Tag Archives: al shine

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

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

Homosexuality and Religion in the Military: The Right to Be Wrong

The Journal of Faith and War reprints a well-written commentary on the repeal of the policy most commonly known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the US military.  Written by retired Cols Al Shine* and Don Snider, “The Right to be Wrong” forwards a simple premise:  If homosexuality is to be permitted in the military, the military must have a decidedly — and explicitly — neutral stance between both opposing ideologies:  Read more