Tag Archives: MRFF

Mikey Weinstein Cites Weasel Zippers. How the Mighty Have Fallen.

Mikey Weinstein’s good side, via Pam Zubeck.

There was a time when Michael “Mikey” Weinstein dined with celebrity. He boasted ambassadors and movie stars as advisors, let calls from senior military leaders go to voicemail so as to not interrupt his TV shows, and “graced” cable news shows like The O’Reilly Factor.  He was “somebody,” at least in his own mind.

Now, Weinstein’s star has so faded that he gets giddy when he’s merely mentioned in someone’s Facebook post. Or, as was the case earlier this week, he celebrated the fact he was “covered” by the website “Weasel Zippers“. The “coverage” by the obscure conservative news aggregator consisted of six words:

Mikey needs to get a life.

That’s apparently Read more

Mikey Weinstein Demands US Army Ban Evangelist Kenneth Copeland

UPDATE: Fort Jackson says “there are no plans to rescind the invitation,” as reported by MRFF-friendly Nina Burleigh at Newsweek. Fort Jackson said [emphasis added]:

The Prayer Breakfast is open to all community members, is entirely voluntary, and is cost free to the Army and attendees. Mr. Copeland’s participation in the prayer breakfast is not an endorsement by Fort Jackson of him or of any comments that he may present. Fort Jackson respects and protects all individual’s rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution, including ensuring access to religious services and events for those who wish to participate and protecting the rights of those who do not.

Michael “Mikey” Weinstein has sent an email to Fort Jackson, SC, demanding the Army post disinvite Kenneth Copeland from their upcoming National Prayer Breakfast. Addressing MajGen John Johnson, Fort Jackson’s Commanding General, Weinstein wrote that Fort Jackson’s upcoming speaker:

is the universally despicable, discredited, fundamentalist Christian extremist/supremacist Kenneth Copeland. Do you know ANYthing of moment about this feckless, religious bully/provocateur, General Johnson?

Weinstein went on to call Copeland “disgusting,” “a miserable, fundamentalist Christian wretch,” a “divisive and corrosive individual/religious predator and bully” and “hideously reprehensible fundamentalist Christian charlatan cum exclusivist bigot.”

Clearly, Mikey Weinstein has a thing for Kenneth Copeland.

But other than his dripping vitriol and thesaurus-like list of adjectives of disdain for the prosperity gospel minister, Weinstein never Read more

Gov Sam Brownback Confirmed as US Religious Freedom Ambassador

The newest American Religious Freedom Ambassador is Kansas Governor Sam Brownback:

The chamber voted 50–49—calling on Vice President Mike Pence to break a tie vote for the second time that day—to install Brownback in the vacant State Department position, which monitors persecution and discrimination on a global scale through the Office of International Religious Freedom (IRF).

The at-large ambassadorship was created in 1998, though Read more

Chris Rodda Cringes at MRFF’s Attack on President Trump

Michael “Mikey” Weinstein’s “charity,” the MRFF, recently published a bit of fan-mail from a person excoriating President Trump’s Tuesday proclamation of Religious Freedom Day.

And even Weinstein’s own research assistant, Chris Rodda, probably grimaced.

The letter, written by a “30-year Active Duty Air Force Officer”, lambasts Trump’s proclamation, claiming it is a “dog whistle of Fundamentalist Christian Dominionism.” As proof [formatting original]:

To understand his real declaratory intent, we need only look at his last paragraph in which he says, “I have hereunto set my hand this sixteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand eighteen…”

…[Trump] ENLARGES the views of those that see 2018 as ‘The Year of Our Lord,’ i.e., Christians only.

Longevity in the military is clearly no guarantor of intellectual acuity.

As anyone with an elementary education and an internet connection could tell you, the Read more

Atheist: You Can Pick Your Gender, but Not Your Faith

Hemant Mehta, an atheist blogger at the pay-per-click Patheos, celebrated a “gotcha” against one-time Senatorial candidate Roy Moore when Mehta decided how to describe the faith of their lawyer.

The “issue” started when Kayla Moore, Roy Moore’s wife, reacted to claims they were anti-Semitic by noting “one of our attorneys is a Jew.”

Truth be told, the “I have friends who are…” defense is always awkward — but it is also common. (Even Michael “Mikey” Weinstein uses it in defending against claims he’s anti-Christian.) But not yet satisfied, critics began an in-depth investigation to figure out who this mystery Jew was — because, well, who knows?

Finally, Kayla Moore simply told them:  Read more

Military Atheist Documents Counseling with Navy Chaplain

Petty Officer 3rd Class Eduardo Otero is a US Navy Sailor and an atheist, as he describes in a uniquely toned article entitled “Not Applicable: The Story of an Atheist, a Navy Chaplain and a Search for Hope.” Otero, a Navy “mass communication specialist” (essentially a public affairs officer), wrote the article in a staccato future perfect tense — making it seem at times like an odd trip down a future memory lane that is unsure of its own footing.

Ultimately, it boils down to PO3 Otero desiring counseling from a chaplain, and he met with a Catholic priest, Chaplain (LTjg) Jason Burchell.

And that’s really about it. The article eventually becomes a “chaplain 101” story in which Otero seems to have transitioned his counseling into interviews with his chaplain, both personally and professionally.

Some of what Otero cites might seem like fodder for Michael “Mikey” Weinstein’s crusade against Read more

Mikey Weinstein: Southern Baptists are Terrifying, Existential Danger

Michael “Mikey” Weinstein’s MRFF recently had a case of the vapors when they read the Southern Baptist Convention’s chaplaincy website, which includes the 1941 quote from Alfred Carpenter that

Every chaplain is a missionary in uniform, and an evangelist at large…

Weinstein’s group let loose the vitriol:

MRFF’s Constitutional [sic] civil-rights [sic] battle for separation of church and state in the U.S [sic] military faces vicious opposition from fundamentalist evangelical Christian dominionists hell-bent on ensuring military chaplains function as “government paid missionaries”…

As previously discussed, every Christian Read more

MRFF’s 2017 Achievements Highlight Mikey Weinstein’s Weakness

Michael “Mikey” Weinstein, perennial critic of religious freedom in the US military, celebrated the close of 2017 by happily saying, essentially, he’d ‘transitioned’ into a well-paid blogger. Apparently stung by the revelation he was soliciting funds for lawsuits that weren’t actually happening, Weinstein now says his primary mission is to communicate, not litigate [emphasis added]:

MRFF’s mission to ensure military religious freedom scored big wins this year with battles achieving massive publicity…

We [need your money to] fuel MRFF’s campaign to illuminate federally funded fundamentalism. We must open the public’s eyes. The spread of knowledge is our arsenal’s most potent weapon.

In other words, whereas Mikey Weinstein once bragged of how much he accomplished, he now brags of how much he talks. Apropos.

More tellingly, Weinstein included a list of 14 “achievements” for 2017 that read like a list of non-events — and other people’s events.

Within that list of 14, Read more

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