Tag Archives: air force

Air Force Oath: Atheists Protest Right Thing the Wrong Way

The American Humanist Association — the same group vying for an atheist chaplain — has threatened to sue the Air Force because the military enlistment oath ends in “So help me God,” and an Airman at Creech AFB lined out part of the oath on his enlistment form:

According to the AHA, the unnamed airman was told Aug. 25 that the Air Force would not accept his contract because he had crossed out the phrase “so help me God.”…

That is unconstitutional and unacceptable, the AHA said.

“The government cannot compel a nonbeliever to take an oath that affirms the existence of a supreme being,” Miller said. “Numerous cases affirm that atheists have the right to omit theistic language from enlistment or reenlistment contracts.”

They’re correct. The problem with the AHA’s position is they demonstrated an amazing lack of comprehension of the law — and basic public relations skills.

After three pages of pontificating in their demand letter, the AHA Read more

Military Prohibits Recognition at Vacation Bible School

Update: Tony Perkins addresses the issue at One News Now. Also at the Christian Post.

Todd Starnes at FoxNews reports on the decision by a local National Guard armory not to be recognized at a local Vacation Bible School — because, they said, it would violate the military policies on religion.  (The Washington Times and others subsequently picked up the story.)

Bible Baptist Church in Carthage…decided to honor the military during their annual Vacation Bible School. The theme was “God’s Rescue Squad.” And each day of the week, the church invited local “rescue squads” to visit with the boys and girls.

The paramedics came on Monday and on Read more

Fighter Pilot Retires to Become Full-Time Pastor

LtCol Eric Samuelson recently made the local Portland, Maine, news when he flew low level over his community on his retirement flight:

Flanked by two other F-15 fighter jets, Samuelson led the formation from Barnes Air National Guard Base in Westfield, Massachusetts, to northern Maine for low-altitude training. After buzzing Portland, they headed for the jetport, where more than 100 members of his church were waiting in a parking lot by the runway…

Samuelson has been a pastor at The Rock Church for some time, and the article noted he found no conflict between his roles as Christian faith leader and military Read more

Army War College Publishes Paper on Religious Hostility

The US Army War College published a monograph on the core topic of the US military’s “evolving culture of hostility toward religious presence and expression.”  The authors were Don Snider, a Senior Fellow in the Center for the Army Profession and Ethic (CAPE) at West Point and an Adjunct Research Professor in the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College, and retired US Army Col Alex Shine of the War College.

The paper, entitled “A Soldier’s Morality, Religion, and Our Professional Ethic: Does the Army’s Culture Facilitate Integration, Character Development, and Trust in the Profession?“, is clearly meant to be academic, but at 30 pages makes for a fairly easy – and worthwhile – read.

The authors focus on the influence of changing social values on ethics within the US military, as demonstrated in the increasing secularism in American society that is essentially hostile to religion:  Read more

Air Force “Honors” Stonewall Riots?

An Air Force article on a homosexual/transgender pride “celebration” at Andersen AFB, Guam, noted the history behind the June event:

Pride Month is celebrated annually in the U.S. during June to honor the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York, a tipping point for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights movement.

For those who haven’t looked it up, the “Stonewall Riots” were essentially a police raid of a “gay bar” that went bad, with patrons attacking the police. When the outnumbered police retreated to a building for their safety, the homosexual rioters attempted to set the building on fire. Read more

Do the Right Thing

In the autumn of your years, as you reflect on the mark you have left, you will be proudest of those times you took the risk to do the right thing and not the expedient.  And you will be most ashamed to recall the times you remained silent when you should have stated your mind.

General Charles G. Boyd, USAF, Retired, May 2006

Read more

Air Force Commander Calls for New Core Value: Courage

Col Christopher Sage recently wrote an article (oddly, published at the commercial Air Force Times rather than through the Air Force) calling on the Air Force to explicitly add “courage” to its list of core values that currently include integrity, service, and excellence.

The trait of courage was absorbed under integrity in the 1997 construct, and only briefly described as “doing what is right…”

Courage should be explicit, not implicit, in our core values. It is time to elevate courage to its proper place.

In an interesting bit of history, Col Sage notes that the 1997 Air Force pamphlet on the core values focused on the institution, rather than the individual:

“Our first task is to fix organizations; individual character development is possible, but it is not a goal.” It goes on Read more

LGBT Airman Describes Negative Impact to Morale

An official Air Force article entitled “Monster in the closet: An Airman fights prejudice” contradicts its own title as it describes a homosexual Airman who does not experience (or fight) prejudice in the Air Force.

Interestingly, though, she relates a story that counters the mainstream idea that the open service by homosexuals in the US military was a “non-event” [emphasis added]:

“I knew an LGBT Airman who deployed after the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and made a friend of the same sex. After the Airman came out to his good friend, who he was not sexually interested in, his friend ostracized him. It made the deployment harder for both men…”

So a homosexual “coming out” to a military peer negatively impacted morale in the deployed combat environment.  Anecdote, yes.  However, it may indicate a crack Read more

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