>every day<\/em>, and they do so to help support <em>all<\/em> Soldiers&#8217; religious freedom, including his.\u00a0 They daily risk their lives in &#8220;foxholes&#8221; <em>despite<\/em> the fact they carry no weapons.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/03\/update-chaplain-goetz-killed-in-afghanistan\/\">Two Chaplains<\/a> and a <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/20\/chaplain-assistant-first-killed-in-battle-in-40-years\/\">Chaplain Assistant<\/a> have paid for their service with their lives in just the last few years.<\/p>\n<p>If this is the tone of the\u00a0&#8220;Rock Beyond Belief&#8221; organizer,\u00a0it remains to be seen how he&#8217;ll keep the acts in the &#8220;Rock Beyond Belief&#8221; lineup under control &#8212; particularly when some are known for their vocal anti-theistic views.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As previously discussed, US Army SGT Justin Griffith is trying to organize a counter-event to &#8220;Rock the Fort.&#8221;\u00a0 His &#8220;Rock Beyond Belief&#8221; event was part of a divorce from the atheistic Fort Bragg Freedom Festival.\u00a0 Based on public information, his event seems to be outdoing his former partners in spades.\u00a0 In order to get MWR &#8220;official&#8221; Army support and access [&#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":[88,20,1055,1126,1056],"class_list":["post-8834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-army","tag-atheism","tag-justin-griffith","tag-rock-beyond-belief","tag-rock-the-fort"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8834","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=8834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8834\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}